Wednesday, April 23rd, 2008
Here’s the full 2-part etude based on All The Things You Are. First, the basic outline using different polyphonic patterns:
allthethings.pdf
And now with some melodic activity added:
allthethings2.pdf
And here’s a rather clumsy rendition of it:
[Audio clip: view full post to listen]
Of course, the idea is to use that as a foundation and to play around with [...]
Thursday, April 10th, 2008
I just wanted to share my approach to learning to play over changes. What has worked for me is to stick to playing the basic chord-tones: 1-3-5-7. I take whatever tune I’m working on, and improvise at a very slow tempo, only with chord tones.
The objective is to really get inside the changes, to really [...]
Sunday, March 30th, 2008
I started messing around with applying patterns to some standards. Here is one I came up with for All The Things You Are:
Because of the constant movement in fourths, it pretty easy to apply a repetitive pattern like this. Other progressions require a little more creativity.
Here’s the same pattern with some added melodic movement:
[...]
Saturday, March 29th, 2008
It’s been awhile. Because of a big move, some traveling, and intermittent internet access, I haven’t had much time to update this blog. But I’ve had quite a few ideas floating around, so things should get up to speed rather quickly.
As most of you know, one of the keys to having good technique is [...]
Thursday, February 21st, 2008
Continuing some ideas from my last post, here are some examples of combining intervals. Instead of parallel thirds, I’m alternating between thirds and sixths:
And here’s a pattern derived from that:
Now, maybe if we were looking for something a bit more modern, we could try other intervals. How about seconds and fourths?
And the [...]
Wednesday, February 20th, 2008
I’ve been leafing though a book called "Gehörbildung" by Ulrich Kaise. It’s a pretty interesting take on ear-training, though a little hard to read for me since it’s in German.
The second half of the book deals with 2 simultaneous voices, and he mentions some figures from "Dritten Theil des sich selbst informierenden Clavier-Spieler" by Michael [...]
Wednesday, January 23rd, 2008
Here’s a little 3-part arrangement of “There Will Never Be Another You.” I simply play the melody while holding a simple root-5 bass line underneath, what I talked about in this post. Then I added a guide-tone line in the middle.
Here’s the score.
This is really a starting point. I plan to add a little more [...]
Friday, December 28th, 2007
In an effort to add contrapuntal textures to my playing, I’ve been messing around with species counterpoint and trying to apply it to jazz tunes.
Here is my first attempt, a cantus firmus for the blues in Bb:
So first, I started playing it and improvising a line on top of it in first species. This proved [...]
Sunday, November 25th, 2007
Here’s a simple excercise to start applying some counterpoint to standards. I got the idea from Neil Olmstead’s book Solo Jazz Piano: The Linear Approach.
It consists of playing the melody of the tune along with a simple bass line: the root and 5th of each chord in half-notes. Simple! But it can [...]
Monday, October 29th, 2007
Lately I’ve been obsessed with counterpoint. Not just counterpoint, but the idea of improvising counterpoint. As if that weren’t enough, I want to do it on the guitar!
Now, for those who may not know, having two or more lines going at the same time can be pretty tough on this beloved instrument of [...]
