To Each His Own

I was recently asked to write an aritcle about the life of bassist Jymie Merritt for the Philadelphia Jazz Heritage Project's upcoming Jazz Fair 2009. Here's a link to the article on Allaboutjazz.com.

A few links to some other folks's stuff:

Bassist Tom Gale has written about his approach for teaching beginning bassists their way around the fingerboard without making them afraid of the thumb position.

Bill Carrothers is a pianist I've been getting into of late. Drummer Jay Epstein's recent CD with Carrothers and bassist Anthony Cox contains a great rendition of "The Imperial March" from Star Wars. Carrothers's website has some goodies on it too, and a lot of humor. He's posted a free lesson here.

I can't say that I completely agree with Carrothers's stance on transcription, but I think that his point is vaild; you have to listen over and over again. "Satuartion listening" is what one of my teachers has called it.