Flamenco harmonies

I bet there are times you hear a guitar player playing something that reminds you of Flamenco and you asked yourself how did s/he do it? This is a good article that explains how some of the flamenco chords could be played and used. Even if you have studied authentic Flamenco guitar (like I did a few years ago), you should still find this useful for other styles.

Sensuous Sax

Smooth jazz ballad, especially when played with saxophone, has long been associated with the image of a couple having sex. Perhaps that's because a lot of movies have employed this cliche. And there is a whole series of recordings that uses this as the theme, at least for the cover, where there are always a man and a woman in intimate positions. It is not actually all the typical "movie sex themed" music. For example, I just listened to his cover of Pink Floyd's classic, "Us and Them", from "Sensuous Sax: The Kiss." This version could still be considered "sexy" but in a different way.

By the way, it was interesting how I came across this series: I was writing about smooth jazz and the established musicians like Marion Meadows. When I checked out his discography on Rhapsody, I found a "Sensuous Sax: Sensation", which listed him, Kenny Geoffrey and Dan Pickering on the cover as the featured musicians. However, this album cannot be found on his discography elsewhere. In fact, most other albums in the series are under the name of one "Le Valedon" which is a very mysterious artist. I just can't find any bio of this person. Some of those albums listed "Compose" as the label. And I tracked it down to "Peter Pan Music" which seemed to be the parent company. That's all info I have on this series.

So, why am I so interested? I want to play like Le Valedon! Seriously, his playing is no doubt very crowd-pleasing, especially to the female audience I suppose, with all these familiar melodies, in a quite romantic mood. In the last 8 years jazz was my main focus and I played a set of the most popular jazz standards at our high school reunion. The question I got the most was: can you play something people know? (And when does your song end.)

Smooth jazz revival?

Several years ago there were many articles written about the "death" of smooth jazz, like this one and this one in 2010 that talked about Chicago's WLFM trying to fill the void left by the former smooth jazz station WNUA. Well, WLFM switched to alternative rock in 2012 too, according to this site. FYI, these folks has created

a Chicago-based, Chicago-targeted, Chicago-driven Smooth Jazz-formatted digital station available through the internet.

I listened via this link. It's alive and kicking. The playlist was similar to the "old school smooth jazz radio station", i.e, a mix of vocal and instrumentals. As I mentioned before, I am not a big fan of smooth jazz vocal. And I found a few interesting fact about it here:

The goal of every radio station, says WQCD operations manager John Mullen is to be heard. "The bulk of music is smooth jazz - so out of 10 or 12 songs, the majority will have an instrumental, jazzy texture. So if we throw in a vocal, maybe to add a little spice or to bring in a few people who are not jazz fans to our radio station, it's our way of getting people who have never tried us to try us."

Oddly enough, instrumentalists often find their songs have a tougher time at jazz/AC radio if they have vocals on them. "I had a song called 'Body Language' with vocals by Shai that got to No.6 on the adult R&B chart, but it didn't get as high on the jazz/AC chart because of the vocals," says James.

He adds that another single, "All Night Long," featured a background vocal hook, while an all-instrumental version of the song was featured on the Japanese release of the album. "When Warner Bros. in the U.S. sent out the CD promo, they included both the instrumental and the vocal version, and the instrumental version was the most popular one here. The stations are playing vocals, vocals, vocals from other people, but when an instrumentalist comes along with one, they won't play it."

Actually, my indicator of its revival is the live performances here in the SF bay area. Looks like it's part of the "new direction" of Yoshi's, which traditionally booked mainly "traditional" jazz musicians but I have been to quite a few smooth jazz performances in the past year, including Peter White, Michael Lington, Jessy J...... I know Najee has played recently. Mindi Abair and Brian Culbertson are coming up in Sept and Oct. I hope this change helps Yoshi's business (Yeah, I still count on them booking those traditional jazz cats) 

Jazz and Washington D.C.

I found out RTHK (the "NPR" of Hong Kong) is broadcasting a show called "The History of Jazz" (爵士樂的歷史) from the Facebook page of a Hong Kong Internet radio show for jazz. RTHK's promo mentioned the show focusing on Washington being an important city in the development of jazz other than New Orleans and New York but this fact is often neglected.

