Tag Archives: smooth jazz

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The Making of Soulosophy – Day 2

Soulosophy Concept Art v1 Brown

Greetings…

Over the last few days, I began to take stock of how I *think* I want this project to unfold. In the last post, I mentioned it was to be a 10 track project but it has since grown two more tracks. I plan on stunting any further growth…, LOL.

Right now, I plan on inviting 24 other artists to participate on this project, whether they all do remains too early to be seen, but the invite email is going out this weekend. Of the 24, I have four already committed, so that’s good, so now starts the real groundwork: logistics, determining how much remote collaboration will be needed, musician assignments to each song, etc. This should prove interesting (one drummer I really would like to have on the project will only play an acoustic set – which I don’t have in my studio), but better to nail down this now verses later. Stay tuned.

::: oceans of rhythm:::

Fresh,

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The Making of Soulosophy – Day 1

Soulosophy Concept Art v1 Brown

Greetings…

Hope everyone is doing well. It’s been a minute since I’ve done any blogging, but I’m back to continue the chronological process started on my Halcyon Sky EP project and continue with my next major project, Soulosophy.

Soulosophy will be a smooth contemporary jazz project. I use the term “smooth contemporary jazz” to make an attempt to distinguish and separate it from what the industry currently presents as “smooth jazz”. Not to rant, but the popular genre name is truly a misnomer. I’ve had countless discussions over the years on the true (industry) name is: New Adult Contemporary. It’s a much more accurate name to use, considering what artists are fill the radio playlists and smooth jazz fests across the country, but using that name to sell the genre is obviously too cumbersome and wouldn’t “sell” (I’m sure you agree).

The name “Soulosophy” actual comes from an Instagram user that I follow. The name fits the concept of tunes I hope to release. I’m already excited about the guests who have graciously decided to become part of the project (more about who they are in future posts), because of their stellar musical gifts, so stayed tune for more on that.

Currently, Soulosophy will be a 10-track instrumental project comprised of new tunes and not-so-new. Most of them right now are in their infancy stages, but I’m pleased to have one very talented smooth jazz keyboardist already submitting tunes for the project for me to check out. I’m excited about the collaboration with this artist and am equally pleased to say that you will hear me on the title track of a CD he is currently working on for release (I believe this is his fifth). There are a number of other musicians I plan on inviting to participate as well.

I’m sitting in Starbucks now and it’s going on 7:30, time to head to homebase.

Have a good morning/afternoon/evening/night.

::: oceans of rhythm:::

Fresh!

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Jazz Funk Soul – An Interview w/Jeff Lorber, Chuck Loeb, & Everette Harp

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Greetings All.

Recently, I had the distinct pleasure of interviewing three heavyweights in the genres of contemporary jazz, smooth jazz, and R&B. While each genre isn’t solely associated one to each musician, they all shine in those areas (their expansive musical careers attribute to that).

Jeff Lorber, Chuck Loeb, and Everette Harp make up the band, Jazz Funk Soul. They released their self-titled CD on 24 June 2014 and it is superb. Each track not only brings the individual talents of each musician, but collectively creates an exciting blend of contemporary and smooth jazz elements. The session musicians that join them are heavy weights in their own right and are known as powerhouses in the NYC area.

Ten tracks make up this stellar release, with the current single being “Serious Business”

Speed of Light
Swingette
Adrenaline
Silent Partner
Telephone
We Were There
Line Drive
Serious Business
D.C.
Raccoon


While I already have a few favorites on this tracklist, I encourage your take a listen for yourself, I’m sure you’ll gain a few if these genres are favorites of yours.

That said, take a listen to (stream or download) the interview below. I hope that you enjoy it – there’s a few audio issues outside of my control but…. 🙂 . For tour dates, check out the Shanachie Records Tour Schedule on their website, and for more on Jazz Funk Soul.

::: oceans of rhythm :::

Fresh!

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All about the tone….

Greetings readers, I hope this post finds you well. This year, well starting the end of last year, has brought many opportunities in terms of live performance and music production. Some have materialized, and some haven’t, but either way, they began making me look at my skills as a guitarist AND a recording engineer more closely. Coincidentally, being the YouTube fan that I am, I started watching performance videos, specifically of guitarist doing smooth jazz pieces to backing tracks and loved the tone they were getting. Most either shot their video in studio or just of them playing on camera. This started my such to obtain such tone.

