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Thank you for the encouraging words, JBN! I continue to really enjoy this process, even when it's challenging and frustrating!
Originally Posted by Jimmy blue note
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01-28-2021 10:17 AM
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Week 8 day 4. 70 BPM using the straight ATTYA ireal pro backing. Mind wondering more than it has been lately causing me to find myself playing out on the ledge when I should have turned left down that hallway. I had the graceful recovery thing well in hand weeks ago, but tonite it was a full stop to hear where I was in the form. I'm going to call it tired from a long day and hope it straightens itself out tomorrow.
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Week 8. Day 4 of "ATTYA" at 85 bpm. Like guido5, my head just wasn't in it this evening. Right before I sat down to play my head started swimming. I got through the exercises. I'll probably play through them more this evening. I spent some time last night trying to see dominant bebop scales with a #11to use over this exercise. But I still feel for me anyway, many of those 7#11, like the D7#9#11 in bar four, are better envisioned as an altered V leading to the next chord. It makes more sense to me that way. And I find I play something more musically satisfying to me ear. Oh, well. Not my best night. I'm not feeling great. Hopefully tomorrow will be a better day.
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Barry Harris’s melodic approach to dominants has been a game changer for me: the dominant scale half-step rules when paired with the four related dominants is ear opening and gets the various altered sounds accessible by superimposing the related dominant scales over V chords in your ears without a lot of “bookwork” and theory. Originally Posted by D'Aquisto Fan
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Week 8 day 5. 70 BPM using the straight ATTYA ireal pro backing. Tonite was just the opposite of last night. I was loose and inventing pretty lines that stayed right in the pocket. The triplets kept falling nicely into place. I just felt completely connected to the form. Finely doing justice to one of my favorite tunes.
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Excellent! Great job! I'm about to embark on this evening's work. Hope I have as much fun and success as you did! Originally Posted by guido5
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Week 8. Day 5 of "ATTYA" at 90 bpm. I continue to follow guido5's lead.
I had an excellent outing this evening. So much more musically satisfying than last night. Think I'll spend some more time with it tonight.
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Week 8. Day 6 of "ATTYA" at 95 bpm. Nice to get a jump on this earlier in the day. No real breakthroughs. I feel like I'm repeating myself quite often. Trying to do more intervalic leaps to keep things fresh and different. Always trying to make it musical to my ears.
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Week 8 day 5. 70 BPM using the straight ATTYA ireal pro backing. It was a long day so my energy level is lower than yesterday. But it still was a nice session. Staying comfortably and intuitively in form with perhaps a bit more tendency to run the arp or chunk of scale than yesterday, but I'm doing it with triplets so that sort of counts. Doesn't it?
A day of something different will feel good...
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The end of week 8. Something quite exciting happened between the week of review and the transition to triplets this week. I find myself getting comfortable with not paying attention to what I'm playing... and what I mean by that is I'm letting go of trying to focus on the individual notes and really thinking in larger units. Triplets as single units playing either a static role or forming movement. Triplet "units" working to create direction or arc over several beats. Phrases taking on distinct beginnings, areas of peak and endings. Using repeated forms to make theme and variation (First two systems creating closely related variation in the third and fourth). These kind of things. As I focus on individual devices, sometimes just using a 10 minute run to do ONLY pickups and enclosures (upper neighbor, lower neighbor, chord tone), it's not musical at all but when I do my next 10 minute segment, boy are there some solid combinations involving the fluidity of embellished chord tones. Maybe I'll give a partial list of three note combinations as units and throw them out there as study points.
Anyway, this week the runs were actually inspiring and invigourating. Having fun.
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Week 9 All The Modulations in Eb Suggested speed target 104
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I'm a few weeks behind everyone else, but I'm reading all the posts and trying to put much of the advice into practice and application. When I finished Day 6 of Week 6 yesterday (Saturday) at 120bpm I was feeling a bit discouraged. I felt that my playing and technique hadn't really improved much from Day 1. I still had to focus to make the changes cleanly and melodically; it was a struggle to avoid the pitfall of just noodling; and getting good, clean articulation for the entire 10 minute session with no flams or mis-picks was a bit hit-or-miss sometimes. But then it occurred to me today that I had made progress: I was making all the same mistakes, but now I'm doing it at over twice the speed from where I started. I'm beginning to realize that the point of Superchops - at least for me - is to be playing right at the edge of where things start to fall apart. The benefit will be that slower tempos will now be more comfortable (I hope).
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Week 9 day 1. 70 BPM using the straight ATTYA ireal pro backing in Eb. It is quite refreshing to play this old friend in a new key. I didn't feel like the sharpest knife in the drawer so I just focused on getting comfy in the new locations and really feeling the form. Hopefully more creative lines will follow later in the week...
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I'm REALLY looking forward to every one of these hourlong workouts. I go into each one with a technical task and having a songform to apply this to is the glue that holds it together. Or maybe I'm learning to glue solid pieces together.
Tonight it was lower neighbor night. I pick a chord tone, start with that note, travel a chromatic or diatonic step down and return to it. This lower neighbor can be really effective in launching me into an ascending direction. C B C E D# E F G A G E C. These kind of groupings are perfect for building vocabulary, an informed ear and developing lines that have a really jazzy strength to them. C B C, D B C, that kind of thing for different chord tones.
