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May 2017

Impromptu FRiSK Video

FRiSK are having a busy summer, which is a wonderful thing in itself, but the great thing about it  is that it gives us more opportunities to produce little off-the-cuff videos and things – largely for our own amusement!

Recently we were booked for a private event at Brooklands Museum, which is a fantastic place that celebrates a golden age of British racing, aviation and engineering.  Penny (one of our singers) and I felt inspired to perform this Fats Waller classic which is of the same era as a lot of the cars in the museum… A few takes and some hasty editing on iMovie and this is the result.  Fun!

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Django Lick and TAB | ACM video

The 16th of May marked the anniversary of the death of Django Rienhardt, so I asked the guys at ACM if I could do a little video by way way of tribute, and here it is.  There’s a lot I wanted to talk about but it’s hard to know what to fit in a video that has to be so short, so it’s a very simple demonstration of one idea:  taking the minor pentatonic (1, b3, 4, 5, b7) and lowering the b7 by a semitone to make it a maj6th (so it’s now 1, b3, 4, 5, 6 – like a m6 arpeggio, and implying the Dorian mode).  This is one thing I found that really helped me start to build some Gypsy style vocabulary and move away from the minor pentatonic licks that are omnipresent in rock and blues improvisation. 

The lick I play is based one of Django’s phrases found in the solo of Swing 42 (click here and skip to about 1’07”).  Swing 42 is in C major , but here I’m using it in the context of a Gm6 chord.  The TAB is here: Django Style Minor 6 Lick

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