Monday, July 31, 2017

#5 - Anton Schwartz - altered harmony

Here are the Videos from Session #5 – Anton Schwartz

               
Altered Dominant Chords Presentation:     

King Dawidalle submitted this ...

Our combo ran through Perdido with the etude and people took turns soloing. We were missing our drummer and a few horns but still everyone held it down and had good timing. Then we played the F blues Dan gave us. We learned a John Coltrane blues lick that we applied to the I and IV chord of the F blues. We also did more work on the harmonic minor specifically G harmonic minor and figured out how we can apply the notes in the scale when we see a minor second chord. 

Marina Albero submitted this ...

Well, it's been two weeks where the attendance hasn't been regularly completed so we spent our sessions getting to learn more about chord changes and practicing several scales and patterns that help in that process. 
Lauren played awesome bass for the first time in our combo!
The tunes are getting much more solid and the solos are really improving so I feel we are ready to polishing them up and offering a good performance on Wednesday.
We also keep looking for the melodic line while improvising and getting the most we can out of a single idea that develops throughout the whole solo.
Girls, you make me feel really proud of your work! Now, just play and enjoy your music! 

Dylan Allrud-Faltisco submitted this ...

The Real McCoy Combo 
7/25 rehearsal led by Dan Chappelle with Dylan Allrud-Faltisco

I took the the horns aside to tighten up those hits and the rest of our backgrounds that we have on Listen Here and Work Song.
The horns and rhythm section worked in separate rooms for a portion of the rehearsal to work on staying in the pocket with everyone else in each section, the ran through heads all together.
Dan and I unpacked some blues licks and introduced some of the endless permutations that we can make out of scales like the blues scale, and in any key of course.
We tried shorter amounts of time for soloists than we usually have in the past, making everyone consolidate more of those ideas they’ve been exploring for the last few weeks.


Cannonball Adderley - Work Song (original 1960 release)

Eddie Harris - Listen Here (original 1967 release)

Max Bennett submitted this ...
The Joe Henderson Combo worked on both of our tunes. For Night and Day there are some chord changes that McCoy plays that are a little different. For the other tune we tried to implement some more of the altered/ melodic minor ideas in our solos. 

Ken Weller submitted this ....

We had an absence of  our regular bassist and drummer so we had a special appearance by the Man On The Street himself, keeping time on drums. 

Little Sunflower. We ironed out some technical details on this piece, we are now starting the tune with an 8 bar vamp by the rhythm section before the head comes in. It will end with a continuous vamp fade out until the rhythm section decides that they are done.

Four. We didn't really do much new on this, the only "new" thing is the ending. After the second to last note (concert Bb), the drummer is given 6.5 beats to fill, with a sustained last note on the & of 2. If this is confusing, we will run it in rehearsal Tuesday

The important subject of this week is the importance of having your own voice and understanding improvisation.  Acting like improvisation and conversation are the same thing is really what I use to not be afraid on-stage any more. It's not that every note has to be exactly right, but it absolutely has to be said with a feeling and a meaning behind it. When improvising, pretend you're talking to a friend (even better, find a friend and jam with them). You will soon find that improvisation comes as naturally as conversation.



Thursday, July 20, 2017

Jazz Colony #4 - Marina Albero

Another great Jazz Colony ... thanks to all who help make this a meaningful experience. Here are some summaries of the events that transpired. Marina Albero's session was well received and groups are improving.

Marina Albero Session 4 – Song – Marina, Michael Glynn and Dan Greenblatt --https://youtu.be/rRMh9C6-ONo

Marina Presentation Session 4 – Part 1  and Part 2    
https://youtu.be/jOsUlJeHcNQ       https://youtu.be/aN0YcIb5n_E

Kyle Gaul - Greenblatt Perdido Combo ....

