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Tom Harrell Lick I Love

This is a great lick. It really gives some insight about weaving and vocabulary.

Check out the bebop major scale coming down. What a natural evolution for the scale huh? It just smooths out the major scale!

I love how he gets to the 4 chord at the end.

I laugh when I play this lick.

I'm definitely on the side of learning licks to study and show you ways through changes. I'm definitely of the belief that it does NOT make you a cut and paste player unless you already were, and then that's another story.

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The more I do this the more I realize the power of a site like this. The more you talk about things, the more you post, the more you comment, I think, the more you learn.

When you record something with the intent of posting on this site you will work hard on the piece and it will sound your best by the time you get it up here. That's important. We all have to do things to sound our best.

Joe Magnarelli Talks About Transcribing

I've been thinking about transcribing these days as I work on a Tom Harrell solo.
I dig Joe's philosophy.

We have a new trumpet site up with Joe and I asked him if I could post his trumpet video on transcribing. He said yes.

When Bobby Hutcherson heard Joe Magnarelli play his reply was: 'Man that cat can spell!'.
I love that quote!

Tom Harrell Solo

I'm always checking myself. Especially with all the different opinions here on the site. Gary has really helped me chill out about practicing. I still DO practice a lot, but i'm not as freaked about it. I'm someone who put in 8 hours a day on average for about 20 years. And personally I think most young musicians should be practicing and playing ALL THE TIME.

No matter what I read or hear about transcribing, I just love doing it. It's fun and I play along with someone whom I really admire for a few days and have a good time.

Lesson Plan for Take the A Train Study

The A Train study is an in depth look at a tune. Tunes unlock secrets to harmony and improvising. In a way, a tune is a well thought out solo! A prepared one! And in a way a solo is a quickly conceived melody over a tune. That's not quite true but you get the idea.

The A train study is a way to really work through this tune and learn the nuances, see what you can take over to your improvisation and work on your chords, chord melodies and solo playing.

What instruments does this pertain to?

Difficulty

Access

Invitation for Barry

Barry asked me to talk about the tune invitation. So I whipped up a quick video, just talking about what makes that tune unique and why it's a great tune to study.

I'm going to do an etude and then I think if some of you guys are interested we can do a study of the tune, just like with A train.

Within a Page (Lesson and solo vibe arrangement)

"Within a Page" is one of my favorites. I wrote it while working on a page out of my sight reading book called "Shapes and Patterns of Music". The title comes after spending weeks on a single line trying to develop it into a song. When I finally came up with a "song" (that I really love), I realized that there was SO MUCH music and work that went into this small page of music. So I titled it "Within A Page". After coming up with the arrangement for solo vibes, I thought I'd offer it along with a lesson on how to play it. So, here it is in PDF download form. I hope you enjoy it.