Free Jazz Education and Music
Lessons
Broken arpeggios are one great way to integrate some larger intervalic material into your improvisation while still outlining the chords that you are playing over. This simple ii-7b5, V7#5, i-6/9 melody utilizes broken arpeggios and underlying step-wise voice leading. By
Working feel of 8th notes seems like an ever ending process of refinement and over the years I’ve found an interesting and pretty fun way to work on it. By isolating and looping some of my favorite examples of 8th
Here’s a Triadic Blues etude I wrote a while back for one of my favorite trumpet players Josh Welchez. It is comprised of all major triads either ascending or descending by half steps. The pdfs below will outline the specific
I’ve done 2 posts on long tones in the past (long tone 1, long tone 2) and thought it might be fun to encourage a 30 day, “long tone” challenge. The long tone method outlined below is easy and a
This is the final part of a 3 part lesson series dealing with using Cycle Wheels to deconstruct any 7 note scale. The 3 cycles will allow you to explore every ascending and descending interval from any scale. Check out Lesson
This is part 2 of a 3 part lesson series dealing with using Cycle Wheels to deconstruct any type of 7 note scale. The 3 Cycles Wheels will allow you to explore every ascending and descending interval within an octave
This is the 1st of a 3 part lesson on using what I like to call a Cycle Wheel to deconstruct a scale. I first wrote about Cycle Wheels in the “Modern Jazz Vocabulary Vol.1” book on Harmonic Major. I’ve
This lesson is similar to a study in triad pairs, however, in this melodic example, one of the 3 note cells is a sus (1,4,5) instead of a straight triad.For an in depth look at a similar approach I highly
Sometimes I find it helpful to spend time working on the modes and 7 main chords in just one key. This helps to strengthen my understanding and visualization of those keys that I end up playing less often. This lesson
This lesson features several etudes I’ve written over standard chord changes. Back in the 80’swhile doing an undergraduate degree at Indiana University, David Baker would make us write out solos over tunes we were learning. I still use this method
Here’s an easy way to begin to introduce some wider intervals into your improvisation while still maintaining melodic and harmonic integrity. This exercise uses a dominant 7th chord, and also includes it’s upperstructure tensions (9, #11, and 13). The melody
In this lesson we look at a short melody derived from the (classical) augmented scale ( 1, b3, 3, 5, b6, 7, 1 ) and play it in triplets grouped in 7. The melody could work in several harmonic contexts but we’ll
