Thomas Graham

If someone wants to excel at any activity, it is necessary for them to observe the greatest practitioners of the craft. This is especially true of jazz. By immersing themselves in the language of the music, young players can greatly expand their vocabulary and understanding of the style. The jazz canon is so vast that it may be difficult for students to know where to start, and this concept of a listening web makes it very easy and tangible for students to become familiar with the greatest musicians of the past and present.

This example uses “Workin’ with the Miles Davis Quintet”, a 1960 album by Miles Davis as an example. You will see each of the players on the album listed: John Coltrane, Red Garland, Paul Chambers, Philly Joe Jones, and Miles as the leader.

Branching off from each sideman, you will notice a different album on which they were the leader. For example, John Coltrane was the leader on the cornerstone album “A Love Supreme”. Under the title, every sideman on that recording is listed. If there were enough space, you could continue the web by including an album led by every contributor to the four secondary albums. By repeating this process over and over again, the visualization of the jazz canon transforms into a visual medium outlining the almost infinite network of connections and recordings.

By using this process to create your own listening webs, you’ll be surprised at the connections that arise between players and albums and can serve as a concrete listening plan. If you’re anything like me, the amount of material that you could possibly listen to at any given time is overwhelming. This narrows all of those possibilities down into a few options at a time. Take your time and dig into each album. Transcribe material from each one and work it into your playing. Study the origin story of each recording and the backgrounds of each player. The more you know about the music, the more valuable you become as a player.

This process can be used for genres other than jazz as well. You could organize a web of a rock band’s albums in chronological order and add branches for recordings by other groups that share similarities. Likewise, you could create a web organized by producer or songwriter. If you come up with any other ideas for organizing your listening, we’d love to hear about it!

As we head into the unknown this summer and fall, the power of listening may become more important than ever. Regardless of the landscape in which we find ourselves, it will be vital for students to remain connected to their craft and for educators to constantly adapt. For more thoughts on engaging through listening, check out my previous post.

How to listen to jazz: Listening webs

Jory Tindall

Breaking down and mastering the elements of the jazz language is a lifelong process, with a massive catalog of artists and genres to transcribe, digest, and absorb into your playing. Who (and honestly when) you transcribe has a significant impact on the outcome of your solos for the early part of your career as improvisor.

Clifford Brown, one of the most iconic improvisors and examples of the jazz language, acted much like a bridge between the bebop era and the hard bop era by taking fundamental language elements and pushing them further along in their evolution and executional style. While his solos seem incredibly complicated and composed of many different components and language, he tends to be one of the most clear and concise examples of straightforward jazz language fundamentals, one of those being the enclosure.

We’re going to utilize his monumental solo on “Take the ‘A’ Train” from the 1955 album 

 to break down his use of enclosures, why they aren’t as complicated as you might think, and strategies for implementing them in your own playing.

Clifford’s strategy on “Take the ‘A’ Train”

There are several key reasons why this solo is a stand-out in the Clifford Brown library; strict adherence to the harmony, melodic repetition, usage of digital patterns that run the changes. For the sake of this article we’re going to focus mainly on his implementation of the enclosure.

An enclosure in the jazz language idiom can be use to describe targeting a specific chord tone (usually the 1, 3, or 5) by wrapping or enclosing it with a note diatonically above, and a note a half step below.For example: if you were trying to enclose the third of C major you would enclose it with a F above and a D# (or Eb) below).

From the perspective of Clifford Brown (and frankly for all jazz musicians), the enclosure sounds good because:

If used properly (see above) it outlines a chord tone

It can act as a joining mechanism to connect two different licks, runs, or other improvisational techniques.

It often adds chromaticism which presents a bit of 

 when used. Meaning, we hear a note that sounds a little bit outside or like it wants to go somewhere else, and we take it to that resolution point.

In almost every single use case Brown uses enclosures to emphasize a chord tone (1, 3, or 5), but the majority of these examples are around the 5th scale degree; the 5th being enclosed by the preceding 6th and #11 scale degrees in that order.

