Originally Posted by
wzpgsr
What’s your approach here? I’m assuming you already know these tunes fairly well and are trying to see what comes out “on the fly” each day.
I’ve been working with a teacher and the brunt of my practice time since the pandemic started has been writing and practicing one-chorus arrangements of just one tune, Autumn Leaves. I’ve put together three so far. One extremely basic bass note and melody arrangement with very little rhythmic interest—basically oompah bass notes on the 1 and 3 of each bar. The second arrangement was way more involved harmonically, but it seemed to suffer from waaay too much rubato and not enough swing. A case of “just because you can write doesn’t mean you can play it”, I think. My current arrangement is much simpler harmonically and I’m focusing on getting the syncopation and swing feel down. That’s been 9 months of practice for me, although admittedly a lot that time is spent trying different sounds out for each melody line.
I think you are pretty accomplished already to be able to pull of these one-day arrangements. Nice work!
Transcriber wanted
Today, 04:35 PM in Improvisation