Category: Blog

Some Online Musician Tools I Use

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There are a couple of “Music Utility” websites I keep in my bookmarks bar if I need to quickly make use of a web browser as a practice aid.

BPM Tool for quickly semi-manually figuring out the tempo of anything you’re listening to – I use the super simple http://www.tempotap.com/ – Press X to “start/reset” and then press the space bar to tap each beat. It even sort-of works on mobile devices..

Drone Tool – This site plays a single chord as a kind of a drone. It is called “The Chord Sounder™”. Pretty neat / simple idea and tool. Of course, if you want to actually practice “making the changes” this is not the tool for that job.

Online Metronome – Depending on what I feel like listening to, I’ll either use the Metronome Online site or this online metronome from 8notes.com.

Online Tuner – There are a couple of online tuners, but these get the extreme caveats of “Your Mileage May Vary” – I’ve had OK luck with this online tuner from Jamplay as well as this other one. Continue reading →

Allan Reuss – Bye Bye Blues Solo Transcription

So, if you’re into the swing-era guitar playing, Allan Reuss was Benny Goodman’s acoustic rhythm player before Charlie Christian ever joined the Goodman band.

Plenty has been written about Reuss from other sources, so you can read up on him here:

I’ve transcribed Allan Reuss’ solo on the song “Bye Bye Blues” – I really dig this solo for the way it sequences ideas, many of which are built on a two/three-finger fixed chord-position and uses the fourth finger to add on ornaments. Also, the song itself, while not a favorite, does have the really weird C-Major to Ab7-Dominant back to C-Major movement which is pretty unique.

Here’s the file as a two page PDF. Enjoy! – Allan Reuss -Bye Bye Blues Solo

Jonathan Stout’s Dark Eyes Solo

So it’s no secret that I’m a big fan of Jonathan Stout & His Campus Five. I even had the honor of sitting in for Jonathan in his own band on New Year’s at Santa Swing in 2013 which was a pleasure. If you’re reading this and by some act of god you haven’t checked out Jonathan’s Swing Guitar Blog which is dedicated to pre-Bebop guitar, it’s worth peepin.

If you see Jonathan’s band a lot, one of his favorite tunes to play, and a great piece for spotlighting any of the band members is the tune Dark Eyes aka “Очи чёрные” aka “Ochi chyornye”. Here I’ll link you to the wikipedia article on the song if you really wish to know more about it’s history and incarnations. I found a copy of original sheet music for Dark Eyes somewhere along the way, and since I identify this song with Jonathan so much, I think I may have even given it to him. What was really interesting to me was that Dark Eyes not only started as a Russian folk-song, but, like Fly Me To The Moon, the sheet music was written in 3/4 Waltz time.

Since this is a “Traditional” song, I feel alright issuing a leadsheet for it here: >>> Dark Eyes Leadsheet

The intro is from Django Reinhardt’s Les yeux noirs – yeah that’s what it’s called in French. Clearly the Jonathan Stout take is influenced by the Gypsy Jazz take on the tune as it is a standard in the Jazz Manouche repertoire.

Dark Eyes is a 16 Measure Form. Since it only has 4 chords in the entire song with an even harmonic rhythm every two bars, this song tends to get played FAST and Jonathan’s recording off of his album Crazy Rhythm is no exception. Jonathan’s solo is a nice mix of block chords, riffing, and gypsy runs so I thought I would jot it down…

Transcription of Jonathan Stout’s Solo on Dark Eyes