Google Day 3

I meant to blog from Wednesday, but, and I don't mean to make excuses for myself, I have been morbidly busy and forgetful. So it is several days late, but I am now here to post about the Google Day we had on Wednesday.
I spent most of my time looking for a place to practice, because I am still modest and embarrassed of trying to improvise in front of people. Eventually I went outside on the sidewalk, which worked well for a while, but then people kept interrupting me, and then other people started practicing out there too, which was really distracting.
The first part of my practice was spent playing all of the scales. I did my best to problem-solve when I got stuck, and only looked at my grids when necessary. That worked out well, and I did a good job of beginning to nail them into my head. Then I tried to practice a few rounds of improvising. It did not go well. By this time, my mouth was starting to fatigue and so it wasn't easy trying to finagle notes. My teacher over the summer taught me (a) that less is more if you mean it, and (b) find a melody to play around with. I couldn't find a melody at all. It was very discouraging, but I suppose that I have to keep on trudging through and keep telling myself that the more I practice, the better I will become, and then I will really be able to enjoy improvising.
Today (Sunday), I was also briefly at the Saturday (weekend) market downtown, and a band called Gunner Roads was performing. I don't know anything about being in a rock band, but the crowd seemed to love them, as did I. I was so excited when I figured out that one of the numbers they played was just a blues progression over and over. I don't remember what it was called, but it was a cover of some classic rock song. The lead guitarist was very good at improvising. He was talented in general, but he was also very confident about what he was doing too. I thought I might keep it in mind just in case it sparks ideas in my own improvising.

A Work in Progress

I decided today that I had to practice my trumpet because of how little work I have put into this project, and so I practiced all of my scales for some amount of time, however long it was. I played major scales, minor scales, 7 scales, and major 7 and minor 7 arpeggios in all twelve keys.

I quickly found out that my grid sheets were of no help. Their intended use is as a tool, a sort of reference sheet in case I get disconcerted, but I found myself using them to read what I am supposed to play without actually learning. In theory, I should be able to think through the grey areas, but in practice, I just read off my sheets. I put them away, and so I worked slower, having to think very carefully through each scale, but truthfully it just made my head hurt more.

While playing through all the scales, I found to my surprise that I had forgotten some very important scales: Jazz Scales. I wrote up a grid for all twelve of them and included it here.

Google Day 2 - Scale Drawings

I have been horribly busy these last few weeks, and I have not been able to practice jazz improvisation except for a C blues progression in jazz band sometime last week. However, wind ensemble class period was a Google project day, and I managed to get a fair amount of work in. I wrote up grids of all the scales I know. For example, I have developing knowledge of major scales, but to re-teach myself minor scales, I drew tables on the computer and filled them in myself by hand. I wrote grids for minor scales, major 7 chords, minor 7 chords, and 7 scales. I took some pretty weak photographs of them, but I have them on this blog post anyway.

Things I learned today:

• There's no such thing as a Major 7 scale. It's just a Major scale.
• There's no such thing as a Minor 7 scale. It's just a Minor scale.
• Reinforcement of Minor Scales. Major scale + 3 flats = Minor scale. For example: C# Major  C# D# E# F# G# A# B# C# + 3 flats (In order of flats, B, E, A) = C# D# E F# G# A B C#
• Reinforcement of Circle of Fifths
• Db Minor has a double Bb. Bbb is A.
• If I really want to become good at jazz, I have to actually practice- not just practicing a bit of improvisation here and there, but performance as well. What is jazz if there is no one to listen to it?