Posts Tagged ‘steve neff’

The next morning, our last day in Disney, I woke up to my kids talking to each other.  I sat up in bed and just looked at them.  There voices sounded normal.  I couldn’t believe it.  Matter of fact, I didn’t believe it. I put on the radio, it sounded normal. I was so excited and happy but I still didn’t say anything to my wife because I was afraid I was mistaken.  What if it was still messed up?  About 15 minutes later I told my wife. I then shared with her the whole story about the prayer I had prayed.  She didn’t seemed impressed.  I was shocked and in awe that God had actually performed a miracle for me and answered my prayer.  She just smiled and said “Of course, he does that all the time”. I just looked at her amazed at her faith.  ”Not like this” I said.  We went home later that day and I was one happy camper.

For the last 5 years things have gone pretty smoothly.  Normal life stuff. Nothing to write a blog about.  I’m happy about that!  I don’t know the why behind all the things in this story and I doubt I ever will but part of me thinks this last story was  so very important to me and my journey.  You see as you could probably tell as I told the story, I was growing increasingly more and more negative.  Many times I doubted if God existed .  Other times I thought “Well if he does exist, he’s kind of a jerk”.  Other times I thought “Well if he does exist, he could care less about me”.   For me this last act was huge.  I know many of you who are reading this might be thinking it was just a coincidence and God had nothing to do with it.  I just happened to pray that prayer the night before my hearing was to return to normal.  Believe me, many times I have even thought that myself.  But I keep coming back to that prayer that I said.  I laid it all out like I never had before.  I told him that if I were to see him work immediately then there would be no question in my mind.  He did exist and he does care about me. He is involved in my life and working and moving.  The next morning, I woke up and was cured.  You might think it was a coincidence but I like to believe it was something else.
Read the rest of this entry »

Well, I’ve been putting this off long enough!  To be honest, this part of the story is not something I feel very excited about telling.  There are a few reasons for this.  One, it’s not funny (well maybe a little funny).  Two, it brings back some painful memories.  Three, it doesn’t paint me in the best light.  Four, it brings up some hard to answer spiritual and emotional topics that are hard to deal with.  Five, I cry like a baby in it. Six………………Well, I could keep going, but I think you get the point.  You might ask  ”Well, why are you sharing it then?”   I would respond  ”Because it is part of the story and that as painful as it was, there are millions out there that have gone through something this painful and millions more that someday will.  I’m not sure if my story has any answers or cures to life’s woes but I know there is a certain consolation in sharing these stories with each other and knowing you are not alone.  Sometimes just knowing that someone else has been through something similar to your situation is enough to give you the courage to keep fighting.”  That’s why I’m sharing it.

Up until this point in my story I have been pretty strong.  I had held it together and gotten through these different life challenges with my head held high and somewhat still optimistic.  After the first set of ordeals (brain tumor, meningitis and cancer),  my life was better in quite a few ways.  I felt grateful to be alive,  I was optimistic about the future and I thought the worst was behind me.  I met my wife and we even worked together in a Christian ministry for 2 1/2 years as I trained to be a minister.  Life was good and I could see a reason for the things that I had to go through to get where I was.  When you can understand a reason and see a good outcome to a hardship it makes it so much easier to accept and surrender to.  You would think, that as I sat in my hospital room that night, I would be able to reflect on these thoughts and be resigned to what the future might hold.   I was not.

I left you in Part 11 on a Saturday night.  My family and friends that came to see me had all left and I laid in my bed very afraid of what would happen to me next.  I remember praying diligently that I would be strong enough to deal with the road ahead.  Even reminding God of that scripture where he says “I will not give you more than you can handle” ( In case he forgot that promise………) I honestly did not sleep one wink that night.  My skin hurt all over like a really bad sunburn and I was starting to itch all over. That coupled with the fact that the hospital ward I was in seemed insanely loud.  I don’t know if it was the burn unit or what but I remember constant crying, screaming, yelling and alarms going off all night long.
Read the rest of this entry »

Ok,  I have my emotions contained again and can go on with the story.  After the doctor told me I couldn’t play the saxophone again, I think I  was in a bit of a shock.  After a while, I started to feel pretty depressed.  I remember my friends and family members coming in and trying to cheer me up.  They were listing all of my talents and telling me about all the other things I would be great at as far as choosing another line of work.  Some even suggested neurosurgery but  nothing they said  would cheer me up.

