Many thanks to Roger Beaujolais to an educational session in which we covered:
“Lady Bird” by Tadd Dameron
“Half Nelson” by Miles Davis
This session involved a lot of playing over what was more or less the same chord sequence with Half Nelson being a contrafact on Lady Bird. Both are great tunes with interesting be-bop aspects in each.
Some time was spent on dealing with the unusual turn around in the last two bars that Lady Bird is famous for: CMaj7 EbMaj7 | AbMaj7 DbMaj7. Roger suggested applying a 1-2-3-5 digital pattern to each chord in turn and introduced us to a great practise technique of taking a 1-2-3-5 pattern through the cycle of 4ths C, F, Bb etc, first using a major chord and then a minor and pointing out that any pattern should be treated in the same way so that it becomes ingrained.
Thanks again to Roger.