Music. Photography. Thoughts.
“A well focused 12 megapixel camera trumps a poorly focused 24 megapixel camera any day of the week. A photograph of a captivating subject taken with a camera that’s mediocre at high ISOs still beats another noise free image of a coffee cup in a coffee shot every time. Waiting for the perfect camera is a fool’s errand.”
by Kirk Tuck, professional photographer in Austin, Texas, U.S.A., in a blog post of his.
Thanks for reading.
Just saw a recent concert of the Larry Carlton Quartet from Spain. Wow, still laying down a good groove after all these years. You might know the last piece in this video…
Thanks for reading.
For me personally, a bass has to have 4 strings. Don’t know whether I could deal with more 😉
But there are of course musicians who can handle more than 4 strings with ease. So take one of the best living bass players and put him together with one of the best (Grammy awarded) Jazz Big Bands I’ve ever heard, let them play in Leverkusen and you’ll have a great evening.
So watch them on Youtube – it’s worth it!
Thanks for reading.
I’ve had an Ampeg SVT when I was younger, together with not one but even two of its “fridges” – loudpeaker cabinets the size of a good fridge, but way heavier (about 75kg each; the (all tube) amp alone was about 40kg or so).
That was wonderful of course – except when you had to transport it 😉
Now something which sounds almost like the real thing exists for the guitarix project – it’s called gxsvt, and it’s part of the gxplugins which you can load into the DAW (digital audio workstation) of your choice – in my case, into Ardour.
I’ve first read about it in the LinuxMusicians forum, and its github page is here. It’s part of the extra plugins package which you can get here (or in your repositories, like in the ones from KXStudio which I’m using).
It doesn’t look like an Ampeg SVT:
– but it does indeed come close in its sound. I didn’t make any recordings yet, but here it is on my screen:
I’m very glad to have it. You will hear something as soon as I have something recorded with it.
Thanks for reading.
Recently I sent some music links to a colleague (who also makes music), and her remark about Jazz was that she only likes very few selected pieces.
So do I. Ok, I can deal with hot fusion stuff like Snarky Puppy, because I could also (at least partially) dig people like Frank Zappa when I was younger. Plus what Snarky still have are melodies. Search Christian McBride’s documentary (also on my blog) about them for this.
So it’s melodies, but it’s also rhythm – as long as you can sing (or at least remember) the melodies, and/or even dance to the rhythm, it’s a good song. And so two of my currently favourite Jazz Standards are both Bossa Nova tunes, can you believe it?
The first one is from Horace Silver, and it’s called “Song for my father”:
And the cover photo indeed shows his father John, who was from the Capverdian islands. Horace wrote this in the house of Flora Purim, and so he combined a Brazilian Bossa rhythm with an old Capverdian folk meldody to write this masterpiece.
What totally got me was not only the theme and rhythm, but also the sax solo from an (at the time) young man called Joe Henderson.
And so the second tune I want to recommend today is on Joe’s first album under his own name. It was written by (the trumpet player on this) Kenny Dorham, who was also kind of a mentor for Joe and other, younger musicians. Kenny’s most well know song is also a Jazz Standard, and it’s called “Blue Bossa”:
Time- and priceless, don’t you think? The soli, and the slightly different melody when it comes back after those soli (and the bass solo is really cool!); wonderful. Sunshine music, both of these tunes. Love them.
Thanks for reading and/or listening.
During yesterday’s lunch break, Arno and I walked around the houses a bit. I had my camera with me, taking some photos, and he captured me doing it:
This was taken with his mobile phone. And what I took is this:
More photos of me, taken by Arno can be seen in his Google Photos folder.
Thanks for viewing.
Yesterday we were out for a short walk in a small village on the other side of the nearby airport. Here’s Zuleikha sitting on a bench near the river:
Back at home, I was doing the usual daily practice routine on my bass, followed by playing around with some standards. As some of you might know, I have the “New Real Book” since some 30 years or so, but it doesn’t contain every standard you might look for – for these, you’d also have to get some of the older classic real books, or better yet, iReal Pro for your smartphone and/or tablet computer, which comes with about 1,300 free classics. And other than the name suggests, this also exists for Android devices. But these are chord sheets / playalongs only, like the original real books these tracks don’t come with the melody due to licensing restrictions.
Here’s also a new version of the collab with jonetsu/nominal6 on Soundcloud. He mixed in my fretless bass quite nicely already, tho the piece is still considered work in progress. In the LinuxMusicians forum entry you can also see some screenshots of the commercial Harrison Mixbus 32c console (on Linux of course) with which he mixed it – together with some nice plugins which I don’t have on Ardour (and which he used for the bass). Anyway, go ahead and listen to that small ambient piece in case you’re interested. It’s under a CC license which means that you could for instance use it for own videos and the likes.
So – currently I’m back to work, where I just upgraded my WordPress to 4.8.1 before writing this (together with updates of two plugins). And today I’m expecting a call from my brother who will visit our aunt, and who will probably need my help with her Linux machine during my lunch break.
And later on, I’ll probably continue working on “Blue Bossa” on my bass…
Thanks for reading.
Listen to this. Bill Evans & Chet Baker – The Legendary Sessions (1959 Album).
Enjoy.
Still working on this collab. Here’s the next version, screenshot first:
And the sound file, but not mixed, and plucked a bit harder – so in this one, the bass is actually quite a bit too loud:
This is without any plugins on its track in Ardour; what you hear is my bass directly into the machine.
Thanks for reading and/or listening.