Now I really want to watch it. And I found out the full title was actually "History of Jazz: Oxygen for the Ears" To be honest, even though I claim myself being familiar with the development of styles in different era in the history of jazz, I am quite ignorant about the connection between jazz and DC. In fact, last time when I was in D.C., the only club that I heard about was the Blues Alley and I skipped it after going to many in NYC. To me, New Orleans was about the early dixieland jazz. Then jazz musicians moved north to Chicago and New York and big band/swing era begun. Charlie Parker who played in Kansas City was the pioneer in bebop which spread to the New York jazz scene quickly. Next we had hard bop on the East coast and cool jazz on the West coast. And we have Miles and Coltrane playing modern jazz (e.g. the modal stuff, the avant garde and fusion) in New York, which has long been the "capital" of jazz. According to this article, before jazz musicians including the great Duke Ellington moved to New York (Harlem to be exact), they were playing at D.C. for a while, which was historically important. Also, the current live jazz scene are actually more active than the one club I mentioned before. For example, there are several good ones in the U Street area (The Howard Theatre was where great African-American musicians played in the early and mid-twentieth century) I guess D.C. was as important as San Francisco as far as jazz is concerned. SF also used to have a vibrant jazz scene in the Fillmore district (maybe D.C. weighs a bit more because of the Duke Ellington connection. SF does have its own Vince Guaraldi though :P) Pianist Jason Moran actually said something similar (from the above link):

[As a jazz artist, the] most familiar and important [cities] to him are New York, Chicago, San Francisco, and Philadelphia, Washington, D.C. and New Orleans.

Moran looks at a city's jazz scene through the artists who enliven it. "I always think about who does the city raise? Duke Ellington and Billy Taylor were people who became major mouthpieces for the music and swayed the opinions of millions," he says. "D.C. is a major central point because of the people it births." He does not feel a musician has to live and perform in New York to make a substantial contribution. 

FYI, Jason Moran is considered as 1 of the 12 most important jazz musicians according to the San Jose Mercury News. From my recent Virginia trip I actually saw brochures of the Jazz at the Kennedy center program at the conference center. Sounds like it's gonna be like Jazz at the Lincoln center and SFJAZZ. I will not miss the jazz scene next time I get a chance to travel there. 

Taylor Swift 1989 Tour

Yes, I went to her stop at Levi's Stadium in Santa Clara last Sat, with my daughter of course. And this was the first time ever I have been to an American pop-star's concert. (Depeche Mode was close but they were not American :P) We bought the tix in the morning of the first day it went on sale and we could only get the "top-level" tix (which still costs $100+ each) We estimated she probably makes between 1-9mil that night. Well, according to this article, she made 2.5mil per stop on average recently. And this tour will push her 2015 earning over 100mil.

Enough about the business aspect, let's talk about the music! So, the format of a pop concert is actually similar to a rock concert: both started with some lesser opening acts (I mean, usually, once in a while you find the likes of Alice Cooper opening for the likes of Motley Crue) The openers for Swift were Shawn Mendes and Vance Joy. Mendes played all by himself with only his guitar (and his voice) which was tough (but also less people to share his money :P) Apparently he has lots of teen female fans and didn't mind. Personally I don't care too much of his songs (sounded like a lesser Ed Sheeren) The music of the Australian Vance Joy was more enjoyable to me as there were traces of influence by English bands like Oasis (according to Wikipedia, he's inspired by George Harrison, so that's in the ballpark)

