Cycle – Kansas City Trio
Here’s a pdf and video of a contrafact I wrote over the Sam Rivers tune “Cyclic Episode”. I love working on improvising over this progression because it uses all 12 minor 7th chords; making it a lot of fun to
Ear Training Series (Major Modes).
Passive Ear Training: A New Approach to Mastering the Modes of the Major Scale. Buy Here I’m excited to share a new ear training series I’ve developed with saxophonist Xose Miguelez. We’ve created something that I think will really help
New CD recording – Kansas City Trio
This recent CD is my first standards album. As jazz musicians we arguably spend most of our time improvising over the jazz cannon; old show tunes and jazz pieces written by our mentors and heroes. This album is a collection
Mousai – Live Recording
Here’s a short tune of mine I recorded on Aug 3rd 2022. It based on an augmented major 7 melody. I wrote the melody from those four notes and harmonized it afterwards. Jeff Harshbarger plays bass and John Kizilarmut plays
Lesson 144: Barry Harris – Chromatic Chord Scales
Several of my students have been asking about various Barry Harris approaches to playing changes and creating strong melodic lines with chromatic notes (non-scale degrees and non-chord tones). Although I love Barry Harris as a playing and improvisor I never
Visa – Charlie Parker
Here’s a brief look at another great Charlie Parker tune based on the Blues. I learned this out of the Omni Book when I was young and it turns out that a lot of the notes on the melody are
Soul Eyes – Mal Waldron
My friend Richard Giddens came out to KC for some gigs and recording summer of 2022. Here’s a take of Soul Eyes by Mal Waldon we did with Doug Auwarter on drums. Doug is an amazing drummer steeped in the
Wanjiku – Live recording June 2022
I wrote this song in 2001. Wanjiku was inspired by the book Pedals of Blood, recommended to me by my step-father Bruce Baron, who studied with the author while doing his undergraduate degree in education. I recorded the song in
Lesson 143: The Sus Chord – G7sus4
In the video below, I explain a few ways to conceptualize the Sus chord. Sus is short for suspension – in church music, the “ah” in “Amen” – is an example of a simple 4 to 3 “suspension” sound; the
Lesson 142: Dominant Shell add #11
The 4 note structure or tetrad made up of 1, 3, #11 and b7 is a very useful note set for voicings and improvising over all sorts of dominant 7th chords. These 4 notes are common tones from both lydian
Lesson 141: Major #9 Melody
This is a short melodic phrase that I wrote that includes use of the #9 on a major chord. I often think of this sound coming from the 6th mode of harmonic minor which works nicely over a major 7
Lesson 140: Cycle 4 Melody – Altered
In this live discussion I outline the entire process I go through when I work on a new idea. In this case, I have written a short 7 note melody which comes from the Altered scale (also called diminished-whole-tone or
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