Hey,
This is a lesson of how you can use classical improvisation to practise technique (mainly scales).Oh, When I say "I think you will love this lesson" I mean "I hope you find this lesson helpfull".

Thanks
Dimitris

Help is needed.

Sometimes I read people explaining how to simulate the vibraphones vibrato effect when using a pickup system.
In most of these cases it is explained as a tremolo effect.

I think this is not really the case.
Let's take a closer look on what is happening.

1. a fully opened resonator amplifies the fundamental tone of the bar.
2. when you close the resonators, the amplification of the bar is less
3. with a fully opened resonator, the pitch of the tube is almost similar to the pitch of the bar

Hey everyone,
I was just thinking/talking about phrasing and how many notes one can fit into a phrase.
I always remember teachers and mentors telling me to play fewer notes when I was in school, however I would listen to them play and there would be 4 million notes in a single measure. What i've learned since that time is that they should have told me to concentrate on phrasing. To Me, phrasing is the difference between an enjoyable and engaging solo/composition and an un-enjoyable one.

Hey Folks,
Ed posted a link to this Chris Potter transcription that I was reading through this morning. The thing about cats like Potter is that they can paint the changes! Check out this line that's played over a turnaround. It was actually originally double time. I did a lesson on turnarounds a while back with similar material too.
-Tyler

Just got this home last week, love it already.

Tons of great ideas in this one exercise! When I was in grad school, I had a great piano player as a teacher, David Hazeltine. He kind of just made this up on the spot, but really covered so much stuff in 8 measures! Hope you enjoy it!

Behn

Another from the Romanian Concert. Man I love the 'Tennessee Waltz'.

Here is take two of Autumn Leaves with some thoughts on improv. A simple technique is to play a motive and move it around the scale. The strength of the motive allows it to be played out of the scale of the underlying chord or used over a reharmonized chord. I'm doing this at the beginning of my solo. The motive is a simple three note scalar motive that I'm moving around. When it sounds out, I'm playing A, B, C# during the measure of the A-7b5. The dissonance creates the interest. If everything is always perfect and played in the scale with a minimum of tension, it can get pretty boring.

Here's a clip of Billy and I playing the classic Autumn Leaves. We did two takes. This was first tune of the day that we played. The topic of comping has been popular on the site with Behn doing some nice lessons. This clip shows some various comping possibilities.

Some of the techniques include double stops, single note walking type bass lines, pedal point (on the bridge), reharmonization, use of guide tone lines, stacking voicings, open versus closed voicings, chord arpeggiation, counterpoint with the soloist, etc.