Sunny : exercice sur les gammes

Aujourd'hui, avec l'un de mes élèves, j'ai élaboré cet exercice simple, préliminaire à l'improvisation. Ce-dernier est basé sur la grille du morceau "Sunny" de Bobby Hebb. Sont utilisées les première et quatrième positions de la gamme Majeure (en l'occurence FA et DO respectivement) ainsi que la première position de la gamme mineure mélodique ascendante (ici, FA).

→ voir l'exercice (PDF)

Notez que dans les quatrième et huitième mesures de la grille, l'accord original est un Bmi7 (agrémenté d'une 11ème). Dans un but de simplification de la grille (réduction du nombre de gammes à utiliser dans l'improvisation au trois gammes mentionnées ci-dessus), je l'ai délibérément remplacé par Bmi7(b5).

Il est conseillé de s'entraîner à jouer cet exercice en chantant les fondamentales.

Amusez-vous bien !

Lateral finger stretching exercise

I use this routine as a warm-up pretty often when I sit down at the piano (Alain Mallet first showed it to me during my time at Berklee.) Please perform it slowly...

→ view exercise (PDF)

As you can see, it consists of a four bar harmonic progression transposed a semitone up through the chromatic scale, which means it can be used rather effectively as an ear training exercise too (in other words, try looking at the first four bars and transposing them instead of reading the whole thing); enjoy the workout!

Phrase #2

A good one to practice block chords in drop 2 over Christmas break (I threw a lower chromatic approach in there too.)

→ view phrase (PDF)

Enjoy!

Phrase #1

This morning I was practicing and I noticed a recurrent phrase in my playing... I remembered a piece of advice I once got from a musician (can't remember exactly who): "If you find yourself playing a phrase over and over again in your solo, practice transposing it in all keys!"

→ view phrase (PDF)

Jazz postcard from California

On tuesday, April 26, I attended a jam session hosted by the Nick Mancini trio at the Blue Whale, a jazz club in downtown LA's "Little Tokyo" district. It was also Nick's birthday so I got to play Happy Birthday after Bye Bye Blackbird (in the same key). Here's a non exhaustive list of other standards performed that night:

• Isfahan
  
• a duo version of Lôro featuring pianist Otmaro Ruiz
  
• an arrangement of a tune (I forget the title) in 2+2+3+2+2+2 clave
  
• What Is This Thing Called Love at an extremely fast tempo
  
• Softly As In A Morning Sunrise
  
• Cheek To Cheek

I met Otmaro and we had a wee chat. He recommend me to check out Brazilian pianist and composer Fabio Torres, who leads the Trio Corrente.

On sunday, May 1, Mark Levine was playing at The Jazzschool in Berkeley in a quintet setting. They performed Stella By Starlight with a latin twist at the end (instead of the original last 4 bars) that went "C#mi7 F#7 ⎢ Cmi7 F7 ⎢ Bmi7 E7 ⎢ Bbmi7 Eb7" a couple of times I think before hitting the Emi7(b5) chord at the top. I thought that was hip. Anyway, on the next day, I was lucky to hang out with the author of the famous Jazz Piano Book. He was really cool and drove me around San Francisco.

On wednesday, May 4, I returned to the Blue Whale to hear Boorbaar, "a percussion ensemble that's actually not lame" as Mike Robbins, member of the wicked trio, defines his own band.

That's about it!

How to input clear jazz chord symbols with Finale

(In this post, I'm specifically referring to the 2008 version of Finale, but I reckon it should all work in a similar fashion with other versions of the software...)

I don't find the basic chord symbols from the "Chord Suffix Selection" scroll box fully satisfying... Thankfully though, Finale does offer a better alternative to input clear jazz chord symbols; just follow these simple steps... (Please note that in order to achieve satisfactory results, you will need to have selected "Handwritten Style (Jazz Font)" in the "Document Setup Wizard")

1. Click on the "CHORD TOOL" button in the "Main Tool Palette" and make sure "Manual Input" in the "Chord" drop-down menu is ticked. Click on a note or a rest in the score and the "Chord Definition" box pops up.
2. In the "Chord Symbol:" field, type the root of the chord you want to input (e.g. "C") followed by an "x" (for example... all I really did here is choose a chord suffix that isn't common.) Then press the "OK" button and the following message pops up: "Could not find suffix "x". Would you like to add it to the chord suffix library?". At that point, click on the "Yes" button and the "Chord Suffix Editor" box pops up.
3. Click on the "Set Font..." button and the "Font" box pops up. Select "JazzCord" from the "Font:" scroll box and input "20" or "21" in the "Size:" field - I tend to use "21" for "ma7" chords and "20" for all other chords (if I'm using the "triangle" symbol for major chords, I set the size to "20" too) - then click on the "OK" button.
4. Finally click on the "Symbol" button ("Chord Suffix Editor" box) and a whole collection of good looking chord symbols appears! Choose the one you need and click on the "Select" button. To finalize your choice, click on the "OK" button ("Chord Suffix Editor" box) and there you have it!!

Now the good news is: your newly created chord symbol will now figure at the very end of the "Chord Suffix Selection" box (which you can access by clicking on the "Select..." button under the "Suffix" section of the "Chord Definition" box).
 

Enjoy the newly acquired clarity of your lead sheets!

Composing what I can't improvise...

As I was working on an arrangement of Tom Bahler's hit song "She's Out Of My Life" (which was made famous by Michael Jackson) I realized that I particularly enjoy writing music, which I wouldn't yet be able to improvise. That way, composing is a process of pushing the boundaries of the inner sense, trying to reach for musical ideas I most likely wouldn't attain in a playing situation, where the music would have to blossom in the moment. Composing thus becomes a mental workout, preparing the mind to fetch more distant material faster, and teaching the soul how to feel it and appreciate it...