An Easy Way to Use the Augmented Scale in Major Keys

As I’ve continued to spend time incorporating the augmented scale into my working vocabulary as a jazz saxophonist, I’ve made one recent discovery which simplifies its application, at least in part. It is this: the same augmented scale used with the tonic chord in a major key also works beautifully for the altered dominant.

For example, in the key of C, use the C augmented scale for both the tonic C Maj 7 and the G+7(b9, #9). Just keep in mind how you handle the root of the scale when the G dominant is sounding, same as you would do if you were playing a G Mixolydian mode.

The reason this same-scale approach works is because every augmented scale, being symmetrical by design, is actually three different scales spaced a major third apart, all sharing the same notes and interval relationships. The C augmented scale also functions as an E and an Ab augmented scale, and each version works nicely with an altered dominant seventh chord built on its leading tone. Thus the Ab augmented scale is the scale of choice for imposing the augmented sound on the altered G7 chord.

Try the above tip with a blues as well. It works fine, adding color and enough “wrong notes” to sound right, providing you bring the free-floating augmented sound back to earth by resolving it properly to a chord tone and maybe adding a nice, earthy dash of the blues scale.

If you have other ways in which you like to use the augmented scale, please drop a comment and share them. And check out my jazz page for more articles and transcriptions geared for the practicing jazz musician.

February 19, 2010 by
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A Charlie Parker Lick Around the Cycle of Fifths

Okay, campers, listen up: Uncle Bob says it’s time again for another great sax lick. So gather round the campfire with your saxophones, and grease your fingers to keep them from igniting, because this lick comes to you from the immortal Bird. That’s right, Charlie Parker, the indisputable emperor of the alto sax–not merely a luminary of jazz, but one of its incendiaries. It pays to light your tinder with Bird’s flame, and this exercise will help you to do so. Click on the thumbnail to enlarge it to readable size.

bird_lick_cycle_of_fifthsThe lick comes from the first bridge section of Parker’s solo on “Thriving from a Riff,” which is one of the myriad contrafacts based on the changes to “I Got Rhythm” that were written back in the bebop era. An alternate and perhaps better-known name for this particular tune is “Anthropology.” Same head, same changes, just a different title.

While a number of variations exist on the chord changes to the Rhythm bridge section, the basic progression, and arguably the most frequently used, is four dominant seventh chords moving around the circle of fifths in two-bar increments. Since the cycle of dominants is the foundation for the Rhythm bridge, extending a lick written over the bridge so that it covers all twelve keys is a great way to develop fluency in every key. That’s the premise of the exercise on this page.

Note that I’ve done only half your work for you. Once you’ve mastered the written material, you’ll need to transpose the lick so that it starts on E7 instead of B7, and work your way through the remaining transpositions.

Parker played Rhythm changes in a number of keys, but the standard key of concert Bb is the one he used most often, and it’s the one that “Thriving from a Riff” was written in. It puts the Eb alto sax in the key of G, with B7 being the first chord of the bridge section. For Bb instruments such as tenor sax, soprano sax, and trumpet, the first chord will be E7. But for purposes of practicing the cycle of fifths, it really doesn’t matter which chord you start with–it’s all good, and it’ll all take you around the complete cycle through all twelve keys, which is the purpose of this exercise.

It’s de rigeur these days to offer analyses of transcribed solos that are so exacting they could split the hairs on a fly’s behind. I admire the insight and effort that go into such exhaustive examinations of an artist’s work, but I frankly find them a bit overwhelming. I do, however, appreciate having points of particular interest spotlighted, and I will offer a few such highlights here.

The opening figure, an arpeggio descending from the thirteenth of the chord, superimposes an A+(#7) over the B7. Bird couldn’t have more effectively avoided playing the basic triad tones. Note his use of the flatted fifth, creating a Lydian sonority. The parent scale at this point is a B Lydian dominant scale, but it’s only a temporary application. In the following bar, Parker clearly defines the B7 and his approach becomes purely diatonic up to bar 4, where he injects a touch of chromaticism in the form of a passing tone. Look closely and you’ll see a hidden chromatic line descending from the note D in bar 3 through C# and B# in bar four and landing on the note B. The final two notes, B and D, are chord tones, the fifth and flat seventh of the E7.

So much for the fancy analytical stuff. If it helps you, fantastic; if it just loses you, don’t worry about it. The main thing is for you to get the exercise drilled into your fingers and your ears. In other words, make a point of memorizing it. Doing so won’t make another Charlie Parker out of you, but it will make you a better player.

That’s the goal, right, campers? You bet it is. Uncle Bob has spoken. Now get your little butts back to your cabins–you’ve got some practicing to do.

February 16, 2010 by
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On Beyond Jazz: Expanding Your Appreciation of Musical Diversity

Is it safe to come out of my bunker now? Has the war between jazz and rock finally ended? I don’t hear any incoming missiles. But then, I’m kind of out of the loop these days when it comes to who is presently saying what in the various music periodicals.

It does seem to me that in this melting pot called America, music has come a long way in developing mutual respect between the different genres. The purist dividing lines have given way to healthy crossover and cooperative experimentation between music styles and artists, and the style racists who once wrung their hands and shouted, “Miscegenation!” back in the days of “Bitches Brew” have long since been thrust aside by open-minded musicians searching for fresh, creative possibilities. Yet I wonder to what extent the old biases still continue to influence us.

Back in my college days, rock music was largely scorned by jazz musicians, and the feeling was amply returned. You couldn’t pick up a “Downbeat” magazine and read an article on fusion without some reader writing in to complain, “That’s not jazz!” If it wasn’t bebop, it it involved an approach to the drum set that was other than tang-tanka-tang, then the purists were up in arms, donning their white hoods and burning their crosses in the letter section. Even back then, naive as I was, I found the topic of this is/isn’t jazz to be petty, not to mention boring, when the groups in question involved world class musicians who knew the standard jazz vocabulary inside-out.

I also found the notion that jazz was the only worthwhile music, or the idea that any one style of music was better than the rest, to be confining, narrow-minded, and pointless. I mean, I cut my teeth on classic rock music–on groups such as Jefferson Airplane, Mountain, Jimi Hendrix, Jethro Tull, King Crimson, Yes, Genesis, and Fleetwood Mac–and I didn’t stop loving rock and roll just because I was starting to become immersed in jazz.

So why was it that jazzers and rockers seemed to have so little respect for each other? For that matter, what was it about symphonic musicians that gave them such an illusion of superiority over all the rest? And why did it go without saying (by me among the rest, I hate to confess) that country/western was inferior music?

Tell me that things have changed since those days. I think they have. From what I can see, we’ve come a long way.

At bottom, all music is divisible into just two categories: good music and bad music. Beyond that, it’s a matter of personal preference. And that is fine; in fact, it’s inevitable. Each of us is drawn to certain kinds of music and not drawn to others. It’s a matter of individual taste, which fines down even beyond general categories to subcategories and artists of all kinds. It’s all good as long as it doesn’t lead to demeaning other forms of musical expression, or to closing ourselves off to their creativity and richness.

Still today, it’s unlikely that I’ll ever purchase a country music CD. However, that choice is influenced not by musical snobbery, but by the fact that I’m a jazz saxophonist with a limited music budget, and on the relatively rare occasions when I purchase a CD, I usually stick with jazz, guided by a goal of learning my craft as well as enjoying its sound. It’s a matter of focus and preference, not elitism. If I’m driving down the highway and happen upon a good country station on the radio, then I’ll listen to it and enjoy it. Over the years and the long, long highway miles, I’ve come to appreciate that country music harbors some of the finest lyricists and songwriters in the world.

My point: Why limit yourself in what you listen to? Jazz is awesome music, but it’s not all that is out there. Broaden your world. Go to YouTube and check out some of the old film clips of Janis Joplin, Hendrix, and the Beatles. Tune in to The Thistle & Shamrock on NPR and let Fiona Ritchie give you an exhilarating earful of wild, wonderful Celtic music. The world of music has wide, wide horizons; open your ears to ways of expressing musical and creative excellence other than the ones you’re used to. Allow yourself to be influenced by the amazing diversity of music in this world. Doing so will enrich your own artistry as a jazz musician.

