Transcript Summary
This hour is our jazz portion of the camp.
We have Dave Bendekite to come on down and help us out.
Dave has, as you can see up here, he brought some of them.
He brought, he's put out two records,
and he's put out two jazz improvisation books.
He has one of them here for sale.
You're so interested.
This guy's been playing around the Bay Area for an awful lot.
He was in the Glenn Miller Orchestra traveling.
He's been at the Fairmont.
Played there for probably, what, three, four years?
Five, around there.
Four of those.
Yeah.
Probably has played for just about every big name person
that's come in through town in the Bay Area.
Has a lot of experience breaking into the classical field now.
Starting to work for the ballet a little bit in San Francisco.
Just as an all around, not dancing.
He's just an all around trumpet player.
You just see, you put music in front of him, he'll do it.
So this is Dave Bendekite.
Excuse me, I'm just getting over a cold here.
If you have any questions while I'm talking,
please just raise your hand and chime in or yell at me
or whatever you want to do.
We're going to talk about jazz improvisation here.
And I'm going to explain to you the method that I use.
And then we're going to have a volunteer, Tom, come up
and we'll take him through a lesson.
So in case you want to teach this stuff,
or see exactly how a lesson runs.
You.
How are you?
OK.
Jazz is a craft that you learn by doing.
It's not, there's a bit of an intellectual exercise to it.
And you've got to understand theory and all that stuff.
But mostly it's a thing you learn by practicing.
Just like learning to play trumpet,
you can't read a bunch of textbooks and theory books
and then suddenly pick up a trumpet and play it.
You have to practice.
It's also, as part of that, it's an oral art, right?
A-U-R-A-L. So that's important to bear in mind when you're
trying to learn to play jazz.
There's been a way of teaching jazz that's
been happening over the last 20, 30 years.
I'm not sure where it came from or where it's going.
But it's been a situation where a teacher who may not
be a jazz player, and this kind of thing might sound good to him,
will say, OK, what you've got to do is learn all your scales
and all your arpeggios, and that's
going to make you be able to play jazz.
And it doesn't really quite work that way.
You have to learn all your scales.
You have to learn all your arpeggios.
But it seems to me, and it seemed to me
before I started writing these books,
that Charlie Parker didn't just learn his scales and chords,
and Dizzy Gillespie didn't just do that, and Louis Armstrong,
and anybody you can name.
What they did was they did start with learning
their scales and chords, but then they
copied their favorite players.
They emulated.
It's an aural art.
They stole licks from guys.
They transcribed solos, memorized them,
and they played a lot.
So it seems to me that all the great players
learn the same way by doing this.
And so that's the way.
I mean, if you want to play like them,
it would kind of make sense that you
learn to play jazz the same way that they did.
And I haven't really, I mean, it seems
to me that everybody who's a great player
learned to play that way.
And if you ask any of them, they'll tell you.
Bill Watrous had like every trombone solo
ever written memorized.
Charlie Parker went up to the Cascades one summer,
and his hero at the time was Lester Young.
And he memorized all the recorded solos of Lester Young
in one summer.
If you want to play like that, you've got to do that stuff.
So they all learned to play the same way.
And I have yet to see someone come out
of the other way of doing it who ends up with a status
that these people have.
So it's just something to think about
if you want to decide what approach to take.
Excuse me.
So first thing, of course, you want to be able to do
is play your instrument.
And so it's important to study with the best
teacher you can find.
And you should all be thankful to whoever, to yourself,
or whoever paid for you to come here,
that you can see Claude and get some information out of him,
because that's very important.
And then when you go out of here, if you live in this area,
I think you can study with Claude down here,
or the Bay Area, San Francisco.
If you're from somewhere else, just
be sure you get with the best teacher you can find
and learn about technique.
Because if you can't play the horn,
then it's impossible to say what you want to say musically.
So that's very important.
Now in terms of learning something,
the best way to do anything, how many
students here of Claude's are studying with him?
Show of hands?
OK.
How many people are here?
All right.
If you've been studying with Claude for any length of time,
you've probably figured out that it's real important
to systematize things.
If you want to learn to do lips slurs,
you don't go to the last page of the Charlie Colman book
or whatever and start from there.
You always start with something simple and you build on it.
You've got to build a bit of a foundation
and then work from there.
