Graham English

Posts Tagged ‘improvisation’

Coins In The River

This is my first attempt at composing generative music.

In An Anxious Funk

This is what a lot of nervous energy sounds like two days before the election.

Equinox

A late night interpretation of John Coltrane’s Equinox performed on my new Nord C1.

The Neuroscience Of Jazz Improvisation

Mind Hacks pointed me to an interesting study by science journal PLoS One on the cognitive neuroscience of Jazz.

Playing Outside: The Dominant 7 Pentatonic Scale Pattern 5

This dominant 7 pentatonic pattern gets tougher again. It has four notes in C and four notes in D flat but they are all spread throughout the bar.

Playing Outside: The Dominant 7 Pentatonic Scale Pattern 4

This pattern should be easier than the previous dominant 7 scale pattern. The transposition doesn’t split the bar so you only have to think about transposing once during the full pattern.

Playing Outside: The Dominant 7 Pentatonic Scale Pattern 3

This dominant 7 pentatonic pattern is similar to the previous pattern. It still moves up a half step for a total of 2 notes in an eight note pattern. But this time, the transposed notes are the fifth and eighth notes in the sequence. This means that you have to transpose up a half-step twice during the pattern, rather than just once.

Playing Outside: The Dominant 7 Pentatonic Scale Pattern 2

If Pattern 1 seemed easy to you, I guarantee you’ll find this next one more challenging.
Last time, we simply took a four-note pattern and transposed it up a half step for the second half of the bar. This time, we’re using a full eight-note pattern and transposing only the fifth and sixth notes up a [...]

Playing Outside: The Dominant 7 Pentatonic Scale Pattern 1

A favorite scale of jazz saxophonist, John Coltrane, is the Dominant 7 Pentatonic Scale.

How To Use Tension And Release In Your Melodies

Music, much like life, is fundamentally a swinging pendulum between tension and release. Fortunately, with music, this is easy to represent objectively and to utilize in your music composition.

Who is Dick Grove?

DICK GROVE (1927-1998) had a distinguished career as a professional writer and composer in Los Angeles and as a unique innovator in the field of contemporary music education.
In 1973 he founded the world-renowned Grove School of Music in Los Angeles and guided this highly regarded institution into the top rank of leading contemporary music schools, [...]

Define: Raga

1. A generic term for Indian scales, consisting of five, six, or seven different notes and calculated to create a certain mood. Each raga is suited to a particular time of day. The word itself comes from the Sanskrit meaning “color,” so that an infinite variety of nuances is possible in the playing of ragas [...]

Keith Jarrett On The Art Of Improvisation

“The miracle of playing is all I need.” -Keith Jarrett

Rollins tells what it takes to survive

Rollins tells what it takes to survive:
Tenor saxophone legend Sonny Rollins, who at 75 has been nominated for a Grammy for best jazz instrumental solo, says people often ask him what goes through his mind when he’s playing one of his celebrated extended improvised solos.
“I relate to them that when I’m playing at my best, [...]