Digital Pill - working musicians talk about their lives | Tag Archive

Percussion: soloing (Ray Pereira)

Saturday, July 17, 2010

Ray discusses using a combination of tone and slap sounds on the djembe to produce rolls of various lengths and their use in contemporary percussion soloing. More information about Ray’s classes, projects and recording can be found at raypereira.com

Sax: long notes (Dean Hilson)

Saturday, May 29, 2010

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Dean looks at long notes from several different angles – the growl, vibrato, dynamics and ear training. Listen to Dean’s music here The Pearly Shells Zydeco Jump The Vanguards

Sax: chromatic warmup (Anton Delecca)

Wednesday, March 31, 2010

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Anton Delecca explains the uses of chromatic scales in jazz improvisation and as a warm up excercise for sax. In this video, Anton describes three excersices for warm up that improve tone and dexterity and are very useful to enliven passages of improvisation. This video works together with a pdf of the lesson available here [...]

Guitar: rhythmic variation (Doug DeVries) pt 2

Thursday, February 4, 2010

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Guitar: rhythmic variation (Doug DeVries) pt 2

In part 2 of a series Doug DeVries shares some ideas on how to add rhythmic variation to a piece of music. In this lesson he demonstrates how to increase interest by varying the rhythm. Visit Doug on these links His website dougdevries.com Doug’s albums on iTunes

Guitar: voice leading (Doug DeVries) pt 1

Monday, January 18, 2010

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Guitar: voice leading (Doug DeVries) pt 1

Doug DeVries shares some ideas on how to add harmonic and rhythmic variation to a piece of music. In this lesson he uses one of his own compositions – Astoria – as an example of voice leading in harmony as well as examples of how to increase interest by varying the rhythm. Visit Doug on [...]

Anita Hustas – graphical music scores

Thursday, December 10, 2009

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Anita Hustas performs and talks briefly about two graphic scores ‘Stream’ and ‘Underwater’ from her ‘Water’ collection composed in 2008. In trying to find creative approaches to composing and making music, and integrating visual art and music performance, Anita has been creating graphic scores for improvisors since 2003. In this video Anita plays Double Bass [...]

Songwriting: lyrics and poetry (Joe Dolce)

Monday, September 14, 2009

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Joe Dolce uses several examples to make the distinction between poetry and lyrics and demonstrates how this understanding is important for songwriting. ” One of the country’s premier songwriters.” RHYTHMS MAGAZINE ” . . . the Ohio-born Dolce is one hell of a bluesman. . . . [the] guitar work is deceptively complex, weaving in [...]

Accordion: bellows shake (Dave Evans)

Friday, July 3, 2009

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Dave Evans explains the uses of the accordion bellows shake. In this video, Dave describes the uses of the double and triple bellows shake in jazz, zydeco and cabaret music. He includes detailed instructions about how to perform the shake as well as techniques for adding accents to play with the rhythmic aspects of accordion. [...]

Sax: bebop scales (Paul Williamson)

Saturday, January 3, 2009

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Paul Williamson explains the uses of bebop scales in jazz improvisation. In this video, Paul’s first post for Digital Pill, he describes the construction of bebop scales, jazz articulation, the use of a metronome and how bebop scales place the chord tones firmly ON the beat to create an “inside” sound in improvisation. The video [...]