Captain's Log - Day 5

Check out these links from Pete, the man on the street, containing Anton's video lecture and some  great dropbox materials!
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLa4d8AMES-LNsOCtSks7ibnlYVxa81NLl
https://www.dropbox.com/sh/9wgup3a3xv6v6fo/AABaXipFpvooYJr_lmPhZm4ea?dl=0

Max - The St. Thomas group had a slim turnout for this session, but I think we all still improved. Once again we worked on playing the chord tones on the changes (1235, 1357, 1213, etc). You could challenge yourself even more with big intervals, such as playing 173. This time we spent a majority of our time on You'd be so Nice. In the last 8 bars of the tune the correct chords should be C#diminished then Dmin then F# dim and Gmin. We sung the lyrics of the song a few times together and did some scatting. We did the same on Have you Met. Keep working on different exercises with the chord tones and keep listening to the recordings of the tunes. 

Rimmy - This week Tim was out again and we continued working on Fiera Livre. However, this time we spent more time working on improvising with the horn players by having them simulate a piano riff. This allowed for the horn players to identify pitches that sound good over the changes as well as what the changes actually are. To finish up this weeks session we did a read through of another latin chart that was handed out by Mr. Bergevin entitled On the Trail.

Cedar - This week Tim was out and we had a sub instructor. We continued work on the song Fiera Livre and talked about the background of the song. We also discussed methods of practicing improvisation both instrument specific and general exercises. Practice Fiera Livre as well as the other tunes we didn’t get to for next week. 

Kyle - Though we missed our fearless leader, we played through Sunny Side of the Street, and a bit of Driftin'. We also discussed the circle of 4ths and practiced playing a 1,2,3(M/m),5 pattern though all the keys.  

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Captain's Log - day 4

Milo Petersen presented on Harmonic Major and it's uses .... 

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLa4d8AMES-LNwf_ewTGreMWjYsCzyw-j1

Here are the worksheets that Milo is referring to during his talk.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0BzoGR9KaGamTdk9UZk9BM2hGZGZMdjExSlBuc3NwN0JTWFJV/view?usp=sharing


Max - The St. Thomas group spent our time working on feeling the beat in our feet. We set the metronome on 2 and 4 and did some exercises feeling where each beat goes. I encourage you to practice this way. Instead of putting on play-a-long tracks, try just setting your metronome to 2 and 4, or 1 and 3, or just one beat. It will help your time tremendously. Keep working on the melody and changes to You'd be so nice. 


Cedar - This week Tim was out and we had a sub instructor. We continued work on the song Fiera Livre and talked about the background of the song. We also discussed methods of practicing improvisation both instrument specific and general exercises. Practice Fiera Livre as well as the other tunes we didn’t get to for next week. 


Joel - The little boat combo was without Mr. Gabrielson and several horn and rhythm section players. To best use our time we split for the majority of the rehearsal. Horns worked in-depth developing our theory and harmony. Understanding which parent modes certain bebop scales come from and additionally what new modes we can discover from these bebop scales. Their practice and application were discussed in great detail. For the horn players and anyone interested who missed this week, there will be a copy of the work we did. The Rhythm section workout was lead by Brandt. They learned a new groove for our straight 8th's section of In Walked Bud, general improvements to the quarter note 'feel' and why the quarter note is so important, and various bass grooves were discussed. See Brandt for further information regarding what was accomplished. Next week we hope to have everyone present. 

