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New Lesson Series: Rhythmic Studies 1 (whole notes)

This is a new lesson series I'm undertaking. It started out with me being dissatisfied with not being able to play longer melodic lines over chord changes. The basic idea is to break a tune into the most rhythmically simple components and build it up over time. This lesson starts with whole notes and the goal is to work up to 16th notes.

We are focusing on three things:

Have You Met Miss Jones

"Have You Met Miss Jones" - At home today practicing with playing this great standard in various keys. Here's a clip (5 choruses) starting in F and then going up a minor 3rd for each chorus and eventually ending back in F. The bridge is a little tricky since it goes through 3 keys a major 3rd apart.

How to book bands?

For many years now, I've been working with a local arts organization, the Hopkinton Center for the Arts (https://hopartscenter.org/). For the past several years I've organized what we've called the Sunset Jazz Concert series -- 6 to 8 outdoor jazz concerts during the summers on Saturday nights.

Two years ago, through some herculean fund raising, the HCA managed to complete building a new performance/gallery/instruction facility. At this time I added a monthly jam session, now on the 2nd Friday night of each month.