Tuesday, November 3, 2015

What Did You Miss This Week? (Week 422 #467)

Intro to Shapes and Scale Practice!!!

We took a break from our session study song last night to give RickEy a chance to introduce a practice technique he calls "Dancing Around the Tonic". First he demonstrated a rhythmic approach to playing the pentatonic scale as a practice technique that reinforces the scale in your ear.

Then, beginning with a subset of four notes from the pentatonic scale, he showed us how to play by reordering the notes while practicing, but always ending your practice phrases on the tonic note. This method breaks you out of the phrasing and playing patterns you may be stuck in when improvising and is a good way to step into improvising if you're new to it.

This leads to shape playing - we'll spend more time with RickEy next week in the hopes time allows for exploring the shape idea. Don't miss it!

Class Notes

  • Joe is on tour in Europe a couple more weeks. Zoe and Grant have you covered in the Level III classes and Shoji and RickEy are planning things for the Performance class discussions, so don't miss it. Be sure to bring a copy of your Level III transcriptions along for Zoe and Grant to refer to as you play.
- Grant Kessler, B1 Blues Crew