Well, jazz is the same way.
So what we try to do with this, I
try to figure out a system that would benefit you most,
benefit your practice time the most by setting it up
so you'd be doing certain things every day
and each thing would build off the previous day.
So the first thing you want to do every day,
and it's in these books.
I'm not going to go through and show you where it is and stuff.
But the first thing you want to do every day
is study a little theory and get an idea of what
you're going to be dealing with.
So you could start off with, say, the major scale.
We all know C major, right?
What's the sixth in C?
A.
A.
Right, OK.
If you didn't know it was A, then there's
some theory you've got to know, OK?
And I'm not going to go through a big lecture on theory
because that's not what we're here for today
because there's just too much of it.
So you need to know the degrees of the scale.
1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 octaves, right?
9th, 10th, same as the third, 11th, 13th.
You need to know what those are.
And you start in C. And then you have
to know it in all the other keys.
So what's a major seventh in F sharp?
E sharp, not F natural.
Same note, same key on a piano.
But we're in F sharp, so it has to be an E sharp.
OK, so you have to know these things.
Now, one of the reasons you have to know them
is that the next thing you get to is chords, OK?
Chords are any three notes played at once or more.
And you start off with triads.
Triads, a C major triad is C, E, G. It's 1, 3, 5, OK?
So you need to know your degrees of the scale
to know what 1, 3, 5 is in every key, OK?
We're in the key of A. What are the notes in an A major triad?
A, and E. OK, you've got to know all that stuff.
And then you go on beyond that.
You start going to minor triads, diminished triads,
seventh chords, ninth chords.
So if I said to you, what are the notes in a C major 9 sharp
11, 13, OK, no, let's make it a weird key.
Let's make it E flat.
That's not really weird.
They're all the same.
What are the three vowels?
So what are the notes in that?
E flat major 7, or E flat major 9 with a sharp 11, 13.
E flat G, E flat D, F, A, C.
F, right, and the sharp 11 is the A, and the C is the 13th, OK?
And all you will see, there's a chalk in here.
All they'll give you for that would be E flat, right,
and they'll do the triangle.
But sometimes they'll write MAJ, or some places
they'll do a 7.
You see a 7, they'll line through it.
Back east, that means major 7.
They'd have a major 9, and then probably parentheses,
sharp 11, 13.
So from this, I mean, you need to know the degrees in your scale.
You need to know what that chord symbol means, OK?
Because if I'm playing, and I hear that chord,
and I don't have perfect pitch, or I don't know exactly what
I want to fit there, and I go, the 9th
would sound awfully good there, but I don't know what it is.
So you need to know that stuff.
And that just comes by learning it,
and learning it, and practicing it over, and over.
There's another thing I want to interject
before we get into the rest of the subjects
that you'd be studying every day, is your memory, OK?
You have to memorize everything, OK?
When you're there on the bandstand,
I got me, my body, my brain, and my trumpet.
That's all I got.
I don't get to bring the Abrasol records, you know,
and then transcribed solos, and all that stuff.
So whatever's in your head is all that you'll be able to have.
So you have to memorize everything.
And memorization is, it's important to think of it
as nothing more than a skill that improves with practice,
OK?
Does everybody here know who Joe Henderson is?
Never heard of him.
Who knows who Joe Henderson is?
One, two, wow, three, four.
Joe Henderson is a, well, he used to be famous,
saxophone player.
You know who Freddie Hubbard is?
Joe Henderson and Freddie Hubbard grew up about the same time.
I think they both came out of Indianapolis,
or thereabouts back east somewhere, anyway.
And Joe Henderson is a tenor saxophone player
who's very famous as a jazz, sort of a modern 60s,
mainstream type jazz saxophone player,
a little after Coltrane, in terms of the timeline there.
Anyway, he was living in San Francisco.
Took some lessons there.
And we started off, he plays piano, also, fairly well.
And so I think the first thing we did was Stella by Starlight.
He wasn't going to teach me how to play trumpet,
because he doesn't know anything about trumpet.
But he was going to teach me how to improvise.
So what he did was he teach you a solo just by rote, OK?
So we're going to do Stella by Starlight.
And he just take one note at a time,
or one little phrase at a time.
Stella by Starlight.
["Starlight by Starlight"]
["Starlight by Starlight"]
So he taught me that solo.
