Skip to main content

Stablemates in 13/8

In the past year, it's been a project of mine to get to a place where I can play as effortlessly over odd meters (11, 13, 15 and 17) as in 4, 3, 5 and 7. This is the result of having checked it out for a few months. So this vid dates back to about March of 2010. Since then, it has become like second nature. In fact I enjoy playing over those extended odd meters more than anything else. I have my good friend Katisse to thank for getting me involved with this stuff. If you have any questions as to how to practice this or some thoughts of your own, please feel free to post.

New Melodies, Old Tunes

Hey guys,

This is a GREAT exercise for writing, improvising, and tune learning. The idea is to write a new melody over the chord changes to an old standard tune. You can alter the harmony a little bit here and there to fit your new melody but the idea is that you could call a standard tune everyone knows, but it will sound completely different.

Playing melodic phrasing with Cells and Upper Structures

Hi everyone, I'm attaching a pdf hand out I used recently for a clinic. In it I go through an example of how one might use a combination of Cells and Upper Structure Triads to create tension and release for playing melodic lines and phrases through your improvisations!

If there are any questions please do not hesitate to ask!

Enjoy!