Well done for me for (not) reading emails carefully! Looks like Simon’s emailed us an exciting new exercise to help with our improvisation skills.
This exercise is based on the four basic jazz chords: dominant 7th, Maj7, m7 and half-diminished and their related modes, mixolydian, ionian (major) dorian and locrian respectively. The goal is to play the broken chord in the upward movement and go down on the steps of the scale.
Obviously, you need play these through all twelve keys (BTW Mark Levine’s advice is to practice everything in all twelve keys which makes perfect sense – in case the singer can’t sing in the key on your sheet music).
This is an ingenious exercise because it helps in associating chords and scales which is going to be very useful for improvising. It appears this may be in answer to one of my earlier posts where I was trying to come up with a useful exercise to practice chords.
This week we’re going to improvise over Take The ‘A’ Train by Billy Strayhorn.
This version is performed by Walter Rinavera Big Band but it is a signature tune of Duke Ellington orchestra.
When Strayhorn was offered a permanent position in Ellington’s organisation including travel expenses for his regular trips from Pittsburgh, he was also given detailed directions to Ellington’s house. The title refers to the A subway train in New York City which was the first of the directions for Strayhorn to follow.
Stereo Café 