February 7, 2010 by
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Band Link Up: A New Virtual Community for Musicians

Attention, jazz musicians and other purveyors of melody! Want to get in on the groundswell of an online community devoted to musicians? Then click on Band Link Up, look it over, take a minute to register, and then start posting and helping this unique labor of love to grow into a thriving virtual hangout for musicians, vocalists, singer/songwriters, and other artistes of every stripe.

I first got wind of it while installing a new operating system on my laptop. The tech who was assisting me, aka Jeff, and I got to chatting while waiting for a lengthy download to complete, and once we got onto the subject of music, things naturally progressed from there. Turns out that Jeff’s fiancee plays violin and loves to connect with other musicians. So as a gift to her, Jeff decided to put together an entire site dedicated to the purpose of helping musicians talk shop, trade ideas, share sound tracks and videos, and so forth.

I’ve already registered, and I’m encouraging all my musical friends and everyone who is actively involved in performance, recording, composing, or music education to do the same. Band Link Up shows great potential as a service to musicians. Please get on board and help make it happen.

February 2, 2010 by
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Saxophone Mouthpiece Exercise (a Dignified Term for Screwing Around Making Weird Noises)

I stumbled upon the following saxophone mouthpiece exercise long before I really knew how to play the sax. Back when I was in high school, I needed some kind of trick to cover my butt when I was jamming with other musicians–typically rock bands in those days–and needed to disguise the fact that I didn’t have a clue what I was doing. One evening at a kegger, having exhausted my meager bag of licks, I got the sudden inspiration to pull my mouthpiece off of my horn and play it by itself. The idea certainly commanded attention, captivating my listeners for a good five seconds, though I’m not sure it was the most musical extravaganza they had ever experienced.

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Anyway, many years down the road, I still make occasional use of the sax mouthpiece exercise. I’m not sure what else to call it, other than screwing around with the mouthpiece making sounds like a goose gargling. But in all seriousness, I believe you can find some value in the technique, both as a creative tool and as a means of sensitizing your oral chamber for purposes of tone color and pitch control.

The exercise is simple: cup your hands together to form a sort of pouch, as in the first picture (click on it to enlarge it). Then blow into the mouthpiece. You can then “play” the piece by opening and closing one hand, as in the second photo. The result is a sort of demented warble that sounds like some kind of marshland bird on an acid trip.

mouthpiece_exercise1_1
Them’s the basics, but of course, you’ll want to experiment. You can actually control the pitch with your hand, and you’ll also want to see what kinds of sounds and pitch-bending you can do by adjusting your embouchure. The point is to explore the colors you can generate using just your mouthpiece, your hands, and your embouchure and air column. You can get some surprisingly expressive effects. In my “Eyes on Mars” album with Ric Troll, I performed an entire piece using this technique. Is it music? I guess that depends on your philosophy of music, and frankly, I wasn’t thinking about the question at the time. I was just having fun trying something different and creative. You know–being a kid.

Give the saxophone mouthpiece exercise a try and see what you think. And check out my jazz page for more tips, technical exercises, and solo transcriptions to keep you occupied.

January 22, 2010 by
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How to Practice the Saxophone: Four Key Principles That Can Help You Advance

What does it take to develop as a jazz saxophonist–or, for that matter, as any kind of instrumentalist?

Practice.

Right, I guess we all know that. But there is practice, and then there is effective practice. Practice that makes the best use of the time you’re investing. Practice which a year from now will have produced a year’s worth of results rather than a month’s worth of plodding the treadmill twelve times over.

Two things are paramount for effective saxophone woodshedding: what you practice and how you practice. In previous posts and on my jazz page, I’ve provided plenty of material that addresses the “what” part of that equation. In this article, I’m going to talk a bit about the “how” as it pertains to technical development.

