Lesson 69: A Major
Sometimes working on just one key for a while can be beneficial. Today I practiced a bit on concert A major – on tenor sax this is B major, which does not lay well on the horn for me, mainly
Free Jazz Education and Music
Sometimes working on just one key for a while can be beneficial. Today I practiced a bit on concert A major – on tenor sax this is B major, which does not lay well on the horn for me, mainly
In this lesson we’ll look at the first ii – V7 – I melody found in the “Modern Jazz Vocabulary vol. 2” book. This melody is comprised of major 1st inversion triads descending by half steps and a few chromatic
I had the honor of doing a masterclass at Casa Valdez Studios while in Portland earlier this month. We talked a lot about singing over droneswhile visualizing the related fingerings on your instrument. Using this method to learn to hear
This is a nice triadic idea that works through a dimished scale. By simply playing 2nd inversion major triads down by minor thirds you get a nice melodic line that clearly outlines the 4 major triads found in diminshed harmony.
Scales have been a popular thing to practice in both the jazz and classical world for years. Playing through scales as been compared to a painter mixing paints from the primary colors. Scale practice can help you hear subtleties in
In this lesson we look at embellishing a triad with specific upper and lower neighbor-tones. The bulk of the exercise will focus on a major triad with surrounding embellishment from the major scale although the concept can be applied to
Finding melodies on a single note instrument that really bring out the sound of more complex types of harmony is often a challenge. Here’s a Major 7 #5 melody I found the other day while doing some slow improvisation. It’s
The sus4 chord can be found in most genres of music; blues, jazz, rock, classical, folk, hip hop, etc. In a normal C7 chord, the 4 notes are C (the root), E (the major 3rd), G (the 5th), Bb (the
When starting out as an improviser, the half diminished 7th chord is often a difficult chord to hear and play over melodically. Even after working on it for years the half diminished chord can still be more challenging to sing
I always liked the introduction to the Dizzy Gillespie tune Bebop. A close friend and wonderful alto player Gabe Eaton and I learned this tune back in the early 90’s and played it frequently while living in Japan with our
Bird may be my all time favorite melodic improvisor. His sound, feel and ideas still seem fresh and alive and I enjoy him more and more the older I get. I’m always shocked when I put on a side I’ve
Here’s an intervallic diminished sequence that I wrote while in Leipzig on a short avant-garde tour in the late 90’s. We had many long days of doing nothing before the sound check and gig so I composed this short melody