We played the Blues Étude to remind ourselves that we all have to learn it better, paying special attention to the triplet phrases. We then looked at the head for Cattin' and tried transposing parts of the head, in order to absorb them into our vocabulary. Lines of melody are useful information and may be used in improvisation to fuel ideas. We then worked on Perdido, similarly dissecting the melody and using it as fodder for other ideas to be used in soloing. We reviewed more C Harmonic minor licks to play over the "turnaround to 2" in Perdido. We practiced each taking a chorus and placing the new licks exactly on that measure. The Perdido Étude is coming along as well. Make sure to FIND and LISTEN to these tunes (YouTube is a great resource). Find a recording you like and STEAL from it! Everyone is improving so let's keep the fire a'blaze into our gig on the 2nd and melt some faces!


Ken Weller's summary of Paul Gabrielson's Get Out of Town Combo

We played through our tunes, Four and Little Sunflower to further cement them in our heads. E.J and Mr. Gabrielson came up with an ending for performance. We play the ending up to the last note and then give the drummer a bar and some beats of a drum solo and come in with the final note on the & of 2. If this is confusing, We'll work on it next week. 

I encourage all students to, when practicing improvisation or exercises, to play with a sense of conviction and confidence. It's easy to say, but improvising is a lot less scary when you play with a sense of purpose. This purpose is like what we've been talking about in sessions. The idea of improvising being like a conversation is one that I feel makes it easier to not be afraid of improvisation.

Joel Steinke summary of The Little Sunflower Combo 
We refined our charts and continued to explore soloing on both tunes. We added an intro to Jared's arrangement, finalized our key changes for solos
and ran the chart four or so times. Lead sheets were handed out for Natalie's contrafact; everyone will learn this for next week with trombone playing the written original contrafact, and trumpet and sax
playing the harmony. Drums is practicing the time change of the quarter note triplet.


Max Bennett provided this for The Joe Henderson Combo 
We only had two folks in attendance last time. However, we had the good fortune of having two guests with us on guitar and bass - Jack Roben and Jackson Mindt. We worked on Night and Day, the solo section to Professor Dissendadt, and a blues. We talked a lot about "contrast" in our solos. For the soloist themselves, this contrast can be achieved by varying the dynamics within a phrase or a line - horn players can do this much easier than the bass or piano. Furthermore, we talked about contrast in the rhythm section. There are lots of ways to switch things up: starting more "open", being more "busy", being loud or soft, doing different hits, changing "feels". 


Jack Hillman submitted this ...

Trombone Sectional:
Along with the usual warm up routines, this lesson was focused on how to practice and really learn scales. This included playing scales in multiple octaves, learning scales fluidly both down and up, step-wise patterns, and intervallic patterns. We also talked about the importance of learning the corresponding chords to scales, and patterns to better learn those.

Barbados Combo:
The group received an arrangement of Saint Thomas and began improvising over the chord changes. Strategies that were discussed were focusing on the home key of the song, which can roughly be used as a baseline to improvise over the whole tune. The group also solidified the melody on Walkin', and continued to practice using the F minor blues scale to solo over the tune. Finally, the group discussed ways to keep the form while soloing, which included going through the melody in your head and listening to the rhythm section to hear the changes.

Mason Fagan submitted this ....

Jory Tindall's - Barbados Combo
We worked on phrasing and rhythm. We did an exercise where we limited our solos to one or two rhythms, and used that to show the students how they can show their creativity in their solos. We then discussed how we could develop this creativity by making up rhythms of our own to play off of. The students showed immediate improvement!


The Real McCoy Combo with Michael Glynn - 7/18 (summary by Dylan Allrud-Faltisco)


Our set for the first show: Work Song and Listen Here

Michael brought in his arrangements of Work SongListen Here, and All the Things You Are, and he brought up some concepts for students to focus on when building a musically and melodically meaningful solo. We gave each student time to explore solo building with these concepts…

Keeping your solo simple at the start. Playing short and spaced out phrases. Work Song is a great example of this sort of build,because of its sparser call-and-response melody. Each phrase is catchy and “responds” to the previous phrase in the head. You can add more to each phrase going forward to build a more complex solo while keeping it more diverse than a bunch of fast lines. Simple phrases with rhythmic conviction and musicality are powerful. If you need inspiration the start off your solo, try sampling the melody. 


