Today I had a great rehearsal with the Jazz Connexion Big Band, my reading is finally getting to the stage where I can enjoying it and I was really in the zone for one of my solos in Groovin’ High, a bebop tune that we’re doing a fast samba arrangement of. I’ve been thinking more…

“Write drunk, Edit sober”. Apparently Ernest Hemingway may have said this. As I work towards developing my own writing practice I have noticed that I’m a much better editor than writer and find it difficult to turn off the editing mode in my mind. I have considerably less trouble with this as a musician. From…

I’m curious about what makes a great music instrument. Have you ever wondered why certain instruments are so popular and people find new ways of creating music on them decade after decade? While other, possibly more interesting or technologically advanced instruments seem to get forgotten or dismissed as inaccessible. As I look at our current…

Doing this writing thing daily is not easy, after all I’ve already missed 3 days in my first week. I can always work up to being consistent about it. I feel like I’ve got to have something profound to say or why bother, but that’s not the point, is it? I’m writing daily as a…

I’m trying to write daily but sometimes there doesn’t seem to be enough time in the day to get everything done. Practice guitar daily, Practice composing daily, an hour of learning through tutorials, perhaps I can start out not quite so ambitiously. Today I practiced guitar for an hour. Trying to learn Charlie Parker’s Anthropology,…

Podcasting with Scott Morgan of Loscil I woke up this morning feeling good about last night’s experiment. While watching my daughter’s soccer practise I recorded a conversation with Scott Morgan (aka Loscil). We’re considering creating a podcast about creating music and instruments and thought we could start by making a pilot of our podcast. I’ll…

Tactility in instruments Back in the 1990’s when I lived in Montreal I practiced guitar daily, sometimes for hours but usually for at least two hours. I’m working on getting back into that habit because it was so rewarding in ways I had not imagined at the time. During today’s morning guitar warmup I started…

Writing about thinking, as opposed to thinking about writing… As an effort to collect thoughts, practise writing and share ideas I’ve decided to journal my progress with my personal and professional research. If you’re interested in any of the ideas, experiments or projects I’ll be sharing please let me know in the comments below. Right…