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Bad news! Good news!

Lango-DjangoLango-Django Niagara-On-The-Lake, ONModerator
It's my birthday on Friday and at about 4am my wife and I are flying off to Miami for a one week jazz cruise…

The bad news is that Bucky Pizzarelli was supposed to come, but his wife has some medical issues.

The good news is that Howard Alden will be aboard!

http://howardalden.com/ha4/

If you ever saw Woody Allen's jazz guitarist movie "Sweet and Lowdown", Howard Alden is the guitarist who did the music for the film… hope I can get a lesson with him for my birthday!
Paul Cezanne: "I could paint for a thousand years without stopping and I would still feel as though I knew nothing."

Edgar Degas: "Only when he no longer knows what he is doing does the painter do good things.... To draw, you must close your eyes and sing."

Georges Braque: "In art there is only one thing that counts: the bit that can’t be explained."

Comments

  • Happy birthday Will.
  • CalebFSUCalebFSU Tallahassee, FLModerator Made in USA Dell Arte Hommage
    Posts: 557
    Will we share a birthday. Happy Birthday and enjoy the cruise!
    Hard work beats talent, when talent doesn't work hard.
  • pickitjohnpickitjohn South Texas Corpus, San Antonio, AustinVirtuoso Patenotte 260
    Posts: 936
    Happy Birthday Will,

    So funny I watched Sweet & Lowdown on Sunday Night again and was wanting to check out who did the Music. I loved it.

    Have a wonderful and safe trip.

    pick on

    pickitjohn

    Sure would be fun to be on a Djangobooks Gypsy Jazz Cruise
  • i second that
    The Magic really starts to happen when you can play it with your eyes closed
  • Lango-DjangoLango-Django Niagara-On-The-Lake, ONModerator
    Posts: 1,868
    Pickitjohn, that is a good idea---- what if a bunch of us here were to all agree to go on a certain cruise ship, or all stay at a certain Florida hotel or motel on a given week...?

    Let's keep that in mind for next year...
    Paul Cezanne: "I could paint for a thousand years without stopping and I would still feel as though I knew nothing."

    Edgar Degas: "Only when he no longer knows what he is doing does the painter do good things.... To draw, you must close your eyes and sing."

    Georges Braque: "In art there is only one thing that counts: the bit that can’t be explained."
  • Posts: 4,918
    "Wanna go to the dump and shoot some rats?" or "I'm the best guitar player in the world... except there's this gypsy. .."
    Love, love that movie.
    Woody Allen did a big favor to the gypsy jazz world with it too.
    Happy birthday Will!

    Buco
    Every note wants to go somewhere-Kurt Rosenwinkel
  • Lango-DjangoLango-Django Niagara-On-The-Lake, ONModerator
    edited December 2013 Posts: 1,868
    Had a great cruise and my birthday wish came true because I got my lesson with the super-awesome Howard Alden.

    As some of you may know, his style for the "Sweet and Low" film was very much in the GJ tradition, but his real life style is much different... more "mainstream" but still plenty swingy. He plays a seven string Benedetto like Bucky Pizzarelli and George van Eps and sounds a bit like those guys. Sometimes his dissonant chords are even a bit reminiscent of Lenny Breau.

    I was lucky enough to see him with some first rate horn players, the Vache brothers, Warren on cornet and Allan on clarinet, and they mostly played jazz standards which all sounded as if they'd been pre-arranged with cool little riffs behind the soloist, etc... But in fact, even when playing audience requests that were obviously spur of the moment, they still sounded tight and rehearsed.

    Howard is a master of chords, which he uses in both his lead and rhythm work, and it was amazing to me that I couldn't even recognize approx 90 percent of his chord shapes... and here I foolishly thought I knew a bit about guitar chords after playing the instrument for over 40 years!

    I found out the reason when I got my lesson with him... he uses a lot of two string harmonies instead of full chords, mostly on strings 3 and 4, and most of the time two shapes to a bar... It works well with both the bass and staying out of the way of the pianists chords. It's almost like a "walking middle" that complements a "walking bass".

    This is a whole new idea for me and Howard gave me some exercises to learn... so I hope to report back once I've figured out how I'm going to reconcile this kind of approach with whatever I've managed to learn about GJ lead and rhythm playing!

    Will
    Paul Cezanne: "I could paint for a thousand years without stopping and I would still feel as though I knew nothing."

    Edgar Degas: "Only when he no longer knows what he is doing does the painter do good things.... To draw, you must close your eyes and sing."

    Georges Braque: "In art there is only one thing that counts: the bit that can’t be explained."
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