youtube o' the week!

Once again, found while looking for something completely different. This kind of playing makes me want to either practice my face off or lay the horn down and never touch it again, and I can never figure out which is the more appropriate response. Not the best recording quality, but holy cow.

Trombonastical youtube o' the week!

I just found this while looking for something else. It's a bit untimely, since the Magnum Mysterium is a Christmas song, but hey. The Lauridsen is my favorite setting, and one of my favorite pieces of music, and it's a trombone choir. Does anybody know anything about Columbus State?

YouTube o' the Not So Deep as Hades

Lauren actually sent this to me after a discussion on my struggles in the low range. It's Alan Raph talking about an alternate embouchure for getting really, really low notes. Not quite contrabass trombone low, but close.

I'm always a little wary of shifts and alternate embouchures and other things that could be considered "cheats". I had some trouble back in high school where I had this killer high range, but it came from a pretty major series of shifts that essentially made it impossible for me to play things like the jump from E3 to C#3 in the Guillmant Morceau or a Bb3-Bb4 jump for a solo in Somewhere Over The Rainbow that became a locally famous euphemism for horrific, mortifying failure my junior year.

But that said, I have been trying Mr. Raph's suggestion here, and I've played down to a pedal D. The interesting thing is that working out with this goofy embouchure has actually tightened up some of the regular pedals on a regular embouchure. I can get down to the F fairly well now, if it's still weak. I can't play E or below at all without the shift, and it takes the shift to get any kind of credibility on a G, but that's an improvement over where I was a couple of weeks ago!

Oh yeah, the video:

Youtube o' the Depths of Hades!

I know what you're thinking. Ok, I really don't.

But this is kind of old, but I found it while looking for something else. It's Murray Crewe, bass trombonist of my beloved Pittsburgh Symphony, talking through the history of his Conn contrabass trombone. The first amusing thing to notice is that they go hunting for him in the bar across the street. The second amusing thing is the sheer size of the instrument.

He's using it to play the famous impossible gliss in the Bartok concerto for orchestra- the gliss goes from B natural to F, an octave below the second partial on your average Bb tenor trombone, which doesn't quite hit any of the partials for a regular bass trombone, but hits the second partial on a contra. There's a brief discussion of the gliss here.

Youtube o' the week!

My brother always gets me a dvd for Christmas. Well, at least for the last several years he has. This year, it was a copy of Rachel Portman's opera The Little Prince, based on the book by Antoine de St.-Exupery. I really enjoyed it, especially the amazing work by baritone Teddy Tahu Rhodes as the pilot. The audio is a little out of sync, but this is the scene shortly after the pilot meets the Prince, and the two come to an understanding about the nature of sheep.

Youtube for the holidays!

I missed my post for this week due to pie and such, but I ran across this on my favorite blogs and had to share. It's the beloved Penguins talking about what they want for Christmas. Marc-Andre Fleury wants Mario Kart and a Ping-Pong table, and Max Talbot got a Guy LaFleur dvd. The first hockey player that really impressed me, before I realized the Penguins existed, before Mario Lemieux came to town, was Guy LaFleur. I remember watching him on French language tv from vacation someplace in New England, tearing down the right side with his hair trailing in the breeze behind him unleashing the original goalie-hatin' slapper from above the right circle, and making goalies look foolish. And now here I am making occasional strange blog posts about how much I dig the Penguins! I wonder if Max would lend out the dvd when he's done with it.

YouTube o' the week- jazz winter style!

If there's anybody on here who is also on my Facebook, and actually pays attention to it, they might have already seen this, but I thought it was really pretty cool. I always dig it when they show the band! But what did the poor drummer do to end up in a little isolation box all by himself?

YouTube o' teh... what the...?!

This clip is entirely worth it to watch Jordan Staal (of my beloved Penguins) talk about his brother Mark dressed up as Pippi Longstocking. Also, what's up with Alex Goligoski and the porn 'stache?

Hockey players talk about their childhood Halloween costumes here:

Bill Watrous on Samantha

I know Jon usually posts the YouTube of the Week, but he's informed me that his posting might be sporadic for a while, so I've decided to step in where I can to keep things regular around here.

I was inspired to look up Bill Watrous on YouTube by my friend Joe, who recently saw him play live in Houston. I came across this recording of Watrous playing "Samantha", a beautiful ballad, and the video (while grainy) gives some amazing shots of his use of slide vibrato. Enjoy!

Youtube o' my misbegotten youth!

And here I admit how old I really am. The Thompson twins (not twins, not named Thompson) were one of my favorite bands when I was very young. I used to sit and listen to my sister listen to these guys. You have to understand- my sister was evil. Like, probably read The Prince and was disgusted at Machiavelli's timidity and lack of imagination. So she'd sit in her room with her stereo and her hundreds of records and I'd sit out on the stairs where she couldn't see me and listen. I remember going to some store- probably the Gold Circle in Braddock Hills that hasn't been there for a while, and wanting to buy a copy of their album The Gap but having my dad refuse to let me because my sister had a copy, and I could just listen to hers. Sometimes parents really don't understand. the nice thing about these guys (and songs from the early 80s in general) is that most of them are so old that they don't have any painful associations: those start in about 1987 with this lovely piece of pop... brilliance. And if that doesn't make them come for my music snob card nothing will!

Bryn and Ceci sing Mozart

Not so weekly youtube o' teh week #2!

I just love watching these guys. Two of the best singers on the planet, with a heap of stage presence and charm. An innate ability in each of them to not take themselves too seriously while performing impeccably. I totally named my cat after Cecilia Bartolli, and never admitted it publicly until now. Huzzah!

Not so weekly youtube o' the week!

So I guess Lauren finally got tired of me sending her Youtube links, because she suggested I post them here rather than send them to her! Since one of the things I do when I'm bored or avoiding doing work is troll through Youtube, starting with something specific and clicking the related links until I find something really neat. So when I do, I'll dump it on here and publish when I find something!

First link is a band I really dig, the Tokyo Ska Paradise Orchestra. A lot of the stuff they do is in fact ska, or at least a logical relative of ska, but they do a lot of stuff that comes more directly from jazz, too. One of my favorite parts of youtube trawling them is that the seem to actually improvise their solos, and most of the clips of them playing the same song have different solos. Anyway, this is a clip of them playing Natty Parade live. I dig how the trumpet player drags out Frere Jacques, and the trombonist pulls out the Baby Elephant walk. Very nice, stuff I wouldn't personally think of, although I am a horrible improviser. Check it out, it's cool!