A late night interpretation of John Coltrane's Equinox performed on my new Nord C1. Equinox from Graham English on Vimeo. … [Read more...]
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. Again, this pattern helps you to get comfortable transposing quickly. And all of these patterns … [Read more...]
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. The rewarding function of this pattern is that you can use … [Read more...]
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. Taking a look at the C major scale, you can see that … [Read more...]
Piano Voicings Part 1: Left Hand Voicings
Left hand piano voicings enable you to play the basic progression of jazz harmony, II-V-I, with good voice leading while freeing your right hand for soloing. The most important notes in these chords are the third and seventh because they determine … [Read more...]
Top Secret Patterns (shhh, they’re free!)
Patterns are a great way of putting scales to work. Not only do they get you out of any do-re-mi rut, they expand your musical vocabulary. They also expand your mind by forcing you to think about systems within systems—and sometimes within … [Read more...]
Internalize And Eternalize The Music By Transcribing Solos
A time honored tradition for learning the ins and outs of a specific discipline is by transcription. Monks transcribe sacred texts in order to internalize the teachings. Writers copy their favorite authors' books in order to assimilate their style. … [Read more...]
Do You Consider That Each Note Has A Different Character?
Ross: Hi, do you consider that each note has a different character? If so, have you found that the same qualities of the same notes are heard by different people (eg. F# = bright, Eb = dull)? If not, what do you see as the point of learning AP … [Read more...]