Free Jazz Education and Music
When I lived in New York City, I had the transformative experience of taking lessons with Lee Konitz. In his remarkable Central Park apartment, which had a grand piano in every room, he guided me through exercises that left a
This is part 3 in my video series on Countdown. In this lesson on Countdown we’ll continue looking at ways of thinking about, conceptualizing and improvising over Countdown. This method uses minor triads over each chord of the progression. On
The b9 is not commonly over a Major 7 chord. This melody is one a wrote to help me incorporate it’s use into my melodic improvisation. In this context it functions as a passing tone between the root and the
Pentatonic scales are amazing 5 note sets that are comprised of stacked perfect 5th or stacked perfect 4ths. They can be used in a variety of harmonic contexts. Keep in mind that the Major pentatonic and the (relative) minor pentatonic
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
As a creative educator in improvisor, I often enjoy working on Cycle 4 and Cycle 5 melodies. This Etude is a vertical melody over the Giant Steps progression (John Coltrane). Each melody starts on the root of the chord and
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
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
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
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
Yesterday I wrote a short 3 chord tune by writing the melody first using a minor pentatonic scale. Many great songs use a pentatonic scale (or relative minor pentatonic) as a theoretical basis for all or part of the melody.
Here’s a simple progression with a chromatic melody. It’s in the key of G starting and targets iii minor (maj7) and I using substitute secondary dominants. I became interested writing really short form tunes by both Monk (Light Blue) and
