Etudes are a great way to work on new material, vocabulary, phrasing and a whole host of positive musical skills. Here’s a one chorus etude I wrote for Bari player Andrea Edwards who is earning her Bachler’s in jazz at KU. She can actually play the etude faster than I can but here’s my version of the chorus at 220 bpm. There are several cliché ideas as well as scale concepts (diminished, harmonic minor, altered) and triad pairs, spread triads, pentatonics, sequences and some harmonic substitutions.
There is a pdf is below along with the video of me playing it and several play alongs you can use to sing the etude and get it into your ear. I spent many hours working on the etude but wrote it in real time during our lessons. Each week we added another 8 bars or so.
~ Enjoy!
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Here’s a video with and explanation:
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Here’s the video of me playing the Etude with no explanation:
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Here are several mp3s to sing and/or play along with. These are midi mp3s but I find them fine for ear training.
