A brief overview of what we covered:
Andrew provided a short discussion of early jazz (also called dixieland or New Orleans style jazz) and its roots and ongoing importance. In short, it’s important to know the history and origins of jazz to understand the cool things we hear later players doing. We then listened to a recording of the Preservation Hall Jazz Band playing “Joe Avery’s Blue/Second Line”.
Here’s the recording we listened to.
Here’s an additional recording that highlights the “marching band” snare
We touched on the differences in instrumentation and style from more modern jazz forms:
- addition of banjo, clarinet, and tuba/sousaphone
- collective improvisation
- individual improvisation backed up by improvised harmony
After listening to the tune we learned the melody by ear. We listened to Andrew play the melody first, then hummed along, then sang along, then started to play along. Once we had it, we played the melody as a group several times through. This pattern: listen - hum - sing - play is a good workflow for learning tunes and transcribing solos. Learning them this way with a lot of repetition leads to much deeper internalisation than reading a lead sheet ever will.
We also practiced counting off and establishing a groove. Everyone took a turn counting off the tune, followed by us playing the melody through. The count-off is an important part of establishing not only the tempo, but the mood and style of a piece.
Once we had the melody down, we tried breaking away from it a little bit into some collective improvisation. The idea was to change the melody a bit, while staying close to the notes (happily, the notes of the melody outline the chords of the blues!). Collective improvisation is useful for a few reasons:
- the emphasis on the melody engrains it in your memory, and grounds your improvisation
- no need for a rhythm section! The other horns playing create the harmonic background
After this we jumped forward about 40 years and listened to “This I Dig of You”. We took turns noting things that we really liked or noticed about the recording. Observations included:
- and the enormous buildup of energy of the break before the piano solo
- tension and release - a concept we’ll return to…
- the rhythmic freedom of both Hank Mobley’s saxophone and the rhythm section
- the intense groove of the bass when it starts walking
- the repeating pattern in the bass and piano during the latin section
- how tasty that opening line of the piano break is!
Here’s a recording of “This I Dig of You”
And the full album!
Next, we learned most of the head by ear, following the same pattern of listen - hum - sing - play. We identified a difficult section - where the melody moves up a half step before shifting back down. Planing is when a melody is played in one key, then shifted up or down and played in another key. It creates a sense of “parallelism”, as you hear the same material shifted from one key centre to another.
Finally, we spent the last 20 minutes playing Song For My Father. Takeaways included the potential difficulty of the AAB form, and the acceptability of light comping over a bass solo (especially in the upper end of the piano keyboard)
We didn’t listen to it, but here’s the recording
Bonus content: The changes to Song for My Father go: Fmin7, Eb7,Db7,C. This is an example of “harmonic” planing. Can you see why?
Assignments for next time:
- finish learning the head to “This I Dig of You” by ear
- play Bb major scale in thirds
- Fox’s bonus extra credit: play Second Line/Joe Avery in another key You Are My Sunshine Combo - Stage - Bennett/Tran
We introduced ourselves, and shared how many hours we slept the night before. It was an awkward prompt but it got us a little insight into each other’s lives.
We learned the head of Take the A-Train (in Concert C), using numbers instead of Notes for the melody. To help with improvising, we played the root, third, fifth, and seventh of each chord, hoping that this arpeggiating would translate into our solos. We also learned the intro, ending, and second melody of Take the A-Train, basically learning the whole tune.
For this years theme (Gardening), someone came up with the idea that we should go the opposite direction. We came up with “Sandu” (like the sand in a dry desert), a blues in the home key of Eb. We already knew the tune, so we ran through it nice and slow.
For a little homework, we thought each of us can go home and cook up a nice and simple melody over Blue Bossa changes for our new contrafact, “Bloom Bossa”, or how Woods Jarol would spell it “Blume Bossa”. It’s not set in stone that we would ever perform this, but it sounds like it would be fun to at least give it a try.
-Don T
Hot House Combo - Glynn/Kimani
First our combo got to know each other's names, grades, and instruments. Then Michael Glynn, our head coach, passed out the first song which was Cedars Blues, by pianist Cedar Walton. He had the horns rehearse the melody and practice playing it perfectly without messing up the complicated rhythms. Then when the horns went into harmony there were intonation issues and due to lacking a third voice in the chord, it sounded a little off. So on piano I played the chord voicings to help the horns. Michael explained that it takes a little while to get the dissonant sounds of some jazz chords into your ear. Next we went over the final 4 bars of Cedar’s Blues in which the horns are playing in 3 part triadic voicings. Mr. Glynn explained what, “ped” means, as it means pedal and it means that the bass and piano are playing the same not over and over in the same rhythm.
Then I explained to the saxophone players in the group how to play with a big sound. I explained that you have to drop your jaw and relax your bottom lip and roll it outwards in order to make sure the reed vibrates as much as possible. You also have to push your mouthpiece in as this will make your saxophone flat so to compensate. Finally you have to use a lot of air support from your diaphragm.
We then discussed improvising on the blues form. Mr. Glynn explained how to use melodic and rhythmic motifs to make the solo more interesting to listen to. We also talked about using the blues scale (1, b3, 4, b4, 5, b7) in a major key. And we talked about the major pentatonic scale, 1, 2, 3, 5, 6).
For our next song we played lotus blossom by Billy Strayhorn. This song is a bit trickier to solo on and we discussed using the chord tones of each chord to solo over it. The chord tones are the root, third, fifth, and 7th. For example the chord tones of a Bb major chord are Bb, d, f, g. We also discussed using the pentatonic scale and major scale and using melodic riffs to improvise. Mr. Glynn explained to our drummer the different drum feels for playing a waltz and where to play the hi hat (on the second beat).
Songs to listen to: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g0oLYCdoDC8
Cedar Walton Quintet - Cedar's Blues
Talli Kimani
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