A Funny Way of Talking

I'm told, quite often, that I have a way with words. I speak differently. The amount of different, I have no clue, but I guess it can be amusing at times. Of course, it can also be quite depressing.

For the truth of the matter is, I see and hear the world differently. Different stimuli provides different response, but I think the majority of it is attributed to my memory. I have quite a good one, and it can catch people quite off guard. Most of those conversations go a bit like "How was ___?" "Good.. how did you know I ____?" "You told me..".

I fear I've had this conversation altogether too much in my life.

Several Shows Later... November 4th, 2011 LIVE @ Boothe Brothers

 I've been very neglectful of my blog lately, but seeing as we've played our third live show at Boothe Brothers, I probably need to tell you guys how these have gone. I'll start with our first show, back on November 4th.

Here we are on Stage

We had some friends come out, and it was only our first show, so it was a pretty small crowd, but it wasn't deserted, there was around 45 people there. I started off the night on the stage alone, and then I brought the rest of the group, Centuric Jive Evidence, up on stage and we finished off the opening set.

Here's a highlight from our setlist:

You can check out the rest of the videos here.

Next, Herod the Fink took the stage, playing their rock/original Christmas music. They calmed down the crowd a bit, and then Chasing Angels took to the stage. They played a pretty nice setlist, swapping between covers and originals.

Concert LIVE at Boothe Brothers Performing Arts Center

Two weeks from today, I'll be opening for a couple of pretty awesome groups. I'll play some of my solo stuff, and then play a bit of Jazz and Latin Jazz as well. It's been a while, so if you'd like to listen to that old demo I did ages ago, I wouldn't be opposed to it. I'll also be featuring one of the first songs going on my album (which I'm recording on Saturday), an odd-metered arrangement of one of everyone's favorite Jaco Pastorious recordings, The Chicken. Here's a video of his version, stay tuned for mine.

As for the other groups playing? Well, Herod The Fink is coming up right after me, a wonderful group who plays some original Christmas Music they wrote. Here's a video of them live and acoustic, they're great fun!

After that, and headlining the show, is Chasing Angels. They don't have any videos yet, or any recordings available, but they're a great group of people, and will end the night out with a bang.

Creedence McNabb, Herod The Fink, and Chasing Angels on November 4th, in Spanish Fork, Utah, starting at 8pm. $5 at the door, at Boothe Brothers Performing Arts Center. It'll be a party, so come out and enjoy!

A Few Jazztacular Visits

Now, I've gone to two pretty interesting places in the past month. One of them was a visit to Snow College for a Jazz Camp put on by Juilliard's Staff. The other one was a visit to Telluride, Colorado for the Jazz Festival. Both were amazing experiences.

This is the Combo I was in, The Feel Goods, directed by Ben Wolfe

Let's start off with the Juilliard Jazz Camp. There people there from all over the country, and some international cats as well. Three from Costa Rica, one from London, several from New Jersey, and a few from Pennsylvania, and probably quite a few other places. The staff there knew exactly what they were talking about, though they were purely teaching Straight Ahead Jazz, and not much of anything else. Each of them had played with several greats, which I suppose would technically mean they were all greats themselves, but that's not near as important as how much they cared about us learning and us becoming the right kind of person for people to want to play gigs with. It was more than a Jazz Camp, they cared about who were just as much as everything else.

If you're curious, the staff included Carl Allen(Drums, Juilliard), Rich Dixon(Guitar, Snow College), Brandon Lee(Trumpet, Juilliard), Ron Blake(Saxophone, Juilliard), Rodney Jones(Guitar, Juilliard), Ben Wolfe(Bass, Juilliard), James Burton III(Trombone, Snow College), and Benny Green(Piano, Juilliard). In another post I'll share with you some of the stuff they taught, along with their listening lists.

The Voodoo Orchestra on the Main Stage at Telluride (I'm back there on Bass)

Now, I said I went to Telluride Colorado for the Jazz Festival, I forgot to mention the only reason I got to go there, is because The Voodoo Orchestra was lucky enough to get to play on the Main Stage, and I was lucky enough to have a backstage pass for the entire festival. The first day there, Tower of Power played, I didn't talk to them after they played, but I did watch them from backstage for a bit, and partied in the audience earlier.

The next day was Paquito D'Rivera, and Andy Narell. Andy Narell plays the Steel Pan, and he played some shows with the Flecktones. You know what that means? I met my second Flecktone! Even if he's an honorary one, it was nice to talk to him after their amazing concert, I talked to him about the Flecktones, and it was a grand old time.

