Road Trip - #4 - July 28

Mr. Bergevin welcomed the group and briefly discussed the benefit of the Jamie Aebersold approach of the 1970s for working on Jazz Improv.  Last week each ensemble received a book to work out of. 

Mr. B talked about this document (Link below) and how each of the coaches might have interesting thoughts on how to re-order this list based on it's importance.

Take a look and make up your own mind?

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1XbSO0oXC_vTItQ1d_L8sbBhvohRMZ__P/view?usp=sharing

 

Wednesday "Sea Jazz" at the Port with Olivia, Evan, Chichi, Violet (Mr. B) and Allison

Milestones Combo

Today we began with a few scales and a Bb blues to warm up. We played "Impressions", focusing on keeping the form. We did an exercise where we all trade 16s, with no piano or bass. The goal of this was to try to always keep our place in the form.   

In the small group with just Bryan and Isaiah, we worked on a few different techniques to memorize honeysuckle rose with Isaiah on piano. Isaiah, learn to play the harmony of Honeysuckle Rose on piano. Begin with the roots of the chords. Once that becomes easy, add the third, and then the seventh. Bryan, learn to walk a bass line on the changes- learn a few different common bass line shapes like 1235. Homework for this week is to learn Impressions, M.E., and Honeysuckle rose. Also, keep reviewing your minor 6 pentatonic, as well as major and minor blues scales. Isaiah, listen to Elvin Jones and play along. Focus on the Elvin Jones style bass drum comping.

- Leo Nakamura

Route 66 Combo

Today was a rather short one, Mr. Bennett was not with us today, so I started the session out.

We started with some friendly competition, a rhythmic dictation game. I had members of the group go up to the board and I’d clap a rhythm, then they’d have to write it out. If you’re interested in studying music, this is just a glimpse of what music school is like. I remember being totally overwhelmed going into my first ear training class, but with consistent practice, you will get much better.

As we finished the game Mr. B joined us and we started to dive into the blues in Eb. Chi chi was not too familiar with the blues in this key, so we did a little bit of group transcription of the bass line on Clifford Browns “Sandu”. The important notes are 1, 3, 5, 7, the chord tones. Don’t forget chromatic movement too! It’s very common to have a half step motion between chord changes.

Before we jammed, I thought it would be important to briefly go over the Soloing sheet by Jamey Aebersold. All of these concepts are important, and the order of importance is interchangeable depending on where you are with your improvising, but the one we should be thinking about the most at this point is number 3, using repetition and sequence. These themes are natural, and found in all styles of music. Repetition glues your solo together, if you repeat and build on an idea, you give room for your bandmates to be creative and communicate, and the average listener will surely remember your solo.

~Max Bartron

Night Train Combo - 

We have now settled in with our two Horace Silver tunes, Silver’s Serenade and Peace. We also looked at Scrapple From the Apple. We spent the majority of our time running the tunes, becoming familiar with them, trying to listen across the band as we played. Homework is to spend some time with the recordings, perhaps also some other band’s interpretations of them, too. Keep working on the chords and the 2 5s in Peace in particular; it seems to be our weakest link. Next week we will begin working on our horn soli line for Silver’s serenade. Boris will work up a solo intro around the melody for Peace between now and our concert. Happy practicing!

 

 -Joel Steinke