A couple of weeks ago Mary Jo Sparrow, director of bands at North Buncombe Middle School, invited me to visit her students and give them a workshop on improvisation. She specifically asked me to run them through an introduction to blues in the key of E flat, since they were working on a piece that included an improv section in those changes. That afternoon, after finishing the clinic, I wrote out a simple blues head in E flat that I though would be playable by middle school music students. Today I finally got around to scoring out that head for a middle school jazz band. I call it Blackhawk Blues, after the North Buncombe Middle School mascot. Here’s a MIDI realization.
As always, you have to use your imagination when listening to a computer play back music written for live musicians. Usually I like to stick a Band-in-a-Box generated solo as a placeholder for solo improv sections, but for this MIDI realization I intentionally left it out so that students could use it as a practice track. If you want to download this MIDI realization right click here and select “download linked file” or whatever similar option you get.
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