Future Song for group - THIS LIST IS LONG!

Hey Everyone,

Now that we have a few performances under our belt, which have gone over very well by the way,  the next step is to increase the library so to speak.  I have volume 1 of the Real Book and earmarked tunes I thought would be fun/challenging for us to do.  One other thing I would like to introduce is the solo feature.  Basically, I want everyone to have a tune where they are the star.  While this is a group, each member deserves a few minutes to be appreciated for their contributions to the group, and I think this can be done with the solo features.  Also, it will give us variety during performances so it's not always the same routine of play the melody, solo, then play the melody to end it.

Here's the list so far:

1. I Got Rhythm
2. Angel Eyes (this might be a good trumpet solo feature)
3. Anthropology
4. Autumn Leaves
5. Four
6. In Walked Bud
7. Jersey Bounce
8. Lady Bird
9. Line for Lyons
10. Oleo
11. One for My Baby (this might be a good sax solo feature)
12. Satin Doll (piano solo feature)
13. Tenderly
14. The Way you Look Tonight
15. Do Nothing 'Til You Hear from Me
16. Don't Get Around Much Anymore
17. Misty

Now, that's a lot of tunes, I know, and I think what I'm going to do is instead of tailoring every part, I'm going to provide copies of certain tunes.  If you want a different solo feature or have your own suggestions for tunes, post a comment.

Townsend Coffehouse is a Smash

Hey,

I just wanted to take a second and congratulate everyone on a wonderful official first performance of the Opus 111 Students Jazz Combo.  I have to first publibly apologize to Diane for dropping the ball concerning the start time.  I should have made sure I spoke to everyone personally to make sure they knew about the time change.  Rest assured I will make sure to do so in the future.

Overall, the performance was very good.  The only tune that had anything close to resembling a breakdown was Moonlight in Vermont.  Again, I need to take the blame for that as we really only practiced that one completely once.  So, it was unfair of me to throw you under the bus with that particular tune.

The feedback from the crowd was very positive.  The only comment that got made was that we were a little loud at times.  Now, with that room shaped the way it was and not having played live in that room before, it's real hard to guage the appropriate volume level until you have played there more than once.  I have a good feeling they may ask us to play again, so we may want to take the volume issue into consideration the next time we play, whether I bring it up to them or if they approach me first.

In closing, I just want to re-iterate how proud I am of all of you.  You each have become good improvisers and there is nowhere to go but forward and improve.  That is not necessarily a reflection of my teaching abilities but more in your individual talent and work ethic.  I consider it an honor and privilege to organize and work with you, and look forward to what we will accomplish in the future.

"Set List" for Townsend Dec. 12

Hey Everyone,

Here's the order of songs we'll be doing for the Townsend Coffehouse on December 12. Remember, we are playing from 11:00-12:00, so please be there by about 11:30 so we can sound check. I'll be there early to set up the sound system. Here's the song list/order:

1. Take the 'A' Train
2. Mercy, Mercy, Mercy
3. All of Me
4. Moonlight in Vermont
5. St. Thomas
6. Tenor Madness

I don't think we originally planned on 'Moonlight', but I threw it in there to be on the safe side. I will be working on getting us all the sound equipment we need as well as working on setup within the coffeehouse. If you can each bring your own music stand and music, that will definitely help me. If you have questions, please let me know. I'll see you on Saturday.

Patrick

Listening/Watching Homework

Ok guys, try this one on for size. This is a video of a very famous contemporary saxhophonist named Michael Brecker, who unfortunately is no longer with us. This is a an arrangement of his entitled Delta City Blues. As you watch/listen, here are some things I would like you to note:

1. Lisa, whenever the piano player is shown, examine where he has hands on the keyboard. When he's not on screen, listen to the rhythm and judge how well his rhythms add to Brecker's playing.


2. Diane, don't try to imitate everything about Brecker. Determine whether you like his sound and decide whether or not you would like to emulate it. Also, find 1 or 2 licks or melodic ideas you would like to incorporate. Don't do more than that, though, you'll freeze yourself out trying to determine what to practice.

ENJOY!!

Appogiatura and Escape Tone Video

Well, here's the promised video demonstrating/explaining appogiaturas and escape tones. It's pretty self-explanatory, but if you have questions, leave a comment and I'll reply as soon as I can.

Quoting Songs in Your Improv

Hey Everyone,

I just wanted to make a real quick post concerning quotes. We've all heard a phenomenal solo from a top-notch player who, in the middle of making sense of musical chaos, finds a way to insert a popular melody into their solo without breaking any kind of sweat. I always used to wonder, "How do they do that and make it look so easy?" Well, some people have different methods for incorporating this technique, but the one I've found that works best for me is the number system.

