"This I Dig Combo" - Bergevin, Alex W, Andrew Fox with Mike Perez
Everyone was here today! Hooray!
Thanks for hanging out with us Mike and Max Bartron! Happy birthday, Jon!
Warmed up on Joe Avery and encouraged dancing to help discover the soul of the music. Stick it in the pocket - All Night Long! Mike gave us a new summary of the pocket related to groove and locking in. Remember that while playing bebop licks is good, something simple is often more convincing and soulful. Jam on a single note!
Brief reminder that Dig should be on our radar, but if it's too difficult we will stick with Sweet Georgia Brown. Mr. B showed us a recording with a mean trumpet solo by Terrell Stafford at Centrum
Learn the melody! Practice licks that work over 2-5-1's as well as the bebop scale.
On This I Dig of You, we worked on finding something to confidently play over the break, going around in a circle one at a time with a sendoff to solo. Jon played a little drums and the rhythm section worked on locking in. Use the recording as a place to steal solo material!
Several students demonstrated good progress on their own. Nice work Addisyn and Oren!
Check out different recordings of every song, not just the "assigned" or "default" recording that we are learning from.
Ended with a little straight, no chaser to practice soloing over the blues. Make sure that when you solo by yourself (or even play the head by yourself) you are in time and sound good. That being said, everyone has bad solos, use each moment of shame and guilt as motivation to get better, not to beat yourself up.
Homework: practice this I dig breaks, bebop scale improvisation, nail down the melodies you don't know, spend some time on Dig? Use a metronome or backing track!
Bonus: learn how to play changes on piano, it will make you a better improviser.
***** Alex W (with Mr. B)
Little Sunflower Combo - Eisenmenger/Salas
This week we did a deep dive on the minor pentatonic scale and learned the tune “Trane’s Slo Blues.” We then spent a lot of time focusing on learning the modes of the major scale. We learned the names of the different modes, how they sound, how to play them, and how to use them in our playing.
Something new we did this week was having a “meditative” time where each person would have some time to noodle around and get familiar with each relevant mode to Little Sunflower, being D Dorian, Eb Lydian, and D Lydian. We then had another kind of this period but we added the drums to add a sense of tempo/time. The remainder of our time was spent playing over Little Sunflower.
Honeysuckle Rose Combo - Steinke/Schatz
Our Royal Garden Blues is really coming along now. We have now learned the entire arrangement, our focus now for RGB is on soloing in Bb and transcribing a few more phrases of solos. Thanks to Stefan for bringing in his transcribed phrase of Sweets Edison. I look forward to hearing everyone’s transcribed phrase next week! If you have been absent, please make sure you can play the arrangement from the recording linked in the previous week’s blog from front to back. After our rhythm section left, us horns and guitar worked on voice leading on the blues, playing our own baselines using non-diatonic chromatic leading tones, like natural 7 and b9 to lead us to b7 or 1, respectively. If you want more detail on the concepts we discussed for your own voice-leading practice, please email me.
Here is the plan for our second tune if Green Chimneys doesn’t work out. Seems like more were interested in this McCoy Tyner tune Three Flowers. This will require some homework to pull off! I will need to leave rehearsal next week after the first hour, at which point you all will lead it and run reps on whatever you decide needs some love.
Thanks - Joel
You are my Sunshine combo summary - Bennett
The students that were there got a ton of playing in. Since some students did not write a Blue Bossa Contrafact we went ahead and voted on the ones that we had. We choose to play Cassie's tune (with a few edits) and use a portion of Mabel's tune as the intro (Mr. B may include it here on the blog?). It sounds great and I'm proud of what we have collectively accomplished. I think we might call it "Bloom Bossa (for a family member)". If you have yet to write a Contrafact, I would love to hear it next time. It would be an extremely informative learning experience; I regret not doing enough composition when I was in high school. The more you do, the better you get at it.
We also worked on Sandu. A few students transcribed the first few phrases of Cliffords second chorus (and a few did the first few phrases of the first chorus, although that is not required since it's a bit faster). We played about a thousand choruses of the blues and worked on a variety of things: 1) Getting familiar with the chord changes (you can't play those concert Gbs on bar 5 and 6, sorry y'all). 2) Using the last phrase of someone's solo to begin your own. 3) trying out some creative limitations to stretch our create abilities (ie. play a solo using only quarter notes, play a solo using only two notes, play a solo with a range of a perfect fifth, etc.). We will have a chance to talk and work on these things next time for the people that missed.
Homework: Compose Blue Bossa contrafact if you haven't already. Keep working on transcribing Cliffords second chorus of his solo (you can also do the first chorus is you want). Keep working on playing the chord tones on Sandu, and blue bossa. Work especially on measures 9-12 on Blue Bossa (ii-V in Db eeek). Develop your own creative limits in your solos. It's really fun.
-Max (Mr. Bennett)
Hothouse Combo - Glynn/Kimani
Today we talked about bebop. Gillian and Olivia were attending. We reviewed the songs Honeysuckle Rose by Fats Waller. We practiced improvising over the chords with it mostly being made of 2-5-1’s. We arpeggiated the chord changes 1,3,5,7. And we played with a lot of air and a big sound. We worked on playing with emotion and feeling and trying to translate that to the audience.
In bebop high notes get accented in the phrase. Some notes get “ghosted” and not played full volume or basically swallowed. One person to listen to for examples of this is sax player Yusef Lateef. We then talked about playing rhythmically like a drummer when playing. You should imagine you are a snare drum. Rhythm is king. When we played fried bananas we looked for notes to ghost, and not play full volume. Listen to Dexter gordon for examples of this.
Then we talked about enclosures and approach tones. You always approach a notes below from a half step down. And approach a note above from a diatonic pitch in the scale. So on a c major triad you would play the notes b d c then eb f e. Then f# a g.
You can also switch the order and do dcbc then f e eb e then a g f# g.
Over a d minor 7 chord you would have e d c# d. Then g f e f. Then b a ab a. Then D c b c.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DwESkieP8OA
This helpful short video explains it all. As bonus challenge come back next session with a bebop line using a combination of enclosures, approach notes, and scales. Happy practicing! - Talli
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