For example, check out the measures 6-7 of the transcription in which the 5th of both the dominant (G7) and the tonic (Cmaj7) is enclosed in almost the same exact fashion outline above.

Example 1

There are clear theoretical reasons that we can use to describe Brown’s usage of different enclosures that stem from alterations of the dominant chord, secondary dominants, and anticipation of the next chord.

When resolving to the tonic from the dominant (in the key of C major, G7), enclosing the 5th scale degree of C between the b6 and #11 expresses an 

. Without getting too complex, the ‘altered’ scale can be defined as the 7th mode of the melodic minor scale that is generally used over dominant 7 chords. For example:

Example 2

Looking at measures 12-13 in the transcription, this is straight from the dominant (A7) of the ii-7 (D minor 7) in which the root is enclosed using the 2nd and natural 7th. While A7 technically doesn’t appear in the chord changes, it’s up to the improviser and rhythm section whether or not they want to add a sort of secondary dominant in that section since it leads nicely into the turnaround.

Example 3

How to implement enclosures in your own solos

Working these examples into your own improvised solos is easier than you might think. Consider an exercise that focuses on enclosing each diatonic (within the scale) note:

Example 4

This exercise utilizes the same enclosure with an half-step approach tone underneath the target note that Clifford Brown uses, but expands it into an exercise that can be practiced in any key and focuses on the entire range of the scale, rather than chord tones.

We can expand these even further by adding an additional layer of complexity to the above exercise. I’ve highlighted each note being enclosed, but it follows the same pattern; precede the target note above by a whole step and below by a half step, except in this circumstance the pattern is more circular.

Example 5

Enclosures are only one of the fundamental strategies that Brown uses in this solo, he also absolutely annihilates the changes by using digital patterns (running patterns up and down the scale), nailing the #11 on almost every D7#11 chord, and using implied chromaticism in his runs. I included an analysis of the additional strategies he uses in the download, see what other techniques he uses.

Once the above exercises have been mastered in all 12 keys it’s time to start working them into your own solos. This can be approached similarly to how you would work on jazz language, by forcefully injecting these snippets into your solos when you're improvising over a play-along with the goal being to start hearing exactly who each of these enclosures resolves.

, but that’s a conversation for a later article.

Enclosures: The Genius and Simplicity of Clifford Brown

Enclosures: The genius and simplicity of Clifford Brown

Skyler Floe

If you’re like me, then there always seems to be a gap between the time you spend transcribing and your growth as an improviser. No matter how many hours you spend memorizing solos from the greats, you struggle to find that magical moment where the work translates into new vocabulary you can call your own.

Despite assurances from my mentors throughout my time as a jazz trumpeter, the most I got from memorizing my transcriptions was a few licks I could copy and paste into my solos. Other than that, transcribing to me was like learning an etude; the benefit was in working out the technical demands of the solo. Therefore, to me, the whole process seemed like a waste of time. Why not just buy a transcription book so you can go straight into the exercise? Out of this frustration, I developed my own method that takes the solos I know and love and bridges the gap, connecting them to my improvising in a way that generates new ideas I can call my own.

It is important to note that this method is an attempt to create a jazz exercise that better reflects the values and musical goals of the music. In my years as both a classical and jazz studies major in universities all over the world, I have found that in the process of institutionalizing jazz music and having jazz programs shaped by administrators of European-classical music, some of its core values have been lost in translation. The most obvious is the development of one’s own voice.

Step 1: Find a cool lick, transcribe it, and its chord changes

If you hear a lick that you are really inspired and motivated by, great! Now you have your starting lick. Always be on the lookout for one while listening to jazz. We all have favorite solos and recordings, comb through them and find the moments that stand out to you.

Another suggestion would be if you have a challenging section of a tune; for example, if you struggle with the ii-V-I in F#maj in “Recordame”, listen to each soloist and pay particular attention to that moment in the form of each chorus. When you hear a great idea you’d like to learn, choose that one!

It is important to know the chords that correspond with your transcribed line so that you can see exactly what is being achieved harmonically and melodically. What made that idea stand out to your ears? Investigate! Check out the chord tones they hit over each chord and what little unique characteristic made that lick so cool. Most importantly, memorize your transcribed lick.

