I've been baking sourdough bread since the start of lockdown in March 2020. In this post I'll describe my process now. I'll try to make it as simple as possible. Note that all the measurements here are approximate. Starter I begged some starter from my neighbour. Or you can order a sachet of dried starter … Continue reading Simple Sourdough Bread
I've been looking at another tune that seems very familiar, but that has a couple of corners in it that up until now I've never untwisted, Like Someone In Love. It was written by Jimmy Van Heusen for a 1944 movie called Belle Of The Yukon (which I probably don't ever want to see), and … Continue reading The First 8 Bars Of “Like Someone In Love”
A lot of fakebooks and other sources give the middle eight of Softly As In The Morning Sunrise (in the key of Cm / Eb) as: | Eb | ./. | C7b9 | ./. || Fm | F#dim | DØ | G7b9| I've never been able to make sense of the change F#dim | DØ. … Continue reading The Middle 8 Of Softly
This is a recipe for pickled chillies that I made today, based partly on what my father-in-law Grandpa Josh used to make, and partly on all the recipes that I see on the webs, for example this one. I put a 900ml jar and lid in the oven at 100C to sterilise. I put in … Continue reading Pickled Chillies
Here's another post in a series on simplifying chords for soloing. This is not rocket science, so advanced players don't need to read it. Lockdown has been a good time for revisiting standards that I learned in my jazz infancy and haven't reconsidered since. Tunes for which I worked out an approach based on my … Continue reading The pitfalls of Fake Books
I wrote this piece in 2012. At some point it got lost from the website. I have edited this version a bit. At first it was just graffiti. A few grotesque figures painted with a fine brush in red ink, around doorways. Each work had an ethereal beauty. Each work was signed Spot. There were … Continue reading Spot
In my last post (You Can Constructively Ignore Harmony) I talked about simplifying harmony by removing unnecessary chords. Often people use pentatonic scales to reduce the complexity of a scale. The removal of notes from a scale makes a stronger, more defined sound. In this post I'll talk about simplifying approaches to dominant chords by thinking … Continue reading A Simplified Approach To Soloing On 7b9
Following on from yesterday's post Too Much Harmony?, a good approach to learning to solo on a standard would be to have in your mind a version for soloing that weeds out as many chords as possible, leaving only the most important. So taking the first 8 bars of I Thought About You as an … Continue reading You Can Constructively Ignore Harmony
When I was at best an improver at jazz, a tutor who I very much respected told me that he was hearing too much harmony in my solo playing. My first reaction was surprise – how could you possibly have too much harmony? Wasn't that what we'd been taught to do? Play through the changes … Continue reading Too Much Harmony?
I made pizza on a sourdough base. This post is to document what I did, so I can remember it. See this post for the basics of how I make sourdough bread. This recipe is enough for an 11" pizza or 2 x 8" pizzas. The night before you want to make pizza, take 50g … Continue reading Sourdough Pizza Base
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