Guitarist Pere Soto visited Asheville a few years ago.  While he was in town, I was able to arrange for him to talk to a couple of my jazz classes.  He’s an expert in Django Reinhardt’s playing and talked to my Jazz History class.  He’s also a very fine jazz and contemporary classical composer.

Currently, Pere is working on a project where he analyzes in incredible detail the compositions of various jazz tunes.  David Valdez, a frequent collaborator of Pere’s, has made one of the tune analysis available.  It’s an analysis of Thelonious Monk’s Bolivar Blues.

Continue reading “Bolivar Blues Analysis By Pere Soto” →

For non-percussion playing composers writing out percussion parts can be quite a challenge, partly because they don’t know exactly how to notate the parts.  These key maps for drum set and some other common percussion instruments can help.

Drum Set

Timbales

Congas

Bongos

Here is a short article on how to write out drum set parts for big bands.  With most “groove-based” percussion playing (jazz, latin, rock, etc.) it’s not necessary to write out the complete percussion part for the player, since what they will come up with to play is usually hipper than what you can notate.  On the other hand, a lot of big band drum set parts don’t have enough info for the drummer for easy sight reading.  There’s a balance that you have to strike to give you percussionists or drum set players enough info to work from to blend and balance with the band (dynamics, phrasings, hits, etc.) without cluttering it up too much.

When in doubt about how to write something, get in person with someone who plays that instrument and get their help.

I’ve been leafing through Bill Russo’s book Jazz Composition & Orchestration for some ideas and inspiration and came across the following eight points to consider for composers wanting to have their music performed.  It’s good advice, particularly for inexperienced composers.

1. Write in medium registers for all the instruments
2. Give the brass instruments frequent and long rests
3. Deal with one aspect of composition at a time
4. Write a sketch score and then a full score
5. Be sure that both the score and the extracted parts are legible and that they correspond to each other completely
6. Know the orchestra you are writing for and give crucial passages to the best players
7. Construct parts that are enjoyable to perform
8. Be brave, if your work is unpalatable to the “hip” crowd, but be careful to learn what they have to teach you and avoid attacking theme merely to disguise your own deficiencies.

If I could be so bold, I’ll add:

1. When looking for new musical material see if you can derive it from motives already in the piece

What would you add?

I just saw this over on Casa Valdez Studio, the blog of saxophonist David Valdez.  Supposedly it is a scan of Bill Evans‘ handwritten manuscript for a 1971 recording session.  Evans was not only one of the most influential pianists of jazz, but was also a innovative composer as well.

Time Remembered is a challenging tune to improvise over.  The root movement is mainly what you would expect, but sometimes the chord quality (major, minor, etc.) often isn’t.  Check out mm. 5-6 in the image above to see what I mean.  The root movement of A, D, to G is the common ii-V-I pattern, but all three chords are minor.  I also love how Evans chooses the upper extensions of the chords as melody notes (9th, 11th, 13th).

One of my composition teachers once brought a stack of photocopies of handwritten music by John Scofield he had gotten somewhere (he wouldn’t say).  It was really cool to look at what Scofield had written and hear the recording to see how much was actually improvised and how much was pre-composed.

Back in 2006 I was commissioned to write an arrangement of all the U.S. armed forces themes into a medley for the San Luis Valley Big Band.  I always enjoy doing things like this, taking non-jazz tunes and putting them into a jazz context.  I had also done this with the Adams State College alma mater back when I taught music there (2000-2003).  ASC is located in the San Luis Valley, which is my connection with this group.

Watch the above YouTube video to hear the San Luis Valley Big Band play through my arrangement.  The SLV Big Band started up after I moved from the area, so I never was personally involved with them.  If you’ve never been to this part of southern Colorado, it’s a beautiful part of the country, but pretty rural and towns are relatively far away from each other.  I’m very impressed that the SLV Big Band has gotten 17 jazz musicians in the area to commit to getting together frequently enough to put together a big band like this.  Kudos to the SLV Big Band!

I’ve gotten a couple of inquiries from band leaders looking for an arrangement like this and wondering how they can get it.  While I’m always willing to do business personally, what I need to do is get a high quality recording done of this arrangement so I can get it published.