I jammed with my friend Ben again today. Here are a few rough recordings from our jam.

Bye Bye Blackbird:

Jam with Jew’s Harp, Trumpet, and Synth:

There Will Never Be Another You:

Ben H – Trumpet, Jew’s Harp

Geoff P – Electric piano

I stumbled upon a wonderfully jazzy and funny Looney Tunes cartoon video, thanks to my Facebook friend and jazz singer Jennifer Scott! From the Wikipedia article on this cartoon (click here to view):

Three Little Bops is a 1957 Looney Tunes cartoon directed by Friz Freleng, with voices by Stan Freberg and music by jazz composer/trumpeter Shorty Rogers. It is a takeoff on The Three Little Pigs, told as a hip, jazzy musical.

View the Three Little Bops on Youtube by clicking here or use the player below.

I discovered an amazing track entitled Trapped in a Dream by jazz trumpeter Ambrose Akinmusire. In this article on San Francisco Bay Area jazz musicians, David Rubien writes:

Akinmusire – a graduate of Berkeley High School’s renowned jazz program with degrees from the Manhattan School of Music, the University of Southern California and the Monk Institute in Los Angeles – seems to be the most academically inclined of the bunch, but the opposite is true. He’s actually an iconoclast who’s thrived just because he’s made everyone come around to seeing things his way.

Feel free to use the player below to listen to Trapped in a Dream, and visit Ambrose Akinmusire’s web site or CDBaby to purchase his album Prelude to Cora.

Trapped In A Dream – Ambrose Akinmusire

The thing that strikes me about Trapped in a Dream is how the music really suits the name of the song. While I am listening to it, I feel like I am dreaming. There are flashes of insight: at times the chords seem to be leading somewhere purposeful, but then return back to the comfort and lull of a deep dream-filled sleep. The way it ends is with a hypnotic drum sequence which suggests to me that I am soon going to wake up and face reality again.

On of the tracks that I have been listening to on my cell phone lately is Lee Morgan‘s tune Ceora (you can listen to the recording on Imeem by clicking here or by using the player below). Jazztrumpetsolos.com has a transcription of Lee Morgan’s solo on Ceora.

Ceora – Lee Morgan

Anyways, tonight I practiced for about half an hour on the tune Ceora. I hadn’t had a practice for almost a whole week, so for a good part of the practice I was focusing on getting some fluidity and strength back into my fingers while soloing. A few more hours and I will be getting back into things again.

Click here to download my practice of Lee Morgan’s Ceora in Midi format.

Since it’s in midi the sound quality will depend on what kind of synthesizer your computer has.

If you have a Disklavier piano it may sound even better than how it sounded while I was practicing!