I spent Sunday afternoon having a jam session on piano with my brother Byron (drums) and friend Jason (bass). This was the first time we had played together and it was a lot of fun. I made a recording of our jam and have made the Mp3’s freely available to download (please click here).

Of course, being a jam session, these recordings are not studio quality and are not our “best”, but they will give you an idea of the kind of energy and musical ideas that we had going during our session. The consensus among the band members was that it was really fun!!

> Click here to listen to our jam session (free MP3’s)

Regarding the tracks we played, I think Voyage is the most “polished” sounding, as I know the tune quite well. The other tunes I sort-of knew but I managed to fake it most of the time. We need to work on our endings!! Blue Monk was really fun, I tried playing in a “rough” style maybe influenced a bit by Thelonious Monk. There is also a recording of a new original tune of mine, Warm Day, which I wrote while taking a composition class with New York Jazz pianist Misha Piatigorsky.

This recording was made using a consumer-model Sony Hi-MD Minidisc player/recorder and a Sony stereo condenser microphone. The total cost of the recording equipment is less than $500. Considering the low cost of the equipment, the sound quality is not bad! I have written an article that describes how I made this recording using Minidisc (please click here).