The over riding theme of this class, and perhaps my life in music is
"Simple, but not easy."
To that, I for one would add
"Complicated to explain."
When it comes to Jazz technique / fundamentals, there are thousands upon thousands of explanations of the same concept on our beloved Internet.
There are also many musicians, playing all kinds of instruments, giving away that information for free.
Recently I took a Skype lesson with a saxophone player named Quamon Fowler, who clearly has a LOT going on
In our lesson, after listening to me fumble around, he re-iterated the contents of this video
Then he asked "what have you transcribed?"
to which I meekly replied "um, uh...."
At this point, he played Trane's Slo Blues along with the CD, note for note, perfectly, adding "yeah, I learned this one when I was a kid"
Then, from that, he extracted a ii - V - I progression for me to learn in all keys...with ARTICULATION! Swing the 8th notes!
Guess what? None of us come from the womb being able to swing our 8th notes. It takes practice.
Practice. Practice. Practice.
And so, in sum, as our togetherness is coming to an end, know that the truth is out there. If you have a question, ask our best friend Google. You will get plenty of answers.
When learning a song or "tune", learning (and singing) the lyrics has been suggested as the first step by many.
Summertime
[Verse 1]
Summertime
And the livin' is easy
Fish are jumpin'
And the cotton is high
[Verse 2]
Oh, your daddy's rich
And your ma is good lookin'
So hush, little baby
Don't you cry
[Refrain]
One of these mornings
You're going to rise up singing
Then you'll spread your wings
And you'll take the sky
But 'til that morning
There's a'nothing can harm you
With daddy and mammy standing by
[Instrumental Bridge]
[Refrain]
One of these mornings
You're going to rise up singing
Then you'll spread your wings
And you'll take the sky
But 'til that morning
There's a'nothing can harm you
With daddy and mammy standing by
If you look to the right of the screen, you will see various version of Summertime. Listen to them all.
What were your top two favorites? Which one did you like the least?
Next, let's listen to the "backing track" -- the "rhythm section" alone, so YOU can practice the "changes."
Looking at Summertime, we see many of the same minor chords, namely Dmin7, Gmin7 and the occasional Emin7b5.
Recall that the Dorian minor chord is spelled 1 2 b3 4 5 6 b7. The chord tones are 1 b3 5 b7. In the case of a min7b5 chord, the chord tones are 1 b3 b5 b7, and the scale is the Locrian minor scale.
There is a "trick" for playing the rather complex Locrian scale. In the case of Emin7b5, you play an F Major scale, starting on E, that is E F G A Bb C D E.
[we know an E Major scale is spelled E F# G# A B C# D# E. Given these two chords, can you figure out the numerical "spelling" of the E Locrian chord? I start for you: 1, b2, ...... ]
We also see some old familiar Dominant 7th chords, as well as some Major chords. This is quite a departure from our most basic blues, which was all dominant 7th chords.
So what to do?
1. learn the melody...transposing if necessary.
2. Learn the chords
1. play the arpeggios of each chord, to the 7th, up and down
3. Incorporate past material
This of course is a work in progress...this blog, your relationship with this particular song and set of chord changes and your overall musicianship. All of which will change significantly in the remaining few weeks.
