Jazz Colony: July 23 - many jazzers have gone fishin'

Here's a list of practice ideas to help get you "on board" with our fishing excursion. Check this "catch record" each week and see if you can build up some tally marks for progress. There will be a new color of tally each week.

listen intently to music and block out distractions
play one simple melody or "cell" in all 12 keys
attend a jam like Sea Jazz (Wednesdays at the Port) and/or Common Tones (Fridays at Main Street Commons)
memorize a jazz standard (melody, harmony, lyrics, quintessential recording and historical background)
practice with a specific goal - consider journaling your progress?
work with a tuner patiently and learn your instruments' pitch tendencies
reach out to another player to collaborate or just make practice more fun
work on your music theory understanding? www.musictheory.net
watched a youtube lesson then practiced the concept you learned so you can own it
work on your piano/keyboard skills
free play (no rules) - spontaneous composition
play along with the radio (spotify/youtube etc)
compose a CONTRAFACT and learn to play it well - contrafact is a new melody over already existing chord changes
work out a good bass line and learn to play it on your horn and/or keys and/or bass
transcribe! choose something you like and learn it patiently by ear (try youtube slower by clicking on the gear wheel and adjusting the playback speed)

It's Jazz Camp Week so many folks are gone. Mr. B went to Port Townsend on Thursday as a working vacation with his wife Christina. He really enjoyed some of the 2024 Centrum Jazz Camp presentations. Many highlights from Free Friday. Sad to see John Clayton go as artistic Director but excited to announce Dawn Clement is picking up the torch. Would love to see more EW students take on the challenge of attending. Way to go LEO! Ask him about his experience?

Dawn Clement may be back to EW in October for a masterclass.... stay tuned.

Here's a cool session I attended by Ben Wendel of the KneeBody band. He uses a looping pedal and some special affects to create some amazing art. This one song is 15 minutes long but pretty special too. Check it out?

https://youtu.be/jugkk538NI0?si=_z83RkOjnz0J8eAu

Ben also plays bassoon! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ben_Wendel

Back in Edmonds, here is a report about how it went on Tuesday, July 23.

Today we merged the “Body and Sole” combo with the “Dolphin Dance” combo due to many players missing, and we had a great session together.

We started with an exercise where we limited ourselves to only use the first 6 notes of a minor scale when improvising, teaching us the endless amount of harmonic possibilities within these 6 notes. The goal for the horn players is to know how to move between minor triads and how to resolve them appropriately. The goal for the rhythm section players is to enhance their listening, make sure they are entirely focused on the soloists phrasing, which could mean when they are ending a phrase, how many notes they’re playing, dynamic contrast, you have to take it all into consideration. We then took this and applied it on an Eb minor blues, can you sound good on a blues with only 6 notes? Yes, you can probably sound good with just 1.

Here are some nuggets that are good takeaways from the lesson:
- Make sure that you are connected emotionally to the notes you’re playing.
- Thinking is death! Try your best to not think too technically while you’re playing.
- Legend bass player Reggie Workman once said as a rhythm section player you have to “stir the pot of soup like a witch or goblin.”
- If you don’t have a strong opinion on what the notes role is, you shouldn’t play it at all. Where does the note want to go? Where does it land? Does it resolve? Think about tension and release.
- Focus on practicing slow, wise person practices slow, wiser person practices slower.

~Max Bartron

This from Mr. Andrew Fox:

We had a small crew today, so we combined with Brandt’s group and worked on a combination of tunes from each combo.

We started with learning the melody to “Wave”, a Boss Nova by Jobim. The melody is challenging, land the chord progression complex, like a lot of the mid-century Bossa nova tunes. We noted that the bridge is made up of a set of two minor scales parallel to each other. After learning the melody and running through it a few times, we had the rhythm section vamp over the intro to the tune, and collectively improvised over it. The vamp is I-IV, I-IV, etc. A minor scale in the key of the piece fits well over this progression. The major 6 can sound hip if it’s not emphasized too much.

After a break we created a riff tune over a Bb blues. Remember, a riff tune is one made up of a combination of short, repeating ideas. We repeated some riffs and then spontaneously created some new ones, both together and as backgrounds to solos. Afterwards we discussed some of the characteristic phrase structures of the blues, namely that melodies tend to avoid the flat 7 of the first chord until the 4 bar, where it connects smoothly to the 3rd of the following chord.

In Bb

Chord: | Bb | Bb | Bb | Bb7 | Eb7

Example of a spontaneous riff tune: the Wailing Interval with Paul Gonsalves and Duke Ellington

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3-BEoONYX5k

A Basie riff tune: Texas Shuffle. Notice that the “melody” is really a trumpet solo over a sax riff

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9IMrGR0iwR4  Another classic riff tune: Jumpin at the Woodside

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eLFj-J54l3g

Wave original recording 1967

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a6KDpB6skA4

Stan Getz performing the same tune in Copenhagen

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

Gradus ad Parnassum, phase 1 Goal -> Blues in all 12 keys