Date: Wed, 25 Apr 2001 22:14:18 -0400 From: Alec Drachman Subject: Buckeye - Part III
Hi Again,
This is the last post - I promise. :-)
First, I want to mention how much I enjoyed hangin' with my bud Mike Easton. I think I forgot to mention him earlier, even though I spent a lot of time with him. Thanks for letting me try the biscuit! Also, It was cool to meet That one Dude and Allen S., even though I didn't meet them until the last night.
Now, as I was saying before, I think that Filisko's teaching extravaganza is the best thing going. I've often gone to seminars, thought "wow, this stuff is great", and yet, never really ended up putting it to any use. Other times, I haven't really understood what was going on in a seminar, but didn't want to ask, because the seminar was already overrun with people asking questions. Don't get me wrong, seminars are great. I love them. Still, I got a lot more out of the informal teach-in as I've already said.
This brings me to Saturday. I got to the teach-in a few minutes after it started. I wanted to spend some time with Allen Holmes, Chris Michalek, and Rob Paparozzi, and pick their brains about how to play Jazz on the diatonic. Allen was sitting with Tom so I butted in and the three of us commenced to working on some Jazz stuff. Musically, this proved to be the best two hours I have ever spent in my life. Allen sat us down and had us each play a solo over a Jamey Abersold CD track. The track was a blues with some jazzy chord substitutions. Allen was very complimentary about our simple blues playing and mentioned that he loved blues and it worked great to just play out of a blues scale. Still, when I heard what Allen played, I realized how cool it would be to be able to highlight the changes better. Over the next two hours, Allen showed us how to do this. I've been working on it since I got back and I feel I'm starting to make some real progress. I can't thank Allen enough for this awesome experience.
The only down side is that I was learning so much, that I didn't want to stop. When I finally did, the session was basically over. I did get a few more pointers from Rob (who expanded more on his very helpful seminar), but I missed Chris completely. :-(
I am more excited about music now than I have been in a long time. I'm gonna sign off now so I can go practice. :-)
Thanks again to everyone who made this event so special, especially those who I forgot to mention by name.
I don't know if this was the best convention ever, but I learned more at this one than any other.
-- Alec Drachman Check out our CD's: http://www.geocities.com/bluecats1999/alec.html