The next day another Doctor came in to talk to me. He was the Ear, Nose and Throat surgeon who had originally opened up my head,  took out my inner ear and sealed up my eustachian tube. I told him what the other Doctor had said about never playing the saxophone again and he told me that he would fix it so that I could still play my sax.  He had worked with many professional musicians over the years and he understod how I felt.  He said he would do whatever it took so that I could continue to play.  I was very relieved after talking to him.

A few days later I went in for the surgery to seal up that eustachion tube permanently.  It wasn’t as big a deal as the first surgery and only took a few hours as I remember.  When I woke up I had that darn bandage on my head and half my head was shaved again.  The ENT Doctor came in who had performed the surgery and he said that the surgery was a success and that I would never have a problem with this issue again.  I don’t know what he did up there, but I’ve gone back to him a few times since then because of headaches and he didn’t even need to do an MRI or anything…….he knew that it wasn’t open again.  He must of sealed that thing shut with super glue or something.
Read the rest of this entry »

Here’s another video of me playing with that Hal Crook play along. I’m not even sure if this is still out there and published.  It’s called “Creative Comping for Improvisation”. I haven’t seen it since the early 90’s. It is such a ball to jam to because the comping is not traditional at all.  There are some really cool alterations, substitutions and out of the ordinary comping on it that really are cool to play with.  I use to play duo with a great keyboard player for years and this reminds me of those times.

Green Dolphin St.

I found this old Hal Crook play along and was jamming to it tonight. He plays some pretty cool changes and chords over the standard Beautiful Love. I use to love playing to these back in college because they would always stretch me out and force me to play outside the box a bit.  Here’s a video of part of the song.

Beautiful Love

Well………..where were we?  Oh yeah, in Mass General Hospital waiting for my next surgery.  As I remember,  it was 2-3 days later.   They came to get me for the surgery and it was an emotional time.  This was the big surgery where they were messing with nerves, arteries and not to mention my brain.  I also didn’t know if it was malignant (cancer) or benign.  I remember being wheeled in for the surgery and my Dad asked  ”How you doing, son?”  I responded  ”This isn’t fun, Dad”.   I was wheeled away with out knowing if I would see my family again.   I remember praying at that moment that if I died  I would wake up in heaven with God and if I woke up here that I would be surrendered to whatever my condition might be.  I prayed hard for those two things.

They asked me to count  backward from 100 and I again tried to see if my will power was strong enough to  fight the drugs……….I made it to about 96 again and don’t remember anything else.  This part of the surgery was pretty long.  I think it was 12-13 hours if I remember correctly.  I can’t imagine operating for that long but there were a few surgeons that all had different duties in the surgery so I would imagine they would take turns.

