Another memorable day for a memorable guy, Lionel Hampton who's birthday occurs today. What an amazing guy, he put the vibraphone on the map.
John
Hi everyone, here's a clip from a recent concert performing my composition Hope. The lead sheet can be downloaded from my website. Here's the link: http://www.edsaindon.com/documents/hope.pdf
Vic Firth just finished editing this clip. The playing was taped at Berklee in one of the percussion department studios and the interview was taped at the VF office. The tunes that I'm playing in the clip are Black Orpheus and Somewhere Over the Rainbow on vibes and Ain't Misbehavin' and St. Thomas on marimba.
When I think Rhythm Changes, I instantly think Parker. Here are some videos of Bird over the form. Note his contrasts. He does an amazing job of switching from harmonic generalization (Bb triad or blues material) to harmonic specificity (hitting chord tones of the changes). Also, as always, his phrasing is fresh and unpredictable. With Rhythm Changes everyone is chasing the bird.
Guys, here's a version of Ellington's Take The A Train. A Train is one of those tunes that can sound cheesey if you play too diatonic and "in". The changes are fairly diatonic, so if you just play chord tones and diatonic scales, it will sound pretty in. There are some techniques that we can use to venture out of the tonal area of the changes. Here are some ideas:
Improv techniques to get out of the key:
Leaning on chromatic approach notes to target notes (G# to A on C6)
Leaning on tensions (especially altered tensions on Dom 7 chords)
Guys, here's a version of Jobim's Wave from the Berklee fundraiser concert that we did on 3/30/12. It features Matt Marvuglio on flute along with Nori Shiota on bass and Jazz Robertson on drums. Nori and Jazz are students at the school. I thought they both did a great job on the concert.
Doing some simple reharm doing my solo and comping for Matt's solo. Substitute Dom 7 chords, Dim Maj 7 in place of Maj 7, some constant structure chords, symmetrical diminished voicings, etc. The symmetrical diminished scale is also good for playing shapes when soloing.
Ed
Guys, this was recorded from a concert we did in Gloucester, MA this past Friday. The band features Matt Marvuglio on flute, Nori Shiota on bass and Jazz Robertson on drums. Nori and Jazz are Berklee students and Matt is the Dean of the Performance Division. The idea was to get a group together featuring faculty and students. Matt called me to see if I would be interested and I said sure. It was for a great cause. The concert was the first concert of a 10 concert series in Gloucester that is raising money for a scholarship fund at the school. We had a fun night with a sold out crowd.
Just blowin' on a blues of mine entitled "Hemming and Hawing"
This is from a gig I did out in LA a couple years ago.
-Tyler
Here is take two of Autumn Leaves with some thoughts on improv. A simple technique is to play a motive and move it around the scale. The strength of the motive allows it to be played out of the scale of the underlying chord or used over a reharmonized chord. I'm doing this at the beginning of my solo. The motive is a simple three note scalar motive that I'm moving around. When it sounds out, I'm playing A, B, C# during the measure of the A-7b5. The dissonance creates the interest. If everything is always perfect and played in the scale with a minimum of tension, it can get pretty boring.