3-ish “Baobab”
3-ish is a trio comprised of Jason Harnell on drums, Ryan McGillicuddy on Bass and Matt Otto on tenor sax. All 3 of us write for the group and have played a lot together over the last 5 years. This
Innocent When You Dream
This is an instrumental recording of Tom Waits tunes with some wonderful players. Aaron Shragge on trumpet and Shakuhachi, Brandon Bernstein on guitar, Jason Harnell drums, Ryan McGillicuddy Bass and Matt Otto on tenor sax. Each of us arranged a
Lesson 29: Maj #5 #9 #11
This is a melody taken from the harmonic major scale. The b6 mode of harmonic major outlines a major 7 chord with a #5, a #9 and a #11. The melodic line starts with a simple “shell voicing” (the root,
Book ~ Modern Jazz Vocab. Vol.1
I finally finished my first book on jazz improvisation. After years of practice journals and outlines for the ultimate jazz tome, I finally realized that I’m not Mick Goodrick or Hal Crook (no matter how much I practice) and in
Lesson 28: My Shining Hour
This is a short etude I wrote over the chord changes to My Shining Hour in concert C. The etude utilizes a lot of modern-ish concepts in terms of rhythmic groupings and harmonic/triadic substitutions. You’ll find several uses of #9
Lesson 27: 4ths-Maj7
This is a simple introduction to using perfect fourths over a Major 7 (#11) sound. By stacking four perfect fourths off of the 7th degree, the 6th degree, the #11 degree and the 3rd degree of the Lydian scale (Maj
Lesson 25: 13 #11 Displaced
This is a simple dominant 13 (#11) melody played around the circle of fourths starting with concert C13(#11). This melody could also work over the related ii chord (G-7 for C13#11) in spite of the presence of the natural 7 (the
Lesson 26: Relative Pitch
This is a very effective relative pitch ear-training exercise that I came up with several years ago and have been doing fairly regularly with fantastic results. The idea is simple and can work in a variety of ways. First
Lesson 23: Harmonic Maj
This is exercise works as a supplement to my book “Jazz Vocabulary Vol. 1 Harmonic Major” or on its own. There are three mp3s for this scale practice below, one at 40bpm, one at 80 bpm and one at 160bpm.
Lesson 22: ii – V – I Chromatic
In lesson 20 and 21 we worked on using chromatics as melodic material over specific harmony. Continuing along these lines, this exercise is another ii-7 – V7- Imaj7 using the chromatic scale. The melody ascends from the minor 3rd
Lesson 21: V7 Chromatic
Although we all practice chromatic scales over the years, sometimes it’s challenging to actually use them as convincing melodies while improvising. One thing I’ve noticed is that every other note of a chromatic scale creates a whole tone scale, and
Lesson 20: V7 to i using -3rds
Here’s a short melody I worked out using minor 3rds descending by half steps. It works well as a V7 to i minor cadence and after the descending minor 3rd passage I added a short 5 note minor melody to
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