  • Cannonball Adderley - Work Song (original 1960 release)


Saturday, July 15, 2017

#3 - July 11 - Nathan Eklund


EWHS Jazz Colony - featuring Nathan Eklund


https://vimeo.com/225639901
A bit of Green Dolphin Street ....

Lecture ....
https://youtu.be/sSeiGHzgdJQ


Check out 88.5 this Sunday at 2 PM to hear a special broadcast featuring Marina Albero!

Ken Weller provided this summary ....

7/11 Jazz Colony Combo Session 

We started with playing Misty. Mr. Gabrielson had an idea to change the bridge section to sound more hip.
He changed the bridge to the following 

|Bb- Bb-Maj7Bb-7  Bb-6AbMaj7AbMaj7|

|A-7      D7      C-7    F7     |G7   C7  F-7 Bb7|

The emphasis here was on the second half of the bridge, the constant V-I progression of the root movement makes it sound more interesting.

Next we played Little Sunflower by Freddie Hubbard 

We finished off with playing Four again. We were encouraged to listen to many different versions of this song to get ideas and to absorb some meaningful tidbits from them. 










"Tough Tenors" summary by Marina Albero

We kept working on the blues now more focused on the chord changes instead of just the blues scale.
Also worked on playing without the music charts specially for blues solos. Many times we keep staring at it just as an involuntary act of  dependence instead of feeling the form and listening to the music created at the moment. Here is the original version of it! I find specially interesting Curtis Fuller's solo (trombone) as he sets a simple idea for one whole chorus just with a few notes of the blues scale, but all solos are great examples on how to use both resources!  We plan on finishing the tune next session:


On my original song "42 y 19" we are getting more fluent on minor modes and started to take a look at the B section where there's a few chromatic II-V's to explore. We just had time to analyze them and also learn how to pick a mixolydian scale that fits our needs (natural? b9? b9 and b13?). We also could relate those scales to the minor modes we've been practicing.
Patterns suggested for practicing chord changes were: 1,2,3,5/1,3,5,7 upwards and downwards. For the dominants (7 chords) I suggested to practice 1,3,5,7,9 or 1,3,5,7,b9 depending on what choice we make.


Marina Albero

"Night and Day" - summary by Max Bennett

The Joe Henderson combo worked on Professor Dissendadt for the majority of the session. We worked on being able to sing the bass line - dragging on the fourth bar is a tendency to keep in mind. We also played the bass line together. 
For most of the time however, we worked on the solo section. We talked about using the melodic minor scales as a resource for the dominant chords. We also talked about trying to mix up the solo sections for each soloist and each chorus. Distinguishing your solo from the one previous is a good thing to do. Mr. B also brought in an arrangement he did of Night and Day. 
The gig is only about two weeks away!

"Barbados" Combo summary Jack Hillman

Trombone Sectional:
In the trombone sectional, we first talked about warm ups again including long tones, false pedals, and lip slurs. For the lip slurs, we focused on improving speed rather than range. Then, we worked on sight reading, and what to look for before one sight reads a piece. Finally, we talked and went through methods of practicing a piece after sight reading it.

Combo: 
The combo continued to rehearse the Miles Davis tune Walkin'.  We talked more about using the minor blues scale again, as well as talked about how to trade fours. The group listened to the tune multiple times to try to pick out the articulation and style of the the song from the recording. Next, we learned the head to Sonny Rollins' Saint Thomas, and talked about the calypso style of the tune. We also listened to the solos to learn about Sonny's use of thematic development and repetition. Finally the students were tasked with searching for a third tune they might want to play.

King Dawidalle provided this ....

Our combo is making progress on the tune Perdido. We revisited Dan's etude he made for it and incorporated it into the tune. Everyone took turns soloing. Dan also had everyone do an exercise where each horn held out a note that represented a chord. The two we did were Bbmaj7 and Fmaj7. Then Dan passed out an etude for the F blues he created and we sight read that. Finally, everyone took turns soloing over the blues and we ended the session. 

