Here is a tune I wrote called “Standard Deviation” done as an accompaniment track using MMA. This is a very simplistic interpretation that makes no use of dynamics, variations in the BossaNova Groove, or even decent repeat logic. But it compiles.
Slightly Greater than one Standard Deviation from the Mean:
Saxophone is a solo instrument. Unless you are into the sounds of Saxophone multiphonics, harmony requires playing with some other instrument. For Jazz, this tends to be a rhythms section of Piano, Bass, and Drums. As a kid, my practicing (without a live Rhythm section) required playing along with pre-recordings of tunes. I had my share of Jamie Aebersold records.
Nowadays, the tool of choice for most Jazz muscians, myself included is iReal Pro. A lovely little app for the phone. All of the Real Book tunes have their chord progressions been posted and generated. The format is simple enough.
But it is a proprietary app. While I continue to support and use it, I am also looking for alternatives that let me get more involved. One such tool is Musical MIDI Accompaniment. I’m just getting started with it, and I want to keep my notes here.
Continue readingOne of my fiorends wrote a bunch of music back in high school. The only remainig recordings are on a casette tape that he produced. Time has not been kind to the recordings, but they are audible…barely. He has a device that produces MP3s from the tape. My job has been to try and get them so that we can understand them well enough to recover the original songs.
I have the combined recording on a single MP3. I’ve gone through and noted the times where each song starts and stops. I am going to go through the steps I’ve been using to go from that single long MP3 to an individual recording.
Continue readingAnother question from the Reddit Theory board. Here is my answer.
Continue readingWhen you start looking at Jazz lead sheets, you might notice a Chord with the Alt modification. This is an altered chord.
Continue readingSomeone asked (on Reddit) how to swing eighth notes. Here’s my response, somewhat cleaned up and expanded.
Don’t. If you try to swing them, they will be over done.
Play straight eighth notes. The “swing is done via articulation.
Normal guitar hangers use the flange at the head to hand, but the Backpacker is straight there. So I had to build my own. And improvise.
I use the term permutations loosely here. But for any given chord inversion, there are 6 variations of the tones in the pitch you can play in order to play each tone once. What makes this an impure use of the term permutations is that the second and third notes of the sequence can go both above the starting note in one variation, and below it in another.
Continue readingGeorge Garzone is the Sax players sax player. He is a teacher that has taught the best of the crop that is out there right now. I had the privilege of studying with George back in high school. I can honestly say that no subject I studied before or since taught me how to think better than Jazz improvisation.
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