Having spent time contemplating the things that have contributed to my own growth as a sax player, I’ve identified four key principles that I believe are important for developing technical proficiency. They are:

Isolate

Repeat

Connect

Memorize

These four principles work together to help you transition from the initial, heavily intellectual process that comes as you tackle new musical material, to a more intuitive approach that develops as you spend time mastering that material and making it your own.

Each of the principles could easily be an article in itself, so I’m not going to tackle them in depth. Right now, I just want to introduce you to the concepts.

Isolate

Whether you’re learning a new scale, practicing patterns, hashing out a lick, moving around the circle of fifths, or memorizing a Charlie Parker solo, the way to approach musical material is in increments.

Think of how you eat your food. You’d never stick an entire steak in your mouth and try to swallow it whole. (You wouldn’t, would you?) No, you cut off manageable, bite-size pieces which you take your time to chew. The same idea applies to working on music: bite-size is best.

Pick groups of notes and repeat them till they lay well under your fingers. In particular, isolate problem areas and focus on them, oiling them with repetition until they’re working smoothly. Work out which alternate fingerings work best in a given situation. If you’re playing in the key of F#, for example, you may find yourself using the bis, one-four, and side fingerings for A# almost consecutively as the context for your approach to the note A# changes.

START SLOW. Concentrate on how evenly you connect the notes, not how fast you can play them. Once you’re playing a note group accurately, comfortably, and consistently, then speed up a notch or two, and continue to increase your speed till you’re playing at high velocity. If you find yourself hitting a speed where you start fumbling and misfiring, then slow down. The point isn’t to play fast, but to play masterfully. Fast will follow.

Repeat

Repetition is woven into the first principle of isolation. You isolate a group of notes or even just two notes in order to repeat, repeat, repeat them, often enough to drill them into your muscle memory. Since I’ve already written a post on repetition, there’s no need for me to–ahem–repeat what I’ve already said. Go read the article.

Connect

Once you’re playing a group of notes fluently, add a note or two in front of it or behind it. Or work on the next group of notes until you’re playing it as fluently as you were playing the first, then connect the two groups.

In the process of focusing on the second group, you may find that you’ve lost a bit of ground with the first group. That’s okay. Go back to the first group and smooth it out. The point is, you work on small units of material, then you work on connecting them to create something larger–to which you will, in turn, connect still more material.

Often you’ll encounter a sticking point between the last note or two in one note group and the first couple of notes in the group that follows. That juncture should become a new area to isolate and work out.

If this sounds like a tedious process, it can be, but it’s also a very profitable one. And not all groups of notes carry equal weight. Some come more easily; others are more challenging. Run toward the challenges, not from them.

Memorize

As long as you’re depending on the paper to tell you what to play, the music you’re working on isn’t really yours. I’m not referring to extended pieces of music where a chart is mandatory, but to scales, licks, patterns…to the building blocks of technique and the language of jazz improvisation. Memorization is an indispensable part of the jazz saxophonist’s toolkit.

The whole point of all this isolating, repeating, and connecting is to move the music off the printed page and into your head and your fingers. So at the very beginning of the process, make a point of looking away from the sheet music. Consult it as freely as you need to, but remember that your goal is to wean yourself from it. When you’re in mid-flight on the bridge to “Cherokee” on your alto sax, you had better be thoroughly acquainted with the keys of Ab, F#, E, and D, because the rhythm section is not going to pause while you look them up in your Larry Teal workbook.

Memorize everything. Tunes. Chord changes. Scales, arpeggios, circular root movements…everything you can possibly cram into your gray matter and drill by repetition into your muscle memory.

One last thing…

Think about what you’re doing. Engage your mind in the process. If you’re working on a digital pattern, consider not just what you’re playing, but also how you can use it with various chords or chord progressions. Think about how you might switch up the rhythm of a lick to create a different effect. You can build all the saxophone technique you want to, but ultimately it’s your brain, not your horn, that converts the raw material into actual music.

