Woods Jazz Studies Blog

For the guitarists in the 5th period group, here are a couple of videos which show the basic chords for Pick Up The Pieces:

Rhythm Guitar part

Lead guitar part

Here is a useful website about constructing bass lines: http://www.malletjazz.com/lessons/bassline.html

I heard a great radio story this morning about Miles Davis’ album “Kind of Blue” – probably the most famous album in all of Jazz recording history. Please listen to the audio stream and explore the npr page with various clips and interview transcripts: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=99805408

I wanted to share this with you, mainly because it is free (for now) and is a useful tool for practicing patterns (if that’s what you want to do). It’s a little tricky to navigate but seems to have a lot of good material for those of you willing to spend some time playing with it.

http://www.ishedjazz.com/

For those in the 5th period class:

I did a bit more research, and it turns out that Charlie Hunter’s “Revolution” is based on Bob Marley’s “Revolution”. The melody is very loosely based, but you can definitely hear the chord sequence as being the same. Here is a video:

Follow this link for the whole song:
Chameleon – Herbie Hancock

Congratulations to everyone for a very successful performance on Dec. 19th. I was hoping to make these recordings into a CD, but unfortunately the record quality is not as good as I expected. The microphone was over near the microwaves and the result was a slightly washy sound. Next time, the mic needs to be right in front of the band, so we don’t pick up so much audience chatter. Anyway, we live and learn… Hopfully you can filter out all the other noises and appreciate how good you all sound. Endings were particularly tight – well done.

Check out this notation program that is really easy to use and FREE! You can share your scores with other people and all the sounds play back online, so it always sounds right. This is a great tool for Music students.

www.noteflight.com

http://www.blanksheetmusic.net/

You can adjust the size of the lines to make them extra big if you need.