The wait for TayTay's appearance was finally over ~9pm (oh yeah, that's a long wait. My daughter was a huge fan of Swift for several years. It peaked around the time of the release of "1989" last year though. You know a girl could only like the same artist with the same level of dedication for so long! She has already "moved on" to One Direction. I guess our constant reminding of how expensive the tickets were made her appreciate it a bit more. In fact, glad to see her enjoying the concert a lot that night) The setlist could be found on the Wikipedia. As expected, she started with several hits from 1989, which represented her transition from pop-country to "simply" pop. I was on the fence about this transition. I mean, I like to see musicians sticking with their roots. However, Swift has been more pop than country already so she might as well cross the line completely. Anyway, the new songs are kinda enjoyable. I just think the country elements made her more stand out from the other run-of-the-mill pop stars. I admire the efforts in rearranging her old and new songs to make them coherent in one concert though, for example, Trouble was rearranged and sounded more mysterious. The other highlights include her playing acoustic guitar/piano to accompany her singing, and she played a white Johnny Marr Fender Jaguar on the song We are never ever getting back together (You know how much I love Jaguar :) Last but not least, the production was top-notch: the sound system was loud and clear and the "run-way" stage that split, elevate and rotate was cool (and seemed safe for TayTay and the dancers) I wonder what concert I would go with my daughter next.

Mouthpiece hygiene

I have bought second hand saxophone and clarinet online. And I was wondering how I should clean them, especially the mouthpiece. And it's not just an issue with second hand instruments. Music store does allow trying out woodwind instruments. What would be a "clean" way to do it? I read some posts about bringing your own mouthpiece. How about trying out the mouthpiece itself? Anyway, I found an article that detailed someone who studied the topic of mouthpiece hygiene thoroughly. Yeah, the science is complicated. The risk is there. I guess I should wash it more often.

Vito and Yamaha saxophone

After playing my rental saxophone for a few weeks, I decided to take the plunge and get one of my own. Many suggested Yamaha YTS (T for Tenor) series as a good starting point so I started looking for used ones on Ebay. Still, they were a bit over my budget. Then I came across discussion about "vintage" Vito's saxophone that were actually made by Yamaha. Those were the days that Japanese manufacturing were deemed inferior. It's the opposite today of course: Yamaha is way more famous than Vito and actually have their horns made else where! The Vito tenor sax I eventually bought was supposed to be the equivalent of a Yamaha YTS-23. Some histories about this brand: according to Wikipedia the name came from one of the founder

Vito is a brand name for Leblanc USA, now part of Conn-Selmer USA. The Vito name was used for student instruments. Leblanc USA was formed in 1946 by Vito Pascucci, and the French woodwind manufacturer, G. Leblanc Cie of France.

The Dark Age

"The Dark Age" was a concert held at the Lingnan University in Hong Kong last month. It stirred up a big controversy because some of the lyrics contain foul language against the police. The pro-establishment groups for sure didn't miss this opportunity to (once again) vilify the student dissidents. Well, shouldn't people be angry and couldn't they sing to condemn the injustice of police violently beating up ordinary citizen which went unpunished? (Here's a statement from the band) I strongly agree with them that the establishment is trying to brainwash the people to blindly subordinate to the power without questioning it.

It's even sadder to see that the president of Lingnan not only didn't stand up for the freedom of speech on his campus (the band members were not students of Lingnan) but actually sided with the establishment. (Here is an open letter from Lingnan students to the president) 

Regardless of the controversy,  the band 血汗攻闖 showed a lot of promises. Check out their video:

New music service owned by artists: Tidal

Tidal is one of the new players in the crowded space of music streaming service. And it made the news recently because of ownership changes. Tidal is now owned by a group of artists led by the financially (and musically?) successful Jay-Z. It claims to pay more royalty to artists than other services. For some reason it is getting quite a few backslashes. For example, one Bob Leftsez complained "We’ve got uber-rich artists complaining they’re just not making enough" which is refuted by this article. Musicians are NOT supposed to be poor, are they? And I just read the criticism mentioned in the Wikipedia about the service being too expensive ($19.99 for hi-resolution streaming. $9.99 for regular. No free option) One Marina and the Diamonds claimed that $240 a year is NOT a positive way for everyone to consume music. Oh well, that's about the price of 16 CDs (or 24 albums in MP3) Is that what artists expect any serious fans of music to spend on new music per year?

