Wednesday, July 19, 2023

Session 2 - July 18, 2023 - Flourish

Here is this week's recap:
 
Schatz/Steinke - A103
HONEYSUCKLE ROSE COMBO

For our second meeting, we familiarized ourselves with the recording of 
Royal Garden Blues which we plan to lift (transcribe). The particular recording 
is linked here: 
 

Important note for those who were not present for this week’s meeting, we have 
learned the arrangement up to the 1:18 mark, so please come to week 3 with 
this much already memorized, in addition to this week's assignments. The 
tune is actually a blues in two different keys, F and Bb, and at 1:18 the 
band switches to playing a Bb blues.
 

There are four assignments for next week’s meeting. First, practice the melody 
up to the key change to Bb (1:18). Second, learn one of the two melody lines that are 
played when the band plays in Bb (1:18 onwards to the blowing sections). Saxophones, 
please learn Johnny Hodges’ melody, brass players, please learn 
Harry “Sweets” Edison’s, harmony players, please choose one of your liking. 
Thirdly, transcribe one phrase from any one solo from the recording. If you 
are feeling ambitious, transcribe more! We will share our transcribed phrases next 
week and try to incorporate them into our arrangement. 
Lastly, please continue to practice the week one blues exercises in our soloing key of Bb. 
 

As we look forward to learning our second tune, please feel free to start listening to it! 
 

As always please reach out to me at joelsteinke@comcast.net with any questions. 
Happy practicing!
 
Thanks,
 
Joel

This I Dig of You 7/18 - Bergevin, Andrew Fox, Alex Weber, (with Goeff Cooke and Mike Perez)



We finished by taking a break and improvising over the F blues! Learn “Straight, No Chaser?” The heart of the music lies within repetition of riffs. You don’t need to play something complicated and impressive to make it feel good. 


To work on at home: Improvise over Bb and F blues. Focus on the time/groove! Don’t be afraid of repeating simple phrases. Learn Sweet Georgia Brown and This I Dig of You heads (and maybe Straight, No Chaser?) Focus on the tricky parts first, slow down YouTube recordings and play along, one small section at a time. 


Bonus homework: diatonic patterns in Bb concert (like repeating triads up and down the scale: 1,3,5 - 2,4,6 - 3-5-7, etc


Here’s some youtube recordings: 


Dig with Miles and Bird 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cUcj_vPwkEI


Here’s Bird, Dizzy, and Lester Young playing Sweet Georgie Brown. Stride piano followed by bebop saxophone, what a contrast!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XSZNlfISNvU


For even worse recording quality, here’s Cab Calloway singing it in 1931. Notice how he abandons the melody and sings like a trumpet player might play it. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HGGeuiw1QPc


And Monk’s recording of Straight, No Chaser. You can hear Monk humming along with his own playing. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uJs2eCqhTN0


(Fox and Weber)

HOT HOUSE COMBO - A111 Glynn/Kimani

First the combo got set up to work on Cedar Blues by Cedar Walton. We talked about embracing the dissonant harmony of cedar blues in which the horns are voiced in three part harmony. Then we talked about playing loud solos, especially the saxophones Olivia and Ian. This is to show confidence the saxophones are to use lots of breath support and loosen up the embouchure so that the reed vibrates in order to get a bigger sound. Furthermore their posture must be straight and they shouldn't slouch.


Then Forest talked about self love when practicing and how we shouldn’t beat ourselves up when we don’t feel like practicing as we can’t be perfect all the time we are not robots. I talked about discipline vs passion. This is important as you need both discipline and passion to succeed in playing music. You must have a deep love for jazz music, practicing, and playing with other musicians. But this is not enough as you must have discipline for practicing. This is because even if you love something you're realistically not going to want to do it every day. You must practice your instrument everyday for even a short amount like 30 minutes and you will improve so much. So it takes both passion and discipline to succeed. You won’t get far if you like jazz and music but aren’t disciplined to practice. You also won’t get far if you have great discipline to practice but you don’t even like playing music or jazz. 


For our next song lotus blossom we talked about changing the melody up rhythmically and playing the exact melody of the page. We talked about bringing out the volume of the highest note of the song and phrasing the melody like a singer. WE also talked about Johnny Hodges and his use of bends and wide vibrato which can be heard on I got it bad.Duke Ellington & Johnny Hodges "I Got it Bad" (1958)  


For improvisation on lotus blossom we talked about using chord tones of each chord which is the 1, 3, 5, 7, and 9 of each chord. So for a C-7 chord the chord tones would be c, eb, g, bb, and d. We discussed playing along to recordings to work on improving sound and improvisation. Finally we analyzed the harmony and its use of 2 5 1. (Talli Kimani)


BLUME BLOSSOM (Bennett/Tran - Stage)

This week was also a little loose since a couple people were gone and its only the second week. However, almost everyone did their homework and came up with a melody over “Blue Bossa” changes. We listened to each of us perform our pieces, and I personally think everyone did a great job. All of them were unique and most of them followed the changes pretty well. Someone said they tried to use repetition more so it sounds more like a recurring melody instead of a improv solo, and I think thats a great method to write music. 

We went over “Take the A-Train” again, this time learning the changes by number. We also played the changes by their roots, thirds, triads, and sevenths chords. We understood Minor7, Major7, Major6, and Major Dominant chords. We made sure to understand what it means to play a flat 5th, sharp 5th, and the 6th of a chord. We then took turns soloing over the tune, with the non-soloists playing chord tones for a chorus. Everyone had great ears and played well.

We went over “Sandu”, an Eb blues, while trying to to do the same thing again. Since most of us were familiar with this tune, we played through it pretty easily and everyone sounded great. 

For homework, we decided that everyone go home and learn their major and minor scales in every way possible (thirds, triads, sevenths, going down, etc) and do any revisions with their Blue Bossa melody if they want to. We decided that we will finally share and decide on a melody once we get everyone in our group to show up. 

Here are links to each tune:


Little Sunflower Combo - Now known as the Groove Gardeners. Eisenmenger/Salas A202

  • Played sonnymoon for two again
  • Learned about altering one phrase to fit the changes
  • Looked at little sunflower (learned the tune, looked at the changes)
  • Learned what the modes are, looked at the D Dorian scale. 
  • Learned how to derive modes from the Ionian mode
  • Talked about little sunflower’s irregular form (AABBAA)
  • Played more blues
  • Discussed the difference between modal tunes and more “traditional/bebop” tunes. (Specifically referring to the changes and how fast/slow they come)
Homework:

Find a bossa nova or other you enjoy - Liam Salas
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