August 18 - Let's Go

We nearing the end of this year’s Jazz Colony, and what a journey it’s been. 

Over the past couple weeks, we’ve continued working on M.E. (Mister Elvin) by Elvin Jones and spent more time understanding the 2-5-1 chord progression. We also kept practicing the scales we’ve learned so far, including major and minor blues, bebop, Mixolydian, and major and minor pentatonic scales.

For homework, we listened to M.E. and Impressions while focusing on different musical elements like tone, phrasing, rhythm, and the different players. 

Talli put a big emphasis on creating motifs during our solos, and also working enclosures into our playing to instill more of that Bebop style that we are trying to replicate. 

Journey’s not over, let’s keep working! - Don Tran

We are missing a lot of people today! Only our pianist and drummer are here, but we make do with what we have. 

With the performance just about two weeks away we need to make sure that we can play through all of our songs in entirety, meaning we know the entire song. It’s hard to do all of this with the missing folk, but we did what we can. We’re focusing mostly on solos and not getting lost, Allison was playing a lot of chords in her left hand during her solo, and it was causing her to get lost and lose the clarity of her solo. We stopped and reinforced the idea of how rhythmic clarity comes first in improvisation, take away your left hand, and just try to play melodies and more rhythmic ideas in your right hand.

This same thing applies to drumming, if your ideas are too complex without enough rhythmic clarity then it will be harder for your band to count. Your job is to make it easier for everyone else, rhythm comes first!

Drum notes

• treat every part of the song differently, intro, melody, different solos, ending.
• Focus on comping specifically at the end of phrases. Jazz phrasing is commonly in groups of bars of 4 and 8. The end of those phrases is where you’re supposed to shine, when the soloist leaves space for you to set up the next phrase/chorus.

I floated and sat in with Michael Glynns group.

Don’t limit yourself to one chorus. After we played road song, we reflected on what our thoughts were while soloing and our goals for improvisation. The ideas consisted of playing within the chords, more melodic “good” sounding notes, using rhythms and motivic development, but I noticed that the students were only playing one chorus. If you are trying to experiment with different ideas, don’t limit yourself to a set number of choruses, it ruins your creativity. If you put yourself in a box by limiting yourself to a chorus or two, it forces you to think about how you’re going to structure your solo around that set time. Rather, you should just say what you have to say, no matter how long (not too long). It makes it so your ideas flow organically without the pressure of having to be done at a certain time.

~Max Bartron

Jazz Colony #5 - August 5

Things are heading in the right direction. The windshield on our road trip is getting a bit foggy. Lots of smoke this week due to Spokane area fires. 

Here's the opening concert solos :)

https://youtu.be/y5t52Pp_I4I?si=PENgNQE5i5QhtOFH

Today we really need to focus on the bridge to Stompin at the Savoy! That is where we are having the most trouble with the improvisation. 

To start, let’s loop the bridge over and over again, repetition is the mother of learning, repetition is the mother of learning. Let’s try various patterns to get familiar with the chord patterns and voice leading. Start with 1 2 3 5, a common phrase used a lot by Coltrane, then once that is comfortable you can do the normal arpeggiating of the chords, 1 3 5 7.

Now everyone simultaneously solo at once, help yourself get familiar with the shapes. The point of this isn’t to necessarily get all the cool vocabulary straight away, but to understand the foundation of soloing and build muscle memory. 

If you’re having trouble with making a memorable solo, or getting started with soloing at all, limit yourself to just 2-3 notes. It takes away the mental pressure of having to hit every chord change, and instead just focus on the clarity of your rhythmic ideas.

Drum notes

• going back to the start of colony, what are some things we need to remind ourselves? 
• Keep that left hand flat! But no resting on our lap. We want to have room for all dynamics.
• Watch your right hand on the cymbals, play in the center where you can get the most clarity.
• Another thing to think about is your bass drum. In jazz, try not to dig the beater into the bass drum head, often times jazz bass drums are resonant, so digging will eliminate that pitch and resonance. Digging is fine when playing a punk/rock kit, but consider the other when you have to consider tone of the drum.

- Max Bartron