This process is slow but worth it, trust me! Don’t write out your transcribed lick in all 12 keys. Instead, transpose it by ear. Conceptualize the lick in scale degrees and shapes as opposed to notes. Just take it one half-step at a time. Keep working until you can comfortably play it in its new key in tempo slowly. Then, modulate another half-step. Keep going until you have it in all 12 keys. This step will be much more challenging for horn players, but transposition is an important skill for all musicians to have.

Step 4: Write your own licks based on your transcription

This is where the fun begins! Take some time playing and improvising variations of the original lick. Write out two or three different licks over the same chord changes and spend some time riffing over those. Use whatever unique and cool characteristics you analyzed that made the lick stand out to your ears. These ideas should sound closely related to the original transcription but be clearly your own.

Step 5: Practice playing your ideas in context

Practice playing the transcription and your ideas in the context of a tune. In iReal Pro, you can loop an 8 bar section of a tune. Solo over that section and practice fitting your licks over the chord changes your transcription fits over. You’ll find that you may need to come up with little tweaks and variations while improvising in order for the line to fit in organically and sound natural. This will take some practice, but the purpose is to get better at letting your ears lead to new lines and variations when improvising based on an idea you’ve worked out. You’re no longer copying and pasting a lick you’ve played before.

Step 6: Learn your written variations in all 12 keys

The chord changes that your variations are written over can most likely be found in 100s of standards (especially if you transcribed a ii-V-I lick). Practicing your newly composed lines in different keys will make playing those tunes so much easier and more comfortable sounding even while sight-reading! You’ll sound like a pro because you have your own original vocabulary in every key. Spend extra time on the less familiar keys like E,F#,C#, and B. Find standards that have the same chord changes but in a variety of keys to practice Step 5 in a variety of keys and changes that lead into and exit from the changes your licks fit over. For example, if your licks fit over a iii-VI-ii-V progression, you can practice them over the 3rd+4th bars of rhythm changes in Bb, the first ending to Yardbird Suite in C, and the 3rd+4th bars of Confirmation in F. All of these examples have different chords proceeding and following your original chord changes. Let your ears guide you to new ideas and variations that account for these subtle differences in form.

This exercise should not be completed in a day. This process is most effective when worked on daily for at least a few weeks at a minimum. The goal is to have your new licks be so ingrained into your playing that you’re comfortable varying them and adapting no matter the key center. Doing so will lead to more and more original ideas and a vocabulary that is truly your own.

I transcribed. Now what?

Greg Feingold

A very common trend that I’m seeing from people these days is the claim that they practice for hours on end without results. This is leading to all different kinds of negative feelings and thoughts like frustration, anger, depression, mental exhaustion and lastly leading to thoughts of quitting. I’d like to take a minute to make a few suggestions that should increase productivity, create momentum, and instill a sense of enjoyment within a daily practice routine.

The first game changing principle is a simple one; have specific goals. Without Any idea of where you want to end up with a practice session, people tend to spend a lot of time noodling or just playing their instrument because someone told you to practice at least 30 minutes a day. This is inherently frustrating. There are two types of goals that I like to set simultaneously so that I feel like I have a constant source of direction.

The Macro Goal is the high-level way above where I am currently. This Acts As the second story in a house that you want to build. The Macro Goal is something that tends to be more subjective than objective (I.e. “I want to improvise through chord changes better” or “I want to be able to recognize harmony faster”). Without a goal off in the distance it is very hard to set Micro Goals.

Micro Goals are much simpler to set. If the Macro Goal is the General in your army, Micro Goals are your infantry. These are goals that you should set at the beginning of every practice routine that serve as the stairs to reach the second story. These goals are tangible and relatively quick to achieve (I.e. “I’m going to play a major scale at quarter note equals 40 BPM”). They should be within your reach for every exercise that you work on and must be reasonable. When you begin to check off the Micro Goals, it establishes a sense of momentum and accomplishment that makes practicing more enjoyable.