Emma - This week, we spent most of the rehearsal time on the Horace Silver tune Silver’s Serenade. We talked a lot about how to approach the harmonic structure of the tune, since the A section consists of alternating minor 7 chords that first move up by a tritone and then down by a half step. The B section is more “straight-ahead”-feeling, with a more standard bebop harmonic structure and rhythmic hits. We played through the tune several times, with everybody taking a few choruses of solos. Michael then suggested that we vamp on each chord of the tune until he tells us to move to the next one, with everyone openly soloing over the chord, allowing us to really explore the notes available within that chord for soloing. It connected back to Milo’s lecture from the beginning of the night; how important it is to familiarize yourself with the scales and harmonic opportunities within each chord of a tune. Everyone seemed to enjoy the tune and the challenges it presented for us.
We also read through the Joe Henderson tune Recorda-me, at the request of one of the combo students. We talked about how Recorda-me is structurally similar to Silver’s Serenade, in that it has an A section with minor 7 chords that move into a more straight-ahead B section with bebop changes and hits. The B section of Recorda-me is different, however, because of the chromatically descending 2-5-1s. Michael talked about how great it can be to prepare ideas for an improvised solo. He mentioned how he noticed that the great bassist Oscar Pettiford played very similar ideas on the same solo for the same tune for many years. Michael emphasized that there is nothing wrong with borrowing or “stealing” ideas from the jazz greats who have come before us. There are no new ideas, especially under the “straight-ahead” pillar of the jazz pantheon, and what we can try to do is borrow from the greats and ultimately just try to sound good. We ended the rehearsal by running through our tune On the Sunny Side of the Street, playing through it at a faster tempo than usual. We didn’t establish concrete goals for next week, since many Colony students will be gone at Centrum. We should continue to bring tunes we’d like to play for the final concert as we continue to develop our set list.

Jazz Colony Session # 3 -- Presenter Tim Carey.

Song:  Contrafact (Bergevin arranged) -- Played by Jake Bergevin, Tim Carey, Milo Petersen and Emma Howeiler.

Click to link to You Tube link:

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLa4d8AMES-LMmUD4BIoE8QeWC-6IAlC5Q


Enjoy.   See you Tuesday night!

Man on the Street.



Also:

Also, to get you going, see one of my favorites:

Chris Potter playing with Snarky Puppy -- Crazy session and song

Click below to see the you tube video
Chris Potter and Snarky Puppy Song

Captain's (rehearsal) Log, Day 3

Ahoy! Our ship survived the first three weeks at sea... Great start! The saxes raised an eye-patch, or two, with their unorthodox tones during homogeneous instrumental workshops last week.

Cedar: Today we began the rehearsal discussing the value of understanding what makes something “jazz” by analyzing pop covers by jazz musicians which have been 'jazzified' (Dirty Loops, Jacob Collier). We talked about how aspects such as interactivity between musicians, re-harmonization and unusual melody phrasing set these versions of popular songs apart from the original music. The tune to practice this week is "Feira Livre" by Jovino Santos Neto (whose band Tim Carey played in). This tune introduced us to a Brazilian rhythmic feel called Baião. We used the tune as a vehicle for improvisation by isolating chord changes and pivoting between them. Shed this tune this week if you’re in this ensemble! 
Feira Livre - Jovino Santos Neto

Max: The St. Thomas Combo started off the session with a discussion about some theory concepts.

1. We discussed the nomenclature for different tones in the scale. For example, in a C major scale, I is the "tonic", iii is the "mediant", V is the "dominant", etc. 

2. We also discussed "Backdoor ii-V-I's". These are an alternative way to get to the I, or the tonic chord. One way to think about them is that they are bIV-bvii-I (minor four to flat 7 to one). They borrow from the scale a minor third above the tonic. Composer's and improvisers use these all the time in tunes. For example, you find this in the third bar of Lady Bird, or in the third bar of Just Friends, or riddled in the music of Stevie Wonder.

3. Lastly, we talked about "enclosures" (or the principal tone system"). These are a part of the bebop sound and there are many many different types of enclosures. One fairly simple version is playing the scale tone above a chord tone, playing the half step below the chord tone, and finally landing on the chord tone. Approaching the tonic in C major would be D, B, C. Approaching the third would be F, Eb, E. 

4. For the playing portion of the night, we really stressed the importance of playing the "good notes in the chord" or the "playing the notes that change". We also played a number of patterns on the changes of Airegin. We played 135, 1357, 1235. You should really work on these for next time and challenge yourself. Hopefully this will help you get a better feel for the changes. 

