Dear Musicians, For today’s song suggestions I’ve picked a tune by a friend of mine Ernie Hammes, who made a name for himself playing with such artists as Maynard Ferguson and Carla Bley. Artist: Ernie Hammes Album: Stepwise Song: 7.15am [Audio clip: view full post to listen]

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It can be hard to be objective about your own playing. While musicians are often brutally aware of how poorly they might have done on a particularly bad night, it is much harder to identify subtle improvements that need to be made, or realize that there are areas where you might think you are doing [...]

Be careful how you use the Internet access on ships! That’s the moral of the story that was posted in the Suntimes today. So, a Bears fan wants to catch a game via his Slingbox while the ship is still in port. So he whips out his wireless card and watches the game on his [...]

Part of playing in a band on a cruise ship means that you will find yourself playing a lot of other people’s music. In fact, it’s rare to encounter a situation where you will actually be encouraged to play your own original pieces. Audiences on vacation are there to hear a familiar tune that they [...]

Check out this video that appeared on Youtube not too long ago. You can fast forward to about 1:20, that’s where the juicy part starts. Oh and don’t worry, not all cruises end up in this kind of weather.

There’re certain things a player obviously needs to know when playing music aboard a cruise ship. For showband musicians, sight-reading ability is a given. For saxophone players, so is minimal ability on doubles — clarinet and flute. When I first committed to join a ship, many veterans gave me pointers about how to do the [...]

Improvisation is a skill that comes up often as it is required to a certain extent on cruise ships. Some musicians that don’t improvise feel inferior to those that do because they may think that they are less talented. I feel that any musician should work on improvisation, as it will make you a more [...]