Okay, this should do everyone some good, but it may be difficult for me to convey to guitarists. Apologies in advance for my lack of guitar skills. If you are habitually playing voicings with the root in them (especially in the middle or at the bottom), this article is for you.
read more of chord voicings
What the heck is this guy talking about now? Mental lever? Like a crowbar for your brain?
read more of abstraction is a mental lever
This was an interesting exercise–recording a downtempo tune highlighted my serious propensity for overplaying. I subsequently recalibrated my whole style in the process of recording this. The first few takes, I beat so hard that it was just comical. I figure that years of playing on stage with real drummers (who lack volume knobs) and guitarists (who superglue theirs on 11) is my excuse. Anyhow, this is just a relaxing, down swinger that sits in the pocket, and it dawned on me that I don’t have a lot of videos like that in the catalog. Because I rarely play that way.
read more of video: Groovin’ High
I really love this tune. There are a couple moments in this version that really make it.
read more of video: Invitation
I was reading about soukous, coupé décaler, and makossa today and I found this page on the BBC site that is a sort of glossary of African pop music terms. It also encompasses Caribbean and some Latin American music. Very interesting reading.
It seems like an interesting mashup would be to take this glossary and build a set of YouTube API queries so you could click on a term to get some examples. (Does that make me a geek for thinking of that?) If you want to see something like that, leave a comment and let me know.
