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.