Tag: Coursera jazz improv class

In Lieu…

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… 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 …

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WWSRD? (What Would Sonny Rollins Do?)

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The title of this post is a question every tenor saxophonist asks himself or herself at some point, and I think it belongs on a T-shirt. I’d buy a few of them for myself, to be sure! Anyway, what led me to come up with this expression is that my homework this week in my Jazz Improvisation course at Coursera involved recording the head (the pre-existing melody) and one chorus of (imporvised) solo on Keith Jarrett’s tune, “Memories of Tomorrow.” I actually have a relationship with this tune going back to high school: my saxophone teacher at the time, Mike …

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Coursera Jazz Improv Class, Week 2 Homework

gordsellar2 Comments

It’s probably silly of me to start with a caveat, but: this weeks’ homework could have been easy if I’d let it be. It’s basically playing six scales or modes, then improvising freely on them. This is the kind of thing I do for warm-ups every day, no particularly challenging in itself, even if some of the scales and modes are ones I haven’t practiced in a decade or two. But I believe that creative people grow by pushing their boundaries, so I decided that if I was going to do the assignment, I’d do it in a way that …

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