Lesson

The theme of this lesson is to find something that YOU like when you play. Forget about judgement, and just listen. Find patterns that sound good, pick out melodies that sound familiar or make up new ones, experiment with different ways of striking the instrument. Try anything. Record and/or remember the things that you really like, and then later you can learn WHAT it is you played so that you can do it again, or be free to change it however you want.

Stole this off our sister site www.trumpetworkshop.com. There's a whole series over there. Is this helpful to anyone? If so I'll steal more!

Just a quick tip here. Dig by Miles is a great melody to study. Try playing it and tapping your feet on 2 and 4! Try playing it by yourself and just making it swing. All the offbeats make it a challenge.

I think it's great to study melodies and to work on phrasing them. Actually I think it's an Art the way some players play melodies. I know I too often overlook them and take them for granted. But there's so much to learn playing and studying melodies.

Our next TOTM is Autumn Leaves. Here is one of my favorite versions. Do you know who Eva Cassidy is? Man check her out, she is pretty heavy. More of a blues singer, but wow, she gives me chills. She died very young and in her prime. I'm a huge Eva Cassidy fan and this is my most favorite versions of Autumn Leaves.

We won't use this to study, but I just figured I'd post it.

POST YOUR FAVORITE VERSIONS OF AUTUMN LEAVES IN THE COMMENTS. WE WILL BUILD A HUGE JUKE BOX OF AUTUMN LEAVES!

Check out the versions below. All the interpretations. Man!!!

I was working in a lesson with Nathaniel and we were working on here's that rainy day. I've been messing around with stuff we worked on and thought I'd pass it along. We were working on these sort of clusters and voicings. Here's a PDF with some of the stuff we were talking about.

This might actually be a GREAT TOTM (tune of the month).

Just banged it out. Let me know if anything is weird.