Wrapping Things Up

I gave my presentation on Thursday, which was several days ago, but I thought it might be important to get a few last words in.

I was really nervous about playing the solo that I'd written out, and it did not go according to plan because I messed up about half of it. I can't include the link to it, so I took some (very poor) photographs of my computer screen. It is two separate photographs, but it's continuous, so it can be read in order.

In addition, I also forgot to say some really important things like, What did I learn? and Will I continue this in the future?

First of all, yes. Second, I gained a lot of respect, even more than I originally had, for jazz musicians. They have a lot of talent and skill and creativity that I happen to find very impressive. I also learned how difficult it is to achieve that. Improvising is not something you can become very good at in a matter of weeks or even months. It takes a lot of dedicated practice in which you are practicing for the sole purpose of getting better. Third, I will definitely continue practicing improvising, especially because I'm in jazz band, and I feel like one cannot be a good jazz musician until one has a solid grasp on improvising.

I hope very much that we will Google it up next semester, because this was a very good experience for me, and also for my classmates.

Much Accomplished

Over the weekend I made some jumps on writing my solo out. It is mostly complete, and today I added some more rhythms and transposed the chords behind it. I am trying my best to make it sound tasteful, but in truth it is a cobbled up jumble of rhythms that I hear in my head. I suppose it's rather cohesive, but there are definitely measures where you can tell I had no idea what to write.
Still, I am quite proud of myself, but I am very nervous to perform it in front of my class on Thursday. I have only played it a few times and need to practice tomorrow.

Threads of a Composition 27 November 2011

Today I started messing around with a music composition program called NoteFlight, which I know some other kids doing this project use. I decided to just make a 12-bar C major blues progression, which is both simple and I know how to do. I only have about four measures to begin with, but I like the sound of it so far. The only thing I don't like about the program is that it's not really meant for jazz composition. There's no "Style" option and cannot swing eighth notes, which I guess is okay for now, but I would really like for it to play back to me what I hear in my head. For the most part, it is going very well.
I am thinking for my presentation to the class that I will either (a) record myself playing my solo and post it on Youtube or (b) cobble together some of the jazz band members to play the chords as accompaniment live in class. I will probably do the latter, but I have some serious work to do if that's going to happen.

Google Day 14 November

I forgot to blog last Google day about two whole weeks ago, and so I need to mention it within this post, because there was also a Google work day today in class as well.
Last work day, I practiced outside once more. I worked on scales and then moved onto improvising. It did not go too bad; my mouth got tired rather quickly, but I managed to get some good practicing in before that. The melody notion that I am working toward was a little bit better. If I haven't explained it already, the melody notion is a melody, maybe a jazz melody, that you play around with to make it interesting, but you can still hear fragments, like certain rhythms or notes, in it. While doing my best to improvise, I came a little bit closer to playing with the melody, but it was mostly just little fragments of half the notes I played. I mean to say, some of the runs or licks or rhythms or ideas that I played sounded like the melody, but it was not a cohesive melody.
Today's work day was not as successful, but I still got some good ideas worked up. I warmed up for a while, but for some reason I could not play. Everything sounded wrong to my ears and I had no ideas for improvising. So I decided to practice my scales, which I am getting more adept at, and worked on the some of the music for Jazz Band.
I also decided to add a new component to this experience: I was once told that writing out your own solos is a good way to get better at them, and I figure this true. I can hear cool patterns and runs in my head, but I just can't play them. So I copied off some blank sheet music and intend to write out a solo. This is probably what I will present for the finish of this Google Project.

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?