I had three choices, the two most obvious: either mic my amp and record in my DAW (Logic Pro), record direct into Logic, but by way of my Line 6 Pod XT Live, or go record straight into Logic and make use of it’s effects plugins and amp simulators. I decided to search the net for articles and forum activity that would help me understand how to achieve my goal for choice #3. To my surprise, I found many references on how to achieve a certain amp sound (amp sims have been big in software recording apps for the past few years now), or certain rock guitar tones, but nothing for that mellow smooth jazz guitar tone. I turned to magazine articles, still nothing. I like using my Pod XT Live for live performance and have found a few non-stock patches online that have really good clean tone.

Fortunately, I reached out to a great guitarist on YouTube Joe Washington, who kindly gave me insight to the effects chain he uses to achieve his tone. It’s really understanding the building blocks or elements needed to get any tone your are looking to use. Joe gets his town via a combination of different hardware effects, whereas I am trying to do the same via software (at least for now, since I still own my amp and a Roland GP-100. While the GP-100 is old school, this unit has some great user created patches I’d like to try out soon.

Fast forward to the last few weeks… a good friend and superb smooth jazz keyboardist asked me to provide the guitar solo for his upcoming CD’s title track. Needless to say, this has been an awesome opportunity and I’m pretty excited about it. With that, I realized I REALLY needed to get that tone for this track… a need for something not TOO smooth but definitely jazzy. After recording a rough of the solo tonite using my Epiphone Sheraton II, I think I am close to finding what I’ve been imagining for a few months. Looking forward to trying this out with my Emperor II after she gets a good setup.

The image above shows a channel strip in Logic Studio 8 with an amp simulator (Guitar Amp Pro), EQ, compression, reverb, and a dynamic stereo spreader (mix of LPF and HPF), giving me a nice jazzy tone. I’m definitely liking it and once I get it to where I really like it, you may see me record and post a few vids of my own.

In any event, I should have BEEN sleeping, but would love to record some more…THAT…is not a good idea at 12:59am.

’til we meet again…peace!

F!

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Welcome To The Sunday Soundtrack – 01 Nov 09

acoustic-hands

Greetings listeners….

Welcome to the 11th month of 2009. Guess you may have been asking yourself the same question I have….”Where has the year gone?” Seems like just yesterday, I was sitting at this very same spot saying…”Here we are…2009….” Time flies when you’re having fun…or just about doing anything else, it seems.

In any event, I’ve decided to take a small departure from the downtempo, chill, and ambient grooves that I love to present in the podcast and, instead, bring you a combination of smoothness and coolness wrapped up in one. Many of you know I am a guitarist and have played a lil of just about all genres the guitar is known for. I’m currently studying jazz guitar as well, and thought I’d bring you a little bit of what I consider some good jazz guitar, both from a more contemporary delivery, as well as what;s foundational. While I couldn’t present all the guitarists I like, much less deserving of the genre, I’m showcasing a few of my favorite that more than adequately represent.

Out of my collection, I bring to you the world renowned, George Benson (a lil trivia for u, he and vocalist Anita Baker were both involved in what kind of activity as youth?), the young lion (still known to be I guess) Mark Whitfield (currently on tour with Chris Botti), Nick Collione, Mr Smooth – Norman Brown, Steve Laury (ex-guitarist of Fattburger), Russell Malone, the jazz guitar giant Kenny Burrell and my favorite, and the legendary Mr. Wes Montgomery.

I hope u enjoy these offerings of “g”-strings. The playlist is as follows:


1. Strollin’ – Mark Whitfield/Mark Whitfield
2. John L – Nick Colionne/Keepin’ It Cool [Bonus Track]
3. After The Storm – Norman Brown/After The Storm
4. Being With You – George Benson/Best Of George Benson: The Instrumentals
5. Tenderly – Kenny Burrell/Lucky So And So
6. West Coast Blues – Wes Montgomery/The Incredible Jazz Guitar
7. Rise – Russell Malone/Sweet Georgia Peach
8. Sugar Hill – Kenny Burrell/Jazz Masters 45
9. Gone With The Wind – Wes Montgomery/The Incredible Jazz Guitar
10. Soulful Eyes – Steve Laury/Stepping Out
11. Tenderly – George Benson/Best Of George Benson: The Instrumentals

Here is one my FAVORITE new discoveries, Matt Otten. He is inspiration.

