I’m pleased to announce that “The Giant Steps Scratch Pad, C Edition” is now published and available for purchase on Lulu.com. If you play the flute, piano, guitar, or any other concert pitch instrument and want a practice companion to help you master Coltrane changes, then this collection of 155 licks and patterns is for you!

Besides the new C edition, “The Giant Steps Scratch Pad” is also available in Bb and Eb editions. A bass clef edition is next in line. I’m not sure what kind of editing it will require, since the shift is to a different clef rather than a different key. I’m hoping that the process will be a simple one and I’ll be able to release the bass clef edition soon.

If you want to learn more details on what the book has to offer, read the initial release notice for the Eb edition. The description applies to all the editions, which are identical except for the keys in which the musical material is written.

At the risk of sounding immodest, I’m not aware of any other resource, either in print or online, that offers such extensive practice material for the Giant Steps cycle. You can find plenty of information on the theory of Coltrane changes, but it has been a different story when it comes to a hands-on, made-to-be-played book that jazz musicians can take with them to the woodshed. “The Giant Steps Scratch Pad” fills that gap. If you want to solo confidently and creatively over the challenging, lopsided changes of “Giant Steps,” then pick the edition that’s right for you and order your copy today!

It has been a long time since I went to a lounge where a group of topnotch musicians was playing and sat in with them on my sax. Tonight I took the plunge and headed over to Noto’s in Cascade, where keyboardist Bob VanStee, vocalist Kathy Lamar, and drummer Bobby Thompson were performing. I’m glad I went! I had an absolute blast.

I’ve known Bobby for a couple years now and enjoy him both as a player and as a person. I’m just getting to know Bob VanStee, but I’ve known OF him since my college days, when he was well-known about town prior to his taking a 15-year hiatus from music from which he has only recently reemerged. As for Kathy, I’d heard her name but never met her until this evening. Holy cow! What a fantastic vocalist and charismatic entertainer! I love playing side man to a good vocalist, and Kathy is an absolute joy to play alongside of.

It really did me good to jump in with this trio and provide some horn work. While I brought my fake books, I wound up not having any use for them. Vocalists frequently sing tunes in keys different from the standard instrumental keys–a good reason for jazz musicians to become as fluent as possible in all twelve tone centers. I like that kind of challenge; it forces me out of my comfort zone. For instance, I’ve woodshedded “How High the Moon” in its contrafact incarnation, “Ornithology,” to the point where I can pretty well shred it in its normal key, concert G. I’ve also been working on it in concert A and F#, and bit in C. But playing it in Eb tonight took me places I wasn’t used to! Sure, Eb puts me in the nice, easy alto sax key of C, but the tune quickly modulates from C to Bb, then down another whole step to Ab. Navigating the key of Ab makes life nothing if not interesting.

Aebersold CDs and Band-in-a-Box are great assets for getting one’s chops together. But the real joy is in playing live with real-life musicians in a spontaneous framework. That’s the essence of jazz–musicians listening and responding to each other in a way that brings coherence and beauty to collective improvisation. It was wonderful to spend some time this evening with three superb talents who know what that’s about.

You read right: “The Giant Steps Scratch Pad” has finally hit the streets!

I hadn’t wanted to give further updates until now because it seemed that I kept running into snags and delays. That kind of news gets embarrassing to write about after a while, and no doubt it’s tiresome to read. But all the hurdles have finally been crossed, and I am extremely pleased to announce that my book of 155 licks and patterns on Giant Steps changes is at long-last published and available for purchase at Lulu.com.

Let me quickly follow with this caveat: The Eb edition is the one that is presently available. However, with that trail finally blazed, Bb, C, and bass clef editions are all in the works and will be following shortly. I finished editing the Bb edition earlier today, and I hope to complete the job tomorrow, so look for it in a day or two, or at least sometime this week. After that will come the C and bass clef editions.

If you’ve ever wanted to build the technique to blaze your way through the changes to John Coltrane’s jazz landmark, “Giant Steps,” this is the book to help you do it. It’s truly a one-of-a-kind. Here’s the cover copy for it:

Build Your Technique and Creativity for the Giant Steps Cycle

Looking for a practice book to help you master “Giant Steps”? This is it! The Giant Steps Scratch Pad will help you develop the chops you need.

Plenty has been written about the theory behind Coltrane changes. This is the first book designed to help you actually improvise on John Coltrane’s benchmark tune. In it, you’ll find

• * A brief overview of “Giant Steps” theory
• * Insights and tips for using this book as a practice companion
• * 155 licks and patterns divided into two parts to help you cultivate facility in both the A and B sections of “Giant Steps”

“Giant Steps” isn’t innately hard. It’s just different and unpracticed. This book gives you a wealth of material to help you take Coltrane’s lopsided chord changes and make music with them. Choose the edition that fits your instrument—Bb, C, Eb, or bass clef—and then get started today.

