matthew wengerd|bassist

It seems like there is a dearth of information about the German bow. I don’t quite know what causes this, but there just seem to be many more French players and information out there.

Imagine my joy and surprise when I read Stan Haskins’ Budget German bow roundup. He seems to give reasonably high marks to the Arcos Brazil bows, one of which I own. The bow is stamped “H. Cirillo” and is a very well-made, well-balanced bow. I paid less than $800 for it and have kept my eyes open for another bow in that range, but haven’t found anything yet.

If you’re looking for a bow in the sub-$800 range, read Haskins’ post and check out the bows he discusses.

The ClickForLessons blog had another interesting post (I was reading back into the archives) I thought worth mentioning. The issue of pricing lessons has always been a vexing one. How do you prevent undervaluing yourself without pricing yourself out of the market? I think these figures wouldn’t fly in my market:

If you want to make $100,000 this year, you can get 200 students to pay you $500 ($20 for half hour lessons, twice a month). You’d also be working your rear-end off - 6 days a week - and needing a support staff.

Or, you can have 60 students that will take two 1-hour lessons a month at $70 an hour. In the latter scenario, you could work Mon-Thurs and have a three day weekend every week - while making $100K. Typically, the person paying $70 vs. $20 also tends to be more serious and stay with you longer (thus avoiding churn and turnover).

I recently “gave myself a raise” and am charging $17/half, $30/hour. Upon obtaining my MM, it’s a sure bet that’ll go up. I could see charging $70 after a decade of pro experience, but don’t read the CFL blog and get the idea that you can demand those prices fresh out of school.

I do indeed like this reality check, though:

The average plumber charges $85 for a house call - whether it’s 10 minutes or an hour - then $85-$100 per hour thereafter. I’d say you’re adding more long-term value than my local plumber, wouldn’t you?

For those of you who do not know, I work for a radio station in the Tampa/St. Petersburg/Sarasota Market. I have been a desk jockey for the station since the start of the summer. In recent weeks, I have been “voice checking” (recording copy for evaluation by my supervisors), working on my inflection and pacing. Wednesday afternoon, I was doing a VC in the production room adjacent to the Master Control Room. I was reading promos for some of our national broadcasts and out-of-date copy regarding our last fund drive.

We have a complex digital system, where the control boards can all be controlled remotely; I had been told that it is not uncommon for someone to mess with a coworker by re-arranging their board remotely during work like voice checks. So, when the lights on the board flashed, I assumed someone was playing tricks on me. Several minutes later, I notice several people hovering over the Master Control Board. At once, they all looked up and me and, in slow motion, raised their hands to their throats to make the left-to-right slice of the “kill it” signal. I looked at them, puzzled, and muted all the channels on my board.

A software malfunction had caused stereo channels in the two rooms to cross, and my voice was going out over the air, live. I was talking over classical music, reading completely unrelated copy several times. I don’t know if I’ve ever been so humiliated. People were quite upset with me until they realized I had done nothing wrong. I continued to do VCs with the caveat that a single blinking light would send me straight home.

At least the big leap is over with.

In high school, they all used to laugh at me because I dug this instrument. The theremin is one of my all time favorite sounds, coming in right behind that of my own instrument. www.clickforlessons.com had a link to this video on their blog. I now feel slightly vindicated:

The Aebersold wrap-up will be here shortly, but I have to relate a more pressing issue:

I arrived home from the workshops and immediately set upon the most urgent task: sorting through two weeks of mail. I separated the letters, cards, and invitations from the magazines and bills (no letters from collections agencies) and left to pick my wife up from the airport.

The day got away from us and I didn’t get a chance to sort through the rest. What a shock my wife got when she saw this:

Yep, that’s me on the cover of Wired Magazine! I had forgotten that they asked subscribers to submit their pictures for customized covers several months ago. The email I received in response led me to believe I did not make the cut-off and would not be getting a customized cover, so the thought completely slipped my mind. I don’t even want to handle this one; I may go buy one off the newsstand to keep mine in good shape.

I’m in David Baker’s theory class right now. Baker is the chair of the Indiana University Jacobs School of Music Department of Jazz Studies. Just check out the first paragraph of his IU bio:

David Baker studied with J.J. Johnson, Janos Starker, and George Russell. He has been honored with nominations for the Pulitzer Prize and the Grammy Award. Mr. Baker has received the Down Beat Magazine’s New Star Award, Lifetime Achievement Award, Jazz Education Hall of Fame Award, the National Association of Jazz Educators Hall of Fame Award, and the National Endowment for the Arts American Jazz Masters Award.

Baker is tough and demanding, but one of the sweetest people you’ve ever met. If you don’t get him on the phone, there’s a good chance you won’t be getting in touch with him. He’s an extremely active teacher who has better things to do than sit a computer all day (I know what you’re thinking…). He and his wife, Lida, are the royal family of the camps. It is such an honor to get to spend time with them. I told Dr. Baker last night that, even though my chops (and ears) aren’t up to his theory class, I am getting so much from it and will be taking it home to shed. My Sony MD recorder is sitting beside me, capturing every story and moment. This is one of the great treasures of the workshops.

The house was packed for Moody, but let up ever so slightly for subsequent sets. I’ve been trying to get a shot like this all week.

This week’s Wednesday night concert at Masterson’s features the incomparable James Moody. Also playing are drummer Jonathan Higgins, guitarist Dave Stryker, and Organist Bobby Floyd. You should be here right now.

