A Spontaneous Composition

[Mark Kleinhaut]

This is daily routine for me. The freedom can be applied to any tune, practicing in this fashion is where that all stems from.

[Mark Kleinhaut]

I’m an advocate of learning repertoire to assimilate the vocabulary of the jazz language. My teacher Ted Dunbar years ago said that learning a few Bird heads (he was particularly fond of Donna Lee) encompasses everything you need to know about Bop. He also said you can spend years studying transcriptions of the language as applied, but also that each of us is perfectly capable of working it all out on our own. The guitar is our own personal laboratory, he would say.


What I’ve learned after 50 years of playing is that working out one’s own approach to this improvisatory language is (at least for me) that playing Freeform spontaneous compositions fosters my discovery of the endless variations we can play with. Here’s an example from this morning (warts and all) and in many ways I’m strayed far from any specific genres. I’m just by playing with the sounds.


Your mileage will vary. It SHOULD vary!

[Rob MacKillop]

Sounds beautiful to me. You are a JG Guru, Mark.