photos by LauraOuk

For the last 3 years I have been wearing contact lenses instead of glasses. I love them, as I found that glasses don’t look very good on me – and people now remark that I have beautiful eyes. Thanks people!

But in the last 9 months I have had chronic redness in one of my eyes – always bloodshot and irritated. This is really bad for one’s appearance and it was worrying me because I haven’t been for an optometrist checkup in a while. I was worried about the health of my eyes. In the mornings before I put in my lenses my eyes would be white and clear and then after an hour of wearing the lenses the left eye would become bloodshot and very red. This started getting only worse over the last few weeks.

I am using Acuvue Advance with Astigmatism which I usually wear daily for about a month, taking them out and cleaning them every night. I noticed that the first day after putting in a new pair of contact lenses, my eyes were white and clear the whole day. But the second day and subsequent days, my eyes would be red again.

In short, I found the solution to my redness problem!! I am so happy and I want to share it with you.

It’s simple – every month, at the same time that I throw away the old lenses, I now also throw out the plastic contact lens case and get a new case. It’s important to throw away the lenses and the case at the same time!! My lens case was contaminated and even if I put fresh lenses into the case, it would immediately contaminate the fresh lenses.

Who knew it could be so simple! Now I don’t look like a fire eye’d boy no more!

Last night I recorded myself performing the jazz standard Giant Steps on the piano. In this video I give a 1 minute introduction to the song and then perform it. If you’re interested in the audio only, you can grab the MP3 from here or use the audio player above.

We made a video recording of one of our sets. To listen, please visit the Playlist on Youtube, or use the player below.

Here is a list of the songs we performed, (mostly jazz standards) with links to the videos:

• Ocean Apart – Geoff Peters
• Quiet Night – Geoff Peters
• Bemsha Swing – Thelonious Monk
• Killer Joe – Benny Golson
• Blue Bossa – Kenny Dorham
• Alice in Wonderland – Fain/Hilliard
• Blue Train – John Coltrane

We made a video of one of the songs, My Foolish Heart by Ned Washington and Victor Young. It’s available on Youtube or by using the player below. Hope you enjoy!

You can view the video on Youtube, Blip.tv, or use the player below.

The MP3 recording of this performance is available for free here.

The video is also available on Blip.tv and the Mp3 file for the song is available here.

Visit Marcus’s Knobb.ca music blog for more interesting ideas and videos. Also produced in cooperation with Birds in the House Productions.

The very same evening, I christened my green friend with the name of TonyFrog. So here is TonyFrog’s debut performance on video.

The rather “epic” classical music for this video was composed, orchestrated, and recorded by me, about 5 years ago. I used Cakewalk Sonar and the Edirol Orchestral module, along with my Yamaha P-80 keyboard hooked up to my PC via MIDI. I always intended for this piece to be used in a film, and its time has finally come! The credits music is another song that I wrote, an electronic dance music piece called Birds in the House that I recorded with my synthesizer (Korg MS-2000B) and mixed with some drum sounds from the Roland Virtual Sound Canvas (VSC).

The video was recorded in 60i mode and recorded directly into iMovie on a Mac using Firewire. I used a white balance card to calibrate the color settings (using the AWB button on my camera). I had to increase the Gain Boost on the camera to Medium because of the low light, and used the Auto Iris setting. I used iMovie to edit the footage and pick out parts which would go along with the music. Starting from the beginning of the music track, I edited clips to fit with the rhythmic and thematic changes in the song. I added a few effects such as a ripple and blur, just for fun.

Hope you enjoy the video!!
Until next time,
take care!
-Geoff Peters

To watch me perform the song, check out this Ear Training Video we made, where I explain how to play the Minor 7th interval (a key part of this song!). The performance of Wild Thing is at the end of the video.

The ear training video on intervals is part of EarPractice.com, a website that I created with my friend Marcus Emmanuel Barnes.

My friend Marcus was over for a visit today and he encouraged me to write a song dedicated to the new “love” in my life, my Petrof acoustic piano.

So I wrote a simple folk ballad which I call “Me N Petrof“. It is similar to a Brad Mehldau song I vaguely remember listening to, as well as the American folk song Shenandoah which I played in high school band, quite a few years ago!

I made a rather hasty recording of it, just to get the idea cemented in my mind, and I wrote out a lead sheet on a piece of music notation paper.

Feel free to use the player above to listen to the song, or you can download the MP3 here.

My new Petrof Piano

The Petrof piano brand is from the Czech Republic. Petrof pianos have been admired and enjoyed by many amazing musicians throughout the years, including jazz greats Keith Jarrett and Count Basie and classical pianists such as Sviatoslav Richter.

I purchased my piano from Yonatan Torn in Vancouver. Yonatan is a master Steinway piano tuner and technician in the Vancouver area who also imports, rebuilds, and sells pianos (mostly European pianos). You can find out more about his piano tuning and restoration services, and view the pianos currently for sale at his website.

In the video I play a series of chords on the piano and after each one, pause for the viewer to identify the kind of chord (such as Major, minor, dominant-seventh) and the key (such as C, A, etc), before revealing the answer. This is a useful exercise and is something you can do with a friend too, once you get the idea.