Principle number two is also easily implemented; keep it short. Nobody likes the idea of a four-hour block of time in their day that they’re forced to do something. Even if they have specific goals, people tend to bite off way more than they can chew for any given practice session. I’ve found my best results come from 15-minute segments strung together in one-hour regiments. This basically means working on an exercise (with a goal) for no more than 15 minutes then taking a full two-minute reset break. I’ll do that four times and that is my whole practice routine for the week. At the end of the hour I’m always refreshed,and I feel like I need more time practicing. That’s the secret to not dreading practicing. At the end of the hour I feel like I need more time so that I can come back later in the day even and be just as productive.

Now that you’ve generated the want to practice the last principle is relatively easy to implement. Practice every day.Now that your practice routine isn’t as daunting, it’s much easier to carve out 45 minutes to an hour a day to practice. If done once every day, this method will produce dramatically better results than practicing for four hours a day sporadically. I always recommend people to practice in the morning whenever possible. I’ve noticed that the later in the day it gets, the more guilt builds up about not practicing. If you wake up and the first thing you dois practice for 45 minutes, you’re guilt free for the rest of the day. If You feel motivated later, you can always practice more but at least you’ve been productive already. People tend to take care of the things that are most important to them before noon (or before 5 pm if you’re in school). Eating, getting dressed, going to work or school all happen within the first two hours of waking up usually. Why not add practicing to the list of essentials?

There is no one-size method for building a practice routine that is fun and effective and some of these may need to be altered slightly. If You implement these principles into your everyday practice routine or design a practice routine with students based around these,I can guarantee a healthy relationship with practicing. At the end of the day we all want to get better as musicians, why wouldn’t we take the path of least resistance?

Principles for productive practicing

The National Core Arts Standards (http://www.nationalartsstandards.org/), a grouping of principles around which music teachers are to design their curricula, are divided into four main categories: “Creating”, “Performing/Presenting/Producing”, “Responding”, and “Connecting”. In instrumental music instruction, a great deal of time is spent on perfecting the performance-based category, and with good reason! We, as teachers, want our students to showcase their skills in the best ways possible during concerts, festivals, and other opportunities. However, we are also obligated to provide our students with a well-rounded education in all areas of musical activity. These two approaches do not have to be at odds with each other. There are ways to engage students in creativity while also working on performance-based skills.

Improvisation is an essential skill in today’s musical landscape. Professional musicians of all kinds are often expected to improvise whether on a “classical”, “jazz”, or “commercial” gig. Improvisation allows us to hear players “thinking in music”. A player’s knowledge of melody, harmony, rhythm, and style becomes apparent when we hear them improvise. Unfortunately in many cases, students only receive improvisation instruction if they are involved in a jazz ensemble. Furthermore, the complexities of jazz harmony can make improvising a daunting task for the young musician.

Chord symbols, unfamiliar tonalities and key centers, and a complex system of nuanced style can make improvisation seem like a scary experience. By scaffolding improvisation activities from the very beginning of instrumental music instruction, you can get everyone in the band creating music for themselves in a fun and low-pressure environment!

I teach my beginning band students to improvise in the first few weeks of instruction. Most of my improvisation activities for beginners revolve around call and response. By building up a repertoire of simple tonal and rhythmic patterns, students develop a vocabulary of musical material. I firmly believe in the philosophy of “sound before sight”. If students know what particular patterns sound like, they will have a more informed perspective when they sight-read a piece or are taught new notation concepts. Setting the foundation for solid ear training at an early stage in musical development will benefit them as they move on to play more complex music in high school, college, and beyond.

It’s very important that you engage in these activities every day of instruction. If your program does not meet every day, these activities can still be useful and effective! You will just need to commit to these exercises every day that your class meets. Young students need consistency and the more opportunities you provide for them to practice these skills, the more successful they will be. By spending time on improvisation during every rehearsal, you are showing your students that you believe improvisation is an integral aspect of musicianship.