That night, and the next day, it was the Clayton Brothers. John Clayton being one of the great bass players in the world today, playing with his brother, his son, and a few "adopted" brothers. Terrell Stafford, I must admit, is one of the best Trumpet players I've heard in ages, and it was an amazing couple of concerts!

Now, that day, a few of us also decided to go out and play in the streets, and we actually made a whole $14 as a group. It was for fun, so we just thought it was cool that other people enjoyed listening to us while we played.

And that wraps it up for my recent trips, keep diggin' it!

DCI: Corps Encore in Utah

Do you remember seeing your Marching Band during a halftime show at a Football game back in High School, or in your College days? DCI, or otherwise known as Drum Corps International, is that to the extreme. People spend thousands of dollars to go to camps and become a part of these Corps to put on an amazing show for people, and for competition. Recently, they held one such show here in Utah, and I happened to go see it. It was amazing, as expected. These guys are literally spending 24 hours a day working on this stuff for their entire Summer Vacation, and once you hit age 21, you're no longer allowed to be a part of it. Here's a few pictures of the Corps that came out (and my personal favorites of the evening).

Phantom Regiment

The Cadets

So what's so special about this, besides them spending their entire life doing this stuff for the Summer? Well, they're memorizing Music, playing it to very large stadiums at very high volumes, and moving across a field in memorized lines and spots and circles, all whilst adjusting to every bit of human error, of which is almost completely eliminated by the end of the season. Yes, they practice to the point where human error stops occurring.

It's really an amazing feat, and the amazing Music can make for a great show, such as Phantom Regiment's very beautiful show called "Juliet" and the very creative show of The Cadets(who won that night) "Between Angels and Demons".

Keep Drummin.

Sick, but still Practicing

Now, here's a little trick if you're ever trying to play fast. It may seem like your fingers can't actually move that fast, no matter how hard you try, but in general, it's actually not a muscle problem. It's actually a muscle memory problem. Recently I've been working on Donna Lee:

A rather quick bebop tune, as well played by Jaco Pastorious, originally written by Charlie Parker, it's great stuff, and a great song to learn how to play fast. The key to doing so, though, is to start slow. Maybe as slow as 80 bpm, or even 60bpm, I personally started at 100bpm since I've worked on a few other fast songs. It gets easier as you learn more fast tunes, but you have got to start slow and speed up slowly. Play it at one tempo perfectly for 3 or 4 times in a row, and then move it up two clicks.

Anyways, that's my spiel on playing fast. I mostly learned this because, in my sickness, I was forced by my weakened body to play slowly, and it definitely helped overall.

Keep jazzin

Oh, and I'm in a Symphony

So, Monday night (That's June 20th, 2011) was an amazing concert put on by Timpanogos Symphony Orchestra.

It was packed!

Sure, it's a "Community Orchestra", but honestly.. the talent that came together was amazing, and John Pew is probably one of the best conductors and one of the best guys you'll meet. We started with American Salute, played some Star Wars excerpts, moved on to William Tell Overture (with guest conductor, the 95 year old Glad Jorgenson), and continued on with a piece from Rodeo. We then brought out our guest artist, Jenny Oaks Baker, and even gave a short teaser of her Disney album, including our World Premier performance of her Colors of the Wind.

It was an amazing concert, and we're raising enough money to keep it going (hence Community Orchestra, we're funded by donations).

So sure.. I play in a nationally acclaimed big band (The Voodoo Orchestra), a brand new Symphony that's given some of the best performances I've ever heard in their first two concerts, and then at the High School.. Marching Band(Drumline), Jazz Band.. Concert Band, the school's Summer Jazz/Rock group, Percussion Ensemble, and I still find time to work on a Solo Album, and with one of my favorite composers.

Music.. I love it.

Well.. am I back to Blogging?

It's a possibility. Maybe I am, maybe I'm not, I think I'll try it for a bit.

In the mean time, I'll explain a bit of what I've been doing. For one, I finally got the bass I wanted.

Schecter's Stiletto Custom 6

And I went to the recording studio and improvised a bit of a demo of my own, which you can find here.

Really, I'm just playing lots and lots of Music, and I've loved it. Which really means nothings changed.. except that I've been working on my solo work a lot.

