The 50 Worst Artists In Music History

Posted on By ericdano 3 Comments on The 50 Worst Artists In Music History

Blender.com, a great music music site, published a great list in 2003 of “The 50 Worst Artists In Music History“. While I don’t agree about #16, Oingo Boingo, I do agree with #4, Kenny G.

"Hated equally by jazz and rock fans, Kenny Gorelick's limpid instrumentals and obsequious cameos helped turn the soprano sax solo into pop music's most feared cliche. He started his career with fusion hack Jeff Lorber, and his 1986 album, Duotones, established a steady market for anodyne, minimal background music, an aesthetic that reached its zenith in 1997 when "The G" set a world record by holding a single note for 45 minutes.
Appalling fact He graduated magna cum laude from the University of Washington with a degree in accounting.
Worst CD Classics in the Key of G (Arista, 1999)"

They also have some interesting comments about Jazz Fusion

"It's a rule of thumb that any music that uses jazz as a prefix will make you want to saw your head off in boredom (see also: jazz-funk, jazz rap, jazz house). But none is as wearying as the genre that thought what rock really needed was month-long bass solos and time signatures Stephen Hawking wouldn't understand.

Cut them some slack, they did publish a fairly good jazz list a while ago. They did nail the Kenny G thing though, I’d have put him as #2. And a newer list would have Paris Hilton and Ashlee Simpson I’m sure….

Articles

Finale 2007

Posted on By ericdano No Comments on Finale 2007

MakeMusic released Finale 2007 a while ago. August I believe. I’ve been using it since then, and I think I can finally review it properly.

There are not a lot great new features in Finale 2007 compared to 2006. The big feature, in fact, really the only feature that is huge, is the linked parts. Though, on MakeMusic’s preview page they harp “features” such as “Authorization Improvements“, and “Improved pickups, vertical collision remover“. There are a couple of other new things I get to. Let’s dismiss the authorization thing. That is as lame as the Copyright symbol they billed as a feature in 2006. The vertical collision remover sorta works, but not really. I can’t really see any difference in the pickups as I really didn’t do much with complex pickup measure.

So, lets dive into the reasons why you’d want to upgrade to 2007…..

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Reviews

Jazz Saxophone Duets by Greg Fishman

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I had rave reviews of Greg Fishman’s “Jazz Saxophone Etudes” book. I really like the tunes in that book. They are melodic, sound great, and are idiomatic of good jazz solos. The concept of including two CDs (one for Alto, and one for Tenor) was, well, fairly obvious (yet no one else does this, ie: Snidero’s Jazz Conception books, or Mintzer’s Etude books).

So, in the mail the other day, I received Fishman’s latest creation, Jazz Saxophone Duets ……

Yup, it’s as good as his other book. There are 10 duets. Two versions of each. One version is for two like instruments, such as two Tenors, or two Altos. The other version is for Alto and Tenor (Alto on the top line, Tenor on the bottom). Each “Duet” could be an etude that could, perhaps should, have been in Greg’s other book. The tunes sound great.

Oh, and they have a rhythm section accompaniment track as well. Did I mention this book contains three CDs. One CD of all the etudes done on Altos. One CD of all the etudes on Tenors. And one CD of all the etudes Alto and Tenor. And on each CD you have the Duet with both parts played, just the top line, just the bottom line, or just the rhythm section (which is on all the tracks). How cool is that?

Two little complaints. First, when I ripped the CDs into iTunes, all the CDs showed up as the Tenor version. That was a pain. Also, the Artist column didn’t make sense, and I had to change that. Second, I kind of wanted another couple of medium tempo tunes. There are 5 tunes that are metronome 200 or above, One ballad (mm=69), one near 200 tune (mm=192). So, that leaves three tunes at mm=126, mm=132, and mm=152. I think if there were two more tunes in the 130 to 160 range, this book would be a perfect 10.

In all, this is a very cool duet/etude book. It’s for advanced intermediate on up players. I give it a 9 out of 10.

Update: 11/12 07:14 GMT by E :Greg Fishman emailed the following:

"Since the three CDs are all almost exactly the same length and same number of tracks,
i-tunes thinks they're all the same disc. I tried correcting this many times by submitting the correct info for each CD separately to the CDDB database, but it didn't make a difference. After several weeks of trying to get the i-tunes database to see the difference, I just stopped trying. This is not my fault or the book's fault; it's just an i-tunes glitch, but I know it's a pain.


Regarding the medium tempos, I did have two more tunes planned, but due to the format of including four versions of each duet, I ran out of space on the CDs. As it stands, the CDs are 74+ minutes each. It would have meant including more CDs or cutting some of the faster duets. I ended up simply picking what I thought were the best duets."

