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One of the cool things about France is myriad public organizations that give people so many outlets for hobbies and activities. My kids and I are deeply ensconced in the local conservatory of music, dance, and theatre. But we have explored running, archery, aviation, and scrabble as well!
Last night I decided to take more advantage of the offerings at the Conservatory. I joined a Jazz Improvizatio and Theory class. I spent 90 minutes comping along with the instructor (on drums) and my classmates (soprano sax, clarinet, piano, piano, bass, and ukulele) and taking my turns doing solos. Between pieces (St. Louis Blues by WC Handy and Recordame by Joe Henderson), I tried to follow the French and learn the lesson.
My French is still bound up in less than about 6 subjects, and music theory isn’t one of them! They name the notes (Do Ré Mi Fa Sol Là Si Do rather than C D E F G A B C). So it takes me an extra couple seconds to grasp that “mi mineur ” is E minor and that “bey beymole” (bé bémole) is Bb.
Amazingly, our instructor, Chistoph, can sing examples of what he wants to think about doing in your solos. So I was reasonably able to follow him. But there were significant bits of info that disappeared into the air.
Still, I had a great time and I’ll be returning.
Finally addressing what I consider to be a gaping hole in my musical capabilities. So, yeah. Fall is a good time to turn over a new leaf.
What are you guys up to?
Daniel
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See now that’s why you’re a better guitar player than I am, Matt!
Richard, I can read for voice (one note at a time), but reading for guitar or mandolin is still beyond me. I hope the improve class will help. (We use scores to learn the melodies.)
Good on you both!
Anyone else?
Daniel
(singing in the men’s choir tonight) -
Class number 2 tonight…
We continued working on Recordame by Joe Henderson. There’s a particularly tricky passage that runs
|Cm7 F7b9|Bbmaj7 |Bbm7 Eb7b9|Abmaj7 |Abm7 Db7b9|Gbmaj7 |Gbm7 C7| Fmaj | E7b9.The magic in this progression is the change from a maj7 to a min7. It’s like walking down stairs, but I’d NEVER think of having a Bbmin7 follow a Bbmaj7. It’s nuts!
We had to run scales over the descending passage.
Christoph ran us through each section one at a time taking turns working with one scale, then the next and so on until we played through. That took us more than an hour, and I loved every monute of it.
This passage was kicking my ass, but now I can play through the passage both by chording and using a simple little improv.
Before class I had a quick chat with our choir director, Eric. I had suggested covering Sting’s “Fragile” and he liked the idea.
(Go have a look on YouTube for choral versions of it. Some of them are pretty cool, especially the German choirs.)
Except tonight he asked me if he could arrange a part for me to play on 5 string emando to introduce the piece and if I would be happy to take a solo. (!!) I said, “Well, it’s a good thing I’m taking a Jazz improv class.”
I have known Eric for 5 years and I have never seen him so animated. His wife told me he spent the whole day with staff paper under headphones except to trim the quince tree in their garden for 30 minutes.
It feels good to be so engaged with both music and a community.
I hope you are all doing well,
Daniel
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Matt, 🙂 Yeah. When I see Ab and Gb on the sheet music, I know I’m in for a challenge!
[Interstingly -or perhaps not- the French word for “sheet music” is “partition”. I almost wrote that sentence of above using the French word. Then I realized it would make no sense to you! I had to stop and think of the English term!]
Fortunately Christoph, a sax player, is cognizant of the fact that horn players are weird and gives us standard notation rather than Bb. 😉
And Happily for me the things you need to do with your left hand don’t change because the chords are all closed. You just need to remember where to put it!
We have a uke player who is trying to learn all these chords as open chords in the moment! She’s often lost. There have to be closed chords for uke as well. I’ll try to find something to help her…
Richard,
I’ve scanned the music and sized the PDF for 8.5″ x 11″ (us standard letter). WordPress isn’t allowing me to upload PDFs, so I’ve emailed them to you.[if anyone else wants a copy, just ask!]
I can’t tab it for you, but I have wrtten in the starting notes on the scale studies where I could. You can assume that if the scale is Cm7, that the scale starts at the bottom with a C.
And, as mentioned above, all the music assumes a standard instrument, not a Bb horn.
I forgot to mention that Christoph asked me to learn the melody as well. He wants me to play it with Thierry our soprano sax player. I said, “OK.” I have no idea why! 🙂
Hope all is well with you two in Cali,
Daniel
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Just in case you all are interested I found a video on YouTube that shows the head of Recordame played on guitar with onscreen guitar tab accompanying the staff notation.
I’m using it to read the staff notation I have. It’s a bear transposing/transcribing guitar to 5 string enamdo. No one has done it yet for mandolin, let alone 5 string mandolin, as far as I know.
Daniel
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New tune: Midnight Blue by Kenny Burrell.
With this one, I think it would be easier to play on guitar. The riffs are all about guitar fingering. It’s not impossible to do on mandolin, but because the mandolin is tuned in 5ths, the hammer-ons and pulls-offs are done on the middle and ring fingers rather than the index and middle. I’m seriously considering dropping string gauge quite a bit to make them easier!
Found a good lguitar esson on YT: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0vEVM_Ey3rU&t=1015s
I’m watching it for the tonal similarity and because the woman teaching the tune is really good at playing slowly.Last night I went to class. I’ve missed a few because Claudine is recovering from hip replacement surgery.
Despite practicing, I was utter rubbish. stumbling all over the fret board, trying to remember which scale to be soloing over at a given point in the song, trying knit together something listenable if not a coherent statement…It’s truly humbling to consider yourself a musician and then run into a genre that kicks your ass everyday and twice on Sundays.
The dedication required to play this stuff well is impressive. Not sure I have it. But I have not given up yet…
Daniel
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