Thanks 10. It's interesting listening back. Not great by any means but it was quick to put together.
Next: What is this thing called love.

Btw, your list is great. They're not always well known though. For example, many people do not know Yesterdays or "everything I love". Halberstadt uses the latter in his book, so those with the book know it, but I think that's about it.
Kenny Drew with NHOP do a very mean version of it. Absolutely gorgeous duet.
Dianne Reeves sings Yesterdays in her Paris CD. Amazing singer. I saw her live and it was one of the most fantastic concerts I've been to.

Hi Knotty
I really liked your arrangement especially your LH movement and the tense RH chord at the high point. It's great how quickly you can output beautiful arrangements like that and your Tenderly one.
What is This Thing called Love sounds fun.

Checking out beaches on the west coast of France vs checking my progressions on the east coast of America, what do you prefer ?

Thanks for your progression. Do you like the in between one ?

F A C D
F Ab C D
D F G Bb
C Eb Gb Eb

You won't believe how long I take to learn stuff. I'm not like you who can transcribe 220 bpm stuff while you drive . I will try to go a bit quicker from now on but Bb is an important one for me to understand.

haha .

"It is with great pleasure that I hereby grant jazz cats the right to post any content of a jazz nature".

Hi Knots
Please disregard my earlier post.
I'm going to do the 1st progression you gave me. I like it, besides being open-sounding, it gives my RH a lot of room to move.
For the 2nd Bb maj 7, are you OK with me using D F G C so that I can throw a 6th in ?

I've had several hours to think about what you said and I agree with you. I can't spend forever on progressions. I will do less compositions over the progressions and stay at 80 bpm so that I can move on quicker.

frustrating today. i tried rh swing today and had to stop after 20 min - pins and needles. really ive had no symptoms over the last few days and thought it was safe to try again. will find out tomorrow if i've done damage.

i thought i' d been patient...

10,
Sorry to hear that. I hope you can treat it fast.

That is bad news Ten. Is it time to see El Doctor?

Thanks. No pain today so I don't think I've repeated the damage of a few weeks ago. I was wondering about el doctoro. Last time he tapped the nerve making it far worse. Then while he was sharpening his scalpel, I managed to get it better by myself.

Hi 10
Sorry about your ups and downs. It must get frustrating.
Maybe give the fast Hanons more of a break hey ? Are you up to the triplet ones ?

Hi custard, I was up to lesson 19 on the hanons but haven't done any for about a month. Last time I did them I had little electric shocks going up my arm to the elbow. I seem to be able to play slow (e.g. my own arrangements, which in fairness, I wrote with a dead easy rh part). But swing is most definitely off limits for another week at least. I wish it would really hurt as soon as I do something wrong, but it's just so uncomplaining - until the next day.

I was really worried yesterday I'd caused another flare up, but so far it's no worse. Next time I improvise I record from the start! I'm beginning to feel I'm doing the same lines over and over.

oh so can you still use your LH ? Well you did say that you wanted to do Exercise 3 Progressions in all 12 keys

yes, indeed. I've been doing them in 6 keys. Also done some reading today and feeling more positive about recovering from this. I did rh swing today, twice for 5 minutes each. No ill effects.

What's everyone else up to?

I'm wondering when I should move on to the next step improvising - and what that step is. Next time I play, I will record.

At this point, I'm wishing everyone the best of health. May we remain fully intact from head to toe! Reading and listening to Cus and Knotty's posts, I (almost) can't wait to progress to Progressions while I voice the Voicings and handle the Hanons of Lesson 3. But inch by inch and row by row, I'll let this garden grow.

The talk of singers and songs made me flashback to the summer of '77. I had comps at the Hollywood Bowl while Sarah Vaughan and Itzhak Perlman were in residence there: Musical Heaven.

I also (finally) downloaded Dave's CD's so I can turn them loose while I drive to work.

Otherwise, I'm singing and swinging with Satchmo, working slowly through The Joy of C, and practicing Lullabye in Blue. Here's my latest effort:

Lullabye in Blue

Norm, lullabye in blue sounds great - accurate all round! Joy of C is just a bit longer.

What's 'had comps'? I can't say I remember much from 1977.

I did some recordings today:

Improvising
http://www.box.net/shared/ptti2nnbi0is0eai1zed

This is unedited, except for when the phone rang. I do C, F (1:40) Bb (2:30) Eb (3:40) Ab (4:40) G (6:10) and D (7:20). As ever, it's a lot, so don't feel obliged to listen. All comments appreciated. I do begin to feel like I'm going over the same lines again and again.

Also the tunes from lesson 18.
http://www.box.net/shared/dmorqxy3dopyxpojnzpf
http://www.box.net/shared/aifd7m5efu536s4gqij9


Also making some progress with the tunes I wanted to learn. I've just been listening, and where I can, following the tune from the Realbook. I don't know if anyone's had the experience of listening to a foreign language and it sounds like jibberish, then you learn a little and *some* of what you hear begins to make sense (but not everything). It's a bit like that.

I greatly enjoyed the dreamy meditative quality of your improv -- a jazz gamelan. I look forward to more. The tunes and singing are great. I especially liked the way you hit that high D and punctuated it with the piano.

