Jazz
A Late Post And Long Day
I’ve had an intensive day of pounding through jazz standards with Jonny before he went back to London. We played for a good 5 hours and I carried on practicing those good old half-diminished scales well after he’d gone -Woo-Hoo!
I’ve spent the rest of my evening battling with Eurobusk 07 footage on iMovie before trying [...]
Jazz Duo
My good pal Jonny is heading up from London tomorrow to work on our duo material.
This is a fairly new project that we are working on together and the majority of our material to date are some of the more laid back jazz standards. We have a few other ideas to try enhance our repertoire [...]
Emailed in Question; Orchestra VS Big Band
Hey Jason,
Thanks for sending me your email Jason. That’s a pretty hard question to answer but I’ll do my best : ).
I guess I can just tell you the things that I find tricky between the 2 genres. I think that you will have to draw your own conclusions based on your own strength as [...]
5 Star Charity Ball *****
Last nights Big Band gig was a success. The venue was at the MacDonald Randolph Hotel, Oxford (5 stars).
It was a bit of a shame that the raffle, auction and speeches ran on as this left us with only a fraction of the 2 hours we were booked for.
But we gave it hell for the [...]
An Unexpected Evening
I was already to crash out last night with a box of Lemsips when I got a call from a mate I play in a Big Band with. He was just calling to ask if I was coming to the rehearsal in Birmingham. I thought it was odd as I only go to the rehearsals [...]
Swingin’ at The Skakespearience
The big band gig I did last week was a really good one.
The audience seemed to love it as the evening was filled with copious applause, 2 standing ovations and 2 encores.
The only thing they seemed a little unhappy about was that we didn’t come out for a 3rd.
However, after a gig we did in [...]
Upper Range Expansion
(Most likely todays Blog will only be of interest to Brass and Trumpet players)
I have a lot to say about this topic. However this is just a mention of the stuff I’m currently using in my everyday practice. Here’s a breakdown of my routine at the moment:
Technique Building (lip slurs, tonguing an finger exercises)
Studies (Looking [...]
The Return of an Old Project (and Losing Bad Habits)
I’m currently in Liverpool and attemptin to restart an old project with a few musicians here.
It’s refrehing to get some time to play and more importantyly not to play. Since I left college Im on the up. I think this is due to the fact that I’m well rested and not destroying my chops on [...]
New Origins – Live at LIPA
Neil Yates played at LIPA yesterday with his group New Origins.
New Origins is made up of Neil Yates (trumpet/ flugelhorn/low whistles and vocal) Stuart McCallum (guitar), Les Chisnall (piano), Gavin Barras (double bass) Rob Turner (drums/ percussion and vocal) Martin O’Neill (bodhran).
Let me start by saying what a refreshing change this group was. A tight, [...]