I still remember it after all these years.
And it started off.
["Starlight by Starlight"]
Right?
With that phrase.
And it probably took me like 10 minutes
to figure out what he was doing.
You know, playing the piano, I try the notes on my horn
and we get back and forth.
So I think the first lesson was an hour lesson.
I probably got 16 measures at the most.
The next lesson, I got the rest of the chorus
plus a half of another one.
The next lesson, I got like a chorus and a half.
And it was just from doing this stuff.
Memorizing is just a skill, OK?
And the more you work on it, the easier it will get.
And in the one book that has the tape,
there's a lot of stuff.
I make transcribed solos.
And there's some trading twos sections
that will help you to improve that aspect here.
Do you find that you learn a transcription faster
by rote like that phrase at a time
or by transcribing the entire solo
and then reading it back?
Reading it back and then comparing that
to the recorded phrase.
By rote, like not writing it down?
Exactly.
I usually write them down.
In fact, I always write them down.
But in this case, you just learn it in a lesson by rote
and then write it down in a day?
Yeah.
You know, maybe it would be better like to...
It would be faster for me just to jot it down.
Yeah.
Well, it is faster to me because I'm writing it down
and I don't have to memorize it
for longer than about 10 seconds.
You know, longer to hear it and write it down
than I forget about it and go on to the next thing.
But then you have to memorize it after that.
It's more time consuming at the outset
to sit there and, you know, just do it by...
Also, always put your record on a cassette tape
so you're not grinding the needle into it.
It's more time consuming,
but I think in the long run it might be more beneficial...
Make it more thorough that way then?
To just do it by ear.
But on the other hand, that's really hard, man,
for somebody who's just starting out, you know.
Is it easier for teaching someone starting out
to have them imitate what they hear
or to try to figure it out by look?
You know, like if you help them write down what the idea is.
Depends on what the idea is.
It's the rhythm, you know.
If it's a simple one,
they can repeat it back to you by ear.
And usually people aren't that up on, you know,
writing down what they hear on the page.
So you want to start them off doing that real soon
so that they get used to it.
I mean, it just gets easier.
It seems like what's going to be hard for them to hear
is also going to be hard for them to read.
Well, maybe.
I don't know.
That's kind of over there.
So you think the ear comes first for most students
or does it have to do with that written idea?
Or does it depend on the student?
Well, yeah.
I mean, in a way, the ear comes first
because you're going to hear it.
You know, you can hear before you can read and write.
So that's, I mean, music is an ear thing.
Right.
So what you teach is you teach them to hear it first
and then recite it and then show them what it looks like.
I do both.
I mean, on the tape, the trading two section,
open trumpet plays something
and then you're supposed to play it back at them
the next two bars.
So it's all there.
There's nothing written down.
You got to do all of it, you know.
And just to like go to one aspect of it or another,
first or second, I don't know if that's real important
because you're going to have to do it all sooner or later.
So you might as well just jump in and, you know.
It's like, should I do tonguing or lips lures?
Well, you know, you got to do both.
And maybe some people have an affinity for one or another.
So I wouldn't get, you know, embroiled in like
what should come first or not.
Just start plugging away.
Anyway, so I was talking about memory.
See?
I remembered.
So that's very important to start developing that.
And it'll also go into other aspects of music.
I've worked with some guys from the San Francisco Symphony.
We used to do recordings and no names.
But it's kind of funny because these guys,
like classical players a lot of the time,
are so enmeshed in...
My crescendo starts under this note
and it goes, it starts in a mezzo forte
and it goes to a fortissimo.
So it's, you know, I've worked on it this way
and it stops right here.
And if I heard that, I wouldn't listen to it.
I just got to like hear with my eyes.
Right?
So I remember this one time we were doing a recording
and time is money in the studio.
Okay?
So if you start asking a lot of questions
or if you fluff a note, if the writer didn't...
I mean the writer's going to hear it
and if he figures he can fix it in the mix or whatever
it's not going to be that important.
Like he doesn't want to know about it
because the producer might be in the booth.
Right?
And the producer might suddenly say,
okay, well now we got to spend another half an hour
and clean this thing up.
Right?
So I remember doing this, this one thing
where the guy who wrote the thing,
who wrote the ad, sang the part
and he was conducting
and he sang it like he wanted it played
and he gave the crescendo, he gave the cutoff.
