Practice Pad
Technology, Programming, Music, Percussion, Drums and Stuff

I just updated rebecca.willyrayconsulting.com and www.willyray.net to WordPress 2.5. Pretty smooth and easy update, really.

A lot has been happening since last I posted. Not sure I’m going to be continuing with music school, for one. Lots of reasons. It’s just not designed for a person with a career to do it. We’ll see what happens. Anyway, here’s to more blogging, I guess.

No-Money coffee shop jam session we put on because otherwise we’d be jamming in a private room up at school. Therefore, no penalty if the kit didn’t work. I didn’t even take a real bass drum.

As you can see, I added the 10″ tom from my Premier Artist Maple kit and a left-side ride. Cymbals: 21″ HHX Raw Dry Ride, 19″ Armand “Beautiful Baby” and 14″ HHX Groove hats.
I’ve found my new gigging configuration. Man, this thing performed great tonight. No problems. I let somebody else play it, and sat back and listened. Just how I imagined it (except the kid was a little unsure what he was supposed to play. Straight No Chaser: Not a shuffle. )

Woo.hoo.

/w

I really should have swept before I put it down…

Here are a couple clips in honor of Max Roach who passed away today at 83.  As anybody who knows me knows, Max was a personal hero of mine.  It’s a sad day for drummers.  Max showed us the way.  Now it’s up to us.

Alright, I have some stuff to blog ’bout so I’m going to get back on it.

Here’s the recent happenings:

We have a weekly jam session happening every Thursday night at Bada Bean coffee shop on 1300 S 500 E. It’s been pretty fun. I’ve enjoyed being able to get my old man buddies together with my new school mates. The hard part about a jam session is it can be difficult to maintain momentum. The first time the session goes down as a bass-drums-alto sax trio can be pretty discouraging. We missed the piano last week. Hopefully that was a one-time thing. We’ll see.

I have a rock band. No name yet, but it’s a bunch of good players, everybody’s excited to get going. So far we’ve had some really good rehearsals and just a touch of the usual band-friction. Like, it seems like we all want to play slightly different styles… I say “Fine, let’s play different styles.” Currently the priority is to get a bunch of covers of good dancing music together to take into the clubs. We’ll deal with the rest later.

I have an audition with a band with a very light rehearsal schedule. They have a bunch of tunes that they already know and are replacing the drummer. Should be a pretty easy pick up for me. I’ll write about how it goes.

Hey All,

My academic combo, The Rudd Effect will be performing on the Jazz Combo Concert, April 24th at Libby Gardner Hall. More deets when I have them

/w

edit:  Here are the rest of the details:  Concert starts at 7:30, Dumke Recital Hall, which is on the 4th floor of David Gardner Hall (bottom end of President’s Circle, just East of the Catholic Newman Center).  I’m not sure how long it’ll last, but I know we’ve been limited to 2 songs, so there must be more combos performing than there were in February.  Free to the public, but given that there are more people on stage, it’s possible that the fairly limited seating will fill up.  They’ll probably open the house right around 7.

I’ve made the decision to attempt to pass at least the next 2 semesters worth of Keyboard Skills this semester.  Basically, that means I take the Keyboard II midterm today, the Keyboard II final at Midterms, the Keyboard III midterm in the beginning of April, and the Keyboard III Final at the regularly finals time.

So far, it’s paying off.  I took the Keyboard II midterm + plus a bunch of repertoire quizes today.  Passed all the quizes and aced the midterm.  100%.  Nice.  The material on the test was: Harmonic Minor scales (parallel octaves over a 2 octave range, 16th notes at quarter note = 60bpm), Major and Dom7 chords arpeggios through all inversions, minor i-iv-i-V-i cadences, transposition, improvised harmonization of melody lines, repertoire and sight-reading.

Link: Playboy interviews Miles in ‘62 (SFW), and the first question they ask is about his temper and whether or not it’s true that he’s rude to his audiences. Miles has a lot to say about racial equality in society and particularly in the music industry. He says what he thinks, and generally, he paints an unapologetically bleak picture or racial relations. Despite this, Miles himself, in his day-to-day actions is extremely fair to his white musician colleagues, even to the periodic outrage of the black musical community.

I read Miles’ autobiography. I’ve listened to his music extensively, and studied parts of it in considerable depth, and I take every opportunity to learn more about him, especially when it’s presented in his own words. I still don’t feel I understand Miles’ off-stage public persona.

Was he trying to agitate for societal change? I don’t think so; I haven’t seen where he actually did anything other than gripe about racial inequality. Was he angry about the treatment of black people in America? Certainly. Would he have given me a shot, if I had been in the right place at the right time, or would I have just been another ofay trying to capitalize on the music black Americans had invented?

I think Miles was misunderstood by people in general, and I’m convinced he was often mis-characterized by the media of the day. The only thing about Miles that I know for sure is that he was and is one of the most important musicians in the history of American music. Miles is the only player I know of who consistently innovated over the course of his entire career. He categorically eschewed his earlier works in favor of what he saw as the new thing. Once he released a few “cool” albums, he was done with that. He moved on to post-bop, and then to fusion, and is generally credited as having been the guy who convinced Herbie and Chick to try out the Fender Rhodes piano. Later, with Bitches’ Brew and some others he experimented with overdubs and post-production composition, splicing together un-related material from hours of random studio exploration, and toward the end of his life was planning to work with Jimmi Hendrix on an album. He did all this even though it’s likely he could have made more money sticking with straight ahead jazz. The only time Miles reprised earlier material was in 1991, specifically in tribute to his long-time friend and collaborator Gil Evans who had died in ‘88.

February is Black History Month. The history (and future) of the music to which I’ve dedicated the next four years (and the rest) of my life are inseparable. I think I’ll use this space to highlight some black American musical history, the origins and development of jazz, and also the role of jazz and jazz musicians in the civil rights movement in the 50s and 60s.

Here’s my schedule, as best as I know it:

Monday, Wednesday:

0730-0820 - Keyboard II.

0835-0925 - Theory II

Tuesday, Thursday:

0730-0820 - Musicianship II

1400-1520 - Jazz Improv II

Friday:

0835-0925 - Theory II

Yet to be schedule:

Rehearsal for Jazz Combo. Currently planning on it being one week-day evening and one weekend day.

Private Applied Lesson. This will likely be Monday morning after my theory class.

Beyond this, I need to fit in 40 hours of work at my computer job.

That is all.

It’s a shame, really. It’s absolutely the best band in the jazz program. They blew my mind at their concert this year. The problem is, my other classes are arranged at such a time that in order to take band, I have to wait around for a little over an hour. I’m also tasked with getting 40 hours per week at my actual job, as well as school, so basically, that means this three-hour class ends up costing me almost 8 hours of day-time hours.

So, that would mean I’d be at my office later in the day, which would mean it would be much harder to get in the practice that is my first non-parenting responsibility.

Upshot: I’ll be in a jazz combo, and that will be it for performance. So, that means I just need to make sure I book some extra gigs for the band this semester, and I absolutely MUST get no less than 2 hours practice per day.