In Lieu…

… of an actual blog post, the last recorded musical homework of my Introduction to Jazz Improvisation course that I’ve been taking over at Coursera. Two tunes this week, because we have no analysis/written homework this time. The first was a blues in concert F:

Yes, the horn section sucks. But I wanted the tune to have a little more oomph. I actually made the foolish assumption that the track was going at a steady tempo, but it wasn’t, so I couldn’t cut and paste the horn section stuff to another chorus as I’d intended. Ah well…

(EDIT: I redid the horn section part, and am happier with it now. That’s what’s above. The not-so-great original — same solo, but crappy horn section — is here.)

And the other tune we had to play is Carla Bley’s “Olhos de Gato,” which is a very odd little tune: the harmonies, the repeated melodic construction (one fragment, put through very tiny variations and played over weirdly shifting harmonies), and it’s quite a dark little tune, considering half the harmonies are actually major-sounding, bright harmonies. It was a tough one, and I have to scramble to get a handle on it, since we moved house this week and had other things going on, but it seemed to work out nicely enough:

Makes me want to dig into some more Carla Bley tunes, get a handle on more of them, and soak up some of her harmonic ideas.

Anyway, I have more stuff to say about this course, but I’ll save it for next week, when I write up an overview of what I’ve learned and how it compares to my expectations.

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