Sorry about "comp" -- that's short-hand for "complementary tickets that enabled me to catch a full summer season at the Hollywood Bowl for free" And that was Divine!

Norm,
Sounds perfect. Don't forget to relax your hand when you play. You want to avoid all tension. Sometimes it's good to just play notes extremely slow and see how little effort you can put into playing a single note.

The tune sounded great.

>> This is unedited, except for when the phone rang. I do C, F (1:40) Bb (2:30) Eb (3:40) Ab (4:40) G (6:10) and D (7:20). As ever, it's a lot, so don't feel obliged to listen. All comments appreciated. I do begin to feel like I'm going over the same lines again and again.

I was so looking forward to that conversation on the phone!!
So you did all 6 major keys, and now you are ready for the next 6 keys? I really recommend that you do all 12.

Your lines are really good, your flow is nice. One thing is to leave longer rests. Dave often tells us to play 4 bars, then stop, 4 bars, then stop. He must have something in mind, but it works really good. I would easily leave 1 or 2 measures of rests. You can play long lines, 4, 6 8 measures or even more. When you stop your line, leave a long rest. At least a measure. Or 2.

The other thing is to practice with a metronome. In many cases, you are playing your chords ahead of the beat. You want to set your metronome no faster than 72 or so at first. But be sure to play those chords exactly on 1. You want to be very strict about that.

Go ahead and do the other 6 keys, use the metronome all the time, take plenty of breaks, leave long rests. Do not worry about speed. You hear everyone say that speed comes from accuracy. They are right. When you play a tune perfect at 72, moving it to your limit will take practically no time.

You're moving along great. Your flow is nice which is a difficult thing to get. Leaving longer rests is easy. Have the metronome on all the time and by the time you're moving to tunes, your time will be great.

Hey Norm
I agree with 10 and Knots that you played this great. Are you using the curved fingers that Dave went through with you on the g+ sess ?

I think it's cool that you're singing Exercise 3 voicings. You know more voicings than you realise. When you get onto the arrangements you can apply them.

To tell you the truth, not a lot, which I'm sad about. I haven't had the chance to practise much lately. The first thing which suffers is improv which I do as the last thing each day. I'm really looking forward to getting back into this very soon.

Lesson 22 Hanons @ 126 bpm
Lesson 33 JOI tunes

Ah, I see Norm. I won't ask what you had to do to get the tickets!

Thanks for the comments!

I suppose, there are 12 keys. (The phone call was quite boring).



One thing I keep wondering is, is this what it's supposed to sound like at this stage?



So, do you mean keep the chords coming and rest the rh? Or stop altogether and start again?



I will try again with the metronome. I found it offputting, whether the mechanical or digital. I never play a chord intentionally ahead of the beat, when I play lh, that is where I mean the beat to be. But I could hear as I played it back that the rhythm was not always accurate.

It was frustrating, so soon after starting to improvise, to need to stop, but I think I'm on the right curve now. Thanks again for the comments.

You are making progress, and you're improvisations have been getting better and better. They inspire me to keep going.

I also wanted to say I tried out 'modal improv' with a student of mine, a little girl of 8 or so, playing for less than a year. One of her pieces involves a repeated lh vamp plus rh semibreves (whole notes). The conversation went a bit like this:

Sarah: This one's boring
Sarah's mum from sofa: Don't say that!
Me: I tend to agree with Sarah, shall we make it a bit more interesting?

We took turn about doing lh vamp and rh improv and my aim is to get her doing hands together. It was a totally unplanned lightbulb moment when I realised the bones of the piece were perfect for what Dave did with us, and we could do the same, at her playing level. She and her mum were absolutely delighted.

>> One thing I keep wondering is, is this what it's supposed to sound like at this stage?
Pretty much. It sounds quite good actually. Keep in mind that this is the first step to improv, and one of the hardest.

>> So, do you mean keep the chords coming and rest the rh? Or stop altogether and start again?
Yes, I was q bit confusing. You can do both. You can actually take a 30 sec break. But in your case, I meant to keep playing your chords, and take a long rest with the RH. That's the easiest step to do, yet it's going to make you sound like your phrases make sense. Have a beginning and end, and also it will give you time to catch your thoughts.

>>I will try again with the metronome. I found it offputting,
you just gotta do it. IT's the single most important thing. Don't sweat it though. Move on to the next step, but use the metronome all the time.

>> She and her mum were absolutely delighted.
That's a nice story!!



>> It was frustrating, so soon after starting to improvise, to need to stop, but I think I'm on the right curve now. Thanks again for the comments.
You are. Sorry about the pain and all. But even with the pain, you're making a lot of progress and moving through the stages really quick.

++

:))))

for Ms. Thumbs

Hey 10
Party rocking in the house. I luvved your story of teaching your classical students modal improv. Although as Dave said it's not jazz, what a great way to introduce them to an entirely different world removed from the constraints of the written page.

Yeah Knotty is a hard teacher to please. But you gotta listen to him ! He made me go back to Lesson 1 when I was at your stage as I was concentrating so hard on improv that I forgot to swing.

The modal stuff is jazz, a different form..

DF

ok thanks