And this one guy who was a very well-known player
couldn't figure out where it was going to stop
because he was looking at the page.
And he says, just watch me.
Oh.
Like listen to what I sang.
That's how it's raised.
Right?
So when you start doing this stuff
for learning to play jazz,
it'll also help out your legitimate trumpet playing
because it's very important.
You'll always find the best players,
the best classical players have real good ears
and they might not be able to explain to you
or talk about that this phrase goes this way or that way
but they can play just beautifully
because they hear it.
Okay?
And I think that's important to have that enter
into all aspects of styles of music
because that's all they are.
They're just different styles.
Okay.
So those are a couple of basic things.
Theory and memorizing, listening to jazz every day.
Okay?
If you turn on the radio,
I guess there's a jazz station down here.
What is it?
KKGO or something like that.
Oh, is it?
Oh, they changed?
Yeah.
Yeah.
Okay.
So turn that on every day.
Go buy records if you got a little extra money.
Records, CDs, whatever they're doing now,
laser discs.
Okay.
Now in terms of what you want to practice every day,
you want to go through a little bit of work on scales.
Okay?
And you can start off with the easiest one,
the C or the major scale.
Okay?
And take it from the lowest note of your instrument.
Just do it up and down, slurred three times.
You don't have to do models on it.
You get plenty of that in the other part of your lesson.
We're just trying to get things under your fingers
and get some ability happening with your ears.
Okay?
So we start out for trumpet low F sharp.
Oh, real good.
If you mess it up like I did,
you got to do it three times.
You got to start over, okay?
So three times in a row, no mistakes.
Then you go to the key of G up a half step.
Just do it up and down.
Once you get used to all of them,
put a metronome on and go along with that.
You know, maybe you won't be the same.
Is he coming back?
Pick him out of the tape.
No.
You know, when that red light goes on,
I start clamming.
Okay, so you'd work through your scales.
Now, without getting too much into the theory aspects,
when you have...
This is a very modern life radio technology.
Damn, that's too far away.
Really nice.
I've seen that.
You like that?
I saw that the other night.
This will be close enough.
Okay, if you have a C major scale here.
It's a C major scale.
It's a C major scale?
Huh?
Okay, if you play it from C up to C,
it's a C major scale.
If you play it from D up to D...
D Dorian.
Dorian, okay, refer to that.
That's called the D Dorian scale or mode.
Mode and scale mean the same thing.
If you go from E up to E, it's Phrygian.
F up to F, it's Lydian, then Mixolydian.
Okay, so they have names for all these different modes
of the C major scale.
Okay, when you're talking about a mode,
you always talk about the first note of the mode.
Okay, so this is A Aeolian.
All right, it's not C Aeolian.
C Aeolian would be down here in F, three flats.
Three flats.
Okay, so just...
Now that's one way of looking at modes.
Now after you practice through your major scales
after a couple days or a week or whatever,
you know, you get comfortable with,
you want to be able to do an eighth note
or a half note equals 120 on those,
which isn't too fast.
And do them in eighth notes, right?
So after you get through a week of that,
you're pretty comfortable with it.
You want to do your Dorian modes, okay?
And compared to a D major scale,
this D Dorian mode has what?
That's different.
Right, D major has one, two, three, four, five, six, seven.
Third and the seventh are flat from what they normally are.
Okay, so Dorian...
has a flat three and a flat seven, okay?
So you'd go through all that.
So like for F sharp, which has how many sharps?
Six.
Okay, you'd have an A natural and an E natural,
okay, for F sharp Dorian.
That would be the first scale.
It's also the same as what major scale?
E.
Okay.
C is a whole step lower than D.
Hawaiian is a whole step lower than F sharp.
E, right?
Okay, so E major scale starting on an F sharp
is F sharp Dorian.
Just to give you a little idea,
I mean, if you understand this, that's fine.
If you don't, there's plenty of theory books around
that can explain it to you.
So you'd want to go through that.
Then you want to do your Phrygian scales
and so on and so forth, okay?
Then, and you do them just like you do in Clark's, okay?
You play it through.
You turn the page.
You're done with it, okay?
It's not nuclear war.
It's not, you know, a hard operation.
It's just scales, okay?
So you play it through.
You don't have to figure,
now I've got to do every pattern mankind
could ever conceive of on this scale.
