Jazz Colony #4 - Nathan Eklund

7-21-2016

Another great session!  #4 is done!

Here are the videos and photographs from JC 2016 Session #4:

1.  Nathan Ecklund Song -Session 4 with Shawn Schlogel; Anton Schwartz, Alex Dyring and Max Bennett

                Footprints - Wayne Shorter:               https://youtu.be/nJnFEUq9DXU

2.  Nathan Ecklund - Clinic    https://youtu.be/Aj8NUzCO_4I

3.  (75 photos to choose from -- Nathan Ecklund doing the song and the lecture)

https://www.dropbox.com/sh/9neccq5ds39ram6/AACMzV1EUNw87riqF2q957tPa?dl=0

4.  Misc. Videos of other groups in JC 2016 Session 4:   (Playlist of 7 snipets...)

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLa4d8AMES-LNM247ds1ZXzAfoWd0f-e7_

Here's Nathan Eklund's handout regarding rhythm/time-feel

Motian Sickness combo:

Three different arrangements were brought in this week (Naima, There will never be another you, and Hot house). Thank you for bringing in these charts. We played through them a few times and worked on style and rhythm of the melodies. We listened to some of the recordings as well. We spent a lot of time on switching between 3 and 4 for Another You and transitioning from the solos to the head. I think everyone in the combo will be gone to Centrum except for Lauren. 

Homework for August 2nd

1. Work on your respective arrangement thinking about orchestrating it for 3 saxophones (or not), as well as fixing some of the rhythmic and form issues and bring in a revised copy 

2. Be ready to run through the tunes as the gig is on August 3rd.

Thanks, 

Max

Carnival Combo

Ear training: distinguishing chord qualities

• Major
• Minor
• Dim
• Aug

Arpeggiation of chords in Autumn Leaves

1 3 5 7 9 

Memorization concepts:

Sing the melody before you play it on your instrument 

Practiced singing the melody without looking at music

Then went back to playing the melody to playing with a more singing style

Andrew talked about interpreting the melody (not reading the notes literally)

Improvising with the melody by changing the phrasing/rhythm, adding passing notes, or fills.  

Talked about really learning a song by listening to recordings to develop how the tune is interpreted in addition to what is 

notated on a lead sheet.

We worked on Andrew’s arrangement of Autumn Leaves.  

We applied the arpeggiation of 1 3 5 7 9 over each of the chords in Autumn Leaves.

We also practice improvising over the changes to Autumn leaves in 16 bar chunks.

____________________________

High Life Combo

This week the Highlife Combo focused all of our efforts making the tunes that we've been focusing on as good as we can improvisation-wise. Those tunes include Autumn Leaves, One By One, and Blues By Five.

Specifically, we revisited the similarities in chords and chord-scales/chord tones between One By One and Autumn Leaves. Our homework from last week was to be able to arpeggiate the chords for the second four bars of Autumn Leaves. We then used the structures that we established with the arpeggios to find common tones between chords, and find the "good" notes to play.

The second half of the rehearsal time we spent mainly focusing on One By One, playing the chart together as a band, and soloing over the chord changes. There are some very specific strategies that we covered to make the chord changes less daunting, including repeating notes and repeating phrases, playing common tones between chords, etc. One By One seems daunting because there's a lot of chords, meaning the harmonic motion is relatively fast compared to the other tunes we've been rehearsing. We've been taking the necessary steps to simplify the improvisation process and make it easier.

Jory

Straight Life Combo

This week we solidified our set list for Aug. 3! Our tunes are:

• Autumn Leaves (throwing around ideas of alternate changes, attached are the "new" chords in Bb, not C, to be clear)
• Invitation
• Blue Monk

We decided to not to go with All the Things You Are, because we felt that it was too similar to Autumn Leaves, and wanted to add more variety. We are also cutting Lady Bird, to try to simplify the set a little. Invitation is largely as written, with a short 8 bar drum intro, and a tag on the end. For Blue Monk, we're going to have one player start with the melody by themselves, fairly rubato and then work up to the tempo by the end of the first time through the head. Then the rest of the group will join for the second time through the head, and then solos! It's fairly simple to put together, and shouldn't take more than one rehearsal!

Full House Combo

Continued the work on Mamacita by Joe Henderson

Nathan and Anton had great ideas on how to approach this when practicing.