Thanks to James Brady for a philosophical session in which we covered
“Bye Bye Blackbird” by Ray Henderson
“Effortless Mastery” by Kenny Werner
“Don’t Stop the Carnival” by Sonny Rollins
After a brief group discussion on why we play jazz and improvise we played through “Bye Bye Blackbird”, but instead of improvising we just gave a good a rendition of the head as possible. The point of this was to show that it is not necessary to play lots of notes to maintain interest (and that probably we should all play less).
The book “Effortless Mastery” was discussed at some length. Key insights: “if you mess up an improvisation, no-one dies”, “great improvisers make it look easy, because it is easy (to them)” and “only play stuff you have mastered” rather than that new lick that you haven’t and will mess up.
We were given some work-sheets on enclosures and other decorations and this was discussed and examples given:
Cambridge Jazz Co-op 8 11 14 – Full Score Bb
Cambridge Jazz Co-op 8 11 14 – Full Score CONCERT
Cambridge Jazz Co-op 8 11 14 – Full Score Eb
At the end of the session, we speed learned “Don’t Stop the Carnival” and had a quick blast on that.
I think that we would probably have liked to have played a bit more, but it was a thought provoking session. Also, a reminder of how important enclosures are is always a good thing.
Many thanks to James Brady.
P.S. Below is a great Youtube video by Mike Titlebaum that shows how the embellishments can be applied to create complex bebop lines: