If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!For my June 2007 podcast, here’s an interview I conducted with Andrew Lawrence while I was attending Django In June in Northampton, Massachusetts.
Andrew is founder of the Community Guitar Program, as well as being the director and coordinator of [...]
Here’s my final formal post on Django In June ‘07. I’ll try to encapsulate how this experience has changed me, and which direction I’m likely to take in my musical development as a result. But first…
what was it like?
Well… read my other posts, for starters. The details describe the experience fairly well. Nevertheless, here are [...]
Wayne Nakamura of HyperHip Media has just posted a couple of videos from the Saturday June 16 concert on Youtube. Enjoy!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U9Tb3HWkJRE
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5uME_Vvb-mA
Andrew had warned us: on the last morning, many of us would be either exhausted or heading out. Nevertheless - in a final display of commitment to this experience - many Django Campers are attending the last seminar of the week, at 10am!
Not me. I’m done for. Fingers are hurting, I haven’t slept much in [...]
Tunes of the day:
Djangology
Douce Ambiance
Morning session: improvisation with Biel Ballester (Barcelona, Spain)
What was covered:
Djangology: learned to practice changes with arpeggios. Learned two chord substitutions for the second chord in the piece. Instead of C dim, play basic triad:
with F#, play D7
with G natural, play Cmin 6 (”planar cadence”)
Biel offered a systematic approach to getting basic [...]
Tunes of the day:
Dark Eyes
Swing 39
morning session - improvisation John McGann (Berklee)
What was covered:
Metronome practice fundamentals. Also learned a specific scale for improvising over Dark Eyes. John prefers (and advocates) mid-tempo playing over fast, because breathing space makes for more inventiveness, less reliance on licks and clichés.
Lessons learned:
Do “caveman” single-fingered arpeggios, with a single string [...]
Tunes of the day:
Swing ‘42
Swing Gitan
Morning session - imrovisation Vladimir Mollov (Bulgaria, via Philadelphia)
(sorry, forgot to take some pictures!)
What was covered:
In a guitar heavy camp, I was one of the only guitar players in the session. Role-reversal with players on other instruments.
Vlado kept it simple. His focus was on getting us up on basic knowledge [...]
N.B. for the remainder of this camp diary, I will use a summary format (as in today’s post) to describe the seminars and other noteworthy camp offerings and events.
Tunes of the Day:
Minor Swing
Django’s Castle
Morning session - improv with Michael Horowitz (Seattle, WA)
What was covered:
How to get started on vocabulary building. We covered basic picking principles [...]
For the trip down to Massachusetts I’ve hooked up with Michel Gaudette, another Montrealer who will be attending the event. After a five-hour road trip, we arrive in Northampton on a fine June late afternoon, and make our way straight to Smith College.
First impressions? This place is just gorgeous! Obviously, the founders of Smith College [...]
Sunday, June 24, 2007
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