“Ever since John Coltrane recorded ‘Giant Steps,’ its chord progression has been a rite of passage for aspiring improvisers. Bob’s book The Giant Steps Scratch Pad presents a practical approach to Coltrane changes that will challenge advanced players and provide fundamental material for those just beginning to tackle the challenge of Giant Steps.’” –Ric Troll, composer, multi-instrumentalist, owner of Tallmadge Mill Studios

“In this volume, Bob has created an excellent new tool for learning how to navigate the slippery harmonies of ‘Giant Steps.’ This is a hands-on, practical approach with a wealth of great material that will be of assistance to students of jazz at all levels of development.” –Kurt Ellenberger, composer, pianist, jazz educator and author of Materials and Concepts in Jazz Improvisation

I’ll of course be putting up an advertisement for the book on this site. But no need to wait for that. If you’re an alto sax or baritone sax player, you can purchase the Eb edition right now! Trumpeters, tenor saxophonists, soprano saxophonists, and clarinet players (did I miss anyone?), the party is coming your way next, so keep your eyes open for the next announcement.

It seems strange to me that something like this book hasn’t been done before, but as far as I know, The Giant Steps Scratch Pad truly is unique. It has been a lot more work than I ever anticipated, but I’m really proud of the results. Major thanks to my friend Brian Fowler of DesignTeam for creating such a totally killer cover. But there’s more to this book than good looks alone. I trust that those of you who purchase it will find that its contents live up to its appearance. If you’re ready to tackle Coltrane changes, this book will give you plenty to keep you occupied for a long time to come.

Here are a couple of patterns I like to practice from time to time to limber up my ability to interpolate chromatic lines with common tones. The third exercise is one that I just thought of, and since I’ll be incorporating it into my saxophone practice sessions from now on, I thought I’d drop it into your lap as well. Click on the image to enlarge it.

The repeat signs don’t mean repeat just once; they mean repeat ad infinitum until the pattern is laying easily under your fingers. Then bump it up or down a half step and practice it in the new key. Repeat this process until you own the pattern in all twelve keys throughout the full range of your instrument.

While each pattern begins by outlining an A minor triad, it implies other harmonies as the chromatic line descends or ascends while the remaining tones remain static. I’ll leave it to you to figure out different practical applications.

You’ll find plenty more patterns, exercises, solo transcriptions, and articles of interest to jazz musicians on my jazz page.

Last November I posted an article on double tonguing on the saxophone, a technique I was just beginning to incorporate as a regular part of my practice sessions. Eight months have elapsed since then. I’d like to say that I’ve mastered double tonguing, but I’d be lying. I have, however, kept at it, and the gains, if slow, have nevertheless been significant.

This is a HARD technique to master! At least, it has been difficult for me. Maybe it has come easily to other saxophonists, but not to this one. By comparison, when I took up circular breathing years ago, I was quite comfortable with it within a few months. But double tonguing…well, the best thing I can do is to keep on keeping on with it, and to strive to apply it increasingly in my playing.

I have in fact gotten to the point where I’ve finally begun to use double tonguing when I’m playing out. It’s not a steady feature of my sax solos, just something that I experiment with.

But it’s in my practice sessions that I’ve been pushing myself, working on scales and licks using double tonguing. Does it sound polished? No. But it’s coming together, and at times it even sounds reasonably convincing.

As is true of any other musical challenge, repetition and perseverance are undoubtedly the key to mastering this technique. It’s a discipline, trying to get my tonguing to not only coincide with my fingerings, but also to make the results sound halfway musical rather than clunky. I seem to be able to handle about ten minutes of double tongue work, after which I move on. My patience is probably integrally tied to my tongue and embouchure’s endurance, and my philosophy is, work it and then leave it be.

At the time of this post, I’m capable of executing sixteenth notes at a tempo of around 135-140 mm. Not gracefully, to be sure, and not on the turn of a dime. I have to work into it. But that’s better than where I started.

Why am I even writing about this? Well, I’m not aware of anyone else who has actually chronicled their efforts to master this technique. If you’re working on it and it’s coming easily for you, then bully for you! But if you’re one who, like me, is finding double tonguing to be a real challenge to bring to a point of usefulness, then you might find it reassuring to know that you’re not the only one.  You might also take courage in hearing that improvements, while slow, do come.

Amid the fast flow of notes that so often characterizes a jazz solo, it’s good to add a little punctuation. Your listeners need it and so do you–a pause here, an accent there, something to break things up for the sake of creative interest. I probably should devote an entire article to the concept of space. In this post, however, I want to talk for a second about a more subtle form of musical punctuation: repeat notes.

I don’t know whether I’m using an actual technical term, but “repeat notes” is the handle I’m hanging on the concept I’m about to describe. It’s as simple a technique as you can imagine: you simply repeat a note in the midst of your flow of ideas. You may repeat it just once. You may repeat it several times for dramatic effect. You may choose to ghost the note or use an alternate fingering for effect. The point is, you’re momentarily bringing the jumble of tones to rest on a single pitch, and you’re working that pitch, spotlighting it, whether for a microsecond or for several bars.

