Patrick Beard: Music

Tue, 17 Dec 2002 19:55:43 GMT

I took a flute lesson from Guido Fazio at House of Woodwinds last week, to get an alternative view on how this instrument is supposed to be played. The single most useful thing he told me about the flute embouchure (how you hold your mouth) is to visualize yourself sucking on a thin straw. That puts your mouth in the right formation, then you blow with the same mouth position. Since that lesson, I've also been experimenting with my sax embouchure, hoping one day to wean myself of my wax & gauze crutch that I've been using for a while to help play without feeling any pain. I managed to do a couple of rehearsals last week without using the crutch, but had performances Friday and Saturday night which I absolutely needed to be able to play comfortably. The sax and flute embouchures are similar, except for one important difference: you need to support the reed without letting any air leak out of the mouth, but without biting the lower lip with the bottom teeth. This is the source of my frustration, how to keep from biting my bottom lip, while supporting the reed enough to get a pleasing sound. Ironically, the sax tone is much better the more you allow the reed to vibrate, but it also feels much more out of control.

Tue, 03 Dec 2002 16:16:32 GMT

I recently posted a blurb about TuneXML in which I referred to a transcription of a tune in TuneXML format. It turns out that if you look at this with IE 5 on the Mac, you'll get a parse error. It parses and displays just fine in Chimera 0.6. The problems seems to stem from the inclusion of a Byte-Order-Mark (BOM) character at the beginning of the XML file, which is what you're supposed to include so that a UNICODE file is perfectly portable. This character seems to mess up IE 5.2.2.

Sun, 01 Dec 2002 18:44:45 GMT

I've been thinking a lot about representing music in XML. There is a good survey of this topic here. MusicXML seems to be fairly dominant, and is getting commercial support behind it. Although, it isn't terribly easy to read and is quite verbose, it looks like a good interchange format, which is certainly a good use of XML. Still, it is overkill for how I want to use XML to represent music. My application is representing Jazz tunes, which consist of chords, melody, and sometimes lyrics. I would like to develop a library of arrangements of Jazz tunes in XML format. Here's an example of the tune All The Things You Are encoded in what I'll call "TuneXML" format.

Tue, 28 May 2002 16:57:41 GMT

Long hiatus from blogging. Just didn't have much new to report... I went to the Sacramento Jazz festival this weekend, and spent the whole time in the Old Town venues. Instead of driving, we took Amtrak from Martinez to Sacramento, and got a different perspective from driving. I like how trains travel along historical right of ways, and that the freeway isn't always visible. Trains have lost much of their importance and Amtrak isn't a cheaper way to travel. They gouged me with $32 round trip tickets. But it is a relaxing way to travel, and just as fast as driving. I wish this country could get its act together on having better public transportation. European countries are so interconnected by trains and our states are interconnected by highways.

Wed, 06 Mar 2002 04:06:46 GMT

My flute playing is coming along. I spent an hour practicing the other day, and was able to hit low D and C fairly reliably. Working on the next higher octave now.

Sat, 09 Feb 2002 15:35:36 GMT

Well, the new Led Airegin web site is now live, thanks to the power of the Radio content management system (CMS).

Wed, 06 Feb 2002 20:01:09 GMT

I've decided to learn how to double on the flute. I've always loved the sound and the fingering is fairly similar to the saxophone. I picked up a Gemeinhardt student model flute a week ago, and I'm having lots of fun. The flute doesn't have an octave key, so controlling which octave you're playing is all a matter of throat control. I find it easier to hit the low notes when I haven't warmed up, and my throat's relaxed. Once I've got basic note production down, this is going to be a blast.

Sun, 03 Feb 2002 18:36:51 GMT

Smooth jazz... No matter what else you say about it, it's very popular. I went to see trumpeter Chris Botti last night at KKSF's free concert in the Sun Valley Mall. Standing room only. He's a good player. The music is simple, grooving, soft-edged. He played on Sting's "Brand New Day" album.

Fri, 01 Feb 2002 20:04:20 GMT

Listening to Miles' version of "Someday My Prince Will Come" from "Greatest Hits." Sublime. Led Airegin should definitely play this tune. I'm also thinking of arranging the classic tune "Night and Day" as a samba...

Fri, 01 Feb 2002 19:31:28 GMT

At last night's Jam Session, we played a couple of new tunes, "It Don't Mean a Thing" by Duke Ellington, "Moanin'" by Bobby Timmons, and "Mustang Sally" by Sir Mack Rice. I don't have the melody for Mustang Sally quite down yet, so I'm looking for good recordings, such as Wilson Pickett's. The one thing I notice is that there's a lot of space in that song.

Tue, 29 Jan 2002 19:56:54 GMT

The key of the week is C#... I'm using Jim Grantham's "Jazzmaster Cookbook - Jazz Theory and Improvization" to design my saxophone practice routine. It's a great book, and it suggests that as you gradually increase the number of scale/arpeggio/pattern exercises you can play, you practice in a different key each week. I've decided to move chromatically each week (that is up a half step). This should help me with my goals to improve my ear, and get better at transposition. I've already noticed a difference in my playing from only working with this book for one week. It's filling in some gaps in my knowledge of jazz theory. For some reason, I never really learned much about terms like diatonic and pentatonic. I learned my scales, as all music students must, but I never really understood what it was all about. This stuff is fun!

Mon, 28 Jan 2002 20:11:33 GMT

Led Airegin's last gig was at Skip's Tavern on January 26th, 2002. We recorded the gig on DAT and are planning to make a demo CD. Our next gig will be on February 23rd, 2002.

Mon, 28 Jan 2002 19:27:59 GMT

I play alto saxophone in a groove jazz band called Led Airegin. My influences are Paul Desmond, Richie Cole, Phil Woods, and of course my sax teacher, Hal Stein.