has uploading died?

[Anonymous]

lol – i was planning on recording & uploading today, but it was the 1st day this week when it hasn’t been raining – so spent 2hrs mowing/weeding the lawns instead.
Predicted rain for the next week – so just couldn’t miss the opportunity of mowing instead.

I guess one of the main reasons in my case for not uploading as much is after 2&1/2 years of playing i’ve got a fair idea of the mistakes/problem areas myself – so in my case it would be more of just sharing an upload for the sake of sharing an upload to show the stuff i’m progressing with.

Oh well, see if i can find one day next to try again. In the mean time looking forward to hearing someone else instead.

[Anonymous]

Perhaps some feel that the lack of feedback does not justify the extra work required?
Even when there is little feedback, the focussed effort to produce the best I can do, has helped improve my playing skill.

Last week I switched over from my 4C to the Selmer Classic Silver MP and I’ve had to go back to a much softer reed.
For Tuesday evening’s band practice session I played the 4C again, and was pleasantly surprised by how easy it has become to produce a good tone on this MP.
The long squeaky struggle with the Selmer Classic has paid dividends!!!

[Michael Bishop]

@ William: That’s pretty cool there William 🙂 I can hear a ‘fat’ tone in that fatboy you’re using. So is that going to be your MP of choice?
When it comes to uploading or playing in general, it can be all too easy for us to get swallowed up in our mistakes, the things we need to work on, etc.. I think sometimes we, ourselves, can be our own worst critics. As student players we’re constantly scrutinizing our playing and there’s always something we need to work on. While we certainly need to be aware of those things, I think it can be so hard sometimes to simply look at the progress we have made and feel good about it. We tend to forget that there was a time when we didn’t even know how to play the Saxophone…and look at us now! 🙂 Very cool when we think about it. I think everyone is doing great and I love watching everyone play. We all learn a lot from each other. Speaking of uploading, I’m on the mend and doing better, looking to upload myself as soon.

[Anonymous]

@Jeff – i agree with you there, if you upload something you’ve taken the time to practice/upload etc and no one bothers to comment positively/negatively even if the song choice is of no intetest to the listener – i agree whats the point of bothering?

i genuinely think, its mainly down to the lack of people using this site, but more so that everyone is busy with juggling work and other commitements, let alone finding their own time to practice.

In my case, i’m struggling to find time once a week to record, have to wsit till next friday now.

Might buy one if those hand held recorders you use, just for my own personal use, as it takes me half an hour to get everything out and setup to do a proper recording, then another half hour putting it all away, as i cant leave it cluttering up the room.

@Jeff – dont give up uploading, i still find it interesting to hear people have a go, and hear how they are progressing. Fortunately for me i have a wides taste for music – i’m not just stuck in one type of music which imo isnt very adventureous

[William Cingolani]

Thanks Michael. In the Dug Out there are the Guardala Brothers the MB Fatboy,and the MB11. Four Theo Wanne warriors the Ambika, the Gaia,the Durga, and the Shiva and The JodyJazz trio the DV, New York, and Chicago, and two Jumbo Javas, T-75 and T-95. So that’s the line up. Theo Wanne named his mouthpieces after Greek and Hindo Royalty. Ambika is the daughter Of Kashya, Durga is the Mother Goddess in Hinduism. She is also known as Ambika. In Greek mythology Gaia was the mother goddess who gave birth to the Earth and all the Universe and to the Titans and the Giants. So there’s some history involved with mouthpieces and those musicians who played them. And Shiva is one of the three major dieties of Hinduism

So the Guardala brothers, the MB Fatboy and/or the MB11 will be my first pick.

[Michael Bishop]

@ william: That’s a huge collection of MPs you got there! I knew Theo Wanne’s work was state-of-the-art, but that’s some pretty cool history behind the naming of his MPs and it didn’t even dawn on me that he used Greek/Hindu names for his MPs–that’s pretty cool to say the least 🙂 I commented on your video on youtube, as soon as I get the chance I’ll check out the others you’ve been posting on youtube.

[William Cingolani]

Yeah Mike. My the number of mpcs grew as the years passed on. I think the MB11 and MB fatboy will end my shopping around, however there are still some good ones out there. I’ll blow what I got and try to make it sound good. Music is a life long adventure.Why can’t our world history be taught from the view point of music instead of from the viewpoint of politics. Even Amadeus Mozart had to put up with that stupid emperor who complained to Mozart that he had too many Notes in his music score.

[William Cingolani]

Hey Johnny and other musicians: I’ve been locking at my St. Louis Blues and tracks. It’s in the Aebersold Jazz Vol. 100. It starts off nice and bluesy than the tempo picks up to a latin tempo. The music is in the key of A major. I was thinking for improvisation switch to B minor, B C# D E F# G# A B, and also the B pentatonic B D E F# A B. I’m not so good at improv. I can read the story, but I’m not so good at telling the story. I was always told at Jazz that to improve I must say something musically tell a story.

[Anonymous]

@William – in my last blues lesson (wasn’t improvising – thats months down the line for me) i was playing very expressively, think

soo i was like talking/singing/bending the pitches wooooooaaaaaahhh
etc or meeeeooooww similar to Jf laughing on the sax. thats gonna come in real useful when i start improvising…

[Michael Bishop]

@ william: It’s funny you mention Jazz because that’s what my Instructor has me working on right now, he felt I had a good grip of the Blues so decided to start me off with basic Jazz theory/Improvising. Pentatonic Scales are used heavily in Jazz and that’s always a great place to get your feet wet. In addition to your Pentatonic Scale, try and see if you can find a place to throw in a minor 3rd and flat 7 in your Improvising…they do this in Jazz playing all the time. If you have a 5 chord in your backing track, then this is the ideal place for the flat 7 and is the best place to use it. You could go minor in your playing like you are thinking about if you wanted too and that’s the cool thing about it because it will absolutely work over a Major scale…just remember we never use Major Improvising over a minor scale…that will stand our like a sore thumb! 🙂 But if you wanna stretch your Jazz Improvising just a little bit, we need to think more in terms of the 7 chords within the scale itself. In jazz, whether you should go Major or minor in your Improvising has a lot to do with chords you’re working with in your backing track. If you have a 2,3 or a 6 chord in your track, then a minor 7 chord would would great; but if you have a 1 or 4 chord in your track, this is where you really wanna think about going Major instead. If you have a 5 chord in your track, use a Dominant 7 chord. One of the most common chord progressions in Jazz playing is the good-ole 2-5-1 chord progression. So go minor over the 2, go dominant over the 5 and go Major over the 1…you can never go wrong with this approach.
This is the kinds of stuff that, as time goes along, you’ll learn to distinguish in your Improvising and it’s all pretty simple stuff. In Jazz playing it’s more of a chord-by-chord type of approach v.s. Blues where it’s a “1 chord fits all” type of Improvising. In Jazz, using Dominant chords is used exclusively over the 5th of the scale whereas in Blues you could use the Blues Scale or dominant chords over the entire 12-Bar Blues progression. There’s other things we use in Jazz like Bebop Scales, Modes with raised intervals, Diminished Scales, chord extensions beyond your standard 7 chords, etc.. But for starters don’t worry yourself about these things. Get a good grip on Improvising using the chords themselves, then the other stuff will make a lot more sense to you.

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