Month: February 2007

Neff Music Approach Note Velocity Studies

February 23, 2007December 3, 2007 ericdano 2 Comments

Every month, I make it a point to buy new music. New music including books in addition to recorded media. I have quiet a backlog of things to review. So, first up are Approach Note Velocity Studies.

I’m not sure when I found these on the net, but Steve Neff’s Approach Note Velocity Studies are pretty darn neat. For $10, you get 90 some pages of great sounding chromatic lines that you can use on Major and Minor vamps. You can incorporate them into other chord progressions as well, such as blues, rhythm changes, etc. If you own the Joseph Viola Chord Studies book, these patterns are similar to those 16th note lines at the end of each chord study. I have also seen patterns like these called neighboring tones or approach tones in other books.

There are two volumes, Major and Minor. Both are great. Check them out.

Reviews

Michael Brecker Memorial

February 23, 2007October 3, 2007 ericdano 1 Comment

From a NYTimes article

"The memorial program for the saxophonist Michael Brecker that filled Town Hall on Tuesday night kept landing on the theme of generosity. Mr. Brecker died of leukemia on Jan. 13 at 57. During his illness he enlisted family members and friends in sending out a call for bone-marrow donors — not just for himself — that resulted in tens of thousands of donor registrations. His friends in jazz and pop music all implied that this wasn’t just an isolated case of conscientiousness."

Some interesting things mentioned are that Michael did drugs in the 70s (probably with 90% of the population as well), as well as some of the stories such as:

"Randy Brecker told a similar story, about one of the hundreds of recording sessions at which he had been hired to work alongside his brother. Michael, he said, came to work straight from the airport after a long flight, not having had time to read the music. He was asked by the producer to build a solo through a long two-chord vamp. One could see where this was going: Michael’s solo was of disturbingly high quality, and Randy was asked to take it from there."

For more Brecker stuff, check out Michael Brecker.com and a new fan site (which was supposed to be a Michael Brecker interactively supported site), iBrecker. iBrecker also has some more info about the Memorial Service.

News

Running Band in A Box Under Parallels

February 1, 2007December 5, 2007 ericdano No Comments

Ok, so we all know that the latest Macs all run Intel processors. You might have heard of an Apple Beta program called Boot Camp where you can get your Mac to boot up as a *shutter* Windows XP computer. You might also have heard of a program Parallels that lets you mitigate Windows to just a Window. Well, if you take the two programs, and add in Band in a Box 2007 for PC, you get a very functional program that runs pretty flawlessly.

Yes, Virginia, it works fine….

Ok, so, first off, you need to download Boot Camp, and get Microsoft Windows XP Pro with Service Pack 2. Not Vista. Vista, as of right now, works fine in Boot Camp (IE: Dedicating the whole machine to it), but has a lot of issues with Parallels. Boot Camp is picky, and you need to have Service Pack 2.

Now, having

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