As part of the Jeunes Volontaires project (Waï trio) I just had a workshop / lesson with Jean-Sebastien Williams.

It was cool. He listened to “live” takes of the Waï trio on July 24th. Then we discussed :

(more…)

I’m playing my last duo gig @ L’independent for the summer tonight. Yet another gig we lost to the terrace…

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Practicing :

• Warmup in E major Scale
  • Hearing/Listening 4ths and 5ths in key
  • A few scalar patterns for fingers…
• Slonimsky
  • #22 – Interpolation of 4 notes
  • experimenting w/different groupings
  • very odd!!! (5, 7, 3)
  • then #23 and #24 as is
• I Should Care
  • Blowing through the form
  • @144 then 176
• Triad Coupling : F and G
  • A few exercises (routine…)
• Fast Ab blues
  • Metronome as “quarter time”
  • Max 288 today
  • that’s fast and I’m still relaxed and free!

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Gig at night was fun. Clinton is always “on top” of things and inspires me to play better.

Going to try out a Polytone amp my friend wants to get rid of … (oups, I think I’m getting older and more traditional… is that ok?) So far, it sounds good for what I need : solid state, powerful.

I already have a tube amp (Fender Blues Junior) and I don’t want to carry it too often, the tubes die and it’s high maintenance… the Polytone could be the answer to that problem : no need for repairs. I’ll take it to a session and a gig this weekend, see how I like it playing in a trio setting.

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Practice :

• Warmup on fast Bb blues, playing mostly in “swinging half time”

• A few patterns , A major, all over fretboard

• Triad Pair : F and G;
  • a few exercises for 3 notes (triplets)
  • and 4-note arpeggios (sixteenths)

• Practicing and Blowing on Along Came Betty

• other stuff… (messing around mostly)

I’m liking the Polytone (mini brute) more and more. I think the main feature that distinguishes it from the Roland Jazz Chorus is the GAIN button. Even if it’s clean clean clean, you can add more “guts” to the sound. Love it.

A lot of playing/composing by myself today. Nothing too structured : blowing on tunes, exploring some voicings. I’m starting to like that “un-organized” approach more and more!

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At night, teaching 4-9 PM and practicing piano. I’m getting better and better at blowing/comping a simple Bb blues on the keyboards! Yeah!

Today’s Practice :

Trying to apply some Lee Konitz concepts. He uses the melody of the song as a springboard to creating meaningful improvised lines (before completely forgetting about the whole “theme” of song and blowing scales and arps…)

I’m improvising slowly on familiar standards and try to make sense of all this …

• All the Things
  • @52 metronome as 2&4

• If I Should Loose You
  • @52, then @104 (as 2&4)

• Days of Wine and Roses
  • @52, then faster (as 2&4)

Wow! Sounds and feels great. That’s new territory for me.

Later :

Practicing and recording Solo in Bb from A Modern Method Vol.3

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Gig @ Night. Trio with Clinton. Had a great time, as usual (and an even greater time because I was mostly improvising on the melody, not just “reinventing the wheel” each time!)

… a few beers surely helped!

(-;

(tomorrow’s my birthday)

In the midst of re-discovering what jazz improvisation is really all about (by reading and working through Connecting Chords with Linear Harmony) I came across a very obvious answer…

It’s funny because I wasn’t even looking for the answer anymore! It jumped right in my face while I was doing something unrelated. Here we go :

How to use octave displacement in jazz improvisation ?

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For a while, I was really working hard on arpeggios and scales that were applicable to soloing. Every now and then I stumbled on a nice line or lick that contained some displacement at the octave (down or up). Most of my favorite recorded solos contains quite a lot of octave displacement.

So…

I worked at it, sparsely, I finally decided that octave displacement is for horns and that it’s not really “guitaristic”.

Much too hard to incorporate in my improv. I tried many ways, didn’t work.