This from Joel Steinke ...
Our (Little sunflower) combo is working on refining the two arrangements of Blue Bossa and Groovin' High. Jared is going to write out harmonies for the horn players and Natalie is going to finish the last four bars of her contrafact. The rhythm section is going to practice the switch in Natalie's contrafact from med swing to swing off the quarter note triplet. Everyone needs to memorize the changes to both tunes for next weeks combo practice! 

Friday, July 7, 2017

#2 - July 5 - 2017 - Jory Tindall

Here are the combo updates ... thanks to all contributors.


Michael Glynn offered this summary of his group ....

This week we played a Bb blues (Easin' It), Work Song, St. Thomas, and Listen Here.  We talked about picking a couple of tunes that everyone will be able to play on, but will also be interesting for the more advanced players.  We discussed finding a couple of contrasting songs to provide variety for the band and for the audience.
I would like the students to listen to the following YouTube tracks to get an idea of how the original versions of some of the tunes we discussed sound, and to move towards finalizing our song picks.
Eddie Harris - Listen Here - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CsHtO_i4qzM
Cannonball Adderley - Work Song - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xCqRYneOdIM
Sonny Rollins - St. Thomas - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UA2XIWZxMKM
Miles Davis - Eight One - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wUAkWhr_8EM
We took turns soloing over the blues and tried using the blues scale. 

Blues Scale:
1 b3 4 #4 5 b7 1
in G: G Bb C C# D F G 

We also started to learn the concept of connecting 3rds and 7ths when going from chord to chord. 

The 3rd of one chord is usually a half step or whole step away from the 7th of the next chord. 

Example,

  • First four bars of a G blues are G7 C7 G7 G7
  • B and F are the 3rd and 7th of G7, E and Bb are the 3rd and 7th of the C7
  • The B in G7 connects to the Bb in C7 and then goes back to the B in G7
  • The F in G7 connects to the E in C7 and then goes back to the F in G7

19 y 42 (Tune 2):

We started working on an arrangement of this tune where some people started playing harmonized parts of the melody. 

Assignment:
  • Work on memorizing the harmonized part or normal melody for 19 y 42 (Tune 2)
  • Practice the 3 minor scales (natural, harmonic, and melodic) in multiple keys.
  • Work on connecting the 3rds and 7ths of chords in a blues. (You can find blues backing tracks on youtube or download the irealb app on a phone)
FODDER FOR THE FIRE ENTRY 2:
Kyle Gaul's summary of Perdido Combo
We started our session by reading an arrangement of Perdido--which sounded great! Work at home with your metronome so that the parts all line up together well at the next rehearsal. In addition to the arrangement, work on the Perdido Etude lovingly composed by Dan. It read nicely, but continue practicing the lines slowly to achieve fluidity and poise. Everyone improvised on the Perdido changes using the "turn back to two" technique with the harmonic minor scale on the Dominant b9 chords (7 b9). We then read Cattin' (F blues) and learned the Minor Blues scale (1, b3, 4, b5, 5, 7), and the Major Blues scale (1, 2, b3, 3, 5, 6). Practice playing the Major Blues scale over the I chord, and the Minor Blues on all the others. Near the end, Dan handed out a Blues Étude in Bb. Though our Blues is not in Bb, see if you can apply the patterns in F. Looking forward to next week--keep the flame a'flicker in the meantime!

Here's what I remember doing on July 5--  

First I ran the saxophones through my "workout," trying to make sure they understand:
  1. Why each of the exercises is important, both to their development as saxophonists and to their development as improvisers.
  2. How each exercise can be adapted, tweaked, expanded beyond what's written on the page.  This is especially important in a big, varied group like that where some are at a pretty elementary level and others are more advanced and may look at what's on the page as "too easy."  If it's "too easy," then here are some suggestions of how to make it challenging.
I tried to keep a balance between actually doing the workout (i. e., horn on face) and explaining the whys and hows (horn in lap while Greenblatt blathers).   The goal of the Colony is catching fire as improvisers, and improvisers are by definition composers--they've got to get in the habit of using their heads/ears to create the music they play.  If it's just playing written saxophone exercises it doesn't contribute much to improvisational skill.  So I gotta talk them through the exercises and get them figuring out what to play next rather than just reading it.  My hope is that as the weeks go by I can do less and less talking.