In my opinion, the number system is the most efficient way to work quotes or any other type of pre-determined lick into an improv solo. The reason I say that is because numbers are not constrained by key signatures. Let me demonstrate:

Let's say for instance, we're in the key of C, so our C scale looks like:
C D E F G A B C

Now if we want to play "Mary Had a Little Lamb" in the key of C, we need to start on E to make to melody sound right. It would look like this:
E-D-C-D-E-E-E
D-D-D E-G-G
E-D-C-D-E-E-E D-D-E-D-C

But what if we take Mary and turn her into numbers? If we think in numbers, we have to keep in mind the scale/key we're working in. In other words, in the key of C, 3=E. So Mary would look like:

3-2-1-2-3-3-3
2-2-2 3-5-5
3-2-1-2-3-3-3 2-2-3-2-1

Now if you know all 12 scales and key signatures, you can take Mary and put her in any key as long as you can quickly figure out which letter is #3 in the scale.

As you progress, you'll be able to learn more sophisticated and/or obscure melodies and incorporate them into a solo.

I've listed below some popular folk tunes as well as a jazz standard. See if you can figure out which melodies they are. Post a comment with your guess and I might have a prize for the person who gets more correct.

1)1-1-5-5-6-6-5 4-4-3-3-2-2-1
5-5-4-4-3-3-2 5-5-4-4-3-3-2
1-1-5-5-6-6-5 4-4-3-3-2-2-1

2)1-1-5-5-6-6-5 3-3-2-2-1

3)5-1 8-6-5-1 5-4-3-3-4-5-1-2-3

4)5-1-7-6-5-6-3-4-5-1-7-1 (jazz standard)

Review of John Armstrong's Visit

Hey there,


Sorry I didn't get this up earlier, but now is better than never. Firstly, John said that what we're doing is the right thing. I take that more as a testament to your progress and work ethic than anything else. If we don't take the concepts and ideas home and try to improve them in our own personal playing, then there will be no progress. With this group, though, that is not the case. Both John and I are very impressed with your musical display. I'm very proud of the progress and John was pleased with your creativity.


That being said, there were a few things that John suggested that I think are good for everyone (myself especially) to keep in mind:

1. experiment in practice, so your experiments become conservative during performance


2. if you find yourself playing the same thing 3 times, stop immediately


3. good style goes a long way


4. improvise from ear sometimes and not always sight

That last item about playing from ear is something I plan to take to heart in our improv classes. So be prepared to enagage in more playing exercises where you won't know what the changes are. We will still do some exercises where we study and analyze chords and changes. Like John said, having theory knowledge is never a bad thing, but now we must temper that with stretching our ears. I take that as my own personal charge. Practicing at home by playing with recordings will help you during the rest of the week.


One thing that John mentioned to me after you had left was the importance of listening to quality recording. previously, I posted a list of suggested listening by instrument, but I might start to make "listening" assignments from time to time.


If you run into John, please thank him for coming and sharing his insight. He got up early in the morning when he didn't have to just to help us out. Please let him know how much you appreciate his efforts. And know that I appreciate your effort and work to make this successful.

Chord tones and non-chord tones

Ok, we’ve developed our rhythms, started reading chord changes, learned about major and minor chords, major and dominant 7ths, so let’s start creating some bridges. Every pitch that you can possibly play on your instrument falls into one of two categories: a chord tone or a non-chord tone.

A chord tone is a pitch that is part of the particular chord being played, and a non-chord tone, surprisingly enough, isn’t part of the chord.
Let’s go to our “C dominant 7” chord:

Remember, the notes of this chord are:

So, the “C” “E” ”G” and “Bb” are all considered to be chord tones. So any other pitch you play, by definition, will be a non-chord tone. When you move to the next chord, the pitches used for that chord will be the chord tones.

Now, we can actually categorize non-chord tones based on how we use them. Context determines how we categorize non-chord tones.

The first type of non-chord tone is the passing tone. A passing tone is a non-chord tone that acts as a bridge between two different chord tones. Usually passing tones are used in a melodic line that moves in a single direction. Passing tones give the melody a scalar quality. Here’s an example of passing tones:

In this case, the “C” “E” “G” are the chord tones while the pitches in between, the “D” and “F” are the passing tones. As you progress, you’ll find that you can start to use chromatic passing tones as well.

The next type of non-chord tone is the neighbor tone. A neighbor tone is a non-chord tone that you play in between two notes of the same chord tone. For example:

There are more examples of non-chord tones, but we’ll cover those later.

