Here's the lead sheet to the Vince Guaraldi tune. It's not the etude, but this is what I'd hand the band and we'd follow it. It's the simplest breakdown of the tune and then everyone adds whatever they want. You know just like the Real Book tunes.
At one time i knew every MONK tune by heart. I played in a Monk band and over 2 years I had every tune down. 6 months after the band stopped playing, I knew about 1/3 and now, not really any except the ones everybody knows.
This is something we all have to face and as far as I'm concerned there's only one true answer here. Anyone know of any others?
The thing about music is it's pretty logical for the most part. Most of the music you're going to play is going to fall in one of a few categories. That's why we have categories of different aspects of music because there's so much music that falls into them.
Take a tune like 'A Train'. That's AABA. Man if i had a nickel for every AABA tune I played, I wouldn't be doing this site, I'd be on some island with tropical girls feeding me grapes!
A lot of you guys are not doing music full time but you really want to get this down. So here are a few tips.
Here's a VERY difficult etude illustrating many ways to accompany yourself and play. It's the head to Joy Spring and then I take a couple choruses. It's really hard but can be played. I used to have it worked up and dreading having to work it up to record it.... so I'm going to stall doing that!
Free 2 months membership to anyone that videos this for me! :-)
below is a midi, file (with a piano sound. can anyone set the midi file up with a vibe sound?)
also i outputed the midi with a vide sound to an mp3.
all is below
On the last day of the workshop here in Ireland, we took Donna Lee and Analyzed it over 2 hours. Everybody was really into it and we barely scratched the surface so I'm thinking of doing a weekly lesson when I get back and we can all just tear apart that tune. Bar by bar.
We took each lick and worked on it, studied the harmony and tried to worked on the chords.
So I'm thinking of spending a few months studying that!
Check out this lesson plan. Check out the simple solo and the scales. Then lets talk.
can you do a chord tone solo easily on this tune?
can you play the chords with 4 mallets?
is it memorized?
we should meet online when i get back from canada.
Bluesette is a great tune to study because of all the ii Vs. This is one of those tunes that is you really work hard on it, you're practicing many other tunes since they'll have similar changes.
Musicians usually play it in either Bb or G, so at the very least you should work on it in at least those keys. Here are a some different things to help you study Bluesette.
It's better to play 1 tune for 24 hours than it is to play 24 tunes for 1 hour.
This lesson talks about 4 mallet chord tone solos over Stella. This is a great way to work on your chords and voicings.
Creating lines over Stella.