Yes, seems the CDs are indeed filled to the brim. However, the first thing I did when I got the book was add them to my iTunes library. Makes one wonder if it even makes sense to include audio CDs anymore. Why not just a data CD that has the tracks ripped in high quality MP3 format?

Reviews

Rolling Stone Greatest Albums List

Posted on By ericdano No Comments on Rolling Stone Greatest Albums List

Rolling Stone has a new list of the 500 Greatest Albums out. Of note are:

  • “12. Kind of Blue, Miles Davis”
  • “47. A Love Supreme, John Coltrane”
  • “94. Bitches Brew, Miles Davis”
  • and “100. In the Wee Small Hours, Frank Sinatra”

Personally, I’d rather have Sinatra at the Sands in there but, it’s good to know that Miles beat Abbey Road by the Beatles 😉

News

Tweaking Smart Music On The Mac

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I have a love/hate relationship with MakeMusic’s Smartmusic. First, the love part. I love that it has a lot of backgrounds for classical etudes, and you can slow them down, tweak the key, etc. You can even record yourself with it, though the quality and the mixing of the resulting recording is not great at all.

Hate part. They tether you to the computer. Personally, I hate looking at a computer monitor all day, and for music. I like to have music stretched out on my stand. 3 Pages sometimes. A lot of stuff, including the jazz stuff in Smartmusic, is screen only. While I can understand copyright issues for songs, for simple little jazz patterns I don’t. Why not let people print them?

Anyhow, the

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Articles

YouTube Jazz Videos

Posted on By ericdano No Comments on YouTube Jazz Videos

You’ve probably heard of YouTube. I’d say, it’s kind of like Napster of almost 10 years ago. People post all kinds of videos there, some are legal, some not (TV Shows, probably some of these videos, etc).

Anyhow, there are a number of great Jazz videos there. Do a search of Coltrane, or Michael Brecker. There are some fantastic videos there, even a recent one of Michael playing a new EWI. So go over to YouTube, and type in the name of a few of your favorite musicians. I’m sure you’ll find a good clip there. I’m still looking for a good clip of Quincy Jones (on Sat Nite Live) doing Manteca with Michael Brecker.

On a related note, if you like the video a LOT, you can download a program like PodTube to have it on your iPod.

Update: 08/28 18:30 GMT by E :Here are some of my favorites so far:

And a whole lot more.

Articles, Videos

Surprise Brecker Appearance!

Posted on By ericdano 1 Comment on Surprise Brecker Appearance!

Michael Brecker made a surprise appearance at Carnegie Hall Friday.

"In a surprise, they were joined on Mr. Hancock’s “One Finger Snap” by the saxophonist Michael Brecker, who has been ill for the last year with MDS, or Myelodisplastic Syndrome, a bone marrow disease. It was the first time he had performed since his hospitalization. Mr. Brecker looked slightly tired, but otherwise gave it his all, playing long, tumultuous lines at full strength through the song."

Great to know Michael is doing better!! He does look a lot thinner now though…….

News

Real Book Listening Project

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I came across an interesting site. Real Book Listen. The goal is to provide links to audio clips of the songs found in the Hal Leonard Real Book (the one that was “illegal” about 10 years ago, and now is “legal”).

It’s a good idea, especially the iTunes links. I think the author should have included links to Emusic as well as they have a lot of classic Jazz available there.

Articles

Beyond The Horn – Backgrounds

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Yes, you knew it was coming. Backgrounds to practice Walt Weiskopf’s great new book, Beyond The Horn. A lot of these are based on “standard” tunes. A couple are original chord changes. All of them are very challenging to play with the Etudes out of the book. It’s different, it’s fun, it will bust your chops for sure. Enjoy!

  Beyond The Horn Backgrounds in Band-in-the-Box format (10.5 KiB, 21 hits)
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Sheet Music

Windcontroller Group (Group Think)

Posted on By ericdano 13 Comments on Windcontroller Group (Group Think)

Over this weekend, I got into this heated argument on a Yahoo group about Wind Controllers. I was interested in perhaps getting a new EWI 4000 to supplement my practicing. I said in one post that I thought a lot of the people using the controller as a sax made it sound cheesy. And, honestly, the sounds do sound cheesy. And I stated that you should try to be a sax, or a flute at all because it just doesn’t sound right. Wow. The little people on that list blew up, calling my statements “stupid”, calling me “bipolar” when I said that the Garritan Jazz Band sounds sound good (but not good enough) and slandering me about everything under the moon. The moderator, Matt at Patchman Music decided to just remove me from the list without any explanation. Nice moderating there guy.

