Tuesday, January 27, 2015

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

Monday, January 26, 2015

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:

(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. :)

Monday, January 05, 2015

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)

Thursday, January 01, 2015

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)