When students can successfully play one note and articulate correctly, they are ready to improvise! This kind of rhythmic improvisation allows students to practice articulating and learn to play rhythmic values that they have not yet learned to decode. All of these activities are done in call and response fashion. You can model the “call” on any instrument with which you feel comfortable. We will typically start with four-beat patterns consisting of half notes, quarter notes, and eighth notes. Sometimes it takes a little while for beginners to latch on to the constant back-and-forth nature of the exercise, but after a few days of practice they’ll be experts.

As students learn more notes, you as an educator have more options to combine pitches and rhythms. You can easily introduce concepts such as half steps vs. whole steps, major vs. minor, and modes once students have more technical facility and theoretical knowledge. Before you know it, students will be echoing and improvising small melodic patterns!

Once students are comfortable echoing musical ideas, I start allowing them to improvise. I have two signals. A closed fist signals for the students to echo exactly what I just played. An open hand instructs them to improvise a pattern of their own. The mass improvisation does sound a little chaotic, but it allows each student to improvise without fear of being singled out. Once you get used to the cacophonous sound, you’ll be able to assess individuals and sections within the group.

After students are able to echo and improvise, I’ll take volunteers to lead the group in the exercise. By this point, there are normally a good number of students who are excited to take charge. Of course, you’ll have the student that gets overzealous and plays a pattern that can’t easily be echoed, but with a little coaching they’ll generally ease up on the difficulty. This kind of activity increases student investment in the content and helps them feel as though they have a voice in the classroom.

In an effort to help you get started, I’ve included several resources for you! One is a notated example of the call response approaches we discussed here, which you can download below. Additionally, here’s a list of links to YouTube videos of myself demonstrating the concepts. You can use those videos for your own musical development or use them with your students, which could be especially valuable in our current season of distance learning.

If you invest in a few minutes of sound-focused creativity every day, you’ll see a huge change in the attitudes and abilities of your students. They will become more technically capable and willing to take chances. Your students will be able to derive musical meaning from notation and connect what they hear with their instrumental abilities.

When it comes time to introduce concepts like chord changes, licks, and scales, students will have a more informed perspective, making the process less daunting. More students will want to take solos and share their creativity. If we teach students to improvise from the very beginning of their instrumental musical instruction, we can create a community of musicians who see improvisation as a central behavior of sound musicianship and are unafraid to share their ideas with the world.

Why Starting Improvisation in Beginning Band is a Necessity

Why starting improvisation in beginning band is a necessity

Today I thought I’d address an ever-present concern throughout the musician community: How to get gigs as a side man. This can seem like a difficult world to break into as an outsider, but if you keep these few points in mind it will make your transition into working as a musician much smoother. The language in the following passage is geared toward jazz but is completely applicable to any genre.

People seek the best musicians possible to play with. Nobody looks through their phone and makes their first call to the person that is only adequate. For the record, I’m not necessarily saying that the people with the highest skill levels get called first. I’m saying people that treat the music with the most care tend to make the best impressions on a band leader. This means memorizing the music wherever applicable, printing your own charts, listening to recordings, making your own charts or anything else that you can do to try to be self-sufficient before the gig. With that mentality you’ll end up with a reputation for always going the extra mile for the music.

Jam sessions aren’t just opportunities to meet people, but rather perfect situations for you to demonstrate a wide variety of musical and interpersonal skills. If you go to a jam session and you present yourself as a competent, confident and encouraging musician you’ll stand way out in a crowd. You don’t have to show off or over play at all. All you have to do is make the best music possible in the situation you’re presented with and you’ll end up making yourself memorable when people are finding personnel for gigs.

Hosting sessions (outside of taking lessons) is the best way to find more tunes to learn, discover your shortcomings with keys and tempos, hearing about what other people are working on, and developing your instincts in a variety of playing situations. It also helps solidify your relationships with people that have gigs. It’s important to always keep in touch with as many musicians as possible.

Without being on the scene you’ll never be “seen.”

It does nobody any good to walk away from a playing situation with a negative outlook. There’s always a lesson to be learned or a way that you could have done something differently to improve the outcome. If you approach musical situations like this you’ll notice two positive effects. First, that you’ll learn a lot about yourself and how you handle stressful or uncomfortable situations. Second, that you’ll learn more about how other people handle those same situations than you ever realized.

