Here's a short video of me playing the 11th dampening etude from David Friedman's book.
Feedback welcome.

Here's me playing Dampening Etude #12 from David Friedman's method book. Feedback welcome.

Play this down in whole steps. It should make sense, what to do.

Then try and vary it a bit, change the rhythms, add a note. Try to build on this.

This is essential to play standards and more complex original tunes.

This needs to be second nature!

The first dominant chord, in this example G13b9 uses the dominant diminished scale. The second chord in this example the A7b13b9 uses the Altered scale.

Dom Dim - G Ab Bb B Db D E F G
A Altered is - A Bb C Db Eb F G

Put this through all the keys.

Is this helpful???

"Bridge Over Troubled Water" - a classic song from Simon and Garfunkel that I've been working on the past few days. I worked with it for some reharm possibilities and applying voicings from my book Voicing Concepts for the Jazz Vibist (available from Amazon). The version from Art singing this at the Central Park concert is a must see. If anyone is interested they can message me for the lead sheet that includes the reharm.

Applying the concept of Tension Resolution to the standard "I Hear a Rhapsody". Working on my sabbatical project which is the combination of solo playing along with improv concepts from my four volume improv series The Complete Guide to Improvisation.

This is a tune by Russ Barenberg in the style of traditional Quebecois folk music. I arranged the tune as a chord melody in a semi-jazz style with a few choice reharmonizations. A version of the head notated is attached. The solo is a little rough, but this is the basic idea of what I'm going for. Jazz arrangements/reharms of traditional tunes.

The damper bar can be set very extensively and sensitively:

* The damping sensitivity is adjusted by the adjustable pedal lever.

* The distribution of the damping effect along the beam is realized by adjusting the two traction straps

* A special feature is the precise adjustment of the parallelism of the damper bar by adjusting the force application points of the traction straps as shown in the video.