Combo rehearsal.  I think our two tunes will be Perdido and Cattin', which is an F Blues head by Mal Waldron.  If we get those together then I'll add either a contrafact I wrote on Blue Bossa changes or some other accessible Latin groove tune, maybe Samba de Orfeu.  So we just did normal rehearsal on the two main tunes.  I wrote a somewhat tricky arrangement for Perdido, on which we made progress, but it still needs work.  And everyone got to solo on it.  Basically same thing with Cattin,' which we just played the head and soloed.  I'll add to that arrangement next week.

That's about it.

DG

Night and Day Combo summary by Max Bennett

The Joe Henderson group worked on Night and Day. We realized that in order to play it at the tempo of the recording, we need to play it slower at first and work up to the fast tempo. Bar 9-12 are especially hard, so it's helpful to take it slow and work on good voice leading and playing melodic lines over it. The rhythm section should avoid letting the tune slow down. 

Secondly, we worked on Nathan Eklunds tune. This will be our primary focus next time as he will be with us. Please listen to the recording and make sure the melody is solid. Start looking at the changes next. 

The option to bring in tunes is still available... 

Ken Weller's summary of the Green Room Combo

Our session for July 5th started with a short discussion about pieces to focus on and play for the summer. We started with playing Four by Miles Davis.

We're quite comfortable on this song and it's likely to be in our repertoire.
We then proceeded to play through three other songs including:


The assignment that was given for this week was on Four, to pick and transcribe a 4 bar lick from any of the soloists and be able to play it for the rest of the combo.

Required for the assignment:
Tempo
Personnel (players only, not audio engineers etc)
Album
4 bar lick



Jack Hillman wrote this ...

Trombone Sectional:
First, we talked about the importance of long tones. The focus was keeping a full tone consistently through all partials on the instrument. Second, we talked about false pedals. I first explained the concept of false pedals, and then explained how they can be used to open up the lower register and help cultivate a more open tone in general. Then, we talked about lip slurs. The focuses were keeping  a good tone through all registers of the horn, as well as gradual increases of speed. Then, we talked about the circle of fifths and how it can be used as a tool to practice major scales. Finally, we talked about ii-V-I patterns and the importance of learning things in all 12 keys.

Combo:
Our combo chose to play the tune Walkin' by Miles Davis. We talked about different improvisation techniques, including using the melody, using the minor blues scale, using space, and repetition. The group listened to the recording multiple times in order to learn the melody as well as listen to Miles' intentional use of space. We also focused on using repetition within solos, and how a single simple idea can be stretched and shaped into an entire solo. Sonny Rollins' solo on Saint Thomas was used as an example of this technique. 


Tim Volpicella wrote this ...

I was very impressed with Natalie's (Groovin High) and Jared’s (Blue Bossa) ideas for arrangements.
We talked about arranging and played through some improvisation ideas. Damn they're very talented.
Looking forward for the actual band to get together. 

This from Mason Fagan .... Barbados Combo

On Wednesday, we discussed repetition in improvisation, the concept of quoting, and how to feel the groove of a tune. We used simple tunes like St. Thomas and billies bounce to get the idea across. We focused on making the students comfortable with their instruments in order to make it easier for them to have inspiration.

Here are the links to the youtube for Jory’s group playing and his presentation for you to put on the Blog.



And, here is a link to my dropbox for photos of the Jory stuff also…..:    https://www.dropbox.com/sh/h8ligsl72e6g4ot/AAAEM40yVNc-y8P-q4UuRPj7a?dl=0