That’s it for today. If you enjoyed this post and would like to read more helpful articles on playing the sax, or perhaps find a jazz sax solo transcription to hash out, see my jazz page.

Practice hard–and have fun!

January 20, 2010 by
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Amy Young and Friends Playing at Schuler Books on January 22

Tonight’s rehearsal with Amy Young and Friends went great. I’m really looking forward to the concert next Friday evening.

Amy is a talented singer/songwriter in the West Michigan area, and she has surrounded herself with a cast of fine musicians for this event. She covers a variety of styles ranging from blues to rock to folk to jazz. If you live in the Grand Rapids vicinity, please come on out and give her and the rest of the band, including me, a listen. Here are the details:

Date: Friday, January 22

Time: 7 p.m.

Place: Schuler Books,  2660 28th St. SE, Kentwood

Admission: FREE, FREE, FREEEEEE!!!

Mark it on your calendar and make it a date. Hope to see you there!

January 17, 2010 by
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Bird Song: Hearing Charlie Parker for the First Time

If there is one name that is synonymous with the alto saxophone, it’s Charlie Parker. For that matter, no jazz musician of any kind–saxophonist, trumpet player, bassist, pianist, you name it–can explore the craft without becoming keenly aware of, if not at some point deeply immersed in, the music of Bird. If Dizzy Gillespie was the clown prince of the bebop school, Charlie Parker was its pied piper, a quirky and unpredictable genius whose God-given creative torch burned too brightly to be quickly extinguished by the excesses that eventually overcame him.

Some jazz musicians grow up with Parker played regularly at home as a vital part of the musical ambiance. Others discover Parker’s music later in life. I fall into the latter category. Ours was not a particularly musical household, though Mom loved the Nutcracker Suite and Dad dug his Louis Armstrong, Bessie Smith, and Sidney Bechet records.  My own musical tastes, once they began to develop, naturally tended toward the rock of the seventies, particularly art rock bands such as Jethro Tull, King Crimson, Yes, Genesis, and Pink Floydd.

I did have the advantage of playing in a big band beginning in the eighth grade. That experience gave me an invaluable exposure to the music of Basie and Ellington, and to the American songbook at large. But bebop? What was that?

Then came my first year at Aquinas College, and a course on modern music appreciation with Dr. Bruce Early. The class covered plenty of ground, as I recall, including the music of some of my favorite rock bands. Inevitably, we got into the various kinds of jazz, which was Bruce’s real thrust with the class. Dixieland I was familiar with, and as for big band swing, I had been playing that since junior high school. But suddenly, jazz began to take on deeper dimensions for me. And one day, Bruce dropped a record onto the turntable, and out of the speakers came the most unbelievable saxophone music I had ever heard. It was blazing. Brilliant. Blinding. Beautiful. Wild, yet–though I wouldn’t have thought of the description at the time–wonderfully logical.

That was my first exposure to Charlie Parker, and it left me stunned. How on earth could anyone play a saxophone like that?

I didn’t have ears enough to comprehend what it was that I had heard. I only knew that it pointed toward possibilities on the alto sax that I had never dreamed of. It was like stepping through a door out of a tiny room and discovering an entire mountain range on the other side.

Fortunately, I was too young and too dumb to feel utterly overwhelmed. That’s probably why I’m still playing the saxophone today. Some contemporaries of Parker weren’t so fortunate. I read of one saxophonist who, after hearing Bird in flight, pitched his horn into the river in despair. Today I understand that sentiment a little better–because, now that I’m more than twice as old as Parker was when he first lit his fire and greased his skillet, I still can’t cook the way he could. I have, however, learned a lot from him, and continue to learn.

If Bird hadn’t been given to the monstrous indulgences that eventually destroyed him, I wonder, as many musicians have wondered, what else he might have accomplished. Would bebop have been his apogee, his singular torch against whose sun-like flame all his future achievements would have paled? Or would it have been the spark to still brighter creative expressions? Dizzy is still with us; had Bird’s life been other than what it was, he might be here, too. But it wasn’t and he’s not, and all we can do is speculate on what might have been or might not have been–and absorb the alto saxophonist’s legacy. In the words of Charles Mingus, “If Charlie Parker was a gunslinger, there’d be a whole lot of dead copycats.”