I think the biggest challenge for them though is to compete with all these other free or paid services and get enough subscribers to sustain the business. Exclusive content might help but it's just one factor. I have listened to Rhapsody for about 10 years WITHOUT the likes of Led Zeppelin, AC/DC or Beatles available and I still have plenty of good music to listen to. To be honest, if I cannot afford Rhapsody anymore, I would count on free services offered by all these online radio and Pandora. Their another selling point was hi-res streaming. I read someone conducted test and found that a lot of listener cannot distinguish between hi-res and "regular" files because the latter were usually encoded in bit rates > 160 these days, which is not exactly lo-res.

What has Rhapsody added in the past 8 years?

I wrote this review 8 years ago comparing what is available on Rhapsody and what is not by using mostly nonmainstream artists/albums between 2005 and 2007.

Jazz: Now become Available	Jazz: Still Unavailable
	Maria Schneider
Metal: Now become Available	Metal: Still Unavailable
John 5, Exodus, Impaled	Tool, Metal Massacre
Classic rock: Now become Available	Classic rock: Still Unavailable
Led Zeppelin	Beatles

I know Maria Schneider would still be unavailable because she doesn't believe in streaming music as a sales platform. However, the biggest deal is that Led Zeppelin is finally on board! Big improvement. Agreed?

Akai EWI-USB Experience

As I mentioned earlier this year, I am learning how to play EWI. And it has been around 4 months! Just want to share some of my tips here. IMO, the #1 most important thing for playing the Akai EWI-USB doesn't have to do with blowing or fingering techniques but rather configuring the software correctly :P So, the EWI-USB relies on your computer to translate the signal from air and finger sensors to sound. Specifically, you play through the Garritan Aria software (on a PC, in my case) I found that the sound is a bit delayed (in technical terms: the latency is too high) using the default sound driver. The solution is using a ASIO driver. Even though some didn't recommend the free ASIO4ALL, it works for me. Once ASIO4ALL is installed, go back to the Aria software and change the Preference to look like this:

Make sure the check box next to "EWI-USB(in)" under "Input MIDI Devices" is checked! Sometimes my PC screwed this up and left it unchecked and thus no sound come out when I play the EWI (and I panic :P)

Another good feature of Aria that I make use of is transposing what I played to other keys (and stop worrying about the keys with many sharps and flats!) To transpose up or down, go to the "Control" tab and choose the semitone needed to get to the new key. It's especially useful when you get "real saxophone" sheet music that expected your instrument to be in Bb (Tenor) or Eb (Alto)

No-one-likes-the-blues Blues

I came across a blog post about how unpopular the blues is in America. He mentioned one of the "makeover" TV show host suggested a blues club to switch to other type of music in order to be more viable because a study found that only 3% of American claimed blues as their favorite music genre. (Well, JJ Blues didn't need this TV show host's advice and "converted" already) I don't know if that study matters that much. As much as I like blues (or metal or classical for that matter) I won't claim that as my favorite music genre though. Another thing mentioned by that blog post was the harp (a.k.a. blues harmonica) player Paul Oscher from the legendary Muddy Waters band performed for free in a suburb city of Austin Texas. However, some readers pointed out in the comments that it wasn't that bad: Oscher actually performed at other shows that charge for admission. Anyway, blues and blues club hopefully will survive. 

So, how about jazz? Does it have better stats? I found this article from 1999, which quoted numbers from a 1992 study (that's 20+ years ago) Jazz lovers came in as 5% compared to Blues' 3%. I was trying to look for that number from the 2012 study but I couldn't seem to find it. The only jazz related number is that 8.1% of U.S. adults have attended a jazz concert. And that number went up from 7.8% in 2008. I guess this is encouraging.

JJ's Blues has changed hand too

Two of my favorite music genre, jazz and its older sibling blues, are both struggling in the SF bay area. I wrote about Yoshi's changing hand and its departure from jazz last year (here's another article on another failed jazz venue in the Fillmore Jazz preservation district) And I just found out the legendary San Jose blues club, JJ's Blues, has changed hand last Summer too. Even though I've only been there 2 or 3 times (once in 2014 before it changed hand) I was impressed. The atmosphere was awesome. Too bad it won't be blues-centric anymore.