Adding to Chords: 7ths

Let's review what we've covered so far. We started with the basic element of improv which is rhythm and the five different methods used to create rhythmic diversity. Next, we began understanding a chord change starting with the letter that is written. This is the "root" of the chord. And from the root, we counted to the 5th pitch above the root to give some ideas for different pitches. Then, we learned that to make a true chord, we need to add the 3rd note above the root. There are two types of 3rds which changes whether we have a major chord versus a minor chord. Whew! Time to move on.

In orchestral music, the three note chord was the standard chord for many years. As we got to the 20th century, composers started to experiment more often with four note chords. This practice became standard in the jazz world and we haven't looked back. In fact, it is very rare that you will find a jazz composition that has a three note chord designated.

So what is the next most common pitch added? Well, let's again go back to our original chord:

Usually in other posts, I've said to remove all the numbers and symbols. This time, we're going to remove all but one number:

We've kept the number 7. The 7th is the most common pitch used to make a 3-note chord into a 4-note chord. So, how do we figure out what pitch would be the 7th? Let's go back to our alphabet:

Now, the muscial alphabet is really more like a circle than a straight line, so I can take the "A" and "B" and move them from the left side to the far right side, like this:

Hopefully, you can figure out at this point which pitch is going to be the 7th. "B" is the 7th of a "C" chord. Now, before I continue, there is something I must try and explain concerning 7ths. There are actually two types of 7ths. The type of 7th is again determined by the how the chord is written in the music.

The first type of 7th is know as a major 7th, and the second type is the minor 7th, more commonly known as a dominant 7th. Before I go any further, I want to make sure you don't confuse major and minor chords with major and dominant 7ths. They are two distinct concepts even though they use the same words.

Major 7ths and dominant 7ths are intervals. Intervals refer to the number of half steps between two pitches. Major and minor chords are specific combinations of at least 3 pitches.

The major 7th is the 7th that occurs naturally within the root's key signature. Again, since there are no sharps or flats in the key of "C", "C" to "B" is a major 7th. So, a C major chord with a major 7th would have the following pitches:

And the chord symbol would look like this:

If you look closely, though, you'll notice that to get the major 7th, we needed to have the "MAJ" included in the chord. We don't have that in the original chord. We have just the "C" and the number 7. So, since we don't have the necessary symbols to have the major 7th, that must mean that the chord we've been using calls for the dominant 7th.

To get the dominant, or minor, 7th, we need to take the 7th that occurs naturally and lower it by a 1/2 step. This usually means adding a flat, but as we progress, you'll find that is not always the case. So the notes of a C major chord with the dominant 7th looks like:

Now, this is a lot of information to take in, especially if you're new to improvisation. So, I want you to take your time. And if you have questions, leave a comment and I will make sure I answer as clearly as possible. Alright, have fun.

Chords: Major vs. Minor

Okay,

Now that you have a grasp of what the large letter in a chord symbol means and how you can use that pitch and the 5th pitch above it, let's add some more.

Here's our original chord:





Again, let's strip away the numbers and other symbols, we get:




Now, let's say, for instance, we make a small, insignificant looking change to the chord:




Doesn't look like much, does it? How can it have any effect? Well, if you're only using "C" and "G", it doesn't affect you. (And if you're not sure where I can up with "G", look to the "Understanding Chord Changes" post for reference.) But, if you want to sound like a pro, you need to heed that small letter "M."

There are two types of chords, major and minor. The way we get chords is by adding another letter to the two we already know.

Let's go back to our musical alphabet:

We already use the first letter ("C") and the 5th letter ("G") for our improvised melodies. But to make a chord, we need to add the third letter in line, in this case "E". So a chord built on C as the first pitch or "root" would look like this:

Now here is where it gets tricky. When you have a chord that just has the root written:


This is a "major" chord and it produces a particular sound when all three notes are played simultaneously. The major chord occurs when you play the root(pitch 1), 3rd and 5th note above that naturally occur based on the root's scale. In other words, since the key of "C" has no flats or sharps, if we play "C" "E" & "G" together the result will be a "C major chord".

Once we add that small "M":

The chord has become a "C minor chord". The root ("C") and the 5th ("G") stay the same, but the note in between, the 3rd ("E"), is different. In a minor chord, the 3rd is lowered by a 1/2 step. If you look at a keyboard, two consecutive keys is a 1/2 step. In this case, to make "E" 1/2 step lower, we add a flat. So a "C minor chord" looks like:

As you progress, you'll will find that to make a minor chord, instead of adding a flat, you might end up taking a away a sharp or even adding a second flat to one that is already in existence, but that requires deep knowledge of keys and key signatures.

For now, just remember that a major chord uses the 1st, 3rd, and 5th pitches based on the root's scale, and a minor chord takes the 3rd pitch and lowers it 1/2 step.

Understanding Chord Changes

After you have a solid grasp of rhythmic diversity, now it's time to start on those pesky letters, numbers, and symbols above a solo section.

