In my last post (You Can Constructively Ignore Harmony) I talked about simplifying harmony by removing unnecessary chords. Often people use pentatonic scales to reduce the complexity of a scale. The removal of notes from a scale makes a stronger, more defined sound. In this post I'll talk about simplifying approaches to dominant chords by thinking … Continue reading A Simplified Approach To Soloing On 7b9
Category: music
You Can Constructively Ignore Harmony
Following on from yesterday's post Too Much Harmony?, a good approach to learning to solo on a standard would be to have in your mind a version for soloing that weeds out as many chords as possible, leaving only the most important. So taking the first 8 bars of I Thought About You as an … Continue reading You Can Constructively Ignore Harmony
Listen to music that you don’t understand
Play any popular number on a gig and you'll get applause as soon as the audience recognises it. Some artists thrive on this, notably James Taylor, who has sung the same old stuff for 45 years and still smiles and makes it fresh. People respond to memories evoked by the music rather than the music in … Continue reading Listen to music that you don’t understand
Play it by ear
Studying jazz is hard. We all know that. Sometimes we make it harder for ourselves than it needs to be. I see a lot of horn players struggling with chord symbols and trying to generate some kind of line that matches them. I suspect that in some cases the learning style is not matched to … Continue reading Play it by ear
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