Next thing I knew I was waking up. It was like I had just fallen asleep a moment ago.   Now this may sound a bit strange, but I’m going to share it  because it really happened and I want to be as factual as possible here.  When I started waking up I was in a big room where they put all the patients after surgery.   The lights looked funny to me, like they were old.  I looked around me and it seemed like the medical equipment was old. Next, a nurse came over to me and she was the happiest nurse I had ever seen in my life.  She had a big smile and her clothes seemed like clothes you would see a nurse wearing in the 50’s.  All of a sudden it hit me…………I had been transported back in time to the 50’s! You might think I am joking here but I really thought I had traveled back in time!    I was giving it such serious thought that I was actually thinking of all the things invented since 1950 and trying to figure out what I could make tons of money with.  I looked up a little later and I saw my parents walking up with big smiles on their faces.  I had never seen them with such big smiles.  My first thought was that these were imposters and that it had something to do with the time travel.  My Mom started talking to me and I interrupted her with an urgent  question “What year is it?”  She looked at me funny……… “What year is it?” I repeated.   She answered “1995, why?”   I said “Are you sure?”  She said  ”Yes” and my parents exchanges a worried glance at one another.  The conversation went on about the surgery and  how I was feeling.    The whole time my parents were talking though,  I was thinking that not only had I been transported back in time but everyone else had also,  and they didn’t even know it!   At no time did it occur to me that I was a bit wacky from the drugs.  Over the next few hours I slowly returned back to reality.

Read the rest of this entry »

Ok, where was I?  Oh yeah. So all this laughing is going on. As this is getting worse and worse things start to fall apart around me.   My relationships are stressed because people think I’m a little strange (OK very strange),  my relationship with my fiance ends (for a number of reasons……..but the constant laughing didn’t help) and my  saxophone playing starts really going downhill fast!

Around this time,  I started to notice more and more problems with my sax playing.  I would go to gigs and get so frustrated.  I would go to play an altissimo note that I had played a million times and it would be wrong. I would play a simple phrase and squeak ( I never ever did that),  I would play a cool run of fast notes I always play and it would be a mess.  I would be improvising a solo and have no ideas whatsoever!  Besides all that,  I couldn’t get through a solo without starting to laugh……… I remember many times where I would just stop playing in the middle of a solo and start laughing.  The band leader would just look at me and say “What’s up?” with a rather annoyed look on his face.  I felt like my time in that band was maybe drawing to an end so………..
Read the rest of this entry »

Well, over the years I have told this story quite a few times.  People are always interested in it and I hope someday that it will be on the discovery channel as one of those medical mystery shows.  I thought I would share it here because many of you might get a kick out of it…………

Back in the early 90’s (1993-1995 time range) life was good.  I was feeling great about many aspects in my life.  I was playing the sax full time.  Gigging all the time.  Practicing all the time.  I had a girlfriend and lots of friends.  I was working out and my health was good.  I was feeling pretty good about things.

Around this time I started noticing that I was laughing a lot. Have you ever met somebody who would laugh whenever they were uncomfortable or nervous?  Well that was me.  It started out where I would laugh at odd moments like during a serious conversation or when someone else was upset.  I think the people around me would just write it off as “this guys a little strange………”

As time went on my laughing got even worse.  It was now quite often the kind of laughing where you feel like you can’t stop.  Your whole body is moving up and down and your laughing so hard that you fall off your chair.  Have you ever laughed that hard?  Well, I was doing it all the time.  Many times a day.  Let me give you a few real life scenarios just so you can understand.
Read the rest of this entry »

Mastering The Dominant Bebop Scale
The Dominant Bebop Scale is a scale that can be used over a dominant chord. It has both the major 7th and the flat 7th in the scale so in the key of G the scale would be GABCDEFF#G. The reason that the dominant bebop scale sounds so great is that when it is started on any of the dominant chord tones (G7 would have the chord tones of G,B,D or F) the downbeats of your lines will all be chord tones.

Read the rest of this entry »

To get most out of my NeffMusic Online Lessons I would suggest a few simple ideas.
1. Focus on one topic like Blues scales, Approach Notes, Pentatonics……..etc.
In my mind it’s always better to focus on one topic at a time and master it.  Working on bits and pieces of 10 different lessons and not mastering any can be tedious and frustrating.  Read through the online lesson descriptions, watch the sample of the videos and then pick a topic that you think would be a good place to start for you. Try to stay within that topic until you feel you have a good grasp of the concept and it is coming out in your playing. If you would like more online lessons on the topic or would like to know how to use it over a specific tune feel free to email me and I can make another video lesson for you.
Read the rest of this entry »