Well, I  finally did it. I had my Austin debut, playing with the Blues Specialists (warning: sound) at the Continental Club. It was one song that went by in a blur. I think it went ok. I didn't pass out or throw up or anything like that. So I'll have to try it again, and when I do, I'll give you all some advance notice.

Two things I learned at my lesson this week.

1. I'm really not so good at the whole 16th note funk style.
2. It's amazing how surly a mood a cruddy lesson can put me in.

LibraryThing seems to have reached critical mass where lots of new features are rolling out very quickly. The newest one, series coverage, is great. This'll let me figure out which books I don't have in a series and what order they belong in.

So, if the title says "two topics" and the above is about books, this next bit has to be about music.

I recently picked up Bill Evans' "Complete Village Vanguard Recordings". Very, very good collection. I don't think I'd ever heard Scott LaFaro on bass before. (Obviously I'm going to be biased towards listening to the bass players. I have to at least act like I'm trying to learn something from these artists.) Listening to him play was, to me, worth getting the collection. Yes, Bill Evans is an excellent pianist, but LaFaro keeps the trio grooving, and when he's given the chance, he knocks out some really nice solos. That was something that also impressed me. I don't know if I could easily name another group from around that time, other than one led by Charles Mingus, that gave bass players that much room to solo and do more than just play rhythm. (I'm sure there were, I just can't think of them off the top of my head.) It was nice to hear a trio where everyone was part of creating the music and not just setting the backdrop for the piano player to solo all night long. If you haven't heard any of this trio, it's definitely worth a listen.

Barry White is much easier to play along with than Miles Davis.

This week, I butchered The Girl From Ipanema much less than last week. Instead, it was Miles Davis' turn on the butcher block tonight.

16 bars should not be this difficult.

Monday's lesson was another frustrating one. Recently, we've been looking at walking jazz lines with a couple of goals. One, to work on my reading, which still is terrible, and two, to analyze what's going on. Most of the lines have been based on jazz versions of 12 bar blues, so we've been looking at the chord substitutions that jazz players use and how to negotiate over those chord changes.

The first couple of weeks were ok, mainly because the lines were rhythmically fairly simple. Some skips, some triplets, nothing too exotic and not really much played off the downbeat. Monday's lesson was a little more difficult. Since it was a piece I'd never seen before, reading it was the equivalent of sounding out "See. Dick. Run." and my normal performance anxiety kicked in. (You'd think I'd be over that somewhat after studying with my teacher for several years now, but no, I'm not.) So I struggled just to read the piece, and then I struggled some more to get a handle on the rhythm. It doesn't seem like there's anything too nuts about the line. The thing that keeps throwing me is that there's a lot of it placed on the upstroke, and I still have trouble playing there. Sigh.

So this week is going to be spent struggling with 16 bars of music. Hopefully I can figure it out before Monday.

So Susan set up a play date for me with one of her coworker's husband. (Yeah, I know I'm mixing the whole blind date/play date metaphor.) He's a guitarist that's been looking to start playing with people again, so Susan hooked us up.

He came over to the house last night, and we jammed for a little while. I guess it went ok, but, man, I sure felt like a feeb at points. When he started going through songs to see what we knew in common, I had to pretty much say that I really don't know any songs, per se.

Yeah, I've been taking lessons for a while, but the main focus of those has been to learn theory so that I can be a more flexible, improvisational player and not just pound out root and fifth. So that I could do things like knowing what to play over a given set of chord changes without having to know the specifics. And the songs that I have sort of learned, I've never really committed to memory since I've never had to play them with anyone, so I can get away with playing with the music in front of me.

So he had to start out by outlining some songs and laying out the chord changes, but once he did that I could kinda fake it through the song, which shows that I've learned something over the last few years. Once we got past that, and he realised he had to outline the changes for me, things picked up. It was kinda fun, and I don't think I totally flopped. (I'm still not going out on any random auditions though.) So at some point we're going to get back together and try it again.

At least this time it won't totally be a blind date.

Tonight, Bass Emporium held a clinic with Jens Ritter of Ritter Basses. He talked about his design and construction philosophies and answered questions and of course, showed off his basses.

Man, this guy makes some incredible looking and sounding basses. I'll admit that I probably couldn't comfortably pull off playing some of his less traditional designs, but there's no doubt that he makes interesting and high quality basses. He builds each of them by hand personally (well, he said he now has an assistant who helps him with the sanding and some rough body shaping) and produces around 80 basses a year now. He sounds incredibly dedicated to making sure that each bass he makes is the right sound for each customer, and he's incredibly passionate about building basses.

I don't think I could ever justify buying something like one of his basses if for no other reason than I don't think my abilities would be doing such a nice bass justice, but it was cool to see and hear him talk about his basses and see and hear people play them.