The Bis Key Chronicles

Ronald Lemmen found some pictures on his camera from this year’s Global MVP Conference in Redmond. The first one is of my band the Dissonance:

This picture clearly shows MVP Curtis Spanburgh in his first guitar gig in the Seattle area. We now have proof! BTW, that’s my lovely wife Suzy on alto sax, Gary Anderson on trumpet and Dave Franzwa on trombone.

The next shot is a CRM MVP gang shot. These guys are really close and a fun group to be associated with:

From left to right are Matt Parks,  Matt Wittemann, Mitch Milam, Michael Höhne, and the inimitable Ronald Lemmen. Prost gentlemen.  :o)

Or Gandalfe in this case…

I’ve been spending time with my sister visiting from Minneapolis and my brother from Austin. Yesterday and today I’m taking a very enjoyable all-day class taught by Gerry McGovern called "Creating Customer Centric Web Sites." Gerry is the author of ‘Killer Web Content‘.

Gerry has a keen sense of humor that makes the 8 hours a day go very fast. And I noted that one of his bad examples came from a sister team who had paid big money to have a campaign created for them by a third-party company. I was just glad my sites had not been called out as bad examples.

So here’s a little music and I’ll peek in later this week by a fellow whose blog I read called the Buzzing Reed. Here’s David Garnet:

Enjoy the day. I know I will.

From the Back at the Chicken Shack by Jimmy Smith comes a tasty piece called "Messy Bessy". It is by no means messy. Wonder of Jimmy is up to now-a-days? I’m still luvin’ this CD.

And in a total non sequitur here is the report on the Didgeridoo class that Suzy and I attended this weekend. We had to really search for the Jamtown Playspace as the building was behind another deserted building on Lake Street. There were two other students there already and we joined them.

The didgeridoo is a wind instrument traditionally made from the trunk of termite hollowed eucalyptus trees from Australia (like the one pictured below). They average about 4 to 5 feet in length, and are played by vibrating your lips into the top end of the instrument which creates a deep humming drone.

The didgeridoo is a rhythm instrument, so you play "beats" instead of melodic songs. Play at your own speed as well; quiet or loud, fast or slow, and soon you’ll develop your own style. There are no "rules" or complex memorization. This makes learning the instrument very intuitive, so you don’t need any musical training to enjoy playing the didgeridoo straight away. It also doesn’t require "power" from your lungs like other wind instruments. The didgeridoo is played with gently vibrating lips, voice, and tongue movement, not lung power. You won’t believe how quickly you can learn this and how much fun it can be.

Our instructor was Pam and she had been playing for three years. She had a number of instruments which was good because the beauty I ordered from eBay at $68 had not arrived yet. We talked about the history of the instrument, voice the drone, and rhythms. Pam recommended the Mary Youngblood CD, a native American flute player and visiting Tyler Spenser’s web site at primaltones.com.

Then we spend a full twenty minutes on circular breathing, learning techniques, and uses. It was fascinating to me and appears to be really learnable given time and the passion to pursue this skill. Suzy probably won’t continue to work on this but I might. Heck I have the instrument now.  :o)

Interesting side stories:

• BBC: Didgeridoo players ‘sue Survivor’
• Current: No didgeridoo lessons for girls: Aborigines outraged over instruction book
• House MD: Jesse Spencer is reported to play the didgeridoo.

A friend of mine travels a lot and has been trying to figure out how to practice whilst on the road. Part of it is about getting an instrument that is small enough to be in your carry on, think soprano sax. But the other part is about finding a place that you can play and not bother the neighbors. So this article from the Sax Journal came to mind and I thought I’d share it with you.

  Using Key Clicks by Paul Haar.

Gordon adds: "Before I purchased a basement, I found the whisper mute worked well enough for this: http://www.saxophones.co.uk/acatalog/e-sax_Electronic_Whisper_Mutes.html.

Bonus: it includes an integrated microphone and chip that allows you to wear headphones/mix in your Aebersolds/apply effects/whatever…  However, it’s only for alto, and it’s not the most portable thing in the world.  Someday, I might even be talked into selling mine."

The key click thing sounds fascinating to me. Surely not as satisfying as playing but maybe a very doable solution for me to consider so that I can improve my technique and rhythm. I can see hooking up a metronome for the session.