Hey all,
As part of my commitment to blues piano education I just posted an interview I did w/ Marty Sammon (keyboardist for Buddy Guy). He's got some incredible insight on creating music and the music business. Check it out and let me know what you think. Thanks!

http://www.stevenixonmusic.net/blog.cfm

Thanks for posting that Steve,

A couple of quotes I especially liked - "Lately I'm starting to think that reliability is the most important thing." Having played in a band where we had a sax player was a great musician but kept missing practices without warning I can attest to that, nothing is more frustrating than having your star player be a no show. I also liked "Piano players seem to never learn groove cause they don't have to play with anyone else if they don't want to."

Thanks Chris. Yeah I enjoyed doing the interview. We've talked at length about this stuff several times while we were on the same show bill but it was fun to talk in "interview" style for this one.

Great interview--I loved his playing when I saw Buddy Guy. Can anyone explain how to do this?

"The best thing is set your metronome on the 2 and 4 and play triplet scales over that. That develops great phrasing as well as a great understanding of groove.".

I practice scales in triplets, but 3 to a beat. I don't understand about setting the metronome to 2 and 4.

Thanks Bluespianofan!

Ok, the metronome on 2 and 4 is a mental thing. Here is a video of the late and great jazz guitarist Emily Remler explaining it. It makes a huge difference in your groove!!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bAVQ3BOINaQ&feature=related

Steve, that's a fantastic video! Thanks!

Steve, I get the 2 and 4 now, but I'm not sure about playing triplets over it. Does that mean there would be a total of 12 notes played for every 2 beats on the metronome? 3 each for the "ghost" beats of 1 and 3, and 3 each for the actual beats of 2 and 4?

Yes, that's exactly correct! Good job.

Thanks--can't wait to start practicing blues scales that way!