No, you don't.
Just play it up and down and go on to the next one, okay?
Keep it simple.
That stuff comes later.
And that is a hard operation.
All right.
After that, what you want to start working on are chords
or arpeggios in the case of instruments
that can only play one note at a time.
So you'd start off with C major
and do them the same way as you did with the scales.
We don't need to make this into some kind of a big deal.
Right, three times up and down,
but you start on the low F sharp for trumpet.
You know, go up by half steps, okay?
Like that.
When you're done with that,
the next week you can do C minor
and so on and so forth.
In the rush, I forgot to bring this other book I have
which has all this stuff written out
if anybody's interested.
There's, you know, order frames
where we can deal with that later.
That has all the order of events
in terms of the order of scales
you want to practice and the chords and whatnot
in a sensible fashion.
Now, once you've done your scales and your chords,
this is for a little more advanced players.
This isn't just for the guys starting off
unless you can figure it out.
Figure out a lick that you got from a record, okay?
Or if there's a lick out of a book, you know, whatever.
It's best to get it off of a record.
And work on it in all the keys.
Do it the same way.
So if the lick was something simple like...
Right here in C minor, B flat concert.
Okay, that's your lick.
Now we're going to start on a low F sharp with that.
Same as we do with the scales.
Three times.
Okay, then you go up a half step.
Right, three times on that
and just keep going up by half steps.
Right, now that's a simple lick.
Okay, now if we want to do something like that...
Okay, that's an F sharp.
Pretty good, huh?
I wasn't sure I could do it.
I wasn't sure I could do it.
Anyway, so like going through,
just with your ear like that,
I mean, it can get real complicated.
You just start off with something easy
and it'll build from that.
Okay, after you do that, through all the keys,
and if it's a simple lick
and it only takes you like five minutes
to get through all the keys on it,
get another one, okay?
The source of your material is records, okay?
Recorded stuff, so buy it.
If you can't think of anything to play,
oh, here's another basic rule.
It's important to think of all this jazz improvisation
in terms of vocabulary, okay?
It's just like speaking the English language
or any language.
If you try to learn English
by learning phonemes and the alphabet
and learning grammar rules, chances are
you won't be able to say anything
that makes any sense,
not to even talk about the correct pronunciation.
The way you do it is,
the way you learn to speak a language
is by listening to other people talk
and you get the, by osmosis,
you come up with the grammar rules
and all that stuff,
and then later you learn
what it was that you're doing
when you get to school.
Then they tell you,
well, you're saying this
and this is how it works,
but first you learn how to do it, right?
Playing music's the same way.
You don't learn the names of all the notes
and the names of all the chords
and this scale and that scale
and this is a third and this is that,
and then suddenly be able to play jazz, right?
They also have, okay,
so it's important to think of all the stuff
in terms of vocabulary
and you're gonna get your vocabulary
from records, okay?
So that ties in with what I said a minute ago.
They have these books
and you can have a stack of books
this high with like every lick known to man
that has ever been written or played anywhere
and you could probably,
if you're fairly competent technically
on your instrument,
you could probably play through all those things
in about a year,
but it's not gonna make you a player.
It's not gonna make you an improviser, okay?
So just please bear that in mind.
That's not to say you shouldn't buy those books
because there's some good stuff in them
and you can hopefully assimilate some of that
into your playing later on,
but we're just trying to get you to think
like what the proper approach is
to learning to play jazz, okay?
Okay, so you've done some scales,
some chords, some licks.
Now the next thing you're gonna tackle
is transcribing solos, okay?
And we'll do a little bit of one here
and we'll have Rosine help out with that.
See, now you can't leave, you're stuck.
Well, I'm trying to make some copies out of it.
Yeah, uh-huh.
Guard!
I've got two jobs on the front.
Right.
Okay, so the next thing you wanna do
is you wanna type transcribing solos
and that means listen to a solo on a record.
First you put it on a tape,
take it note by note,
figure out what the notes are,
write them down,
then memorize it.
You wanna practice it
just like you would an etude
in Clarks or Arbins or anywhere.
So you get all the notes right.
You wanna copy the inflections, okay?
You wanna copy the tone quality.
And chances are,
I mean, if it's somebody whose tone you hate,
you probably have to transcribe
in their solo in the first place.
