Christopher Schlegel Update 02-17-2010

“Mood Indigo”, Duke Ellington’s classic ballad, is the fourth tune on my Solo Jazz Guitar Standards, Vol. 1 disc.

http://cdbaby.com/cd/schlegel8

What is there to say about Duke that hasn’t already been said? A genius of American music, an amazing composer & arranger, outstanding (and in my opinion highly underrated) pianist, bandleader, performer, overall first rate musician. Always dressed to the nines and always on the top of his game.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duke_Ellington

Along with Gershwin, Mr. Edward “Duke” Ellington’s songs form the backbone of the Great American songbook. “Mood Indigo” is a tune I’ve known and loved for many years.  Like many jazz tunes, for years I never knew the lyrics to the tune. Or even that it had lyrics!  I’ve intentionally avoided grandstanding on this one. Just the melody, a simple bass line, and inner chord color tones that are my personal tribute to Duke’s beautiful music that I’ve loved for many, many years.

I’ve been testing my video studio setup with a new mic & subdued lighting. I recently filmed some test footage which included a pass at “Mood Indigo”.  This is very similiar to the arrangement on the CD & how I typically perform it.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XvN26FYSFHA

I also recently filmed a series of blues lessons for Guitar Tricks. I used my Reason Amps Bambino for all of them!

http://www.reasonamps.com/

Here are a couple of the play along performance sections I extracted from the lesson footage.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H-9eA4jWfkw

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i3E5tgDeRX8

Happy viewing & listening!

Happy new year! My web vendor CD Baby now has an Artist Overview page, on which you can view my currently available catalog of discs on CD Baby. And also get links to direct digital downloads.

http://www.cdbaby.com/Artist/ChristopherSchlegel

I need to get some of those Download Cards and give them away to people or something like that which might resemble “Marketing”.

I still haven’t finished posting about all my jazz guitar CD tunes individually. I intend to finish that project this year. So keep watching this e-space for a blurb about each tune in order!

http://www.cdbaby.com/cd/schlegel8

I am also working on some exciting projects involving performances & clinics this year! More details to follow.

Gibson.com has posted another of my video lessons. I have at least a couple more like this ready to go for the beginning of the year. I enjoy doing these simple blues things very much!

http://www.gibson.com/en-us/Lifestyle/Lessons/InstrumentLessons/Blues-Orchestration-In-A-112/

Happy viewing & listening!

Christopher Schlegel Update 12-19-2009

“Blue Monk”, Thelonius Monk’s classic is the third tune on my Solo Jazz Guitar Standards, Vol. 1 disc.

http://cdbaby.com/cd/schlegel8

Monk was an odd character to say the least.  Some of his stuff is beautiful, some ugly, some just plain weird.  But it is all farily stunning.  He is an American jazz original for sure.  I picked this tune to do because it is basically just a simple blues with a nifty little melody.  This leaves the options for improvisation wide open to the performer.  I had a lot of fun thinking of things to do with it.

Finally, here is a vid of me playing the tune at that outdoor arts fest:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qYjOZw1ff5g

Enjoy!

Christopher Schlegel Update 11-16-2009

A couple of months ago I attended the very first Nashville Amp Expo.

http://www.nashvilleampexpo.com/

As a result, I am officially an endorsed artist for Reason Amplification. Thanks to my old friend, Obeid the best tube amp designer in the world, and to my new friend Anthony, the best amp cabinet man in the world! Scroll down the list to read my blurb.

http://www.reasonamps.com/artists.php

I wrote it for them to stress how my name on their roster is best mutually beneficial. And, it’s true! I am a pioneer and leader in online video instruction with over a thousand lessons on various websites. I’ve had over 1,000 video lessons in total on various sites for a while. But as of yesterday I have over 1,000 on Guitar Tricks alone!

http://www.guitartricks.com/instructor.php?input=155014

I did a series of six videos to demostrate the tonal range and potential of the amp I got from them, a Reason Amp Bambino. If you haven’t seen them yet, you can check out all 6 on my YouTube channel.

http://www.youtube.com/user/ChristopherSchlegel

I’ve been incorporating my new Reason Amplifier in every possible lesson I’ve done lately. The first of these to show up on the Gibson site has recently been posted.

http://www.gibson.com/en-us/Lifestyle/Lessons/InstrumentLessons/Combining-Lead-Rhythm-111/

Happy viewing & listening!