我的結他雜記:Youtube片

早幾年經常上論壇討論結他相關話題，其中一個最常出現的是可用甚麼結他彈甚麼風格，於是搜尋了一堆視像連結：

民謠結他（鋼線木結他） - 民謠

電結他 - 重金

電結他 - Hard rock

電結他- 藍調

民謠結他（鋼線木結他） - 藍調 這條片十分特別：已故藍調結他大師Stevie Ray Vaughan演出時大多彈電結他，這是少有的木結他錄像

古典結他（尼龍弦木結他） - 古典

古典結他（尼龍弦木結他） - 爵士樂

古典結他（尼龍弦木結他） - Flamenco

Jazz Podcasts

These days I learned about new (or old) jazz releases mostly from the local station KCSM as well as the website AllAboutJazz.com. Sometimes I would check out playlist curated by writers at Rhapsody. Yet another sources are podcasts. I found a few good ones here:

• In the Groove, Jazz and Beyond
• Geoffrey Smith's Jazz on Radio 3 UK
• Cool Jazz Countdown (it plays tune from the "combined" chart so it contains some smooth jazz)

(I actually started this post back in 2005, I wanted to write about the critically acclaimed jazz podcast: Detroit JazzStage. Too bad it's now defunct. The old URL http://www.jazzstage.us/ doesn't work anymore)

我的結他雜記: The 4 levels of the Blues

Guitarist and magazine columnist Carl Verheyen did a great job in classifying 4 different ways of blues improvisation, from the most basic (minor pentatonic) to the most sophisticated (jazz blues with altered scales and upper extensions.) You might consider these the secrets of blues guitar. :)

The Yoshi's SF Saga

The formerly premiere jazz club of SF known as Yoshi's SF is done, which was sad news to me and I felt that it was not given a fair chance to fight for its survival. Oh well, as an outsider I could only find out so much from the media, like this article from SFWeekly. The whole Fillmore district redevelopment and jazz preservation project started in 1995 was supposed to be the way the city made amend to the "original" 1950s redevelopment that chased away black residents, businesses and the vibrant jazz scene. Yoshi's SF which opened in 2007 was probably the "crown jewel" of the project. I saw Yoshi's SF as a more up-scaled version of Yoshi's Oakland (i.e., jazz and Japanese food) with higher price tags on admissions and dining (and I predicted the top-tier, bigger name jazz musicians will have their shows in SF in place of or in addition to Oakland and made more money) I was wrong on the money part though. The ownership had spent a lot to make the place looked that good (more than twice of the original estimate) Unfortunately, opening in 2007 was bad timing: people cut spending during the financial crisis. Even though Yoshi's brought in $9-$10 million or more a year, it's still not profitable after paying down all its debts and covering more than $60,000 per month in rent, taxes, and maintenance charge. Like other businesses started with money from the redevelopment agency, it had problem paying back the loan and needed more money to bail them out. Some owners of these businesses complained the agency didn't provide enough help. On the other hand, critics of the redevelopment agency claimed that there was insufficient oversight on how the agency handed out the money. Anyway, some fingers were pointing at the musical genre (i.e., jazz) as a cause of the failure: the city surveyed local residents and claimed that interests in jazz were not high (which I don't think it's that relevant: there were jazz fans all over the SF Bay Area who would come to the Fillmore district when there were great jazz shows) Even branching outside of jazz couldn't save it's original majority owner (co-founder of Yoshi's Oakland) from losing Yoshi's SF to the "new" ownership group (formerly minority owners who were the builders and landlords of the place) Not sure if Yoshi's is paying less rent now. Oh yeah, as part of the deal, 5 million dollar of the debt to the city was forgiven. (Did anyone say sorry to the SF tax payers?) Actually the deal itself is quite complicated and I found some details here.

RIP Yoshi's SF. Long live Yoshi's Oakland (I hope)

New Year's Resolution #1: Learn to play EWI

My goal is to play some pop music on an EWI (electronic woodwind instrument) this year. I just started learning the fingering last month and practicing with H.Klose's 25 Daily Exercises for Saxophone. The first one is supposed to sound like this:
Of course I am no where near this fast. I guess when I am this fast I don't need to worry about the issue with legato transition between B and C, which I actually found someone talked about.(And he is following this book, Creative Saxophone. I think I should check it out)