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2/22/2013 Week-in-Review

NPR's A Blog Supreme had an interesting albeit non-exhaustive sampling of important jazz suites- History As Symphony: The African-American Experience in Jazz Suites.

-YouTube's music influence continues to grow as Billboard Makes YouTube Part of Hot 100 Formula.

-Social media continues to become more things for more people as Tumblr Gets Into Music Discovery.

-Matt Warnock retweeted this video of Joe Pass and Ella Fitzgerald playing a duet concert in Hannover 1975.  Ella appears 27 minutes in.

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2/15/2013 Week-in-Review

-I made some corrections to my chart for Disperfunctory that came out earlier this week. 

-Hypebot.com has yet another great article- How Digital Music Has Changed The Charts: The Decline Of The Top Ten (INFOGRAPHIC)

-In a somewhat related article, dinosaur media continues to weaken except for digital revenue- Warner Music Quarterly Loss Widens

-Many people noted this loss- Donald Byrd, Jazz Trumpeter, Dies at 80

-Here's an interesting write-up at stowetoday.com- The Bad Plus tackles a Stravinsky classic

Christian Sands and Kris Bowers rethink both prepared piano and Fats Waller in an awesome version of Ain't Misbehavin'.  Jazz purists beware!

 

Related articles

Original Music: Disperfunctory

Trumpeter Donald Byrd dies at the age of 80

Legendary jazz trumpeter Donald Byrd has died, says nephew

Warner Music Group Reports Q1 Revs Down 0.8%

Sheet Music: Disperfunctory

Last week I posted the video for this tune.  I thought it might only take a couple hours to enter it into Finale.  Let's just say I need to keep working on my Finale Kung Fu.  I still don't know how to hide some of the layered rests.  As I mentioned in the original post, this tune is more complicated than most of my songs.  I didn't realize until notating it how often I needed F-flats and C-flats.  It's hard to explain to students why an E or a B won't work, but I think it's pretty obvious here.

 

 (click below for sound)

 

Disperfunctory

 

 

Related articles

Original Music: Disperfunctory

2/8/2013 Week-in-Review

-I've paid extra attention to the news in Greece since my interview with an anonymous Greek jazz musician, Music in Collapse.  Things seem to be getting worse: Greek Isles Cut Off From Mainland For Sixth Day As Strikes Return With A Vengeance.

-Pianist George Colligan at his blog JazzTruth breaks down Wayne Shorter's album High Life and the poor critical response at its debut.

-Clyde Smith over at music news hub www.hypebot.com reviewed David Hooper's book Six Figure Musician, which says it will tell you "How to Sell More Music, Get More People to Your Shows, and Make More Money in the Music Business."  

 Here's a video a guitarist friend of mine sent, Carl Verheyen "Creating Melodic Lines." 

Original Music: Disperfunctory

This is an original composition I wrote back in December 2011.  The made up word disperfunctory is an overly complicated way to say meaningful.  At the time, I was still finishing my doctoral dissertation and commuting 240 miles round-trip twice a week for a teaching job.  Disperfunctory sounds a little like my life then- overly complicated and full of struggle, but beautiful at times.

In this performance, I play the head twice.  It's an AAB form.  In an ideal world where I get more practice, there would be an improvised solo in the middle.  But as you may see after I publish the chart in a few days, this thing is a beast.

2/1/2013 Week-in-Review

 The 3 Most Profitable DIY Revenue Streams and Why Many Artists Succeed at Only One of Them- a guest post from Jay Frank over at www.hypebot.com, an excellent music news site.

What Happens if the Price of Music Falls to Zero? -an interesting read over at CNNMoney about the trend of recorded music's falling value.

Three days in, Bjork’s Biophilia app Kickstarter has raised only £12.7k- It seems crowdfunding has its downsides too.  

Although I've spent much more time listening to Wes Montgomery and George Benson, I've always had a fascination with Barney Kessell.  I understand the criticism from his detractors, but his tone, imagination, and -I would argue- humor usually wins me over.  Here's a great video of Kessell with a trio playing a blues.  The music's great, and the outdated fashion is a bonus.