Last week, vocalist Gio Escueta and I performed at the Fairmont Waterfront Hotel in downtown Vancouver BC Canada.

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!

Last night I made a video recording of myself performing an original jazz bebop tune on the piano. It’s called Ocean Apart and I wrote it last summer while taking a composition class with New York jazz pianist Misha Piatigorsky.

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.

My friend Marcus dropped by today for a visit, and we recorded an improvised performance of synthesizer and piano. It’s called Heartbeet. We named it this maybe because we both really like to eat beets, (yum!) and so therefore “heart” them, as well as because we were wanting to play on the concept of the pulsating bass drum that sometimes goes out of time from the piano, much like a heart beat will continue its own rhythm oblivious to the other rhythms around it.

I tried out my new video camera (a Panasonic AG-DVX100A) and filmed my stuffed animal frog which I bought at the Daiso Japanese dollar store in Richmond, BC, Canada.

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

Today I wrote a new song: it’s called “Wild Thing” and is inspired by the movie Where the Wild Things Are. Click here to download the song or feel free to use the player above to listen.

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.

My friend Marcus and I created an ear training video on identifying chords. It’s available at EarPractice, on Youtube, or by using the player below.

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.

pegEsus Quintet Live at Hermann's Jazz Club (poster by Oliver Brooks)

Back in August I performed a show with the pegEsus Quintet at Hermann’s Jazz Club in Victoria.

pegEsus is led by vocalist Peggy Hogan, who is currently studying music and literature at Concordia University.

The pegEsus Quintet is: Peggy Hogan voice, Geoff Peters piano, Ben Fast bass, Nick Houghton drums, and Amanda Paterson saxophone.

I recorded the show using my Minidisc recorder and camcorder, and put together the whole thing online as a series of Youtube videos.

• Watch entire show on Youtube
• Download the MP3’s of the concert (free)
• Check out Peggy’s myspace page.
• See my article on how use Minidiscs to record live music.

Here is a set list and links to the individual videos:

Set 1:

• Song For My Father by Horace Silver

• Your Mind is On Vacation by Mose Allison

• Close Enough for Love by Johnny Mandel, Paul Williams

• Bye Bye Blackbird by Ray Henderson

• Straight No Chaser by Thelonious Monk

• Georgia on My Mind by Hoagy Carmichael

• West Coast Blues by Wes Montgomery

Set 2:

• Softly as In A Morning Sunrise by Sigmund Romberg and Oscar Hammerstein II

• A Timeless Place (The Peacocks) by Norma Winstone / Jimmy Rowles

• It Ain’t Necessarily So by George and Ira Gershwin

• Twisted by Lambert, Hendricks & Ross

• God Bless the Child by Billie Holiday and Arthur Herzog Jr.

I decided I am going to start a “Song of the Week” on this blog. Every week I will post a blog about a new song that I have found that I think is really great. There will be links to where you can listen to the song online and also purchase it.

Ninjaspy

The first Song of the Week (SOTW) is a track by a band based in Vancouver BC Canada called Ninjaspy (band web site, myspace).

Ninjaspy is innovative in that they combine and blend genres in their music. They are a Hardcore Punk Rock band mixed with Funk and Ska/Reggae. Fusion is something I really enjoy, whether it is with food, music, or even other kinds of art.

While this blog is primarily about jazz and jazz piano, my friends have said that I have eclectic tastes in music, and I intend to write about any sort of music that I think is good. I was listening to the tracks on the Ninjaspy myspace page in the background and was working on something else, and suddenly I thought, hey, that’s a really cool song.

The song is called Hit by a Cement Mixer (iTunes link, imeem link). It’s a hugely dynamic song, going from a gentle whisper of a city soundscape to full on Hardcore screaming, to a catchy ska groove.

The best part of it is at 1:22 in the track (and several other times where the section is repeated), where there is a relaxing lull moment (just before 1:22) followed by a burst of guitar and excited screaming that ends in a harmonically beautiful guitar cadence.

The lyrics are quite graphic and dark, but poetic. I didn’t catch all of them when I was listening to the song, but when I read them on a lyrics site I was a bit shocked. But a fairly depressing theme goes along with the band’s Hardcore and edgy roots – it’s crying out and it says something.

[JPC]

Ninjaspy
Song: Hit by a Cement Mixer
Album: Nature
Official Web Site
Album page at CDBaby
Listen on : iTunes, imeem

Hit By a Cement Mixer – ninjaspy

I am happy to announce the release of the music video for the song Quiet Night by my band, the Geoff Peters Trio.

The song is from our album Quiet Night (which is available worldwide from CDBaby).

Feel free to watch below or on Youtube.

The band on the album is:

Geoff Peters piano
Mark White bass
Greg Murray drums

For more info about the Geoff Peters Trio check out our web page.

Mark White is the bass player shown playing in the park scene in the music video. The music video was shot in Vancouver, BC, Canada. The video was produced by Chris Lacroix.

Quiet Night was mixed and mastered by Alan Wong Moon. The Steinway piano tuning was done by Yonatan Torn. Video also available on Vimeo.