Quasimodo & Serpent's Tooth

At our session yesterday we had a new drummer Eric Puente, and Mathew Mayers on saxophone along with the rest. We played Charlie Parker's Quasimodo playing the head many times to really try to get a handle on it.  Of course we continued to dissect the changes, and there was lots of discussion of the different possibilities you can use re: scales, chord outlines, modes, and of course my road tested drills, that have helped so many young players improve their linear improvisations. We spent most of the two hours performing this tune, soloing on it for 2 or 3 choruses each, and stopping and starting a lot to discuss things. For the last half hour we played Serpent's Tooth supposedly written by Miles Davis, but truly written by Jimmie Heath. The combo has the next few weeks to review these two tunes, and work on the improv skills, and drills for those that understand them clearly. And we will continue next session.

The First Session

Mark Sherman and David

In the first session we worked on Quasimodo by Charlie Parker, which is one of my favorite lines. We discussed how Bird used to take well known standards like Indiana and use the form and changes to write his own melody there by creating a new tune in Donna Lee, or Embraceable You and Quasimodo. Anyway since the drummer did not show up I played drums. We played the tune with me singing the melody as basically nobody knew the melody, and it is a tough one, and demands attention. So next week they will play the melody as they will practice it this week. After playing it for a while and getting a feel for what they played like, I moved away from the jamming segment and dug into the harmony with some drills and basic concepts I use to master any set of chord changes. It would be to easy for to just sit back and play all night with them, but not the correct thing to do, as they all need language, and I felt that was what we needed to dig into. SO we took  Quasimodo apart a bit discussing the different modes, major scales, bebop and diminished scales chord outlines, and general concepts for soloing on that particular set of changes. Then we played again at several different tempos. I believe this format is more helpful to these players at this point so in future classes we will play a lot, but I will also try to feed them a lot of  language as we go along. And take the tunes apart harmonically.

 



Rob on guitar, Mark Sherman conducting,
David on bass and David on Piano