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🎵 Play A Great Standard In One Month – Someday My Prince Will Come – Week 2

Welcome to Week 2 of our study of "Someday My Prince Will Come"!

Last week, we began exploring this classic jazz waltz in the traditional key of B♭ major, focusing on practical four-mallet voicings that loosely followed the melody.

We kept the rhythms extremely simple, using dotted half notes to establish the harmony while getting comfortable with the three-beat pulse.

Little mistake in the middle

🎵 Play A Great Standard In One Month – Someday My Prince Will Come – Week 1

Welcome to the next installment of Play A Great Standard In One Month!

After spending two full series exploring blues and rhythm changes, we've been applying those concepts to some of the most important standards in the jazz repertoire.

This etude adds a little more each chorus. How far can you go? Can you memorize it? 

🎵 Play A Great Standard In One Month – Body & Soul – Week 4

We've reached Week 4, the final lesson in our study of "Body and Soul"!

Over the past three weeks, we've developed two different sets of voicings and begun combining those ideas into a complete chord-melody arrangement.

Last week, we introduced what I called a "simple" chord melody, although there was certainly plenty of challenging material to work through!

Continuing my slow march through Tony's 15 week lessons - here's lesson 4.

"Talk about chord melody".  This is where you accompany yourself by playing some harmony behind your melody line.  It's a good skill for comping for yourself when soloing, for doing more interesting and melodic comping for others, and for solo vibes playing.  The assignment here calls for leaving out the roots (except on min 7 b5) which leaves room for some nice tensions.

🎵 Play A Great Standard In One Month – Body & Soul – Week 3

Over the past two weeks, we've been developing our approach to "Body and Soul" by exploring different four-mallet voicings throughout the entire form.

Week 1 focused on voicings that loosely followed the melody, while Week 2 introduced another set of options emphasizing closed voicings and practical comping underneath a soloist.

This week, we're taking those ideas and putting them together into something a little more involved:

Friedman 5 - better dynamics than the first 4. Weird aspect ratio because I had to edit the video so it wouldn't upload as a short. 

🎵 Play A Great Standard In One Month – Body & Soul – Week 2

Last week, we began our study of "Body and Soul" by developing a practical set of voicings through the entire form in the traditional key of D♭ major.

Our focus was on finding good voicings that loosely followed the melody, while becoming comfortable with the tune's rich harmony and challenging modulations.

This week, we're continuing our work on voicings, but with a slightly different approach.

Vibraphone, weird-sounding speaker