Like many musical concepts, this one is easier to illustrate than to explain. So click on the image and take a look at the exercise I’ve included. It’ll give you a start on repeat notes. From there, the possibilities are limited only by your imagination.

By the way, the note heads with X’s are ghost notes. For whatever reason–probably because we’re talking about punctuating solos–it seemed appropriate to include a few of them in this exercise along with the repeat notes.

You are reading what will likely prove to be the shortest post I’ve ever written on this blog. There’s no need for me to write a lot. I’m just going to redirect you to Neal Battaglia’s Sax Station website, where I came across a terrific YouTube video by Kirk Whalum. If you’re looking for some new practice ideas with which to challenge yourself and improve your saxophone technique, you have got to check this out!

One of the things I enjoy most is playing jazz with friends whose musicianship I respect and whose company I enjoy. Interpersonal dynamics make such a difference. The format does too. My preferred habitat is the small combo, which offers a maximum amount of spontaneity and creative interplay, and allows me to stretch out as a sax soloist.

All of what I’ve just described was the setting today out on the patio at the Boatwerks in Holland, Michigan. The musicians were Paul Sherwood on drums, Wright McCargar on keyboards, and Dave DeVos on bass–guys I’ve played with quite a bit over the past few years and whose abilities I trust.

This gig was my introduction to the Boatwerks, and it was a delightful one. The Boatwerks is situated on the south side of the channel that connects Lake Macatawa to Lake Michigan, across from Holland State Park. It is a lovely setting and today’s audience was an appreciative one. The only improvement I could have asked for would have been to dial down the temperature and dewpoints by about 10 degrees. Unfortunately the weather doesn’t take requests, and me being a sweaty kinda guy, my face quickly began perspiring like a sprinkler system. Kiss any images of being a cool jazz musicianly type good-bye!

That was just a minor detraction, though. This was the kind of gig I love to do: three hours in a beautiful location outdoors on the waterfront on a pleasant summer afternoon. I had really been looking forward  to it, and I was pleased with how my chops rose to the occasion. They’ve been feeling great lately. The practice I’ve been doing in the keys of F# and Eb seems to be paying dividends all across the board.

Between Paul and me, we did a few vocal numbers as well as instrumentals. I love to sing, and while it has taken me time to muster up the confidence to do so, it turns out that I’ve got a pretty decent voice. It was nice to be able to sing “Days of Wine and Roses” and “My Funny Valentine” and then follow up the lyrics with a sax solo.

The Boatwerks is a great place and I hope we’ll get an opportunity to play there again soon.

In a recent post, I wrote about how reacquainting myself with diatonic fourths was helping me to get inside keys in a different way, breaking me away from the usual tertian harmony and giving me a more open sound in my sax improvisations.

I thought I’d share with you a few of the exercises I’m using. Click on the image to enlarge it. As always, take each pattern up and down the full range of your instrument.

This is my first use of scoring software in a blog post. I’ve only recently familiarized myself with MuseScore and I still have plenty to learn about it. (The latest upgrade has introduced some significant improvements since I first reviewed this great open-source music transcription program a couple months ago.) It took me a little casting about to convert the music file to a format that works in WordPress, and the example here isn’t perfect. Kindly bear with the little green boxes at the ends of the staves and with the vagueness of some of the bar lines. I expect I’ll figure out how to get everything picture-perfect in the future, but for now, I’ve spent enough time dithering about. Now I’m putting the results out on the table, imperfect but serviceable.

If you’ve never worked with fourths before, get ready for a bit of a challenge. Fourths don’t lay under the fingers as easily as thirds. But that’s part of their merit: the fact that they break you away from easy formulae, making you think differently and programming your fingers with a new kind of muscle memory.

Stick with it and have fun!

“If something’s worth doing, then it’s worth doing right.”

Hear, hear! I agree with that old axiom. But doing something right often takes longer than we expected when we first got our project underway. In the case of “The Giant Steps Scratch Pad”–my book of licks and patterns for Coltrane changes–it has been taking considerably longer. So I thought I’d share another update for those of you who are interested. Here’s the status of the project and my plans for it:

* After many a headache and blind alley, the music and text files for the Eb edition are now merged into a single document and the interior of the book is ready to go.

* Registration for copyright has been filed at the U. S. Copyright Office.

* Rather than use one of the templates at Lulu.com, I’ve decided to have the cover professionally done by a friend of mine who specializes in graphic design for book and CD covers. I meet with him next week. This should be the last big task (knock on wood).

* Once the cover is completed, the Eb edition will be ready for publication through Lulu.com. At that point, I’ll just need to set up a store account and make the book available.

* Bb, C, and bass clef editions will follow once the Eb edition is published. So tenor sax, trumpet, piano, flute, trombone, and bass players, never fear! I’ve definitely got you on the radar. It just makes sense, from my standpoint, to publish the material as I initially wrote it first, so I can at least get alto sax player like me underway.

That’s it for now. When there’s more to tell, I’ll let you know, so stay dialed in.