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Coins In The River

March 1, 2009 By Graham English

This is my first attempt at composing generative music. All four harp parts were generated by a set of melodic, harmonic, and rhythmic rules. Minor editing was done after the fact. I improvised the piano in real-time. The drone was performed using … [Read more...]

Filed Under: Audio, Music Tagged With: 70bpm, alchemy, ambient, Camel Audio, drone, experimental music, F, generative, generative music, harmonics, harp, harp harmonics, improvisation, Instrumental, Lydian, meditative, piano, plucked, Tim Conrardy, triangle

In An Anxious Funk

November 8, 2008 By Graham English

This is what a lot of nervous energy sounds like two days before the election. In An Anxious Funk from Graham English on Vimeo. Watch on Vimeo In An Anxious Funk by Graham English Watch on Viddler In An Anxious Funk by Graham English Watch … [Read more...]

Filed Under: Video Tagged With: anxious, Fmin13, frenetic, funk, funky, Hammond Organ, improvisation, organ, organ groove, organ solo

Equinox

October 21, 2008 By Graham English

A late night interpretation of John Coltrane's Equinox performed on my new Nord C1. Equinox from Graham English on Vimeo. … [Read more...]

Filed Under: Video Tagged With: 120bpm, C#min, Equinox, hammond, improvisation, jazz, John Coltrane, Nord C1, organ solo, soloing, solos, Viddler, videos

The Neuroscience Of Jazz Improvisation

March 2, 2008 By Graham English

Mind Hacks pointed me to an interesting study by science journal PLoS One on the cognitive neuroscience of Jazz. The scientists found that a region of the brain known as the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, a broad portion of the front of the brain … [Read more...]

Filed Under: Music Education, Prose Tagged With: brain, improvisation, jazz, mind, Mind Hacks, neuroscience, research, Science

Playing Outside: The Dominant 7 Pentatonic Scale Pattern 5

June 10, 2007 By Graham English

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. Again, this pattern helps you to get comfortable transposing quickly. And all of these patterns … [Read more...]

Filed Under: Music Education, Prose Tagged With: dominant 7, exercises, free lessons, HowTo, improvisation, jazz harmony, juxtaposition, melodic motion, modal, modes, musical vocabulary, patterns, peak performance, pentatonic scales, playing outside, polytonal, scales, soloing, tips, transposing

Playing Outside: The Dominant 7 Pentatonic Scale Pattern 4

June 4, 2007 By Graham English

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. The rewarding function of this pattern is that you can use … [Read more...]

Filed Under: Music Education, Prose Tagged With: dominant 7, exercises, free lessons, HowTo, improvisation, jazz harmony, modal, modes, patterns, pentatonic scales, playing outside, soloing, tips, transposing

Playing Outside: The Dominant 7 Pentatonic Scale Pattern 3

May 30, 2007 By Graham English

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 … [Read more...]

Filed Under: Music Education, Prose Tagged With: dominant 7, exercises, free lessons, HowTo, improvisation, jazz harmony, modal, modes, patterns, pentatonic scales, playing outside, saxophone, tips

Playing Outside: The Dominant 7 Pentatonic Scale Pattern 2

May 23, 2007 By Graham English

Dominant 7 Pentatonic Scale Pattern 2

If Dominant 7 Pentatonic Scale Pattern 2 seemed easy to you, I guarantee you'll find this next one more challenging. Last time, we 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 … [Read more...]

Filed Under: Music Education, Prose Tagged With: dominant 7, exercises, free lessons, HowTo, improvisation, jazz harmony, modal, modes, patterns, pentatonic scales, playing outside, saxophone, tips

Playing Outside: The Dominant 7 Pentatonic Scale Pattern 1

May 21, 2007 By Graham English

Dominant 7 Pentatonic Scale Pattern 1

John Coltrane loved the Dominant 7 Pentatonic Scale. During the 60s, Trane (and other avant-garde musicians like Ornette Coleman) created a unique and dissonant style of "playing outside" the chord changes. Often, they would play a half-step … [Read more...]

Filed Under: Music Education, Prose Tagged With: dominant 7, exercises, free lessons, HowTo, improvisation, jazz harmony, John Coltrane, modal, modes, patterns, pentatonic scales, playing outside, saxophone, tips

How To Use Tension And Release In Your Melodies

April 23, 2007 By Graham English

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. Taking a look at the C major scale, you can see that … [Read more...]

Filed Under: Music Education, Prose Tagged With: composing, composing strategies, consonance, counterpoint, dissonance, fundamentals, harmony, HowTo, improvisation, intervals, lessons, melody, music fundamentals, Music Theory, scales, soloing, stability and instability, tension and release, Writing Music

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Graham is a singer/songwriter and jazz-trained keyboard player, music producer and studio musician, best-selling author of Logic Pro X For Dummies, and serial entrepreneur.

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