So...
I mean, if the guy's got a squeezed up tone like that,
like, you know, no names.
But there are, you know,
players who would like to kind of sound funny
like, well, try to copy that
because that's part of what they're saying, right?
Once you can copy that,
then you can do what you want with it, okay?
Also, if you went and, like, memorized every,
say, Freddie Hubbard solo
that had ever been played
and you could play him
and you try to copy his tone,
his phrasing, everything,
it'd be pretty hard.
I mean, he gets around the horn real well.
You still wouldn't sound like Freddie
no matter how hard you tried.
So I don't feel like
just because you're copying people
is going to make you
into some kind of a clone
because it won't.
You're still going to sound like you
whether you like it or not, right?
Okay.
And then after you transcribe,
you just work on that like an étude
and when you're done with that,
you put it away
and then what you want to do every day is play.
Okay, do some playing.
Along with Ava Sold Records
or if you know a piano player,
bass player, drummer,
you can get together with her
or a guitar player,
just play, okay?
And so that's pretty much your routine.
Now before we actually,
we're going to actually go through this.
He disappeared.
Oh, that's a light guy.
Before we actually go through this
with Tom if he shows up again,
are there any questions?
Clogging up your brains.
Waiting to get out.
No?
No?
Do you use experience band in a box?
Band in a box?
Like chef and chef in a box?
Like chef in a box?
Like chef in a can?
Oh, I'm sorry.
No, what is that?
It's a computer program
where you enter the chords
and the measures
and fill out a style
and then it's backed up
with the piano, drums,
and for the symphony.
So it's like a sequencer program?
Sort of.
Yeah, but you just fill out
the measures and the style
and the chords and it...
Yeah.
Okay.
I didn't know if you...
No.
That might work out okay.
It depends on how it sounds.
On the other hand,
if you just want to hear chords
that's probably fine.
Give something to play along with.
Also, once...
There's also a...
Aebersold.
You all heard of Jamie Aebersold?
A-E-B-E-R-S-O-L-D, I think.
It's out of...
Geez, I have to figure out
what town...
You know what town?
Some place in Indiana.
Some place in Indiana.
Wasn't that a tune?
What's a bridge to Indiana?
There ain't no bridge to Indiana.
Anyway.
So you can get these records.
Most music stores will have them.
They're nice play-along records.
Yeah.
Boom.
Right?
They're nice play-along records
and there's got to be
about 40 of them
or 50 of them by now
that he's put out.
So any tune you can think of
and he hires
real good rhythm sections
you can play along with that.
The only thing that's
a little questionable
and everybody's aware of it
including Jamie
is that there ain't
no communication
between you
and the real rhythm section.
So if you go...
Sorry.
They're not going to do that
like a real rhythm section would
back at you
or whatever.
So let's bear that in mind
because sometimes
you'll play along
with those records
and then you get
with the real rhythm section
and people just get terrified
because there's this stuff
coming at them
that's not what the record did.
Right.
Yeah, so something like
that band in the box.
Have you found any other questions?
Have you ever run
any bad habits
in your other playing
as a result of copying
different styles
maybe some real good ideas
but inferior technique?
I'm sorry,
what was the first part of it?
If I say studying
someone with a stifled tone
has that ever affected
your playing
in some way
that you ended up
getting into bad habits
or something like that?
Something you were able
to completely isolate then?
Yeah.
I think
with just
with any trumpet
you can get
a whole variety
of different sounds.
Right?
Sorry.
I mean you can get
a real airy
or you can get it bright
or anywhere in between
depending on how you do
your vibrato
and how your airs work
and stuff
and you can't
that's not the thing
if you're trying to show somebody
to figure out
how to do this stuff
just kind of
let your ear
be your guide
more than
oh my tongue
has to come up
a quarter of an inch here
and then I do this
and then I put my head
like that
because you won't
be able to do it
twice in a row
so always
let your ear
be your guide
and that kind of stuff
and I don't think
unless you're doing
something really weird
like if the only way
you can sound like
Chet Baker
is to go over here
that might mess you up
maybe some guys
can do that
yes sir
are there
are any particular
travel players
that seem to
remain improvisers
like Erwin Wiles
or something like that
whatever you like
I would suggest
in terms of
yeah
you know
listen to what you like
this isn't like
cod liver oil
or something
you know what I mean
I like Freddie Hubbard a lot
Clifford Brown
Lee Morgan
I tend to like
the guys from
that era
that's just my personal taste
doesn't mean
other players
aren't good
or something
so I'd go with
what you like
and in terms of transcribing
if you're just getting started
try to find something
that's fairly simple
out of somebody
that you like
there's a bunch of solos
in this book here
the grey one
that you can transcribe
and they start off
real easy
so it will give you
the idea of how to do it
and by the time
you're done with the book
you'll be able to
transcribe
from anywhere
within reason
of course
any other questions?