I recently got a new amp! It’s a Bambino combo, the all tube home studio amp from Reason Amps.

www.reasonamps.com

The amp designer is a long-time friend of mine from old school days back in St. Louis where I grew up. We’ve kept in touch over the years. When he told me he was launching his own company I knew I’d have to check out the result. So, I met with the guys from Reason at the Nashville Amp Show and was amazed with this little box! I bought one and they agreed to make me an endorsed artist. I also got permission from them to do some demos.

The idea here is to demonstrate the basic settings & parameters of the amp with different guitars.

1. Epiphone jazz box into normal channel.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SHfp6gpS82Q

2. Epiphone jazz box into bright channel.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9ThJn8qA6xw

3. Epiphone jazz box into stack channel.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qijPR_AEWY4

4. Fender Strat into normal channel.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sUPQIPrdxhY

5. Fender Strat into bright channel.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sv9vrMLQ7WI

6. Fender Strat into stack channel.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z6KzDi4Lo0k

I hope you enjoy watching & listening to these as much I did making them! I’ll be incorporating this amp into as many future Guitar Tricks lessons as possible, too.

Fats Waller’s great tune is the second tune on my Solo Jazz Guitar Standards, Vol. 1 disc.

http://cdbaby.com/cd/schlegel8

Thomas “Fats” Waller and Art Tatum were great friends.  Waller is the author of the famous (infamous?) quote referring to Tatum as “God”.  One night while gigging in a nightclub Waller was informed Tatum had just showed up.  Said Waller to the audience, “I only play piano, but tonight God is in the house.”  Legend has it that Tatum was the only pianist to which Waller would surrender the keys!

And Waller could easily stand on his own as one of the giants of jazz piano.  This is one of his most well-known pieces.  It has a really beautiful chromatic climb in the harmonic structure of the melody, which is also echoed by the smaller melodic chord tone climb in the bridge.  It has one of those melancholy but satisfied melodies that perfectly matches the lyric.

I hope to do other Waller tunes in future collections (“Honeysuckle Rose” & “Jitterbug Waltz” come to mind).  But I thought it was a fine idea to start with one of his best known for this first volume. 

Finally, here is a vid of me playing the tune at that outdoor arts fest:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=frH1kfz1nr0

Enjoy!

The first tune on my Solo Jazz Guitar Standards, Vol. 1 disc is Gershwin’s “I Got Rhythm”. Who could ask for anything more? :)

http://cdbaby.com/cd/schlegel8

I did a lesson for Gibson using part of this tune to explain jazz guitar:

http://www.gibson.com/en-us/Lifestyle/Lessons/InstrumentLessons/Jazz-Guitar-Chord-Style-621/

In that video you can see the mental process that goes into my arrangement of the tune. In these videos you can see me trying out a couple more ideas in a live setting. I played the tune two times at this gig, once at the end of each set.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nZ4yWVWtojA

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZxA2xW8FE30

Gershwin’s tune is the quintessential tune for a jazz cat to learn the craft, to woodshed. charlie Parker and all the other jazz shredders honed their chops by soloing over Gershwin’s legendary tune. In fact, the chord changes in the bridge of “I Got Rhythm” are so fundamental to jazz and jazz improvisation that they are known as “Rhythm changes”. And every jazz player is expected to know and be able to competently solo over “Rhythm Changes”. It’s just a simple circle of fifths motion back to the home key (III – VI – II – V – I). But Gershwin’s song is the gold standard by which jazz musicians “measure” it! Enjoy!

