I issued a friendly challenge to listeners to spot the famous Jazz standard nestled among the busy polyphonic dialog in this Bach piece.

Even an offering of 2000 internet cool points has not unearthed the answer, so I’ll give it to you now:

Listen at 1:52

…now listen to the video below at 2:25.

Nerdy but cool.

New Videos, New Album, New Store

I made a new jazz guitar Christmas EP “Rob Michael’s Christmas by the Fire.”  Because I believe an album should more than some audio files and a pretty picture, I’m inviting you to listen and watch via this Youtube playlist.

This features the actual performances heard for the entire album, yours to experience for free.

Let me know what you think!!

We have two new stores on the Android Market

One for Atmos Trio and anothr for Rob Michael projects.
Put “Rob Michael’s Christmas by the Fire” in your Google Music library.

Among all of the great features, the one that gets talked about the most is the ‘Hangout’ where up to ten people can participate in a video chat; either public or private. It’s bone-head easy and works great!

I pretty much always have my guitar in my hands–even when surfing the web. It’s nothing new to me. Whenever I would see a hangout float down the stream, I would pop-in, say ‘Hi’ and play a bit and split. Folks in the hangout have generally reacted very positively. I would always offer to not play (or mute my channel) because I didn’t want to be that obnoxious guy who imposes his guitar playing on everyone. That offer has, so far, always been declined.

Edit By request, I’ve decided to make this tune available for streaming and download. As always, “Pay What You think it’s Worth.”

One potential use for this amazing tool is a real-time jam session with musicians in remote locations. There is still plenty of lag for this not to be totally useful for this yet, but I can see it coming. That gave me the idea to make this video: a Proof of Concept of sorts.

So–wanna hangout?

Here I’m playing some chords to a melody that meandered by. You likely know someone for whom this tune is perfect.

..and if it’s your birthday, this should set the mood for some reflection/ self-evaluation.

Enjoy.

Rob Michael, Solo Baritone Guitar. #HBDTY by Rob Michael

33 Youtube musicians played on this project accumulating a staggering 160 audio tracks and 70 layers of video! You can get a free mp3 of the audio here.

Happy Holidays!

For those that like lead sheets, feel free to read along:

I’ve started making short videos of Christmas tunes that I’ve been re-harmonizing lately. Here’s my latest.

We enjoyed an enthusiastic audience both in the room and on Ustream. The club was very dark so our Ustream crew was treated to primarily audio feed. Fortunately, we had a couple of other cameras that were able to catch a enough visual data for me to provide you this glimpse of the show.

The main thing that struck me from this show was the musical strength and depth with which these musicians play. Who knew a pick-up band from Twitter would be so burning!

Thanks again to my compadres Jason Parker, Steve Uccello, Darin Wilson, Dave Hoffman and Joe Shotwell.

What I’ve tried to do here is provide some documentary content: To really show what it is you’re hearing.

The audio and video for this song were tracked at the same time. What you hear and what you see are one-in-the-same. When you see a computer recording something in the background, you can bet that that is the audio you’re hearing in the recording. There is even some out-take footage.

This is one more way I’m inviting you into the making music process. I shot this on an inexpensive (~$100) consumer HD video camera and edited it in Final Cut Express HD. It was surprisingly easy.

As always, this song is available to you for streaming or downloading from my store at a Pay What You Want (even nothing) price. Please SHARE this music with friends via Facebook, Twitter, embed it in your blog, whatever… It’s a subtle way of showing your friends how hip you are and helping me out at the same time.

This was a fun project to assemble. What do think? Is it cool? Is it dumb?

Talk to me…

As always, the show was super fun. Steve and I met when we organized and performed together last spring at the Atmos Trio “Twitter House Concert.”

We got together in my studio to play some tunes. I employed my Ustream rig which consists of the iSight cam on my MacBook which receives a nice audio mix from studio’s mixing board. I had also just received  another HD camera as a gift so I had a 2nd video feed destined for YouTube. I also made a multi track recording of the show.

Upon reviewing what we had captured to disk, the music was deemed worthy to share. Just goes to show that a good sounding record doesn’t need to take a pile of cash and months to make. Just a couple of musos and healthy does of simpatico.

Please be sure to share this music with a friend.

If you would like to hear the rest of the album sooner rather than later, simply fill-out the mailing list form in the sidebar and you’ll be linked to an Exclusive Advanced Access Listener’s page.

Enjoy!

Album artwork by Linda Palmer.