Here goes:

Alex Skolnick writes a great blog and recently has been posting about how some of his favorite songs have horrible lyrics.

I recently have been becoming an avid reader of AudioTuts+. Ear training was always difficult for me in school, so I was very happy to see them to a roundup of the best ear training websites around. My personal favorite is IWasDoingAlright.

Christopher Davis is not only a great classical guitarist, but he runs one the best guitar blogs around. To celebrate my recent move back to the Motherland (Iowa), here is an interview Christopher did with Iowa Luthier John H. Dick.

I have sung the praises of The Bad Plus here before. Ethan Iverson is usually to blame for their excellent blog, Do The Math. Recently, he posted a in-depth interview with Cedar Walton and a transcription of Walton playing “I’ll Remember April.”

Every musician has a particular way that they warm-up before a practice session or a gig. Guitarist Cameron Mizell outlines some of his favorite exercises in a recent post. I think this week I will write up some of my favorite exercises as well, since I just got a new copy of Sibelius.

Hopefully you take a minute and check out these posts. If you like them, leave a comment and let them know.

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In no particular order:

GuitarNoize.com is one of the first guitar centric blogs I started to read on a regular basis.  It has a great look and feel and is a great place to find the latest guitar news that sometimes is overlooked by the mainstream.

Ariel Hyatt is a publicity wizard.  She was the first one to tell me how to make Twitter work for me and for that I am grateful.  If you are an independent musician, please do yourself a favor and check her out.

GuitarVibe.com is a really great site for concert reviews, gear reviews and some really nice interviews.  Since Zach is in the the tech industry, I really like the reviews on some of the guitar technology that is out there.

What is it with Australia and amazing guitar blogs? iHeartGuitar is a guitar news blog that features both some incredible interviews (Dave Mustaine, Ace Frehley, etc.) but lessons, album reviews and more.  I am really looking forward to finally meeting Peter at NAMM next January.

The Rock House Method Blog is not only a place to keep up on the latest Rock House news but a great resource for tons of lessons, articles and more from other websites and blogs.

John is one of our instructors at NGW and is always willing to help students (and fellow bloggers).  He has some great coverage from the summer and is one of the best examples of how to leverage the internet to create a great teaching studio.

Easily one of the most read music business blogs around, Hypebot is a great way to learn more about what is changing daily about the music business.  Bruce Houghton and his staff really do a great job of explaing complicated concepts in an easy to understand way.

Bob Lefsetz is a longtime commentator on the music industry.  Starting out as an actual letter and then progressing to an emai list, his blog is read by a large amount of the music industry.  He posts A LOT, so I would recommend checking it out from time to time and catch up.

Derek Sivers is the guy who started CDBaby and in turn empowered a generation of DIY musicians.  Much like his hero, Seth Godin, Derek’s blog is full of short useful posts that really make you think.  If I had to choose one of this list, this would be it.  HIGHLY recommended.

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I just finished reading a great post by Ronan Guilfoyle about the (over)use of complicated rhythms in jazz today.  Ronan is an excellent bassist, amazing jazz educator and real authority on rhythm (he literally wrote the book on it).  It is interesting to me that Ronan isn’t criticizing the use of polyrhythms and metric modulation, but the idea that modern jazz musicians use those techniques as an end in itself.

Via Ronan’s Blog

Instead, it seems to me that often a new explicit statement of the form seems to have appeared. Rather than having the form be something that is invisible — a guiding structure that only the musicians are aware of — the new orthodoxy seems to be to create music that is not only rhythmically complex but is explicitly so — wearing its mathematical heart on its sleeve so to speak. Pieces are played with mathematical precision, and having achieved the technical wherewithal to deal with these new complex rhythms a lot of musicians seem to be happy to leave it at that. They seem to be proud to be able to play five over three, for example, as if the act of achieving an accurate representation of this is an end in itself. The fives and the threes are rigidly marked off and flagged, as if the musicians want to display the nuts and bolts of their achievement to an admiring crowd. It’s a reversal of the other tradition i mentioned — rather than have the form act as a kind of internalised guiding principle, the form of the piece in this more recent approach is used as a kind of exoskeleton that is worn proudly by the musicians as they negotiate the treacherous twists and turns of their rhythmic high wire act.

Many times in college we worked on exercises and techniques that opened our eyes and ears to different rhythmic concepts.  Sometimes they worked, others not so much.  I also feel that in order to make these concepts sound natural and organic, you must go through a period of living, breathing and playing them.  Many times when I listen to groups, I feel like when everything they play is in a different time signature it does begin to sound stale to me.  However, I need to side with Ronan on this one.  Lately it seems like in order to be a jazz musician, you need to use some form of rhythmic trickery on every tune. Not so.

I am preparing a blog post on some of my favorite exercises using more complicated rhythmic ideas, but until then what are your favorite ways of “hiding the one”?