Aebersold jazz camp

[dhosek]

Assuming that I can get to the net while I'm there, just thought I'd post a heads up that there will be on-line diary entries posted at http://don.dream-in-color.net/music/diary.php4

If I can't get to a computer, then I'll just post a big massive account when I get back.

-dh

[AlexFeldman]

Get Jamey to play bass for you while you're there. Better yet, get Jamey to play your bass. And don't forget your tape recorder for the master classes!

[dhosek]

Well, for anyone who happened to try checking for updates last week and discovered none, I've got all of my diary entries typed up and entered into the database. Assuming that I keep up with the diary this week, they'll start scrolling off the diary page by Thursday, so you'll want to get there sooner rather than later:

http://don.dream-in-color.net/music/diary.php4

[AlexFeldman]

Hee! I also got nasty blisters at camp last year, and Lynn gave me the same advice. In fact, he was so nice he actually gave me some of the tape (I didn't have car to go get any). Actually, during the entire week, most of the instructors, including Rufus, approached me separeratly with advice about them. I ended up lancing them which worked for me.

[Chris Fitzgerald]

Don,

Sorry I missed you! Damn, I HATE it when that happens. Oh well, sounds like you had a decent enough time. Lynn's blister remedy works well enough, but I don't like the sound the tape gets on the attack.

If you ever come back to the camps let me know and we can hook up when you're here. I can assure you that Louisville has more than fast food places, although that's about all you can find down by the university.

[dhosek]

Just thought I'd toss in the bit of info that I've gotten around to adding in some pictures that I took last week of the bass faculty doing their 8-bass improv. If I can manage the technicalities of it, I'll get some recordings from the week up on the pages in Real Audio format as well.

Incidentally, two of the faculty member I didn't really deal with during the week, and I've done my best to correctly identify them by trying to match names from the faculty list to what I could make out on name tags, but if anyone has any corrections for me, I'd appreciate it.

[dhosek]

Originally posted by Chris Fitzgerald
Sorry I missed you! Damn, I HATE it when that happens. Oh well, sounds like you had a decent enough time. Lynn's blister remedy works well enough, but I don't like the sound the tape gets on the attack.

It could be my lousy pizz technique, but I've never felt that I've lost sound with taped fingers. What I'd always mourned was the lost sensitivity. But Lynn's wrapping technique worked better than anything I'd done previously in terms of maintaining flexibility (my junior high wrappings typically resulted in effectively freezing my finger into a stiff inflexible posture).

-dh

[Chris Fitzgerald]

Don,

The middle picture should read (L-R):Tyrone Wheeler, Bob Sinicrope, Rich Armandi. John Adams wasn't at the camp this year. After hearing the Tuesday night concert, Rich decided to order one of those 8" cabinets I've been talking about in the "Amps" forum. Sorry I missed you this year, let me know if you come again....I haven't met anybody from talkbass yet.

[dhosek]

Originally posted by Ed Fuqua
Hey DAHOSER, I just read that you are having signal problems with your Realist? When you say "plugged directly into an amp" do you mean just a power amp or a regular instrument amp? Because the thing that I noticed about the Realist was how much hotter the signal was plugging it into the same amplifier I was using, compared to the Underwood I had before. Maybe you gotta wire shorting out or sumpn'...

Nah, it was just a question of having a sufficiently hot signal or an amp that will handle its low signal. The luthier who installed it warned me that it would really want a pre-amp stage to sound good. If I plug directly into my Roland KC500 (keyboard amp, which I use a lot for my BGs), I don't really get a usable signal, but if I go through my Raven Labs MDB-1 first, I get a plenty strong signal.

The amp that was on stage at the Aebersold jazz camp probably would have dealt with the straight signal just fine. When I initially plugged in through the MDB1, I got feedback until I turned down the gain.

-dh

[dhosek]

Thanks for the corrections on the captions. I had a feeling that John Adams was wrong because the name seemed so unfamiliar to me.

And I was kinda looking for you, but I couldn't remember the name so it's entirely possible we passed each other multiple times without realizing it.

I'll probably pass on next year just because I'll be burning at least 2 weeks of vacation doing a choral tour of italy next fall. But 2003 is a definite possibility. I'd originally thought that I'd come back the second time as a piano player and then as a flute player, but there's so much that I'd like to learn from the bass faculty, it would be hard to do. Perhaps what I might do is take 2 weeks in 2003, spending the first week as a bass player and the second on flute... hmmm that seems like a most appealing possibility indeed...

Incidentally, it appears that I won't be able to get real audios up until Thursday at the earliest courtesy of my ****ty cable company who've broken my connection and won't have me back up until then and it seems while I can get the recordings onto the computer at home, I can't really get them off that computer to get them here...

[Chris Fitzgerald]

Well, I'm officially piano faculty, but I've been playing bass on the faculty concerts since last year - Jamey knows damn well how little (if at all) I practice piano these days. Tonight I got my butt thoroughly kicked during the concert...I got to play a set with the following lineup:

Pat LaBarbera - tenor
Rich Perry - tenor
Andy LaVerne - piano
Steve Davis - drums
DURRL - bass


Man, talk about being thrown into the deep end of the pool!
That was fun.

[dhosek]

Steve Davis is the faculty member who looked like our staff drummer. Knowing that, makes the confusion about playing abilities I mentioned in Monday's diary entry that much more amusing.

-dh

[Bruce Lindfield]

I read through the diary entries - very interesting to compare this with the Jazz Summerschool I have attended for the last 3 years and which I will be joining again on 22 July.

The Aebersold one sounds much more academic and "worthy" than the one I attend at the University of Glamorgan, which is much more geared to live performances every evening. So there is a Jazz club from 8.00 in the evening to 'round Midnight (of course) in what is the student union bar and which has a nice stage and students from other courses as well as all the Jazz students and tutors making up the audience.

Basically all the workshops are geared toward performing in the evening and there isn't really any "theory" or sitting around unless you actively choose this. Most of the week is spent with a small group and a tutor getting to play together and learning some songs to perform.

Each year I have really enjoyed it and especially enjoyed the evening "concerts" which have included some very varied music - hardly any "standards" as such and a lot of more specialised things which are allowed by the time given to prepare. I often think it would be worth coming just to hear the concerts in the evening as the tutors are all excellent and always come up with something worth hearing - to me it's like a Jazz festival. And some of the big bands that are set up towards the end of the week have been genuinely thrilling - I have a lot of it recorded on MiniDisc.

So there was an "Early Ellington" band which was absolutley huge and contained about 90 people - the sound was incredible! There is also a "choir" feature, where one of the tutors writes a choral work for the students, which is then "improvised over" by the tutors' band - so everybody has to sing and again the sound is amazing when you have like a hundred people singing four or five part "backings" quietly, while a soloist plays over the top.