I thought it was really interesting that these guys have deluded themselves into thinking that playing a flute patch, or sax patch sounds as good as the real thing. One gem, was posted by this german guy “We emulators must have come very close to the “real thing” otherwise they wouldn’t feel to threatened and be so passionate about preventing emulation”. I totally don’t agree. You are doing a disservice to the music community. Whatever happened to tone? Isn’t tone the most important part of someone’s playing? If you are proficient on wind controller, why not just play the real instrument then? There is not much of a leap from EWI to clarinet. Why not just play it as it’s own instrument with it’s own unique sound?

Group Think

Ah, anyhow, the little group there seems to think not. Thus I got bounced, though people who slandered me seem to have been allowed to continue to post. I think the wind controller players are limiting themselves if they do emulation, or even think it sounds a “believable” substitute for a real instrument. Steps Ahead would not be on my iPod if Brecker was using a flute patch to play all those songs.

But what do you all think? EWI as a substitute for a real instrument? As it’s own entity (ala Brecker)? I am totally for the latter, and opposed to the former.

Articles

Beyond The Horn

Posted on By ericdano 1 Comment on Beyond The Horn

Walt Weiskopf and Ed Rosenberg, have released a great new book, Beyond The Horn. It is more of a follow up to his great Around The Horn book. The 246 pages are filled with Octave Displaced Triads, and a bevy of Octave displaced minor, melodic minor, harmonic minor and a bunch of other modes. Plus, there are some etudes based on original and standard chord songs that incorporate the material studied throughout the book in them. The funniest title, for me, was “You’re Modern” which is based on the chords to “I’m Old Fashioned” by Jerome Kern. Get it?…..get it? Aw, nevermind.

They forward in the book says that the material was tried out with a captives from the Eastman Music school. Supposedly no students were injured in the testing….though it doesn’t say that…..

All of Walt Weiskopf’s books are must haves in your library. His Around The Horn, “Coltrane – A Players Guide To His Harmony, Intervallic Improvisation, and Augmented Scale In Jazz are well written, easy to read, concise books every saxophone player should have. This book gets a 10 out of 10.

Reviews

DEVONThink

Posted on By ericdano 3 Comments on DEVONThink

I tend to gather stuff while online. Pictures, articles, PDFs, this, that, the other thing. It’s really hard to keep track of stuff. Perhaps it was a website where you read this great article about taking care of your reeds. Or maybe it was that PDF of a solo you downloaded, but what was the file name again? Mac OS X’s Spotlight can only help so much in finding stuff. And on Windows…..you’ll have to wait for Vista for anything like Spotlight.

Fear not. There are a number of solutions for this information overload, and the one I picked was DEVONThink Pro. It’s a great program that can keep track of all the STUFF you gather. All the PDFs I’ve collected. Articles out of FluteTalk, or the Double Reed Society. Or out of Downbeat. I have something like 16 gigabytes in DEVONThink right now. PDFs of songs. I can organize them. Categorize them. Type in some good descriptions. Plus, if I want to find a Beach Boys song, but I don’t remember the title…..I can search on it….instantly.

I don’t really know of anything like this for Windows, but if you have a Mac, you should check it out.

Reviews

II-V-I Patterns

Posted on By ericdano 14 Comments on II-V-I Patterns

I have updated the II-V-I patterns yet again. I consolidated some of the other patterns I had (like the Ray Brown ones). There are now 286 pages (or 286 4 bar patterns in all keys) to enjoy. Also gone is the Jazz Font. I am in favor of a more clean, professional look using Bill Duncan’s Fonts for Finale for this going forward.

  II-V-I Patterns in Bb (4.6 MiB, 12,507 hits)
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  II-V-I Patterns in Bb Pages 1 to 100 (1.7 MiB, 11,497 hits)
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  II-V-I Patterns in Bb Pages 101 to 200 (1.9 MiB, 10,984 hits)
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  II-V-I Patterns in Bb Pages 201 to 289 (1.6 MiB, 10,999 hits)
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  II-V-I Patterns in Eb (4.7 MiB, 11,714 hits)
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  II-V-I Patterns in Eb Pages 1 to 100 (1.7 MiB, 10,434 hits)
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  II-V-I Patterns in Eb Pages 101 to 200 (1.9 MiB, 10,357 hits)
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  II-V-I Patterns in Eb Pages 201 to 289 (1.6 MiB, 10,923 hits)
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  II-V-I Patterns Reference (600.9 KiB, 12,106 hits)
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These patterns were designed to be used with Aebersold Vol. 3, Track 2. Also included is a 24 page reference of the patterns.

Sheet Music