I left off after just making it into the Voodoo Orchestra, and now I've gone to DC with them, and California, and played with Jeff Coffin, Steve Reid, and Fransisco Torres. I've met Poncho Sanchez and learned Latin Percussion from one of his clinics, I've met Abraham Laboriel and learned from him a true love and understanding of Music from his one of his amazing clinics. I've met Brian Bromberg, seeing what a huge dedication to practice can lead to, and I've had a party.

I've started trying to get my own Jazz groups together, which only kind of worked, but we'll see if we can get it going again. I've also gotten to play some Music with a good friend of mine, and I've loved every minute of it.

Until Next Time

Busy Busy Busy

My life, is quite a bit of music.

Specifically, last week was Shaun Barrowes' first benefit concert, which is part of a tour he'll be doing to several different High Schools, raising money for music programs across the U.S.

This tour is specifically called the "Live for Music" tour. To be honest, I'm not a huge fan of his Music, but his general idea of helping others is pretty cool, and most of the people I know actually do like his Music, so it's probably just me being extra picky.

Afterward, the Jazz Band I'm in went to State Fair and the judges told us "You're amazingly energetic, now just get quiet enough when the music needs to be quiet, because you're loudness is amazing." The whole dynamic contrast speech, and such.

Before that I actually did an audition to be a part one of Caleb Chapman's groups, and I made it into the Voodoo Orchestra. The Voodoo Orchestra won a Downbeat Award last year, and is an altogether amazing group, and I'm incredibly lucky to have gotten into that band. To tell you a bit about Caleb Chapman's groups, the Crescent Super Band is their flagship group, and has won several awards, and all the groups play with several professionals in the Music business. A few of the ones they've played with before include Dave Weckl, Abe Laboriel, and Jeff Coffin, but they've played with over 200 Guest Artists of that caliber.

Basically, they're a group of High School students that play at the Professional level, both in skill and in who they play with.

It's grand.

This Last Week

I've been spending most of my time at school, despite school not having started yet.

I think it's called Band Camp. What I get to do is stand behind a large piece of wood cut up into bits and strapped together by strings, and hit it with a piece of wood attached to rubber, with a bit of yarn wrapped around the rubber.

It's rather quite fun, if you think about it. I suppose the idea is to make the weird metal things and the odd round things sound cooler when they all get hit and spit at at the same time.

Marching Band, it's interesting.

Birth Order, Personality, and Mistakes

(Note: The Human brain is basically magical. We can overcome anything that we start out with, all it takes is quite a bit of effort.)
I've been reading a few articles here and there, and watched a TED speech today, and more and more they seem to be finding that we're very much controlled by our genes. Our personalities tend to be similar through-out our lives from 1st Grade on, while our behaviors change throughout the years, or rather, how we act out our personality changes due to our experiences in life.

Evidently when you were born is actually a bit important to how your personality gets set, so long as your siblings are still around before 1st grade. Of course every family life is different, but there is a general idea for the average family. You can check out the article that explains it a little more in depth here.

Finally, there are some mistakes that the majority of us make that are completely and utterly genetic. Specifically, this research was done on a sort of financial level, where they found people didn't look at the beginning and end result, but they thought of finances as relative to what you have to what you'll get.

In other words, if someone offered $1000 and one of two choices for extra money, those two choices being:
Take a Risk                               Play It Safe
Flip a coin-                                Get another $500.
Heads = Extra $1000
Tails = $0

Most people would play it safe, but when offered $2000, and given two options, being:
Take a Risk                               Play It Safe
Flip a coin-                                Lose $500
Heads = Lose $1000
Tails = Lose $0

Most people actually choose to take the risk, but in both situations you have the choice of $1000 or $2000, or a guaranteed $1500. Not to be completely discouraged, monkeys make the same mistake. See more on that in Laurie Santos' TED speech here.

Weird, I sure went on one there.....

Search on.

Hm.. Odd

A lot of people have been saying "Oh dear" to me lately. Apparently it's happening to other people, too. To be honest, this doesn't usually happen. I know, you're thinking I just haven't been noticing, aren't you? Well, you're wrong. Usually people just give me weird looks instead of actually voicing something, so don't give me any of that!

Oh dear..

So, I've Made an Executive Decision

We'll call it here. I didn't practice for a week, and it was rather torturous. I've begun to go insane, from lack of human contact and instrument practicing (I had a bit of bad timing, as I found out after I'd decided to do this practice ban, my best friend decided to inform me she was going to be gone for a while >.<, oh well, not her fault). From this moment on, it shall be said that I tortured myself for a week, and that is it.

