Easter Pot Luck at Jays

All -

You are invited to a pot luck at my place Easter Sunday (March 23rd this year) at 4pm.


All are welcome, just let me know if you will be coming and if you need our home address.

- Jay

Rest In Peace, Dennis Irwin.

Dennis was an amazing musician, and an amazing person. He passed away yesterday and will be missed...

(The Real) Guitar Dojo!

Everyone did a great job at this workshop, and based on the positive feedback from everyone, I'm sure that we will do this again!

Amazing Resource!

http://urge2burge.wordpress.com/

Lots of great music to check out for free. Thanks for the heads up on this from Gunnar!

free improv

Hey all, well i have spent the last several days doing what jay had talked about during are gathering, recording small clips of free improve and recording myself over it later. I must say doing this exercise has already taught me ALOT about my playing! one of the most surprising things i learned so far was that just simple playing free i started to find myself falling into predictable patterns and sounds, i disliked this and after some thought on the problem i realized that i really wasn't there yet..that is to say although i thought i was playing improvised i was really just rambling on shapes and sound i already knew. The great awaking came when i decided to make these patterns musical, that is to say i stopped just playing and tried to find the most musical, lyrical, speaking way i could and BAM!! i started to hear things in the music that wasn't there before!!
hopefully you all try this exercises out because it truly helped me hear my playing and improv in a new way.
As well id love to hear some others peoples playings.
cheers
noah

Must See!

Lesson - A New Technique

I've been able to manage to practice about 2 hours a day this past week.

The ''note popping'' is a good excercise that I expect to keep in my routine as is reading without looking at the neck. I need a lot of work on the discepline of focusing on the target. I have a tendancy to rush ahead without looking.

The practice of naming note names and scale degrees is a good one for me. It helps me avoid the running of scales/patterns without thinking about anything more than the pattern/scale name and its sound.

This week, Jay raised my awareness of the style of playing I have somewhat developed and how it differs from straight ahead jazz style which I want. Not to say that my learned style is bad, but to recognize its character. I found that it took some effort to eliminate my slip and slide, heavy note bending, ''chicken picken'' sort of style and work on playing more ''straight''. A good practice to help me become more versatile. Trying to fill up the ''bag of tricks''.

I have new voicings and arps to work on this week. Cool stuff.

Thanks Jay,

Bob