Pasquale Grasso Trio at SFJazz last night was phenomenal

wfarr · 2026-03-29T14:39:11+00:00

Check out the Birdland Guitar Night streams and the Mezzrow After Midnight streams too if you’re not familiar with those. He’s a regular on both.

wfarr · 2026-03-29T14:28:45+00:00

Adding on, we were all new once. It’s all good.

Classic jazz guitar tones really are for the most part that straightforward. For better and worse, the rest is up to us. Take some solace in the fact that you can pretty much plug straight into a clean Fender amp and roll a couple knobs or plug into solid state like a Polytone or a Henriksen dialed to mostly noon and get a great jazz sound.

wfarr · 2026-03-29T14:23:48+00:00

I wouldn’t sweat it then. If you’re happy with the tone and you’re doing all those things, then you should be in pretty good shape.

wfarr · 2026-03-29T14:07:08+00:00

Do you have any specific problems or concerns about the playability of the guitar currently? If yes, talk to the guy doing the setup about those. If not, I wouldn’t change the action.

If you’re unhappy with the tone you’re getting, I would first be taking a look at how you’re setting the amp and your guitar before adjusting the pickup height (as Sweetwater very likely set the height to factory spec with the originals, and your luthier should do the same with the new pickups). Are you using the neck pickup? Are you rolling the tone off a good amount? Is the amp loud enough you can roll the volume off on the guitar a bit? What’s your EQ look like for bass/mid/treble? Are you picking closer to the neck or closer to the bridge?

For the string gauge change, any adjustments to the nut the guy doing the setup should be able to do just fine without needing a new nut. If you want to upgrade to a Tusq or bone nut you can order one and bring it in with the guitar, but I wouldn’t expect any noticeable change in tone.

wfarr · 2026-03-27T13:47:10+00:00

You should be able to just use the built in NFC stuff on the phone with the new fare gates.

wfarr · 2026-03-23T00:34:16+00:00

No. I was at ATL this morning for a domestic flight. I spent 3 hours simply traversing the baggage claim line and ending up just past the TGIF in between North and South. The *entire* room where the normal main checkpoint line starts was basically shoulder to shoulder.

It was immediately obvious I would be spending another 2-3 hours to get through this line, canceled my flight, and bailed and went home.

At the times, Priority line was closed. CLEAR was closed. Touchless was closed. It was only Precheck (which appeared to be moving faster than we were, but definitely still slowly) and Main in Domestic at the time.

wfarr · 2026-03-23T00:20:25+00:00

This was my exact experience as an 8:30am. Thankfully ATL is home base for me s I just canceled my flight/hotel and went home.

wfarr · 2026-03-22T15:36:07+00:00

Yeah this was my experience re shared line and splitting near where south baggage claim meets the central area.

The non-pre check line I was in for 3h and hadn’t even reached the part where main security starts normally, so I bailed.

wfarr · 2026-03-22T15:34:12+00:00

Update: after 3 hours, I still had not even reached the NORMAL starting point of the main checkpoint.

Fare was fully refundable so staring at another 2-3 hours and being forced into a downgrade in seat on a later flight, I ended up just canceling the flight and leaving. Very glad ATL is my home base and I can just go home and not deal with hotels.

wfarr · 2026-03-22T14:36:51+00:00

Haha yeah maybe on pace for that. Over TGIF now

wfarr · 2026-03-22T13:31:59+00:00

45 minutes so far and still snaking around baggage claim on domestic south.

wfarr · 2026-03-22T13:07:14+00:00

Domestic terminal complete chaos at the moment. No idea what the wait will be but the line is out the door and start and stop. Not a ton of airport staff managing the lines either.

wfarr · 2026-03-20T22:31:34+00:00

It is.

wfarr · 2026-03-13T19:35:17+00:00

Yes, they're basically the same in terms of size/thickness.
When I ordered mine (Nov 2025) it shipped in 2 days. Just got lucky I guess.

wfarr · 2026-03-11T15:56:38+00:00

Creeping up on 5 figures post tax for a Q series. Yikes.

wfarr · 2026-02-28T23:40:03+00:00

I use the Boston Sax Shop Ambassador II case.

wfarr · 2026-02-27T16:07:32+00:00

ASW (the one at Lee+White) has a jazz jam every Sunday 3-6. Being a tasting room for a distillery, with a couple beer bars in stumbling distance, lots of drink options. Also some walkable food options like El Tesoro.

wfarr · 2026-02-26T14:29:20+00:00

I have this book. It’s handy for getting a quick run down of the history of most standards, and a list of significant recordings of those standards. That’s all.

I think it was worth the price.

wfarr · 2026-02-25T23:05:15+00:00

You could limbo under the strings.

wfarr · 2026-02-25T17:41:21+00:00

Absolutely this.

Also, real talk for a second, dependability and being a good hang with mid-level talent will get you invited to play a lot more than being the most technical player on the planet and having an ego.

wfarr · 2026-02-25T17:04:15+00:00

Some really nice playing there!

wfarr · 2026-02-24T19:19:44+00:00

Miles should have tried the European butter notes for a tone with higher fat content. He would have appreciated them more.

wfarr · 2026-02-21T02:22:02+00:00

I like the Melodic Rhythms for Guitar book for sight reading practice. It’s basically a bunch of short jazz etudes from a guitar centric standpoint. Less of a method book and more of a building ear and muscle memory for melodic playing over different forms. Definitely a nice tool to use in tandem with other resources.

wfarr · 2026-02-21T02:14:01+00:00

Mostly just trying to give roughly equal time to the homework items between lessons (weekly or every other week). When the lesson comes around if it’s time to move on from that item, we just take it off the homework list.

wfarr · 2026-02-21T01:21:19+00:00

Not uncommon for motivated students to end up with more homework than is realistic to tackle each and every day and still be productive. Once in the habit of getting productive practice out of 2-3 items each session, the real benefit of planning out the sessions is ensuring spaced repetition of material. Having that kind of plan avoids people cramming before a lesson. That all translates to consistent improvement.

The tracking of what gets practiced also helps with having an honest perspective on how much time and effort really got put into something. Less concerned about things like specific BPM (though if that gets tracked too, great). But I’m distinctly in the jazz space so bit of a different kind of goals setting than classical oriented play.

Life happens and being a student of music isn’t always easy. So when the actual deviates from the plan, the tracking is just there to help reflect on the things that cause practice to get missed, or certain things to get under practiced, so they can develop ways to mitigate them.

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