I figure if I take a "figure a day" approach, 1) There's no excuse for ever repeating myself 2) I'll quickly learn what doesn't work and 3) my mastery of really playing, hearing and thinking good ideas will be a natural result.
I'm going to combine neighbors with arpeggios tomorrow. Whee!
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Week 9. Day 1 of "ATTYA" in Eb at 80 bpm. I took a sneak peek and run through last night to acclimate myself. I agree with guido5. It's nice to approach an old favorite standard in a different key. It made the song more fresh to my ear. I need to try to incorporate the neighbor tones like JBN talked about in his post. I was pleased with the musical ideas this evening.
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Today I worked with three note (triplet) combinations that start with a chord tone. Yesterday there were note groupings that led to a chord tone, placing the weight at the end of the triplet; today's are at the start.
This can be 1 3 5, or 3 4 5, or 5 4 3... the point is these kinds of triplets will work towards creating some sense of movement, up or down, and they make contour.
What is the difference in strong note at the beginning or the end of a triplet? Try it out. You decide and then if you notice some discernible effect in the rhythmic flow, make your own rule about this. It'll be really useful when you make lines that have impact.
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Week 9 day 2. 70 BPM using the straight ATTYA ireal pro backing in Eb. Despite a tiring day moving snow around, I started to dig back into my triplet lines. Some times they started on chord tones sometimes they were just passing figures on the way to another melodic destination. No blinding insights, just doing the work.
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Week 9. Day 2 of "ATTYA" in Eb at 85 bpm. I went through the exercise a number of times this evening. Trying to focus more on the triplets as well as capturing the color of the tritone sounds. I'm really enjoying ATTYA in this key. Looking forward to getting back at it tomorrow evening!
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Week 9 day 3. 70 BPM using the straight ATTYA ireal pro backing in Eb. Nice evening session of exploring the different approached to this fine tune. Triplets, big interval jumps, passing motifs through the various harmonic centers, scalar things, arp based things. So much nice movement to work with on this tune.
Last edited by guido5; 02-04-2021 at 06:47 AM.
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Week 9. Day 3 of "ATTYA" at 90 bpm. Tonight's work was a mental challenge. I had outpatient surgery this afternoon. Everything's fine, but I was put under general anesthesia. They told me not to drive a car or any other heavy machinery. They should've also suggested I not play over Howard Robert's advanced harmonic content while my brain is still fuzzy.
It wasn't a total disaster. But the importance of a sharp mind was quite evident! Howard urges no skipped days, so I wanted to remain true to my commitment. Needless to say, I'm glad today is over. I'm looking forward to working the exercises tomorrow with a clear head!
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Day 4. Getting out from the omnipresent suggestion of All The Things You Are. That song has such a distinctive harmonic movement and a melody that hugs that harmony so closely, I wanted to fight the current on that. So I created lines that tried to maintain a pretty direct single direction until it met the tonic of the key area four bars down, then some twist. This allowed me to embellish my relatively simple melody with different devices. This "statement" and short "response" thinking was kind of fun, and with the awareness of where and how I might embellish, it was a real challenge.
Sometimes it worked, sometimes it was not elegant at all, sometimes it was a train wreck, but not once did I feel I ran out of ideas.
I did an hour of this in the late morning and then again in the evening. By the end of the day it felt strong.
I'm having a lot of fun here.
I'll note too that when I'm working on other pieces (today was Alfie), a lot of these phrase twists I'm working on are making their way into the ease of playing, into the comfort zone. Good feeling.
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Week 9 day 4. 70 BPM using the straight ATTYA ireal pro backing in Eb. After last nights wild excess, I too was feeling a bit drawn around by the tune/structure when I first started tonite. But rather than go to the same places it was calling me to, I went the other direction. Some times this lead to interesting places, sometimes not so much.
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Week 9. Day 4 of "ATTYA" at 95 bpm. Pretty uneventful this evening. Even though I worked all day, I feel like my head is still kind of fuzzy from yesterday's procedure. Things weren't clicking tonight as they had the first couple days. That's okay. There's always tomorrow.
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Week 9 day 5. 70 BPM using the straight ATTYA ireal pro backing in Eb. Got my project work in early so I could catch the Vanguard Sorey, Frisell, Lovano stream.
My choruses went nicely without any real focus, just playing pretty melodies on the well loved changes. Lots of triplets intermingled with the other ideas. A relaxed pleasant session.
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Just saw the Vanguard stream of Bill Frisell. SO many new ideas, like being adventurous about note choice and the flow of sounds. I'm inspired to work on the Project a second time tonight.
Earlier I was getting pretty fluid with triplets, today I was putting the focus note in the middle, using the first note of the triplet as an approach and the last note to pickup to the next grouping. This kind of really focused almost calesthetic approach is well suited for the program as long as I can stay "on the horse". These ornaments, run through for basically an hour, are really changing my sound. I can really get something notable in each day's work now.
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Jimmy Bruno - Poinciana
Today, 08:52 AM in The Players