Robin D. G. Kelly's Thelonious Monk: The Life & Times of an American Original---to me one of the truly stellar jazz biogs.
Anything by David Hajdu; especially Billy Strayhorn: Lush Life and his biog on Nat Cole. (I've also corresponded w/him and he seems truly nice).
Frank Buchman-Moller's You Just Fight for Your Life---the Story of Lester Young. (All the Pres biogs are worth reading).
Art Pepper's autobiog (written with Laurie Pepper); and Miles (written with Quincy Troupe) are self-gratifying and hampered by loads of BS, but I've read them both numerous times. Pepper is a spellbinding raconteur, and his insight into other musicians' work is interesting to read (if his comments about his own 'genius' are slightly delusional). Miles talking about music has been great food for thought.
The Benson book was mentioned. One thing that cracked me up: some poetic justice. I knew Eddie Diehl for years, and he had a bug up his ass about Kenny Burrell. It had to do with a record date where he was sent home and replaced by Kenny b/c the company wanted a 'name'. He neither ever forgot nor stopped bad-mouthing Kenny's playing til it came out of your ears. I guess it's SOMEWHAT understandable. Eddie WAS one of the best, and a truly good-hearted guy underneath it all. We're all sensitive, and rejection---perceived or real---can really hurt.
Anyway, in George's book when he got the call to go with McDuff he was to replace Eddie. His comments---and they were respectful---were (paraphrasing): '(Eddie) was a formidable musician----not on the level of Kenny Burrell...., but he definitely could play'. Eddie was still alive when that came out. I hope he read it---it MAY have shut his mouth. I doubt it though---shutting Eddie's mouth about ANYTHING, especially guitar players he was jealous of (their stature in the biz, not their playing), was a tall order. But I had quite a chuckle over that one...
I have two guitars with sound ports. The Beardsell short-scale high-A flattop is almost all soundport on the upper bout and delivers a lot more volume than you would hear from the top if there was...
I only had one that I forgot the name (some guy had gits made and imported them) of because I sent it back as it had many top cracks that the seller did not reveal.
That said, despite the cracks...
Since chords are derived from scales, the #11/b5 designation exists so that each letter of the musical alphabet is expressed only once in the chord scale.
so a chord with a b5 can theoretically...
As bad as that break looks, I bet a good luthier can repair that so you'd never know it broke, and it would never break there again. It's pretty clean.
Hello. Old thread I know, but the greatest blues music guitarist/singer/songwriter(imho) was never mentioned; the late Elmore James. All of his recordings are free on YouTube and he popularized many...
Yeah, it's not so much that I wouldn't want one, I just know if I were ever to buy a really nice hand built classical, it's probably not going to have a truss rod--traditional builders just don't use...
I have a Cordoba classical and I wish it had a truss rod. The new Cordoba Stage I bought DOES have a truss rod and I'm glad, I have already had to use it.
In the measure with the Bb-7 chord, 4th note, you're playing a D natural and it needs to be a Db. You got me thinking about playing it an octave higher than what I've been doing.
From a purely guitar perspective - with limited notes available for chords - can anyone explain to me why some chords are described as flat 5 and others are sharp 11?
Can anyone describe a chord...
Is an Archtop Tribute AT101 model not the same (or pretty close to the same) as the ES-125C? Not quite the TDC but an option. There's a used one on Reverb right now, but the price is a little higher...
Hi, my guitar is a yamaha sa2200, and I'm happy. I would like to get a guitar more specific for classic jazz, with a very warm, soft tone. I thought about ibanez pm 200. What do you think? Am I at...
Enharmonics
Today, 09:59 AM in Theory