June 20, 2015: Roger Beaujolais

Many thanks to vibraphonist Roger Beaujolais for tutoring us in a session in which we covered

“Lover Man” by Jimmy Davis
“Body and Soul” by Johnny Green

Starting with “Lover Man”, we each took a turn playing the head applying our own interpretation to it. After that a round of improvisation was embarked upon with Roger point out the blues F7-Bb7 section.

Roger attempted to get us to up the tension using altered notes whenever a dominant chord was present.

After the break “Body and Soul” was played through with roger pointing out the use of Tritone substitutions at points in the song.

The importance of knowing your instrument discused, especially your arpeggios. Roger showed that simply by connecting arpeggios a melodic solo could be achieved. That’s a lot of work right there. Decorating arpeggios with a leading semitone below created more interest as did other patterns.

Many thanks to Roger for coming to see us.