Look at the bright side! It's got me in the habit of doing a blogpost every day. We'll see what I end up blogging about tomorrow, or maybe even later today, eh?

Today's my new band's first practice, we'll see about giving it a name and such, and I'll tell you all about it later.

Keep up the torture, but don't go insane!

These Are Getting Exciting.... ... HA! (Day 7)

See, I fooled you, cause really, it was another day of absolutely nothing! I'm so tricky, I know, I know, you can bask in my trickiness later, but for now, let's put on suits!

Now that we've cleared up that little situation, let's clear up another. I'm not a drinker, and I shall never be, but those suits... are pretty snazzy. I can't even pretend not to be jealous, what about you? I thought as much! Also, I didn't practice one bit today, despite my fingers desperate attempts at trying!

At any rate, I have a song you may want to listen to. It's a pretty cool song by The Shins, called A Comet Appears. YouTube link! Enjoy!

Just keep fooling, just keep fooling...

Well, This /Was/a Prior Commitment (Day 6)

I played my Gig today, which was planned far before my decision to do this no practicing deal, but, it was a performance rather then a practice, so let's go by technicality that it doesn't even count, yeah? Either way, I ended up with blood blisters on my fingers, which happens when you don't practice for ages, then play for 45+ minutes straight. Well, on to tomorrow, which will be the last of a week!

Keep it technical!

Sorry for the Late Update (Day 5)

I apologize for not updating you guys at the end of yesterday, in my attempts to distract myself I forgot to type up a blog post. Nothing happened yesterday, to be honest. I did my best to distract myself, but it didn't really work. I didn't practice one bit, despite the immense temptation to, but beyond that, there really isn't much to say.

Band Meeting! A Promising Venture (Day 4)

Today I had a meeting with a Band that's looking promising. We've got things scheduled out, and we're planning on doing many a practice. Only once a week, but that's great, because I know the Singer and Drummer pretty well. They're good, and not at all annoying, while the two guitar players (whom I've just met) are pretty awesome people, and definitely do not suck at their instrument. It's the first time I've been musically excited in a long while.

What kind of band will it be, you may ask. Well, it's not going to be a hardcore band, or some indie nonsense band (not that all Indie bands are nonsense, but lately...). We're going to be a bit experimental, and genre mixing. It'd be cool to start a new genre, but ya know what? A band devoted to making a new genre becomes a lot of nonsense. We're going to be a band devoted to the Music we're playing, and we're going let Music take us where it wants to go.

Well, that was longer than I thought it'd be. Here's where I mention, though, that I did not play or practice any instrument whatsoever, so no worries, keeping my challenge!

Keep jammin'!

Field Painting and Insanity (Day 3)

So, the entirety of my day nothing has happened, except this morning where I helped mark a few fields for painting. This will enable the Marching Band to have many a choice when it comes to practicing their drilling.

Beyond that, completely uneventful. I sat here. I then proceeded to sit here some more, and I'm slowly going insane. I did a few push-ups, but beyond that I've just tried to stand up every 30 or so minutes and walking around a bit. I'm at a loss for things to do. Try not to mind so much if the next few posts are INSANE.

Okay, so.. I don't really have any muscle (Day 2)

Today was completely (and utterly) uneventful. No, really, nothing happened today. I did a few pushups and random other work outs today. When I mean "a few", I really do mean "a few", and those few really got me out of breath.

So yes, I have no arm muscles whatsoever, and what little leg muscle I have will slowly disappear if I don't do these spontaneous workouts, which to anyone who had even a teensy bit a of muscle would call a warmup!

Okay, so I'm exaggerating a little bit, but honestly, I'm a twig anywhere there isn't fat, so if I can't practice music, I might as well be slightly less of a twig, right?

The Internet is a Cruel Mistress (Day 1)

On the first official day of my ban on instrument practicing, I found my internet going in and out, until it finally just shut down. For several hours. In fact, it only just came on, and it shut down about 10+ hours ago. Having spent most of my days on the internet and practicing instruments before, I lost them both on the same day o.o It wasn't entirely fun, but I did get out of the house and had a short visit with my best friend (which was quite fun).

At any rate, hopefully this doesn't happen again tomorrow. If it does, I don't really know what I'll do >.<

Just keep chargin'