Most Popular Lessons

🚨 New Tune Deep Dive Series! 🚨
Pt. 1: “Wave” – Establishing Form & Groove

We’re kicking off a brand-new Tune Deep Dive with Antônio Carlos Jobim’s Wave—a bossa nova classic that’s as groovy as it is deceptively tricky. This tune has a 44-bar form (A – A – B – A, with 12-bar A sections and an 8-bar bridge), so memorizing the structure is step one.

I would see David performing this when we would play duo concerts. 

It's a cool improv that is also a great study.

Check out the attached PDF!

Check out the attached PDF!

Simple example of a way to study harmony. Learn it and use it for more complex progessions. It usually almost always works, but sometimes it doesn't.

Assignments Due

• 251 cycle of fourths posted on VW
• Post yourself playing the Blue Bossa Scales with Ireal pro. Must be memorized
• Friedman etude #5 posted on VW in time and played well
• 12 bars of Donna Lee memorized
• post 6 keys Open Closed Maj 9 chords
• Of Lands I Never Saw - Talk about Double Image and post on VW.

Check out the attached PDF!

Cool lesson. It turns into an etude once you get the chords down. Spend some time on this! 

🚨 Soloing Through the Changes Pt. 4 – 7th Chord Outlinings with 9ths & Alterations

In Part 4, we take the 7th chord outlines from the previous lesson and extend them into 9ths, while also adding alterations and inversions on dominant chords. The result is a more melodic, colorful, and expressive soloing vocabulary—still grounded in chord structure, but reaching toward the sound of bebop and beyond.

In case you haven't seen this yet, you MUST watch it!