no? okay
Tom
old boy
do you have a trumpet?
sure do
okay
he's mad at me
Tom Brozine
ladies and gentlemen
let's have a big round of applause
he graciously agreed
to go through this
we're just going to go
through the first lesson
in the book
because we wanted
to get a little idea
of how
if you want to teach
teach this
how to go about it
Tom
yes
in lesson one here
the first thing is theory
and it has the major scale
like over there
with the degrees of the scale
root, second, third, fourth
fifth, sixth, seventh
octave, ninth
I guess it just goes
through the ninth
you understand all that right?
if you don't understand
all that
you'd have to read it
it's pretty self explanatory
and go through
some different keys
make yourself
little flashcards
or whatever
you can also name
like a degree of the scale
the sixth in
and then name a key
E flat
C
okay
so you can play games
with yourself like that
with going through
the different keys
okay
and a little thing here
most players say
one, two, five
rather than reading
all about that
in terms of
where a major scale
will go
if you were just
playing scales
over a set of chord changes
what kind of a chord
would a major scale
go with?
yeah major
major scale
or major chord
any old kind of major chord
major six
major seven
major nine
whatever
or just a major triad
okay
you understand that right?
okay
Niners
alright
the next part
in the theory thing
is building chords
five
we all know what this is
okay
so when you're teaching
you want to make sure
that the student
understands the theory
part of it
and can do it
in several keys
unless they're just
a rank beginner
if they can play
all their major scales
and all the keys
they ought to be able
to do all this stuff
and all the keys
okay
the next part
is just playing this
would you play this time?
sure
thank you very much
there you go
F sharp
okay
in the book
it's just for
basic stuff
so it's just
in the key of C
try it in like
low F sharp
okay
and you can go up
with half steps
with that
if you're feeling industrious
okay
the next part
is just playing
okay
the next part
that you do
now that's like
what it would take
it's like three minutes
so there's not
all that much theory
at the outset
unless you're doing
all the keys
the next part is
trading twos
now
on this
okay
there's an open trumpet
on the
left channel
and a cut mute
trumpet on the right channel
you listen to
what's on the
left channel
it's two measures
and then you play it
back exactly
as you heard it
and there'll be
a cut mute
of trumpet playing
your part
so if you hear
something different
on the cut mute
then you play the roll
it lets you know
automatically
okay
part three
one, two, three, four
trumpet playing
trumpet playing
trumpet playing
trumpet playing
trumpet playing
trumpet playing
trumpet playing
applause
that was in C major
that was very good
that was in C major
and he only made
two mistakes
laughter
um
actually
I got mixed up
laughter
the piano player is bald
can I write that down
yep
laughter
I gotta use that one
check it right
laughter
um
the lighting's wrong
laughter
it's his fault
um
okay so that's
what you do
and if you make mistakes
which you might
or may not
at the beginning
we go back
and do it again
a couple times
and it's real simple
what that does
is first of all
you have to memorize
what you're hearing
for at least two measures
okay
so let's go
to get that started
if there were
anything
any licks on there
I know this is like
the first lesson
any licks on there
that you wanted to use
maybe a three blind
mice lick
whatever you want
laughter
write it down
start a notebook
of licks
okay
so you don't forget them
and practice them
in all the keys
okay
um
now the next part
is a tune
yes sir
oh
those recorded examples
are on
in the key
that you just worked on
yeah
how that works
right
yeah I tried to make everything
so it made sense
yeah
um
yeah
uh
but you know
once we
once you start getting off
into
you know like
all keys of
whatever
it kind of got difficult
but uh
you know
you covered it
well enough
now the next
the next part of the lesson
is a song
and um
this is all
C major
that's the chord
uh
C major six
and there's a little melody
and then a solo
which we're going to transcribe
so
what you do
uh the first time through
is you play it
it's over here
again right there
um
it's an eight bar tune
and then there's
eight bars of a solo
that I played
that you would
transcribe
after a bit
and then there's
a repeated section of
eight bars
so sixteen bars
that you get to improvise on
and then
the last eight bars