All the above artists can be found at Amazon and iTunes. I hope the playlist provided for a relaxing journey through music.

The Sunday Soundtrack is on Facebook as well as Twitter – see the links over there—->

Have a great day, evening, and/or night….

peace, keep it chilled…

F!

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Welcome To The Sunday Soundtrack – 09 Sep 09


Photo Credit: Ray G.

Listeners,

How are you? Welcome back to another edition of The Sunday Soundtrack. Always glad you can partake of the music I bring forth. It’s definitely a labor of love and I appreciate the comments left here and abroad. As summer begins to wind down, there is a time that is ending and, as the photo depicts above, a time ahead. Being a four seasons man, I always anticipate the vibrant colors and crisp, cool weather of the autumnal equinox, better known as Fall. While summer is always known to be more care free and lazy, Fall has it’s own goodness to me, and in that…bring it on.

The tracks I bring to you for this podcast are mainly new. As usual, the pics come my favorite source, Soma FM. Incidentally, 60% of the tracks this time came within 3 hours of off and on listening this Friday night.

Inner Shade brings us Little Sunflower, a well made remake of the classic Freddie Hubbard tune, with a twist of drum and bass influence as the foundation of track. I also particularly enjoy the tune because Inner Shade is a spinoff group of Incognito. The CD, 4 Corners, is their solo release, which I think is becoming more difficult to come by. If you happen to find it, definitely add it to your collection. It features the jazz guitar work of Mark Whitfield and the soulfully vocal goodness of Maysa Leak (the primary female lead vocalist Incognito is known for).

In honor of Vikter Duplaix’s new CD and single release entitled “Electric Love”, I bring you an old favorite of mine and a track perfect for the Sunday Soundtrack musical palette, “Another Love Gone By” featuring Esthero.

Another artist I’m happy to feature is Philip Clark…the NEW definition of blue eyed soul. I became acquainted with PC via Twitter after we crossed paths via some musical collaborationwork I am doing with fellow brothers in podcasting Fave and The Big La Todd Kelley, now known as “C3”. After checkin’ out PC’s tracks on Myspace…I was DEFINITELY feelin’ his musical flow. Per further discussion, he “Granted” me (pun intended) the great opportunity to do a remix of a track of my choice from his last CD. Needless to say, after being a remix fan for YEARS, I hopped on it. He knows what track it is, but P, if you are reading this…I’ve got three remixes I am working on of said track…three different genres…I hope you like them!

As for some “smooth jazz” goodness, I was led to include a track, dedicated to a person on Twitter who continually tweets inspirational, resourceful, and heart warming messages everytime I notice them. The track “Monica” is for you, Monica, better known on Twitter as Deltavogue…thanks for the very nice complements you gave the Sunday Soundtrack last week. I greatly appreciate it!

With that being said, the playlist for this weekend is as follows:


1. Little Sunflower – Inner Shade/4 Corners
2. Monica – Fattburger/The Best Of Fattburger
3. Granted – Philip Clark/The State Of Blue-Eyed Soul
4. Sanso Sheep – Jens Buchert/Ice Lounge
5. Sands of Time – Ten Madison/Grounded
6. IMG.00.37 – Akotcha/Sound Burger
7. Elephant (Dub Mix) – Spiral System & Lottie Child/Here We Are – EP
8. Another Great Love Gone By Featuring Esthero – Vikter Duplaix/Bold & Beautiful
9. Reflections – Jens Buchert/Sunrider
10. Billy Bibbit – Moss/East Coast Chip Shop

I hope you’ve enjoyed this edition of the Sunday Soundtrack. Kudos to all my podcasting massive, bring good musical vibes all week long: Darrenkeith (My Love For Music), Fave (The Friday Favecast), Todd Kelley (Flowink), Macedonia (BSOTS), EJ Flavors (OSW), T. Grundy (Rhythms In Black Satin), DJ Diva (The Monday Mixtape), Honeysoul (Honeysoul), Anjibee (The Chillcast), Nikki (Soulrific) and a host of others. Check all their podcasts out under my category Music Podcasts, over there to the right!

Have a good week….
Keep it chilled…
peace,
F!