"So What" - Jazz Ambassadors LIVE

Hi everyone, my trio, the Jazz Ambassadors, hosted a jazz jam session in my hometown last Saturday and my drummer, Ed, recorded it. I am on keyboards, Ed on drums and Jeff on bass. I think the audio is OK - I cleaned it up using the tools I have, but I'm going to reach out to a mastering engineer and send him the raw audio file to see if someone professional can get this to a level that would be acceptable for public release.

This is a great cool jazz tune called "So What" that is essentially just two chords: Dmin7 and Ebmin7 and it was made famous on the album "Kind of Blue" by Miles Davis. Bill Evans, the piano player, came up with that little piano figure at the beginning that kind of sounds like "So What" - hence the name I suspect 😊

This trio is a dream come true - I have quite a lot of great recordings of us that I want to pull together into a "sizzle reel" and take this on tour. Every time we play live people respond and that Saturday was special. This coffee shop has been hosting a Saturday afternoon jazz jam session for years but I never went because they had a really terrible keyboard and I guess I never considered bringing my own. But one day my friend was hosting and he's like - just come dude! So I came and sure enough the piano was not suitable for professional use. Plus the sustain pedal was broken. So after the jam session I asked who the owner was and someone pointed me to this guy Les, a beauiful Polish man who has created this incredible space. It's alwasy packed with people from all races and cultures and has amazing energy. I was thinking "I have an extra sustain pedal, so I'll just mention that to him" and I walked over and introduced myself, and said "Hey man, thanks so much for hosting this jam session, it's so great! I just wanted to let you know that the sustain pedal on the keyboard is broken and I..."

Before I could finish he threw his hands up and held his head a little bit and said "Ah, I don't know...I just love jazz..." and I realized "This guy could use some HELP" so I said "Hey, OK, what if I bring a better keyboard and everything, and we just do a trade? I'll take that keyboard (pointing to the one on the stage) and I'll come back with a better one." He was thrilled.

I had an extra keyboard, a Yamaha P115 that my friend was "borrowing" indefinitely for his kids to use to learn piano. So I just took the coffee shop keyboard and replacement sustain pedal to his place, traded that for my P115, and then delivered it to the coffee shop and also brought all the cables and set up the mix so it sounded good through the PA (it always sounded bad in there because nobody knew how to mix). So I realized I can really help this place!

This attracted more piano players and incentivized me to come more often as well, so I became a "regular". It's like my church. When I come in I know everybody and we all love each other and they've seen me sit in with other host bands and also jam a lot, but I've never hosted myself. This past Saturday I got that opportunity and it was incredible because of the feedback principle that Prudence has talked about - the love of my life was there close to the stage and she loves my music so much. She radiates so much love and positive energy that the whole room lights up. In the raw recording you can clearly hear her laugh, it's so beautiful! Anyway, that all contributed to a great live show that I want to release but I need the audio to be up to par.

If anyone on here has the audio engineering skills to manipulate the raw audio file and would like to give it a try, I can share that too. Ed unfortunately deleted the WAV file so it's am MP3, not sure the fidelity. But seriously, I would love to see what someone with real mixing/mastering skills could do with the raw audio and capture all the essence and energy of the live show - if you are interested in helping, please let me know!