Is Smooth Jazz Dead?

I didn't come up with the title. I simply took it from an article in the JazzTimes magazine (discussed here on the Saxophone music forum.) I am really surprised that a type of music that is trying to please everyone and offend no one could go downhill like this [link1, link2] (I was equally surprised when the radio station KKSF dropped the smooth jazz format) I guess the moral of the story is that musicians just need to be themselves and play without worrying about offending or pleasing some audiences. Good players will always find way to be heard, with the smooth jazz moniker or not. (Look at David Sanborn) On the other hand, less talented folks who rode on coattails of others won't last long.

Electric blues compilation

I have been a big fan of electric blues since the first time I listened to SRV years ago. Just read about a new 12-CD compilation from the Guitar Player magazine. I was in the mood for some blues and listened to some Lightnin' Hopkins 2 weeks ago. What a coincidence!

我的結他雜記: The Pentatonic Jazz improvisation system

Check out this video for a good demo of the system:
I came across it from this forum post. Following this system, you won't play any note that doesn't "go along" with the harmony. His fingering is always 2 notes per string, which is "classic" pentatonic fingering. His system has many many fingerings though. Some also said jazz was about playing the "wrong notes" On the other hand, it has a lot of appeal to players like me who are unable to improvise at all with so many note and scale choices. He used only 1 fingering (moved for different keys) in the above demo and it sounds pretty good already.

Current landscape of cloud music service

Yes, I intentionally made the title sounded like some sort of research/report from the likes of Gartner. Well, it was 5 years ago last time I wrote a related post. The buzzword "cloud" wasn't as big back then and the industry still refered to streaming services like Rhapsody and Napster as "subscription" Lots have changed though between these 5 years besides of the name. I'm still a user of such service (back to Rhapsody after Yahoo Music Unlimited was shutdown in 2008) but haven't paid much attention to the health of this business until today. I've found:
1) Rhapsody was spun off by Real Network (and partner MTV Network) as an independent company (Real still owns some stakes) in 2010
2) Rhapsody celebrated its 10th anniversary, reached one million subscribers and on track to become profitable last year according to this. The growth was credited to popularities of competitors like Spotify and support on portable devices like iOS and Android tablet/phones.
3) Among the providers I mentioned in my 2007 post, only 2 remained: Rhapsody bought Napster from BestBuy last year. MTV's Urge merged with Rhapsody in 2007. Microsoft's Zune Pass will become Xbox Music soon. And I already mentioned Yahoo shutdown its service in 2008.

Lots of techie disliked Real Network because of its practices (Real Player installations related) in the early dot-com days so I guess not longer associating with it is a good thing for Rhapsody to some potential customers. It seemed quite amazing to me that a business could survive for 10 years while struggling with profitability. It is also surprising that the appearance of a heavily hyped upstart like Spotify actually revitalize the whole sector ("grown the cake" if you will) and benefited "old timers" in the sector like Rhapsody. Hey, anything that's associated with "the cloud" is cool, especially after Apple created iCloud, isn't it? I guess it showed that Rhapsody was way ahead (9+ years) of its time. I certainly would not blame its lack of success on its technology. Not sure how many people knew and remembered the whole saga of Harmony DRM back in 2004 (BTW, finally a class action lawsuit was filed against Apple recently). Rhapsody created Harmony so that their tracks (purchased by user only, not the subscription ones) could play on iPod. Of course, Apple being Apple wouldn't allow this to happen and patched this "loophole" during the next release of firmware. At that point I thought Rhapsody could make a great move by releasing its own iPod firmware that works with both purchased and subscription tracks! (They don't even have to do it officially. Just leak it and claimed it's a hack by the user community!) Well, things come full circle when Apple finally approved Rhapsody's iOS app years later, which works for both types of tracks. IIn fact, the app was another boost to Rhapsody's growth. Looks like this industry is in good shape and we could all go back to enjoying great music.

我的結他雜記: 即興道

這不是甚麼新興武術，而是一個爵士即興教材的名字，我是從討論區這個帖得知。練習方法就是聽一個jazz lick（旋律），彈出來，然後按cycle of 4th把該lick轉足十二個key彈出來，教材包括伴奏的CD。可以想像得到，要練成跟到伴奏，必有一定功力；值得考慮試試。

It runs in the family

Listened to a bunch of "new" jazz music last weekend (some of them are released recently while others are just discovered by me) The common and interesting theme is that all of them comes from musical families. The first CD is "Spirit Fiction" by saxophonist Ravi Coltrane, whose father is one of the most important musician in the history of jazz, as most people already know, the late great John Coltrane. John Coltrane died when Ravi was 2 and obviously didn't gave him any input in terms of music directly (On the other hand, every jazz player must have been influenced by John Coltrane one way or the other) Ravi has his unique sound and this CD is one of the his best. The 2nd CD is "Colombe" by guitarist David Reinhardt. Again, he has an instantly recognizable last name from his grandfather, the legendary Gypsy jazz guitarist Django Reinhardt. David also doesn't sound like his grandpa. He plays in a organ trio setting on this CD. The next musician, saxophonist Von Freeman, is different in the sense that I've actually listened to his son, Chico Freeman, before I listened to him. Finally, I discovered a CD by jazz ukulele player Lyle Ritz, "A Night of Ukulele jazz/Live at McCabe's," on which his daughter Emily has also performed.

Find Yourself

It's a track from the album "Disney Jazz Volume 1: Everybody Wants to be a cat" from 2011 that I just "discovered" today. My favorite jazz violinist Regina Carter performed this track:


You could hear a harp-like instrument on the track. It's kora from Africa performed by master Yacouba Sissoko, who also collaborated with Carter on her earlier release, Reverse Thread.

The whole album featured an all-star lineup with players like Dave Brubeck, Roy Hargrove etc. Highly recommended. Here is an insightful review.

BTW, the original song is from the final credits of the movie "Cars" I watched it many times with my son when he was younger but I've never noticed the song. Nice song (of course I like Carter's version better):