Kyle: The Driftin' Combo started by playing the head to "On the Sunny Side of the Street." Everyone was playing the melody well, but we discussed listening the recording for articulations and inflections. After each improvising on a chorus of the tune we stopped to discuss the harmony of the classic standard. Michael offered a couple different techniques for combining theory and melody, the first was looking for the pitches that change between chords and using their motion to guide a melodic idea. The second technique was looking for the notes that stay the same (though their function in each chord may change). We also practiced identifying key centers within the harmony, to improvise with. Writing out the pitches of each chord of a tune in closed position is a good exercise to help visualize how a pitch moves through the harmony. 

Next we worked on Driftin'. Again the head is sounding great, time to hone it into what we like off the recording! On this tune we discussed using the Blues scale to help fit the idiom of the original recording. After a brief discussion regarding the social implications of dramatically overusing the blues scale we practiced using blues concepts and theory concepts to construct solos. 

We finished by playing the head to "Drfitwood," then enjoyed a great snack. 

Captain's (rehearsal) Log, day 2

Emma- Driftin’ Combo
We began the rehearsal by performing the minor blues tune we collectively composed together last week, titled Driftwood, for our combo leader and clinician Michael Kelly. We practiced playing through the head a few times, and as a group brainstormed how we could make the tune sound more “spooky”, cohesive, and creative. We tossed around the idea adding a bridge for the tune that used dissonant long tones played by all the horns. A combo member suggested playing a tune completely different in mood and tone from the spooky minor blues, like the great standard On the Sunny Side of the Street. We jammed on that tune for a while, sounding out the melody as a group as we did not have a chart for it. Everyone in the group seemed really excited to include this tune as part of the set for the final concert. We agreed that our arrangement will be heavily informed by the Dizzy Gillespie recording from the album Sonny Side Up (1957), in which the melody is notably altered. We played through the tune a few times, with everyone taking solos. During the last portion of the night, we thought that since our combo is called the Driftin’ Combo, we should at least consider playing the tune Driftin’ by Herbie Hancock, from his album Takin’ Off (1962).. None of us fully remembered the melody or the changes, so we listened to the recording to refresh our memories. We talked about how, harmonically, the A sections generally maintain an Eb minor bluesy sound, even though the changes move around a bit. We proceeded to play through the tune a few times, with everyone taking solos. We agreed to, between now and the next rehearsal, consider creative arrangements for all three of our tunes so far. We also should brainstorm a fourth tune for our set, which could be something more open in structure or something that markedly contrasts to the other more straight ahead-style tunes we established.

Rimmy - We read through an arrangement of Summertime and played the appropriate arpeggios with the chord changes. An exercise that was used in order to help you keep track of where you were in the tune was playing the root and the third on beats one and two of each bar and if there was more than one chord in the bar, the root and the third of the second change would occupy beats three and four. After this, we moved on to an arrangement of How High the Moon and rehearsed the horn and rhythm section parts first separately, then together. We utilized the backgrounds of the tune to help the soloist keep track of where they were throughout their solo.

Joel - The Little Boat combo had our first rehearsal with Mr. Paul Gabrielson. The charts we will prepare going forward are Stolen Moments and In Walked Bud. We listened as a group to the original monk recording of In Walked Bud. The rest of combo time

Was spent rehearsing these two arrangements.

Homework is as follows:

Horns are to learn their parts for both arrangements. Extra time should be spent on the changes of these tunes.

Rhythm is to spend time playing along with both original recordings (Benny Golson for Stolen Moments, Monk for In Walked Bud). Drummer and bassist are to continue to develop a solid

Quarter note feel.

Piano should shed the alternate minor blues changes in bar 9 and 10 of Stolen Moments. General improvements of Voicings on In Walked Bud (dig what Monk plays please).

Interns Joel and Brandt will each flesh out arrangements of one chart for future weeks.

Jack - Today we worked on a Dank Moblat arrangement of Little Boat. The class first played the chart and then  learned about the Dorian mode. We started with D Dorian and worked on numerous patterns. Finally, the class worked on Bluesville and focused on soloing over a 12 bar Bb blues. We also talked about New Orleans and what "walking" means to jazz. Notable names mentioned include Hank Mobley, Wynton Kelly, Wayne Shorter, Paul Chambers, and Randy Weston.