125: Blues for Alice
Two of my friends, Peter Schlamb and Matt Villinger, mentioned working on Blues for Alice by Charlie Parker during Covid. They’ve been playing it through the keys, one key per week, really trying to get it down. I thought I’d
Free Jazz Education and Music
Lessons
Two of my friends, Peter Schlamb and Matt Villinger, mentioned working on Blues for Alice by Charlie Parker during Covid. They’ve been playing it through the keys, one key per week, really trying to get it down. I thought I’d
By playing a G7 Shell (1,3,b7) and adding a triad over that basic structure, you can create a lot of harmonic voicings and melodic material.
A warm up that activates both your ear and your sound. Trying to discover smarter ways to warm up and do ear training is often on my mind when teaching. Many students spend time doing long tones but still have
I’ve been practicing a simple Major melody that uses both a diatonic enclosure of the 3rd and a descending diatonic 6th. The melody outlines the 3rd to the 5th of each of the 7 chords in the major scale. The
Harmonic Major modes over 2-5-1 in Minor. I’ve been working on using the 7 modes of Harmonic Major over various chords as alternate scale choices. The example below uses two scales over a minor 2 – 5 – 1 –
Steve Cardenas, one of my favorite guitar players, taught me how to create a 7 note diminished scale. These scales work over Dominant b9 (half/whole) type diminished as well, but we’ll look at regular Diminished 7th in this example. There
Here’s a blues etude that uses some different 4 note cells (tetrads) and various scales. By writing an etude you can learn to hear melody that specifically reflects an underlying concept and later improvise using the concept alone. The original
I always enjoy writing contra-facts over chord progressions I like to improvise on. This is an easy one that is based on the Gigi Gryce’s song Minority. Gigi writes great tunes; always melodic and fun to blow on harmonically. I
This piece is based on a re-harmonization of the chord progression to Dave Brubeck’s song, “In Your Own Sweet Way”. I added an interlude of descending Sus Chords as an alternative solo section as well as simplifying the chord changes
I composed this song in three for the recording date. The composition is two distinct melodic phrases set withing a simple harmonic progression. The solo sections are distinct and only reflect a simplified version of the harmony heard during the
Using only the 1,3,#11,7 Tetrad (or 4 note set) I’ve been using this 1, 3, #11, 7 Tetrad (4 note set) for years in both composition (voicings for big band or small group part writing) and as a group of
Using “triad pairs” has become a popular method to help generate melodic material. I first heard Oliver Nelson use triad pairs in his 1961 solo from Blues in the Abstract Truth. John Coltrane also used the concept extensively. Since that