July 7th, 2006

Number 6

Getting closer now! Three songs in this rehearsal: 'You Just Know', 'Waiting Game' & 'Warmer Still' (along with some more craziness...). We will be recording most of these songs as a demo next Friday (14th), so I'll be able to give you a better quality preview soon after that. Spending time at the moment getting our Creative NZ application into some semblance of order as it needs to be in before the end of July. I will let you know how that all progresses. BTW, check out the MP3s on the Grand Central Band page. There's a playlist called 'Bar 3' which was recorded one Sunday night recently at Sky City. The quality wasn't too bad so I've thrown the files up on the site for your listening pleasure. This showcases how we turn cover songs into Grand Central Band styles...

Play in PopupSize: 24.4 MB

June 20th, 2006

Rehearsal 5...

This podcast is a little shorter in length as it features only two songs: 'State Of Mind' and 'In Fluence'. What we are doing now is finalising arrangements, so we are working on 2-3 songs per rehearsal. Very soon (in a few weeks time) we will be recording them all as a studio demo so that we can try and get funding and/or a record deal - ideally both!! :)
Grand Central Band is still going strong on Sunday nights at Bar 3 in Sky City, Auckland. Our sound tech there has recorded some of the performances from the desk and they sound pretty darn good. I will put some of these up on the Grand Central page mp3 player soon.

Play in PopupSize: 13.6 MB

May 23rd, 2006

Number 4!

At last! A new podcast of our rehearsal! Ok, so it's been a little delayed, but hopefully worth the wait...! Things are progressing well and we pretty much have the material organised for the album. What we are now in the process of doing is arranging each tune in terms of solos, form etc. All very exciting stuff :)

What we will also be looking at soon, is doing a half-decent demo recording of the songs that we can take to various record companies, as well as including with a Creative NZ grant application.

On other news, we now have a MySpace, so have a visit, and let others know that we're there!

Play in PopupSize: 21.5 MB

April 26th, 2006

Rehearsal 3

Well here we have another rehearsal for your listening pleasure! This one is rather longer, giving you a bit more insight into the craziness that is a Blue Train rehearsal! Again, you can listen to it directly via the podcast button (but be patient, as it can take a while), or subscribe via the RSS feed on the right, or even listen to it via the mp3 player. On other news, my Jazz Voicing book is now available for purchase through lulu.com, and I will shortly be setting up a shopping cart so that you can buy CDs online from here. All very exciting stuff, but also a learning curve!

I had fun down in Tauranga for the Easter weekend jazz festival, playing a great set with Lewis McCallum on the Sunday. It was so much fun playing Lewis's material - a healthy mix of jazz and hip-hop. Be sure to grab his album when it comes out. I also played for the Miles Davis tribute which went very well - in fact we will be presenting the same thing in July at Massey University in Albany. Watch this site for details...

Grand Central Band is now down to once a fortnight at Grand Central Bar - a dumb bar management idea in my opinion. All consistency of building a crowd with a regular gig is now gone. Jerome Hendrix will be playing alternate Thursdays. So we are NOT there April 27, but will be the following, and so on. Anyway Sky City Bar 3 IS a regular on Sunday nights and we had a very good crowd last week, so come on up!!

Play in PopupSize: 27.1 MB

April 3rd, 2006

Second rehearsal podcast

Check out the new rehearsal recording, this time featuring some different tunes than before. The quality again is a little rough, but this will only improve! We are having a lot of fun in these rehearsals (as you can no-doubt hear in the recordings!), but we are also quite excited about the new material and band line-up. Now to get some gigs... ;-)
I've put some new pics up on the photos page as well as an updated gig list on the home page. Also check out the new 'iPod' MP3 player on the music page. I've included the podcasts as a playlist here, which may be easier to access for some people. The link for the player is here.

Play in PopupSize: 17.8 MB

March 17th, 2006

First Podcast here!!

Finally, I can now bring you the first podcast. This is just some highlights of our first rehearsal, and gives you a glimpse of the first run-throughs of a few of the new tunes. Future podcasts will also take this format. There is a low-level hum in the background of this recording, but I should be able to eliminate that in future podcasts. Drag the 'RSS Feed' link on the right into iTunes to subscribe, or play the podcast directly in the browser here. Enjoy!!

Play in PopupSize: 11.3 MB

March 13th, 2006

More on MP3s and podcasts

Some of you have mentioned that the mp3 player sometimes cuts out or stops and starts. I can't find anything wrong with the player or the way it's implemented, but I think it's a traffic thing. Even on broadband, if the network is busy ( and this site is hosted in the U.S), these symptoms may occur. What happens is that the player starts playing the song, after a percentage of the song is loaded. If the loading is slow, the playing may catch up with the loading and cause the stutter.

Anyway, hopefully that explains some things. I hope to have podcasts of our rehearsals appearing soon - I've recorded a couple of rehearsals, but just need to edit them a little. I'm excited by the material - Steve has some great tunes, and with all our contributions, I think we'll have a pretty damn good album (if I do say so myself!!)

February 23rd, 2006

MP3 player

I've managed to get the player happening in a new window at last! The playlist appears below it so you can select lists for each band. (They show the xml extension at the moment, but I plan to fix that so it looks better). Now you can browse the site without cutting out the music. Let me know how it works for you and if there are any browser problems...

February 21st, 2006

Blue Train rehearsals

We had our first rehearsal of new material last night which went extremely well. Great new songs from Steve and Jason, along with a few of my own. I'm really excited by this project, especially with having Junior Turua and Dixon Nacey on board. I recorded last night, but as a first practice, it's probably not suitable for podcast material just yet! However, I would like to make some of this available, even as just a production diary. I'll send out an email when I've got something to offer.

I'm also looking at having the music player as a separate window, rather than embedded on each music page. This would enable you to listen while browsing the site (or anywhere else!). I've been looking at the Wimpy mp3 player which looks great (skinable etc), but the current flash player may work ok, with some tweaking. Now, just to work out how to do this in Rapidweaver...

February 16th, 2006

Jazz Piano page

I've finally got the Jazz Piano page up and running. At this stage it's more of a trial to see if it gains interest, but once I do have an online purchasing facility, I may produce other learning resources to advertise there. On the Blue Train news, we are shortly to start a regular rehearsal time :-) I have several tunes, a couple in 'scratch' idea form, but hopefully we will get some writing happening as a band. Steve also has a number so we have plenty on new material. What I also hope to do, is record some rehearsals and make them into podcasts - just a thought, but this webdesign app I use, 'Rapidweaver' makes it all very easy to do...Keep an eye on this page ;-)