January 11, 2010 by
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The Trouble with Reading Glasses: A Jazz Saxophonist’s Lament

Reading glasses suck.

No, let me restate that: Reading glasses are a boon, but having to wear them sucks. And it particularly sucks, sucks to the fourth power, when one is trying to read big band charts on a bandstand.

Am I the only horn player who has this problem? I seriously doubt it.

I go through reading glasses like they’re M&Ms chocolate-covered peanuts. I buy them, lose them, buy them, lose them. So I get the cheapest ones I can find–I mean, reeeaally cheap, $1.99 glasses which I purchase at Ace Hardware in Hastings. They do the job just fine for most purposes, but playing in a big band is not “most purposes.” It’s a purpose set apart that poses some peculiar problems.

For one thing, those classy, low-slung bandstands which are so much a part of the big band tradition place the music a couple feet away and well below my natural line of vision. I compensate by scroonching forward and down in a manner that would inspire admiration in a circus contortionist.  This gets me closer to the music, allowing me to read it.

Most of it, that is. There comes a point, as I approach the bottom of a chart, where the music dips below the frame of my glasses, and I’m confronted with a decision whether to scroonch even farther–and believe me, four hours of scroonching in this manner does nothing to improve either my posture or my attitude–or else attempt to read the remainder of the page without the assistance of lenses.

Now, my vision isn’t so bad that option B isn’t feasible, at least in theory, but a funny–though not knee-slappingly so–thing happens when I attempt it: I lose my place in the music.

This leaves me frantically scrambling to find my place while the rest of the band chugs merrily onward. Eventually, Eric or Hugh or whoever is playing tenor next to me points to a spot on my chart, and I dive back in with varying levels of success, depending on my familiarity with the arrangement. It’s frustrating and embarrassing.

Life would be so much easier if I could trade the bandstand for a good, old-fashioned music stand which adjusts easily for height and distance. Get those charts right smack in front of my eyeballs, where I can read them without the aid of a telescope, and I’d be fine. But no, that’s not how it works, not with a big band, where low-rise bandstands are integrally woven into the mystique.

That, my friends, is why I emerge from big band gigs with the posture of a Cheeto. Reading-glasses-induced scroonching is doing me in.

I may be a well-maintained 53 years old, but I’m still 53. That’s not old enough yet to qualify as a curmudgeon, but there are times when I come pretty close, and an entire evening of imitating a hunchback is one of them.

So why do I continue to put up with the frustrations and, in all seriousness, the physical discomfort? Because I enjoy playing the music. I’m not primarily a big band musician; my natural habitat, where I really spread my wings and fly, is small combos. But I came up through big bands, and I’m glad for the opportunity to still play the great old arrangements from time to time. I mean, you can’t get a better jazz education than you’ll find in the music of Duke and Basie, you know? That’s why I continue to pay the cost of tuition.

There’s no problem with the library, none whatever. I just wish I could find some reading glasses that would enable me to read the books without a hitch from cover to cover.

December 19, 2009 by
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Lynn’s Grins: A Charles McPherson Alto Sax Solo Transcription

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Ready for another saxophone solo transcription? “Lynn’s Grins” by alto saxophonist Charles McPherson is one of my favorites. It’s a concert C blues (alto key of A) at a medium-fast tempo, and it features McPherson in full cry, showing the listening world that he knows a thing or two about bebop. (Click on the images to enlarge them.)

lynns_grins_p2
From his simple opening statement outlining the tonic triad, McPherson plunges headlong into a millrace of ideas, toying at times with outside colors but always staying within the basic framework of the parent key.

There’s plenty to pick up on from this solo, and the best way to do so is by getting to work on it. What are you waiting for? Get cracking!

December 11, 2009 by
Filed Under: Band, Jazz, Jazz Improvisation and Technique, Music, Saxophone Tagged With: , , , , , ,
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