Welcome to 2026. Already?? Winter break is now the one time of the year I can set aside dayjob demands for a moment and mess around on the old computizing device. This year s theme was slop-slinging, since that is how we now do things in the late stages of my profession. Trained some wavenets as Continue reading "Recent experiments"
A year ago I wrote about composing a solo on All the Things You Are and it still remains the jazz standard that I have the most comfort with. Since then, I also joined an online jazz community and have been upping my game a bit. When this standard came around again, I took the Continue reading "All the Things You Are Hank Mobley"
Just to make it clear where I stand on this not at all difficult moral question: deporting people without due process is, in every case, wrong. Especially so when the clear intent is placing them in offshore torture prisons. If saying so gets me on a government list of some sort, I ll wear that as Continue reading "Scenes from democracy in decline"
Latest transcription is Scrapple. The head and transcribed solo are fun to play, but I really struggled with improvising on this one, especially the A section where it stays in F almost the whole time. Parker, of course, makes it sound effortless. Fun finding on this one is the lick starting in bar 15 in Continue reading "Scrapple from the Apple"
I have been using a paid phone app that shall remain nameless for practicing outlining jazz chords on guitar. The app gives you the chords from a standard one at a time, and you play the intervals; the app marks each note completed as they are detected through the microphone. It works pretty well, but Continue reading "A pitch for pitchy"
I forgot to mention in the previous post on On Green Dolphin Street that one reason I liked the song was due to a version on a Tito Puente compilation in which there is some stratospheric trumpet work. I used to play the horn but my embouchure atrophied years ago. Still, I love the sound Continue reading "Blue Train"
For the last month I ve been working on and off on the transcription of Cannonball Adderly s first chorus of On Green Dolphin Street. The phrasing is really nice in this solo. Adderly plays around a lot with the time feel, at times playing way behind the beat which made writing out the rhythms challenging. I Continue reading "On Green Dolphin Street"
The album Sonny Side Up, featuring both Sonny Stitt and Sonny Rollins, is fire, and Sonny Stitt s chorus from On the Sunny Side of the Street is hard to beat. I ve had this whole album on repeat for the last month or so and there s not a bad track. Dizzy Gillespie sings on Sunny and Continue reading "On the Sunny Side of the Street"
The path of totality of the April 8, 2024 eclipse just barely missed our house, so I did what any extremely normal person would do: booked a hotel 4 months in advance two hours west of here, pre-ordered a dozen eclipse glasses, and then took a day off of work to go watch it. Totally Continue reading "Hole in the sky"
New transcription: another Parker blues, Billie s Bounce.