NoJazz

Thought you might like some background. I came across this french outfit listening to internet jazz radio. Here is the Wikipeadia entry. Toe Macero produced their first album. I have one of his own albums which is great funky jazz although his reputation comes from producing Miles. Sylvain Gontard the trumpeter has amazing classical technique with a bebop language which is well matched by the sax player. I like the fact that the band uses a hip-hop style. For me this is very much modern jazz with some fabulous soloing.

Over There - Queen of Sheeba 7/11/15

A most interesting session today. I found listening to the smaller groups quite revealing. I think when we play as a full group we perhaps don’t always take as much responsibility for our own part - it’s easy to rely on our neighbours (that’s your neighbour in the class rather than your neighbour at home … ) In the small group setting everyone has to know where they are and be ready to come in with their solo or backing etc.

I thought our extended version of Queen Of Sheba was tremendous. Sadly, I didn’t record this. Top work from our rhythm section and special thanks to Beau Barnard for stepping in at short notice on the bass.

I did however record our three performances of Over There and they are now in the Dropbox. There is some lovely playing on these tracks.

Band 1 is Annie, Wook, Patrick, Stuart, Beau & Charlie

Band 2 is Ash, Kim, Jim, Mike, Beau & Charlie

Band 3 is Steve L, Steve F, Neil, Aprile, Beau & Charlie

Also, I had a go at home, doing a short solo over the iRealPro backing I sent out last time. This is attached below and is in the Dropbox. For me, the biggest challenge was the time. It was OK if I stuck to slow moving notes but playing faster often made me lose my place. I found by staying diatonic (in the major scale) most notes sounded OK but I wanted to try some different colours on the ‘tweaked’ chords. This was hard - I had several goes at it! Thanks to Steve for finding this piece.

Look forward to seeing you all on November 27th (I’ll get the new music out shortly)

Cheers Mark

Over There - Feedback

Hi Everyone,

There was some beautiful playing again today - and some exciting risk taking!

I’ve just created a couple of backing tracks for Over There  which you might find useful.

Over There (backing1) does four cycles of the regular chords and then two cycles of some ‘tweaked’ chords (see below) before finishing with two more cycles of the regular chords again, plus the backing line (featuring some dodgy singing from some bloke…) The so-called ‘tweaked’ chords feature the two variations we discussed today: adding #5 to the first chord in bar 3 and adding 13, b9 and b5 to the first chord in bar 4. I have also put in various 7ths and the occasional 9th. All of this stuff happens at different points during the Terence Blanchard recording (I haven’t just made it all up!!) 

Over There (backing2) does just four cycles of the ‘tweaked’ chords

_______________________________________________________

The ‘tweaked’ chords in concert are as follows:

|| G∆    A/C# | G∆/B    A7 | G∆#5    Em9 | A13b9b5    D/F# ||

NB  G∆#5 could be notated as B/G

A13b9b5 could be notated as Ebm/A

_______________________________________________________

The ‘tweaked’ chords in Bb are as follows:

|| A∆    B/D# | A∆/C#    B7 | A∆#5    F#m9 | B13b9b5    E/G# ||

NB  A∆#5 could be notated as C#/A

B13b9b5 could be notated as Fm/B

_______________________________________________________

The ‘tweaked’ chords in Eb are as follows:

|| E∆    F#/A# | E∆/G#    F#7 | E∆#5    C#m9 | F#13b9b5    B/D# ||

NB  E∆#5 could be notated as G#/E (or Ab/E)

F#13b9b5 could be notated as Cm/F#

Mark

Daphna Sadeh

Some more background about this interesting composer and bass player here. Check out the trombonist. Is than an Oud or a Lute?

Dates for Autumn / Winter 2015

The following are dates for the next two blocks 2015. If you are a regular already then let Steve know if you won't be coming. If you are not and want to come then contact Steve to see if there are any vacancies.

Block 1
9 Oct, 16 Oct, 23 Oct, (miss a week for school half term), 6 Nov
Block 2
27 Nov, 4 Dec, 11 Dec, 18 Dec

ROPETACKLE - block VI, week 4

In this final session we once again put our two tunes through their paces. The results have been recorded and can be found in the Dropbox.

RECORDING  Gato - Mark & Charlie

Quick demo of me practising the Gato solo sequence, stressing the root of each new scale.