I am going to post about my latest CD track by track. But first I want to provide a general overview of the project.

http://cdbaby.com/cd/schlegel8

Ever since I was a little kid I’ve loved these songs. I remember hearing them in my parent’s and grandparent’s homes. I remember hearing them in movie musicals. I remember loving the scene in “An American In Paris” in which Gene Kelly dances for the kids while singing Gerswhin’s “I Got Rhythm”. I remember loving the way Ella Fitzgerald’s voice sounds when I heard her on Duke’s “Mood Indigo”. I remember loving Handy’s “St. Louis Blues” everytime it came on TV or the radio announcing the beginning of a hockey broadcast!

After becoming obsessed with the idea of a totally solo performance career, I soon discovered there are really only two genres that fully support this approach: classical and jazz.

I’ve done classical and will continue to do it in the future. I’ve play jazz since I was a teenager. I’ve played in big band ensembles, small groups, in orchestra pits for Broadway musicals. But I’ve never done a jazz CD.

For the last decade I’ve been listening to Joe Pass and Art Tatum. I’ve come to regard these giants as the epitome of what the solo instrumentalist can accomplish in jazz. I’ve also enjoyed George Van Eps and Johnny Smith. And, even though it is not jazz, the constant presence of Beethoven’s piano sonatas in my life has added to the wealth of ideas in which I’ve been immersed as I built my skills and repertoire as a solo artist.

For the last decade I’ve been writing and arranging pieces for solo guitar. In 2007 Gibson-Epiphone gave me the Joe Pass model Emperor guitar. Since then I’ve been recording demos of myself playing tunes from the Great American Songbook. I’ve got over 140 of them on my studio computer!

This year I finally arrived at ten tunes that had a good arrangement and I was pleased with the performance I captured. And the result is Solo Jazz Guitar Standards, Vol. 1.

What about the other 130? You’ll see ten more of them on volume 2.

This is the biggest update of the year so far.  Maybe the biggest one to happen all year!

Gibson.com posted my latest in depth jazz lesson:

http://www.gibson.com/en-us/Lifestyle/Lessons/InstrumentLessons/Jazz-Guitar-Chord-Style-621/

It’s an 11 minute-plus mini course on chord melody!

Next week is the Summer NAMM show.  I am looking forward to it!  I’ll be trying to catch up with current contacts, make new ones and pass out CDs.  This one:

http://cdbaby.com/cd/schlegel8

My CD release this year!  As promised a long time ago, volume one of my solo jazz guitar standards collection.  I will get more into the specifics of this disc in future updates.  For now I am just excited to say it is officially released!

Happy viewing & listening!

Christopher Schlegel

In 1993 I purchased my first PC with a music MIDI sequencing program; an Atari 1040STE and Cubase.  I used it primarily to write my original orchestral music.  I also used it to make backing tacks for various studios; small home project studios, singer-songwriters, and even medium-sized professional studios.

But I also immediately used it to make backing tracks for guitar students.  Using a metronome is an absolutely essential tool in developing music skill.  But many students found it very boring.  A great solution was to provide a consistent, objective time keeping reference in the form of backing tracks.

It was and remains a great tool that encouraged, rather than discouraged music students to practice.

With that in mind I recently put another product up on my CDBaby CD page.

http://www.cdbaby.com/cd/schlegel7

The idea was to take the most popular of my hundreds of backing tracks and make them available for purchase. 

From the CD description page:

“This CD has 24 professional studio backing tracks of bass guitar and drums playing a sequence of 12 bar blues in all 12 musical keys at two different tempos; slow at 80 BPM and fast at 120 BPM.  Perfect for instrumental practicing rhythm, lead soloing, playing along with and over I-IV-V chord changes in all 12 keys.  Perfect for music student lessons, rehearsal, and project studio use.”

If you are a guitar student or teacher, check it out!