Digital Pill – working musicians talk about their lives

Fiona Roake made the trip across the Tasman from New Zealand to Australia in the mid 90s to study theatre. In this song she combines her lifelong love of music and spoken word to capture the feeling of losing your motherland when you call a new place home.

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

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 this post - to your social network

Marios Cafe marked 25 years of serving the arts community last night with an all star band in front of a large crowd at the Fitzroy Town Hall. I’ve posted this short clip of Paul Williamson blowing all the cobwebs away. Have a look at his very popular sax lesson for Digital Pill here

Thanks to the two Marios for an incredible gig and all of their support for live music over many many years. You can visit their new website here

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

David Bridie sings The Centre Cannot Hold from the Fiasco album by My Friend the Chocolate Cake.

David says of this song -
From the W B yeats poem..”things fall apart, the centre cannot hold”..a war reflection..pretty simple tune, just blocked piano and droning strings … listened to Robert Wyatt’s “stalingrad” off “nothing can stop us” and then saw a doco set in Kabul in the winter time during the current war .. the parallel struck me…. there’s lighter songs on the album, this aint one of them:)

Visit
My Friend the Chocolate Cake

And have a listen to their music on iTunes

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

Kate and Adam and Ariel Valent, together known as Invention in Time, perform Fast Giraffe from their latest CD Falling by Design. Played on marimba (wooden) and vibraphone (metal) this piece is one of the duo’s more jazzy, up-beat original compositions.

Visit them online

on Myspace

Buy the CD

The album is also available on iTunes

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

Guitarist Lucas Michailidis details his unique triadic approach to comping and improvisation. Included is a comprehensive guide to all triad inversions along with how these can be superimposed to generate a range of extended chords and alternative possibilities.

Click > HERE < to download a pdf of the lesson

Here’s some links to Lucas’ music

His website

and also this is a link to all his music on iTunes

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

Cam Robbins demonstrates a classic device for jazz improvisation on the clarinet, rhythmic register jumping. The video contains several examples and Cam demonstrates how to use the technique over one and two chord sequences.

Here’s some links to Cam’s music

Cam playing with Skazz

and also this is a link to all his music on iTunes

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

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 this post - to your social network

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 these links

His website dougdevries.com

Doug’s albums on iTunes

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