Moody conducted a saxophone masterclass today and will be hosting a flute masterclass on Thursday. We are honored to have such a living legend here with us for the week.

Only at Aebersold!

1…If you know Jamey Aebersold, you know he likes to take pictures. He tells me he uses the SnP method of photography - Shoot and Pray. He gets some good shots that are featured throughout the buildings this week. Unfortunately, he snagged one of a visible stunned me and had it placed prominently on the bulletin board in the lobby of the school of music.

It’s been a running deal to place captions below it. I believe the one here is “INCONTHEIVABLE!” Let me know if you have any good captions.

2…At least one camper has come to me and said “you’re the guy with the blog, right?” If you are reading this and attending the Aebersold workshops, come up to me and let me know. It’s very gratifying to meet readers (long time or new) in real life. I’m the guy in the picture above, say hello.

I only have internet in the dining hall and can’t post regularly. I do have a doozy of a story to tell when I get it up and running again.

Congratulations to Jason Heath for being the latest addition to the International Society of Bassists’ (ISB’s) Board of Directors. Jason’s appointment shows the foresight (perhaps by this point it’s just common sense) the ISB has in including an www component in its highest level. Jason says it best:

I am still amazed at how sitting at a laptop in your kitchen and typing furiously into the wee hours of the morning can give one more credibility than all the hours, days, weeks, months, and years spent practicing prior to that point.

This is the staff of the Jamey Aebersold Summer Workshops. God Have Mercy On Our Souls.

I ran into Chris Fitzgerald in the hall today and he commented on the amusement my posting brought him. I came into this very determined to post consistently, but quickly lost momentum. It’s kinda like watching DJA liveblog BoaC and seeing the fatigue set in, but mine’s not nearly as entertaining. Well, I promise to do my best to be a bit more consistent. I’ve already posted a couple times today. Don’t hold me to it, though.

I haven’t encountered any other livebloggers yet, but I did catch a post by Thomas Howard chronicling his experiences. It is so great to see people with backgrounds in rock, pop, and classical music coming to these workshops and making great headway as jazz musicians. I’m awful with names; when Thomas posted at Talkbass to let me know he wrote this post, I had to check his myspace for pictures to recognize who he was. We had several conversations while he was here and I really enjoyed the bit of time I had to get to know him.

This thing really is a brotherhood.

We had a bit of a respite last night (following Transformers with Anotonio). The week starts back up today. I just had a less than pleasing audition, but this is one of those few low-pressure moments where it doesn’t really matter.

At the end of my audition, Friesen had me play my bass backwards (RH on the neck) for a slow blues. Boy, did it go poorly! Afterwards, Friesen reminded me that this was pretty much how I played when I first picked up the bass. “See how far you’ve come?” he asked. That made my day.

I will not be teaching at Southeastern University for the 2007-2008 Academic Year. Those of you studying bass at SEU will be studying with Mark Neuenschwander. I will continue to teach privately in Lakeland and throughout Central Florida.

Where else can you see Transformers with Antonio Hart?

Things have been much busier than expected and I haven’t had the time to write as I desired. I’ve been recording a lot of my experiences for a big audio dump and possible podcasting. While you’re waiting, here are some bass shots:

Today was move-in day for the first of two week-long Aebersold Workshops. Many of the rhythm section players arrived earlier in the week for the two-day drum and bass workshops in addition to players here for The Man’s two-day improvisation primer. The staff had a very reasonable call of 10:00 am today (after a much-needed early end yesterday) and we prepared for registration.

[interruption]
Lynn Seaton just played an arco/vocal solo a la Slam Stewart on a blues that knocked my socks off! I wish I had recorded it to share with my (few) loyal readers. Wow!

[/interruption]

I took the minors to lunch at Taco Hut (much to their chagrin) for the second day in a row. It’s not agreeing with me one bit. After lunch, there was much moving of furniture. Rooms needed to be re-arranged to accommodate the classes and combos of the camps. This was the part of the day I choose to forget. It was exhausting and I’m glad it’s over.

Tonight was the last dinner on the meal plan. Meals are served on the campus of UofL at Masterson’s, which I am told is not at all unpleasant, but gets tedious for those of us on the two-week plan. Dinners at Masterson’s are accompanied by faculty concerts. Our own Jack Wilkins played in a quintet featuring dueling tenors, guitar, bass, and organ. The truth of the matter is, I was a little too exhausted to give it my full attention. There were, however, a few moments where the quintet burned so hard…well, I’ve never been a very vivid writer, use your own good jazz analogy.

Evenings at the Aebersold camps feature three sets of faculty concerts. I was blessed to miss the first set (it’s not as bad as it sounds) because Rich Armandi pulled me away for a lesson. The best part of this camp is the amazing faculty that avail themselves to us almost non-stop for the entire week. Rich is a Chicago area bassist that, as he says, is focused on being a strong utility player, knowing as many tunes as possible and playing in time and in tune with an excellent sound. We talked a lot about vomit, the Gary Karr exercise that, when played by a room full of bassists, has been known to induce vomiting. We also talked about using large muscles to maximize sound production. I’ll write better notes on the lesson tonight.

The second set was:
Lynn Seaton.b
Phil DeGregg.p
Steve Barnes.d
Tim Armacost.ts
Dave Stryker.g
Jennifer Barnes.voc

You already heard what I think about that.

Starting now is:

Don Braden.ts
David Hazeltine.tp
Antonio Hart.as
Rufus Reid.b
Steve Davis.d
Barry Ries.p

I’ve got more important things to do than type….more later.