Cased closed. (Until today)

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And all of a sudden : “Wait a minute! Transposition is very easy on the guitar because it’s linear, it works in half-steps. BUT… transposing something up or down an octave is much harder!“

I realized that a serious “mind shift” was required for a guitar player to finish a line (or part of a line) up or down an octave. On piano, it’s easy : you hit the same keys! On guitar, you have to re-consider fingerings and it’s almost impossible to execute “linearly”, without jumps.

So I gave up : An octave displacement is just what it is (that’s in my head). It’s not simply “same notes an octave down” in my perception… and that solves the problem!

You can think I’m crazy. I forgive you. I probably am.

In fact, I’m a serious nutcase.

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For example, take a line like this :

And play that instead :

It works particularly well for ascending arpeggios (that a horn would normally “run out of  high notes”) or descending scales (“run out of low notes”…). Another Example :

And one last one, for the road (now with 100% more scalar displacement!)

Practice Well.

Marc-A

In this post, I will discuss my experience during a private lesson I took November 11th with Montreal jazz guitar great Jean-Sebastien Williams.

This was my first private lesson in a loooong time! Thinking about it… I had many good “hang outs” with musicians and discussed a lot, but never had an actual “lesson” in years. (and yes, it costs money this time!)

So, this was my first lesson with JS, even though we knew each other from various “jazz places” in Montreal. In the past 5 years, I went to see him 5 to 10 times, mostly when he was gigging with his own trio. He also did a “masterclass” in my jazz improvisation class, when I was still in music school in the early 2000’s.

Jean-Sebastien is a very talented and hard-working guitarist. I believe we can relate, not only through music, but because we both share a common background :

• We started music late,
• we both went to Concordia and
• JS and I studied in engineering faculty before turning to guitar and jazz in our 20’s.

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So the actual lesson now…

I metroed, then walked to his place on the plateau. I was greeted with an outgoing : “Hey! Do you wanna coffee?!” We were off to a great start. (I love coffee).

Then, we discussed and played a lot. Several musical and “music life” matters arouse such as :

• JS’s experience on the Montreal music scene (mostly jazz and pop);
• Persistence in the so called “music business” (stay in the game);
• Developing a personal sound/trademark voice;
• Playing standards without a bassist (with “implied” bass);
• Phrasing and articulation (and paying attention to tiny details);
• Focus and listening to band mates (staying in that “space”);
• Time and rhythms;
• Odd time signatures;
• Transcriptions (and learning from the tradition);
• Playing and looking at two of my compositions.

(This is just a partial list of topics)

I had the opportunity to record the entire lesson. Listening back I find more and more important things that JS said or played. I’m even listening to it while I’m writing these lines!

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What I learned from that lesson…

To make it short and sweet, JS really had and impact on me on 5 levels :

• Phrasing
  • Mixing up different rhythmic figures in the same phrase (for example, switching between 16th notes and triplets)
  • Paying close attention to the way a phrase is played (makes the notes sound somewhat different by varying the rhythms and dynamics)
  • You’ll be “improvising more” with better phrasing.

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• Deep listening in improvisation.
  • “Feeding off” each other ideas in a band.Improvisation becomes a “game” where you and your band mates make conscious choices about the music that’s happening in the moment.
  • Staying in the “space” (focused) for practicing and performing.
  • Aiming for a genuine connection within the band and towards the audience.
  • Has to be sustained for long periods of time and comes back to the previous point of “Deep listening in improvisation”.

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• Transcriptions
  • JS was doing “one a week” for a while. I’ve always been quite a slow transcriber, I will set my aim a little higher.
  • Writing solos -vs- learning by ear.
  • Learning only parts of recordings I like, especially when it’s not possible to figure it out “on the spot”, by ear.

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• Developing a Personal Sound / Trademark Voice
  • Playing “how I think it should sound” rather than “sounding the way they me expect to”
  • People will call you because you sound different. They want to add that flavor to their recording or band or project.

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The next following days and weeks will reveal how this lesson affected my playing and practice regiment in general. Enough writing about it now, I’ll go practice!!!