musical thoughts

I use this a lot over dominant seventh chords. It’s worth discussing because it’s so very useful. This is a recap of discussion from a forum I participate in. I editied and simplified it a lot though.

read more of diminished scale

This tune is strongly identified with Diz, who wrote it, and with Bird, who recorded the “famous alto break” on it. This is my solo version, and since I don’t have the benefit of a rhythm section behind me to accomplish the feel changes (latin on the A, swing on the B and interlude) this winds up pretty much swinging all the way through, which isn’t a bad thing.

read more of video: Night In Tunisia

All the cerebral stuff on here needs to be balanced out, so here’s a straight-ahead blues in F to enjoy while all the theory steeps in to your skull.

read more of video: Walkin’

You read the analysis, now hear how it sounds.

read more of video: Dolphin Dance

I just recently learned that Strayhorn wrote this while he was incredibly young. That’s very compelling to me, because I’ve thought a lot about how music gets inside someone and comes out again. Anyhow, this is a masterpiece, in the original (archaic) sense of the word indicating a work submitted by an apprentice to attain the rank of master within his guild.

read more of video: Lush Life

This is sort of a rant that is largely a result of feedback received from videos on YouTube.

I really never considered trying to play in a way that’s free of mistakes until I started posting videos online, and it has me thinking about the whole creative process, and editing, and what makes jazz interesting, a lot of related issues.

read more of on being mistake-free

Video of Cole Porter’s “I Love You.” Straight ahead swing.

read more of video: I Love You

I’m a little bit less comfortable analyzing Mingus tunes, because they are often at a higher level than I am really prepared to grasp. But take the following as my opinion. To the extent that it is useful to you, it’s correct, but by no means am I really equipped to interpret Mingus’s intentions. So with the disclaimer out of the way, let’s look at what we have. (I also can’t vouch for the absolute accuracy of the chord changes I have, I didn’t do this transcription myself.)

read more of analysis: Goodbye Pork Pie Hat

This is a beautiful tune by Herbie Hancock, and I think there’s a substantial amount of musical understanding to be gained by analyzing it. This is a seemingly difficult tune, but if we decompose it, there are really just a few key ideas, which are presented in a context that varies the way they function. There’s a very refined balance between unity and variety at work in that process, and it makes the tune very successful as a composition (it doesn’t hurt that it sounds pretty as well). Anyhow, let’s rip this thing apart and see what we can learn.

read more of analysis: Tell Me A Bedtime Story

Here’s a couple tricks I’ve found that make certain posts a bit more readable on this blog. I have a couple more in the works that involve a bit of programming.

Update: of course they don’t work in IE!!!

read more of A few useless HTML tricks