Welcome to another installment of the Fiddle Jam Club Newsletter! 

Topics: Happy New Year!  Sugarfoot Rag Lesson update.  Digital Fiddle Jam Book Sale.  Referral Offer.

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1) Happy New Year!  I sincerely hope that this is your happiest, funnest, and most fiddle jamming year ever!  If the Fiddle Jam Institute can be a part of that joy for you, I will be thrilled!!

Below is some info about some more recent things I’ve been brewing on.  As usual, please feel free to stay in touch with your comments, questions and feedback.

2) Sugarfoot Rag Lesson Delivery: I’ve been dragging my feet a bit on getting more lessons into the School Store for sale as individual products for those of you who are not monthly All Access Pass (AAP) members (who, as you may know, get to see all lessons included in their monthly tuition).  I’m beginning to put more energy into this idea though, and would like to get your feedback on best practices to present them.  

As an example, I picked a fiddle tune, at random, and took a good re-look at what we have in the Library for Sugarfoot Rag.  I shot a whole bunch of short new videos for this lesson to fill in every possible detail, just as I’d teach it in a private lesson.  

***For a short time (I’m thinking the next 10 days?), I  will set this lesson in the Library so that ANY registered member (Free or AAP) can see it in its entirety.  PLEASE FEEL FREE TO GIVE ME SOME FEEDBACK ON IT’S PRESENTATION IF YOU WILL.  Do this on the lesson’s comment form or below.

To sell a lesson like this in the School Store, with the video files included would be WAAYYY too big of a file to download in any reasonable amount of time.  So, what I’m thinking of doing, is selling a smaller digital bundle, that will be much easier and quicker to download, that includes any mp3 backing track audio files for the lessons, along with a pdf file that will have all the same text and graphics from the FJi/AAP lesson, and live LINKS to the online video content embedded in the pdf file (Hosted in a private channel on YouTube’s servers for easy access).  I could possibly supply these on a DVD for a small extra charge too.

WHAT DO YOU THINK?  WOULD THIS WORK FOR YOU??  PLEASE LET ME KNOW YOUR THOUGHTS.  YOU CAN CONVENIENTLY REPLY VIA ANY FJI COMMENT FORMS (SHOULD BE ONE BELOW).

3) ORCHESTRA GIG: Babik’s reunited gig with the Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra in the end of September was a rousing success!  It is an honor to play such an esteemed hall with a world-class orchestra at your back!  What a thrill to stand in the same spot as the likes of Jascha Heifetz, Itzhak Perlman, YoYoMa, and even Led Zepplin in this acoustically perfect hall!  It was good to perform one more time with my old friends in front of the hometown crowd too (I think I had about 40 family members there alone!  A Pretty cool night).

I’ll post whatever fan footage I can find here (sorry, no official footage, as it would have taken a boatload of attorneys and money to get every musician in the orchestra to give permission for such things!).  

On the program was: I Can’t Give you Anything But Love, Nuage (not BPO footage) and Rhtyhm Futur (FJi All Access Pass members can see the full practice chart of this crazy tune here. Members of our free Fiddle Jam Club can see some of the chart and info about this gig on the Founder’s blog post I made about it here). 

4) FIDDLE JAM CLINICS: I did a month-long string of clinics at the University of Florida here in Gainesville.  I video filmed most of it and plan on editing it for your jam-along-at-home pleasure soon.  Participants were some of my young private students and a couple new-comers.  I love getting relatively inexperienced people together to jam and gently guiding them to creative heights.  It was neat to see and hear their improv-development from session to session, and how they learned from each other.  I said, “this is what I want to do when I grow up!”  Ha.

If this sort of thing interests you, I may be interested in trying to “live stream” events like this in the future.  Let me know if you’d be interested in jamming along with a class from the safety of your own home ;~)  …your interest might spur me along to bump the task up my every present “to-do” list!  Of course… I am also available to come to your town to hold such educational/edu-tainment sessions!  

Contact me for details if interested in hosting such an event.  I have been know to take over school orchestras for the day, and getting all the kids to jam!  I was thrilled, a couple years ago, a twenty-something young man came up to me after a gig to say that the day I had introduced him to improvisation at a Fiddle Jam Clinic changed the course of his life!  Pretty neat.

5) Member Referral Offer: We are working behind the scenes on getting some fancy software in place that will allow you to get paid for referring others to the Fiddle Jam Institute.  While we work on that, I will make any currently registered members (you) an offer I can simply do manually: get one of your friends to signup for an (AAP) All Access Pass FJi membership, let me know their name, and I’ll give YOU a free month! 

Maybe it’s the Holiday Spirit still lingering, but, only for our Free Fiddle Jam Club Newsletter folks, I’ll sweeten that deal further that, for the month of January, if you get us three AAP referrals, I’ll go ahead and give you a Lifetime Membership (a $450 value)!  Sweet!

Overall, I’m looking forward to the new year and am getting excited about some new developments I have in mind for the site.  I hope you are still with me!  Stay in touch.  Don’t be shy about sending me your thoughts, questions, and requests.  You can use the form below.

Talk soon!

Fitz

PS: if the contact form (that is supposed to be below) does not appear in your browser, click here to send me a message instead.