Here’s a nice little fourth / pentatonic type intervalic ii-V7 pattern, a la Woody Shaw, that slipped into my fingers the other day as I was doing my saxophonic due diligence. A quick analysis of the first line reveals that on beats 3 & 4 and 1 & 2 of measures one & two respectively, there’s a brief tonality shift into B Major, or one half step below the target key, C. Beats 3 & 4 of measure two are an altered four note grouping, relative to the dominant (G7), leading back to the targeted tonic chord C minor (or … Read More
Monthly Archives: December 2012
Miles Don’t Play Dat! I’d been thinking about doing this post for about a month now, since I happened upon this YouTube vid. It’s an interview with Miles Davis by TV producer Bill Boggs from ca. 1990, for what I’m guessing was a local Philadelphia daytime talk show. The reason I had reservations about posting it is because as a new blogger trying to gain some cred, I thought this might verge on silliness. Well, after giving it some thought, I remembered that “I.B. Silly” just so happens to be one of my multiple personalities, and in the words of … Read More
“Satellite” – John Coltrane’s “Giant Step-ed” treatment of the standard “How High the Moon” was recorded as the final tune of the evening session on Oct. 24th, 1960 for Atlantic Records. This late session also produced all of the tracks (with the exception of “Mr. Syms”, recorded earlier that afternoon) for the album which eventually became known as Coltrane Plays the Blues, which wasn’t released until 1962. The afternoon & evening sessions from that day, as well as the sessions from the 21st & 26th of Oct., yielded all the material for 2 other albums as well: My Favorite Things (released … Read More
Simply put, Transcribe! is an amazing music software tool that allows you to take any standard audio file (mp3, wav, aif, & more), of a song, lick, solo, etc. which you’re trying to master; and, among other things, slow it down to variable speeds without changing it’s pitch, in order to make the transcribing or learning process so much easier. Transcribe! has been around for some time, and chances are you either already have it or have heard about it. If you haven’t, I’m happy to do some of the preliminaries and introductions. I highly recommend you make it’s acquaintance, … Read More
Here’s a chops building, warm up type, major pentatonic scale exercise through all 12 keys that I’ve found to be quite useful. Pentatonic Scales (defined as any scale containing 5 notes) are evident, even prominent, in many styles of music from all over the world. The pentatonic scale is probably as old as music itself! The Major Pentatonic Scale is derived from the Major Scale by omitting its 4th & 7th degrees (1-2-3-5-6). As there are 12 Major keys, there are also 12 distinct Major Pentatonics. … Read More
Is it just me, or does it seem like every other month there’s another ad for a fledgling synthetic reed co. that I hadn’t as yet heard of? Due to advances in technology, better marketing, the current tight economy, dissatisfaction with the inconsistencies of cane and the availability of a real and viable option; the result seems to be that more woodwind players than ever before are switching to synthetic reeds and regretting it less. The cane vs. synth debate is presented pretty much on point elsewhere, so no need to go down Redundancy Rd. here. Reeds, like mouthpieces, combs … Read More