I like to start with the simplest elements first and get comfortable with that element before adding more. So, let's start at the beginning.

Let's look at a potentially complicated chord:

Ok, first things first, I picked the letter C since there are no sharps or flats in the key of C we have to worry about.

Now, before you freak out, the first step is to eliminate all numbers and symbols. We're stripping the chord down to its most basic component. So the above chord with no decoration looks like this:

So, bye-bye to the 7, b9, and #11, we'll look at those later. Whatever letter is written is known as the root of the chord. You can use this pitch on your instrument to make a melody. Now, most people can handle a single pitch and tire of doing only that quickly.

There is a formula to devise another usable pitch along with the printed letter. The steps to the formula are:

1. Write the musical alphabet out. (A B C D E F G)


2. Whatever letter is written as the root, give it the number 1.
   
   



3. Now, assign numbers to the other letters as you go forward until you get to the number 5.
   
   



4. For now, the only numbers you can use, again until you get more comforatble, is 1 and 5.
   

So, for a beginner improvising on a C chord, you can use C and G and you'll never sound like you're playing a wrong note. The next step will be covered in a later post.

Suggested Listening

I received recently a request for a list of suggested listening for jazz. When it comes to playing jazz, the best thing to do is have an idea of what you want to sound like before you play a single note. For instance, every time I play my tenor sax, my goal is to sound like Sonny Rollins is in the room. How close I get is up to the listener. So this list is my own selection not only for sound concept but also melodic ideas as well. Jazz is an aural art and the best way to learn this music is to immerse yourself in it through listening. Also, don't limit yourself to artists who play your particular instrument. There are many things a saxophone player can learn from a trumpet player.

Suggested Listening

Alto Sax

• Charlie Parker
• Sonny Stitt
• Cannonball Adderly (very good model for sound)
• Johnny Hodges

Tenor Sax

• Sonny Rollins (personal favorite for sound)
• John Coltrane (Great melodic ideas and a true pioneer, I just can't stand his sound)
• Benny Golson
• Dexter Gordon
• Coleman Hawkins
• Lester Young
• Ben Webster
• Sonny Stitt

Trumpet

• Dizzy Gillespie
• Lee Morgan
• Clifford Brown
• Miles Davis (a true pioneer in composition, but in my opinion a somewhat sloppy improviser)
• Chet Baker (great model for flowing melodic lines)

Piano

• Count Basie
• Duke Ellington
• Thelonious Monk
• Fats Waller

Drums

• Art Blakey
• Buddy Rich
• Gene Krupa
• Max Roach

Bass

• Charles Mingus
• Jaco Pastorius

Obviously, there are some intstruments not listed, but that does not mean there is not an artist that has brought that instrument into the public light in a jazz sense. Also, these short lists are so far from comprehensive it's not even funny. There are so many great names, I would run out space trying to list them all. Take these few names I've listed and go from there. Find your own favorites. Let your ears be your guide.

Improvisation Lesson 1: Elements of Rhythm

Improve your Improv

When it comes to improvisation, before you assume the playing position, I believe there is one rule you have to adopt to be successful: Let go. Don't worry about playing the right notes 100% of the time. As you go along and as these blog posts will demonstrate, the concept of a "wrong" note is inaccurate. There is no such thing as a wrong note, but there is such a thing as a wrong line. Before we get to that, let's start with the most basic component of improvisation.

With improv, the most critical element is rhythm. Having a wealth of fresh rhythmic ideas is more important than how many scales you know. Anyone can craft an interesting solo using only a handful of pitches as long as their rhythmic diversity is vast. How do you get this diversity? What we have to do is first breakdown rhythm. There are 5 different ways to create rhythmic diversity. They are:

1. Duration
   
2. Silence
   
3. Volume
   
4. Texture
   
5. Accents

I'll spend a few seconds explaining each quickly.

Duration - This basically means using combinations of various sound durations; half notes mixed with quarter notes and eighth notes.

Silence - Don't feel like you have to use every bit of solo space. Give your brain and the listener's ear short breaks throughout your solo with silences.

Volume - Surprise your listener with a phrase consisting of whispers of notes.

These last two elements can be grouped as "Articulation," however, one deals with the beginning of the note while the other focuses on the end of the note.

Texture - Create diversity by mixing notes that blend with notes that are separated with minute spaces.

Accents - Give extra emphasis to the beginning of certain notes and see how much a difference it makes in your playing.

Well, that's about it. All of these ideas I've gotten from a book entitled The Improvised Melodic Line by Michael Longo. Future posts will be a mixture of my own ideas as well as concepts from Longo's book. If you have questions or would like to comment, please feel free.