One of things that I must repeatedly emphasize about Jimmy Raney is his unique improvisational abilities as it relates to rhythm, and in particular his mastery of the more subtle and beautiful asymmetrical rhythm. It’s mind boggling how his monumental achievements in this area could’ve gone so largely unnoticed. I have noted in prior blogs his mastery of 6/4 and 5/4 phrases over 4/4. See here: Jimmy Raney’s polyrhythmic concepts part1 and here: Jimmy Raney’s polyrhythmic concepts part 2 In this blog’s example, 5/4 and 6/4 are used in combination, which is definitely more complex(!), but Jimmy Raney handled such things with ease. The example is a phrase from Jimmy’s…
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Man Vs. Machine
Do you have a love hate relationship with computers and technical gadgets? I know I do. At times it seems like the gadgets have their own spirit and intentions and in some cases (as in below story) openly defiant. And forget about the manuals. I want to constantly shoot the authors of them. And gadgets always screw up at the same time don’t they? Which is contributing to my personal persecution theories… Case in point. I bought a Motorola 2.4 ghz cordless phone w/ answering machine. I was happy with the purchase and got it for a good price. But for some reason it would not correctly update the day…
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When At a Loss for Words…Post Pictures
In the absence of any substantial thoughts/ideas on my part, click below MySpace link where pics were posted recently: Jon Raney MySpace page. Guess which ones are camera phone shots…uggh. Some great old photos of Dad as though. They are snapshots of the originals which were auctioned off by EBay. Read prior blog about EBay. Click the “pics” link below the sidebar photo when you get to MySpace page. (Sorry, you need to login or sign up for MySpace in order to see the photos)
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Communication in the Internet Age
The pre-e-mail and Internet world is difficult to imagine now after years of its entrenchment in our daily lives. I was musing about when the first rudimentary email was launched at my former employ, the now defunct Guggenheim Museum Soho. E-mail and Internet communication occupies this vast space between mailing written letters and yakking it up on the telephone, along with everything in between: chatting, both written and voice enabled, message boards and… oh yeah blogs with reader commentary. With the addition of graphics, audio and live hyperlinks to other sources of related interest, electronic correspondence is a whole new accelerated communication paradigm. It’s simply different when you “speak” to…
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The Recording
Tne J-maan… makin’ records…The Rainster… playin’ tunesOf his own..with a band…the BAND-maanHavin a hard timemakin’ recordsplayin tunes..of his own…with a band…He’s a complainsterThe J-maan… 90’s SNL characters aside. I was discussing on my forum (in my usual self-critical fashion) a recording done with bassist, Ed Fuqua and drummer, Eliot Zigmund. Sax and trumpet were added on 3 tunes: father and son team Dan & Tatum Greenblatt. (See also Charles Monteiro video snippet of session). I also enlisted old pals, bassist, Mario Rodriguez, drummer, Todd Isler and guitarist Billy Newman on a couple of more latin oriented cuts. So how did it go? For starters let me say this: I was…
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My Double Life
Some time ago I spoke about my full time day gig at ThomasNet. At that point I was still getting the hang of everything. I was suddenly put in the html driver’s seat with license to throw the switch to send our newsletters to hundreds of thousands of subscribers. After some trial by fire, I feel pretty comfortable with everything – even last minute email blasts with lots of edit change requests. But this does not mean I am ready to say I’m an html expert on my resume by any stretch. I am a functioning newsletter production manager, but my html design skills are in need of an upgrade.…
