This
session kicked off with a rhythm warm up (based loosely on the idea of
“The Rhythm Tree” John Stevens / Dave Wickins ). We established a
regular clapping beat (quavers at about 120 bpm) and practised doubling
it, halving it, and halving it again etc., finally creating a sequence
with two bars on each rhythmic value - minims, crotchets, quavers and
semiquavers (see attached picture below). This 8 bar sequence was then
performed as a round in 4 parts - 4 groups phased at 2 bar intervals.
When everyone was clapping, all the rhythmic values could be heard
simultaneously, but no group played the same rhythm for more than 2 bars
(so no one’s hands dropped off playing semiquavers for too long … )
This is of course a warm up exercise for practising 3 against 2.
In the next part of the session we had a quick look at the melody to Armando’s Rhumba
at a slower tempo. We shall attempt to speed this up in due course :-)
Then we each took turns improvising over the first 8 bars of this 20 bar
sequence ( Im II7 V7 Im ).
Below are my notes from last year when we first looked at this piece.
After the break we looked at So Nice
and I introduced the idea of improvising staying strictly within one
scale (or mode) and really exploring the melodic possibilities, stepwise
and with all the diatonic intervals contained in the scale. I suggested
examining the semitone intervals within the scale and rearranging them
to create major seven and flat nine intervals. The dissonance created by
these type of intervals can be useful in voicings too. The piano intro
to this track is a wonderful example of all the above, staying strictly
within the scale of F aeolian (6th mode of Ab major). We tried
recreating this effect with some trios and quartets, all playing freely,
but within this scale.
For the final part of this session we played through the head a couple of times.
Once again, below you will find my notes from last year on this piece.
Cheers Mark
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