Today was awesome!!! After about 4 hours of sleep and a huge breakfast I hit the road for Philly. With only two wrong turns I was about 5 minutes late.

Today started out a little rough, only got about 3 hours of sleep and had to run off to music theory, mail my application for that whole composition thing and then I ran down to the local drum store to pick up some mallets (Balter 23Rs, after seeing them in his product video). I was able to practice for quite a while today, finished really getting into Billie's Bounce and I started into Tony's lesson on Take the A Train but didn't get to far in. I still need to run through all the books sometime to double check I didn't accidentally throw something in the wrong folder.

Here's another lesson, that was in the reject pile. But maybe it will be of use to someone. Sort of a reminder lesson.

Hello, my name is Chris Varga and I'm new to the site. I was based in Chicago, but have lived in Seoul, Korea for quite some time now.
At Tony's urging, I humbly post a track from my recent album...
The record features Kenji Omae on sax, Han Woongi on guitar, Clark Sommers on bass and Mark Ferber on drums.

here is part 3 where I discuss improvising using the upper structure triads on the dominant chords for "My One and Only Love"...

For example...
In the A section you have a B-7b5 to E7 to A-....
for the E7 I use a G triad as the upper structure so the voicing looks like this:
G# B D G moving to an A C E for minor.
Now when improvising try to create melodies that utilize the notes from an E7 (E G# B D) and mix in a G triad (G B D) so it might look like G G# B D E. Move around the octaves and try to make melodies that resolve to the A minor chord.

This should help your vibe playing!

In Part 2 I talk about the specifics on how to use the triads with the dominant 7 chords to create harmonic movement.

For example.

The G7 on the 2nd measure would have an E triad as the upper structure. So voicing it out would look like this:
G B F G# B E
this chord moves to an A- so if you just take the G# B and E and move them to A C E you have a really nice movement to the minor sound!

Sorry for the low audio for my speaking...if it is too low I can type it out for you guys if you want.

Hey guys, here is a lesson on playing upper structure triads on "My One and Only love". Using these triads will show how easy it is to think about upper structures of harmony.
I also demonstrates a way of thinking about chords and triads instead of using scales to create melodic improvisation.
The first part is a demonstration of the melody focusing on the upper structure triads.
The Second part is an explanation of the chords.
The third part is an explanation on improvising over the chords.

I was inspired by Carla Jenkins' really pretty version of "This Masquerade", and decided to make it my practice tune for the night. I didn't have the melody written out, so I was doing it by memory/ear. Need to work on that part.

I'll definitely be adding this one to my repertoire. It's relatively simple. Nice descending line, etc.

Barry

(3/23/2010)