Digital Pill - working musicians talk about their lives » jazz

Lisa Young – konnakol rhythms

Leo — Fri, 20 Aug 2010 08:39:05 +0000

Vocalist Lisa Young sings and explains examples of konnakol, the spoken rhythms of South Indian music.

download the pdf of the Sa Ri Ga rhythms here

Visit Lisa’s website

And here’s a link to her album Grace (awarded best Australian Jazz Vocal album of the year)

click here - to add a link to this post - to your social network

Percussion: soloing (Ray Pereira)

Leo — Fri, 16 Jul 2010 23:17:37 +0000

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

click here - to add a link to this post - to your social network

Sax: long notes (Dean Hilson)

Leo — Sat, 29 May 2010 09:04:28 +0000

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

click here - to add a link to this post - to your social network

Anthony Schulz accordion improvisation

Leo — Wed, 05 May 2010 05:11:12 +0000

Anthony Schulz plays an improvisation on the stradella and free bass accordion

Visit Anthony on myspace here

click here - to add a link to this post - to your social network

So what do you do for a crust ?

Leo — Wed, 21 Apr 2010 14:23:22 +0000

You know those conversations you have with people about being a musician or artist: questions like – “So How’s the music going?” and “Are you in a band?” Doug DeVries, Anton Delecca, Shannon Barnett, Mal Webb, Anita Hustas, John Fleming, Colin Hopkins and Justin Dwyer got talking about what follows the question – “So what do you do for a crust?”

click here - to add a link to this post - to your social network

Shannon Barnett plays All and Sun-Dried

Leo — Thu, 15 Apr 2010 21:49:51 +0000

Trombonist Shannon Barnett performs “All and Sun-Dried”, a piece inspired by her hatred for the existence of sun-dried tomatoes. The piece is a kind of etude for trombone that makes use of large intervals and odd-meter phrasing.

Visit her online
myspace.com/shantrom

And hear her on these albums
The Vampires: “Chellowdene” and “South Coasting”
Andrea Keller Quartet “Angels and Rascals”

click here - to add a link to this post - to your social network

Dean Hilson’s video just turned over 50,000 hits

Leo — Wed, 14 Apr 2010 04:33:06 +0000

One of the first videos to go up on Digital Pill just passed the 50,000 hit mark. If you are a sax player go and check it out and see what the fuss is about. Dean Hilson’s stratospheric sax gliss

click here - to add a link to this post - to your social network

Sax: chromatic warmup (Anton Delecca)

Leo — Wed, 31 Mar 2010 09:59:07 +0000

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

Visit Anton website

Anton’s album is available on iTunes

click here - to add a link to this post - to your social network

Pianist Colin Hopkins lyrically ruminates on the Cosmic Joke…

Leo — Wed, 24 Mar 2010 01:19:41 +0000

I’m experimenting with Vimeo. If anyone has problems with it or comments please send me an email

Catch pianist Colin Hopkins at home where he uses all his improvisatory skills in an attempt to revive the wooden man – his only remaining audience member (besides the dog) – and finds the job a little more challenging than he first anticipated! Never the less, this unusual, spontaneous and yet surprisingly melodic journey remains worthy of a listen by those of us still living…

Visit Colin’s website

click here - to add a link to this post - to your social network

Guitar: rhythmic variation (Doug DeVries) pt 2

Leo — Thu, 04 Feb 2010 10:51:57 +0000

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

click here - to add a link to this post - to your social network