December 13th, 2017
This week, aim to practice 30 minutes a day, broken down in the three 10-minute parts indicated below.
Your next trip to the music store, please pick up Jazz Conception by Jim Snidero, as well as a box of size 3.5 medium Rigotti reeds (what I gave you) or size 3 Vandoren blue box reeds.
Longtones/Warmup (10 min)
Throat-opener exercise (on handout). Aim for:
- Less lip in mouth - think of the lip position of saying 'v'.
- Open throat, high tongue position
- Listen for the differences in tone as the exercise goes on. Aim to get your last note sounding fuller and more resonant than your first.
Technique (10 min)
A harmonic minor exercises with metronome at 80 bpm:
- arpeggio exercises
- scale exercise.
Repertoire (10 min+)
Equinox (handout below):
- Practice playing melody and improvising along to this backing track using only the A harmonic minor scale (and arpeggios).
- Listen (and practice improvising along to) this track of a minor blues: Stolen Moments.