now
for the sixteen bars
that you're improvising on
you can use some of the licks
that you just heard
right
should be
sort of fresh in your head
you use a
C major scale
use a triad
whatever
you just want to
experiment around
and uh
try to start developing
your vocabulary
okay
or if you've heard some
Clifford Brown lick
that you want to try out
on this
fine
yeah
whatever
okay
so what do I
play it
lesson one
part four
one
two
three
four
four
oh
don't
this is a solo
that you transcribe
okay
okay
now you play
well
make up style
more bars
okay
just keep playing
yeah
yeah
yeah
yeah
yeah
yeah
yeah
yeah
yeah
yeah
yeah
yeah
yeah
and uh
once you transcribe the solo
you memorize it
and
play it
you know
try experimenting around
with it
some of the licks from it
during your solo
okay
so
that's that
and that's the end of that
lesson now
we're going to transcribe the solo
in a minute
um
there we go
how long does this go
till you're done
you got about
oh okay
we'll transcribe a little of the solo then
uh
so that's basically
what you do
every day
and there's
fifteen lessons and stuff
so it'll
it'll be progressive
like it needs to be
um
and it kind of covers
a little bit of everything
right
you have your scales
your chords
there's some licks in there
and the transcribing solos
and playing
okay
and that's just what
the great players did
not exactly in this
this order
and with this song
but that's exactly
what they did
to learn how to play
okay
so hope yeah
now
let's uh
talk a little bit about
transcriptions
anyway
get this thing
right out of the way
sure
just to not save
okay
this way
okay
just enough
to get that
step
alright
let's see
wait a minute
let me go a little more
hang on
it's all going to
forward
let me know what
it's not
it's five
okay
okay
I guess we can see
it up here
um
okay
lesson one
part four
no thank you
one
one
one
one
one
two
three
four
okay
first thing you want to do
is make a dot
on the music
staff there
what note was that
okay
okay
search around until you find it
alright
play the tape over and over
and you know
get your finger going
so you just stop
when that note
when that note happens
and you get enough of it
to figure out what it is
okay
is an E
we make a dot
don't worry about
the rhythms at first
okay
ba da
if I couldn't figure that out
I'd stop the tape
on the next note
ba da
F
F
F
F
F
F
F
F
F
F
F
F
F
F
F
F
F
F
F
F
F
F
a
a
a
figure that out on your horn
it's an F
ba dada
back to an E
ba dada
okay
now
at this point
we wouldn't
know what the rhythm
is
we don't know if that's there
or there
what's going on here
so
you want to start
clapping
or take
your fingers
ba da da
so you know where
one, two, three and four
is
or one two
three four you know whatever it takes to figure out to figure out where the beat
is okay the best thing to do at first is also figure out what's on one and what's
on three okay so here's the time it's playing along
ba da da da da so you figure the first notes on one so we don't need to rest
in front of them now we want to figure out what's on three two three four ba da da third
note right that one my hand hit okay so that whoops hey that's on three this is
on one now we want to that's either going to be not this stuff doesn't get
down to 16th notes and 32nd notes it's just quarter notes and eighth notes and
half notes okay so we want to figure out where this is is it on two or before two
ba da da da so it's on the after beat of two right we don't know figure that out so we know
this is an eighth note and this is a not important okay the next notes on four
correct now this note is it before one or is it on one before one okay so there would be a
bar line here and since we got three beats four beats we really don't have much choice it has to
be an eighth note there right okay so you go through just note by note figure the rhythms out
kind of do it systematically as systematically as you can don't try to figure out what the rhythm
is on a whole tricky passage just figure out words what's on the beat what's off okay and add
things up don't go about it that way okay and you just do the whole soul that way okay any other
questions yeah I'm done show us what the last lesson does huh show us what the last lesson does
what does last lesson it's just it's like a fast blues
more tricky stuff but it all builds up to that and this books been used you know by
high school students in college college classes and stuff so it works people seem to get something
out of it and they're happy any other questions and that's it say
you