MONDAY MAY 7TH BEBOP/POST BOP COMBO MARK SHERMAN

MONDAY MAY 7TH BEBOP/POST BOP COMBO MARK SHERMAN

I was the drummer for combo yesterday but of course it does not hold the combo back. We had Vinnie on bass, a newcomer, our other normal diligent players. Dave, Rob, and Matt. We ran through Birdlike(Freddie Hubbard), Black Nile(Wayne Shorter), Beatrice(Sam Rivers), After You've Gone, and we attempted to play T Monk's Pannonica. A difficult set of changes to master.

Along Came Betty, Stablemates & Beatrice

Today is my first sub for Mark Sherman (he's on tour in Europe), has been a pleasure to work and play with these advanced musicians! We played a bunch of very difficult tunes such as Stablemates and Along Came Betty by the great Benny Golson and talked a lot about interplay and improvisation. We also spent some time on Beatrice, a beautiful ballad by Sam Rivers. I talked a bit on how to play pentatonic scales on those changes but I couldn't go too far in class so I wanna post it here.

These are the changes on Beatrice:

|| Fmaj7 | GbMaj7 | Fmaj7 | Ebmaj7 |

| Dm7 | Ebmaj | Dm7 Cm7 | Bbm7 |

| Am7 | Bbmaj7 | Em7b5 A7 | Dm7 |

| Gm7 | Gbmaj7 | Fm7 | Gbmaj7 ||

There are several spots where the melody itself it's actually built over pentatonic scales, that suggest (even tough you can use it whenever) that pentatonic scales are a color that well fit this particular composition. If you think of this major cord as Lydian, then you can play a minor pentatonic built half step down the root of the cord, and just move it around the changes. The last 3 bars of the tune you can keep playing an Fm7 pentatonic and just let the chords change the background, providing a really nice contrast! Here is a whole chorus where I notated which pentatonic scale I would use on each bar, of course the basic chord of the tune . Of course you can try other pentatonic scales, more inside the chord tones of the changes or even completely outside of them.

|| Em7 | Fm7 | Em7 | Dm7 |

| Dm7 | Dm7 | Dm7 | Cm7 |

| Am7 | Am7 | Dm7 | Dm7 |

| Gm7 | Fm7 | Fm7 | Fm7 ||

Have fun and don't hesitate to contact me if you have questions!

Best, Andrea

26-2, After You've Gone, Star Eyes,

The last month has been a productive one in the combo. We have had a variety of different chairs not showing up for work reasons or personal reasons, but the good part has been that if the piano player does not show up for a session, then the remaining members get a piece of me as I play piano for the session. If the drummer is missing I am playing drums, and when a horn player does not show up I don't play horn, but I play vibes with the guitar. Basically with the absences we have every time maintained a full rhythm section. Thank god Toru the bass player has not been absent or I would be walking bass lines on the piano for 2 hours. Or we would get Dave to sub of course. We have pulled out some new tunes like 26-2, After You've Gone, Star Eyes, one of my originals, and others. Actually my original turned out to be a huge challenge for this group. It is essentially a blues with some interesting rhythm hits, and structure as well as altered dominant harmony. The toughest part for the players is the rhythmic structure, and the intro which has a vamp consisting of 7sus4 chords. Otherwise known as 11 chords. The sus concept is new and slightly more advanced than the 2-5-1 concepts, and blues. So it has created some challenges rhythmically and harmonically. We have discussed how the sus substitutes for the 2 or 5 chord in any key region, and the scales and chord outlines that can be used. The stopping and teaching of harmonic language concepts is something I do often in the sessions as I feel this obligation to teach the depth of the language rather than just sit and listen to everyone play. It is important to me that everyone grows harmonically, and rhythmically. I always sort of apologize to the drummer while spending 10 minutes discussing these things, it sort of leaves Eric our drummer out of it a bit as the drums are not involved in the harmonic scheme, but Eric always seems to suck all the information in and seems to enjoy the discussions. Of course we play a lot in a 2 hour session as well. Finding that balance is my challenge!! Below is a copy of my blues entitled "Angular Blues" It presents many possibilities.

Bird Like

This is the video of our class performing Freddie Hubbards's "Birld Like" at Smalls.

Video of Performance at Smalls

Great Job Mark Sherman's students! Here is the video of your performance at Smalls last week.
Congratulations.

January 30th Session - Hot House

We began the session by playing through Quasimodo which is one of the tunes performed at Smalls this past sunday. I was happy with the addition the vibraphone . I think it makes a big difference for the players to play behind me as well. Additionally I was able to demonstrate easily from the vibes. Otherwise I was constantly having to move Dave Perlman off the piano for a minute which worked, but this is far more productive. To begin the session we played Quasimodo straight up medium tempo, and I have to say "the band sounds great". Man these 5 guys have really improved in their concepts. How they play the music has simply gotten better. One really important thing that has happened is Eric Puente our drummer has really stepped up. He has taken everything I have told him, and physically shown him on the drums, and injected it into his own playing. He has taken all to heart. He treated the tips I gave him as if they were gold. He is swinging much better than he was when we started as I cut down a great deal of wasted motion and effort. He is now swinging along in a more effortless manner. He did really apply himself as much as to take a private lesson with me in which I showed him several approaches that I learned from Elvin Jones when I studied years ago with him. Anyway it helped Eric learn to propel the triplet motion of swinging drums forward. As well as watching me demonstrate things for him on the drums during combo. It is one thing to tell someone how to do something, and another thing to sit down and demonstrate live for them how it is done. For the remainder of the class we played a new tune I gave them to learn. "Hot House" by Tadd Dameron. Everyone played a lot on it, and we practiced executing the head various times. Then we continued playing the other 4 tunes in our repertoire, and Toro our new bass player played Hot House, and one other tune. I stopped to discuss language and harmony a lot.

We discussed how when you see G-7b5 - C+7(augmented 7), you surely can use Locrian for the -7b5 chord(the 7 chord in Ab+ 2 chord in Fminor), and for the C+7 you have many options in the altered scale, the half whole diminished, and the appropriate Eb bebop scale(ie: understanding the 5-1 relationship in Ab major). And not to be held to either scale. They all work. Anyway the key to the combos continued improvement is the development of there language and rhythmic tools, so I stop to teach that quite often in a session. I cannot just let them play tunes over and over without dissecting the changes, and harmony within. In these workshops they are getting a large dose of playing, but a larger dose of what to play! A particularly great session as confidence was up after the Smalls performance.

Jan 29 at Small's

What a great afternoon we had at Small's for our performance! It was really nice to finally meet the rest of the workshop students, and well as have all the teachers together. Our Hard Bop group played Quasimado, Byrd Like, Woody N' You, and Serpents Tooth - I was really proud at how we all came together, listened to each other, and applied all the techniques and methods that Mark Sherman has been working on with us. Marco was taking video, so hopefully we will see some clips soon. The other workshops were also great to see and hear, and at the very end, all of the teachers got up to do an encore of 2 tunes, which was great!