RECORDING  Gato - EVERYONE

solo order: Steve, Jim, Mike, Yvonne, Peter, Charlie, Stuart, Ash, Patrick, Steph, Annie 

This 21 minute marathon was our first attempt at the entire solo sequence on Gato. Everyone takes two choruses and I think there is some really skilled improvising going on here - good knowledge and use of the relevant scales and generally secure sense of geography (ie how long each scale sound lasts). I was delighted to hear people getting to grips with the different scale sounds and especially the elusive diminished (whole-half). As a number of you commented, the more you listen to this sequence the more ‘natural’ (or ‘logical’ ) it sounds. Presumably Finn and his band played this piece quite a few times before they recorded it. On their recording there is a freedom to everyone’s playing - it doesn’t sound as if they are just ‘reeling off’ modes and scales, they are really making music, expressing themselves, improvising in fact.

RECORDING  Peshwali improv exercise (2 keys)

solo order: Ash, Annie, Mike, Charlie, Patrick, Steve, Yvonne, Stuart, Steph, Jim, Peter

In this improv practice exercise on Peshwali we used just the first two key centres of the solo section. I suggested a simple rising line from the first key centre leading into the second. This was to encourage the idea of playing phrases which start in one key and continue into the next (rather than leaving a gap at the point of modulation and then restarting in the new key).

The line I used comprised a bar of crotchets followed by a bar of crotchet-triplets finishing on a long note. I thought it might be fun to incorporate some crotchet-triplet rhythms into our soloing - to add variety. I was inspired by the Finn Peters solo on Gato where he plays a long phrase all in crotchet-triplets (bars 23-26 of first chorus). He adds further interest to this line by repeating pairs of notes and emphasising the first of each pair - this creates a minim-triplet rhythm. We didn’t quite get to this but I did try it a few times myself on the long note at the end of our line (you can hear me doing it towards the end of the recording, a kind of ‘pulsing’ on one note).

There is some good melodic soloing here from everyone - exemplary use of crotchet-triplet rhythms (including nice interaction with drums) and more confident connecting lines between the two key centres.

So we come to the end of the final block for this academic year. I hope you have enjoyed exploring these last two tunes. Peshwali is deceptively simple looking and I think Andy Sheppard’s arrangement is really imaginative, working with just a few elements but mixing them up in unexpected ways (NB the sequence of key centres in the solo section and also the ingenious build up in the intro). Gato is clearly no piece of cake (I’m sure that was Steve’s gag!) and needs time to get inside it. The construction of the solo sequence is however relatively straightforward - four bars on each chord scale (like Maiden Voyage or even Canteloupe Island ). I suggested, as a summer project, you might like to have a go at creating a modal chord sequence of your own (same approach with each scale lasting four bars). Don’t worry about writing a melody as such, just try improvising on the sequence - this may suggest a melody for you without you having to ‘compose’ one.

And on the subject of composition I would like to mention that at the end of last Friday’s session Charlie told me he had done a Schenkerian analysis (see below*) of the Gato solo sequence. Amazingly he had managed to reduce the entire sequence down to three chords - namely II  V  I  (key of C)

*Schenkerian analysis is a method of musical analysis of tonal music based on the theories of Heinrich Schenker (1868–1935). The goal of a Schenkerian analysis is to interpret the underlying structure of a tonal work and to help reading the score according to that structure.

chord II (Dm7-ish) E phrygian, D dorian, Ab mixolydian (Ab is a tritone for D)

chord V (G7-ish) G lydian, G mixolydian, G diminished

chord I (C-ish - lydian) B phrygian, C lydian

Thanks for this Charlie and also for your support throughout the last year.

Thanks also to all of you for your hard work and commitment to the class.

And extra special thanks to Steve and Ash for organising everything (and choosing much of the material we’ve been playing).

Have a great summer and look forward to seeing you in the autumn.

Cheers Mark

mark@markbassey.com

Feedback for next block

"I think the idea of looking at two pieces over four sessions is much more rewarding than a different tune each time.  This way at least we can develop ideas on music that is becoming familiar." Patrick.

Are you happy to continue this format?

 

Do you want to look at two new tunes for the next block or have specific requests for ones we have done already? 

Would you like to explore other specifics, e.g. arrangements for pieces, how to resolve to a chord tone, etc?

Do you want more analysis of solos on recordings?

 

Any other ideas?

Post your thoughts as comments.