I really want to remind everyone that reads this once again that these are general principles that will always help when it comes to generating and keeping gig opportunities. There are many other ways to break into a “scene.” Creating your own gig opportunities and finding people that are interested in playing the gig with you is a perfectly viable avenue, however without taking care of the music you will end up finding it hard to keep people you respect as musicians on the gig.

4 tactics to getting and keeping the gig

In this season of school closures and social distancing, many educators have been tasked with converting their classrooms into an online format. Listening assignments are incredibly valuable and easy to implement in our new educational landscape. In this series of posts, I’ll be sharing some tips and tricks to get your students introduced to the process of deep listening.

Jazz is a complex style of music with each instrument contributing an essential role in the performance. In order for students to become “fluent” in the language of the music, they must be aware of how all of the pieces of the puzzle fit together. The best way to achieve this level of understanding is through frequent listening.

We live in a fast-paced, mile-a-minute world where students are often attempting to focus on multiple things at once. Science shows that humans are not great at multitasking. When our attention is split among numerous things, the quality of our performance suffers.

Deep listening, one of the most important musical skills we can teach our students, demands all of our attention. However, stopping and focusing on one thing for minutes at a time can be a huge challenge for some students. This exercise of creating a listening list is a perfect first step for training students in this process.

The first step is to pick a recording that is of appropriate length for your students. For younger students a shorter recording may be the best option, or you might even consider focusing on a section of a recording rather than the whole track. As students’ attention spans develop, you can start to introduce longer or more complex tunes. Ideally, it would not be a tune or ensemble that they haven’t listened to very much which will help stretch their observation skills.

The idea behind this exercise is for students to list literally every detail they possibly can while listening to the recording. Nothing is “too obvious” or unimportant, with the goal being to wring every piece of information possible out the performance. Here’s a list of areas on which you could possibly comment:

This is definitely not an exhaustive list, but it provides a place to start. You could even listen to the recording and ONLY comment on one of the categories above as a way to focus on one thing.

Deep listening techniques with “Are You Real”

I will demonstrate this approach with “Are You Real” by Benny Golson, performed by Art Blakey and the Jazz Messengers (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yg5n045lvWM). The performers are Art Blakey (drums), Lee Morgan (trumpet), Benny Golson (tenor saxophone), Bobby Timmons (piano), and Jymie Merritt (bass).

melody starts in harmony, goes to unison at the B section

vocalization from someone in rhythm section

Timmons playing mostly single lines with harmony for accent

Art takes 8 bars after the second Lee statement, can hear vocalizing, maybe communicating what’s next?

bass solo- comping dynamic much softer, crisp hi-hat, sizzle-y ride

This list is not meant to be a polished or finished product. It is simply an awareness exercise that allows your students to engage with the music as they listen. This exercise opens doors up for a great discussion in which your students list off the things that they heard. You’ll be surprised at what they will pick up on.

I encourage you to try this activity for yourself and see the impact that it has on your students!

How To Listen To Jazz - Intro To Deep Listening

How to listen to jazz: Intro to deep listening

What was the result the last time you searched for something music education-related on the web? If you’re like me and my confidants, the results were...less than fruitful. Go on, search “John Coltrane solo analysis.” What generally comes up in my search results is the following:

Published John Coltrane transcription books

Clickbait posts trying to encourage users to buy an eBook titled something like “Play like John Coltrane in 5 Easy Steps”

Outdated posts published on Blogger (RIP)

Ultra-opinionated pieces written about whether or not John Coltrane is good at phrasing.

Put yourself in the shoes of a student who is trying to learn what methods Coltrane uses in his solos. What would 

Abstracting a little bit, put yourself in the shoes of a beginning trombonist who doesn’t have access to private instruction due to financial or geographic constraints. What would 

Put yourself in the shoes of a general music teacher who has been tasked with leading a beginning jazz band and has absolutely no idea what repertoire to choose for an upcoming festival. What would 

As a group, we’ve collectively experienced these problems as teachers, students, and musicians, and have consistently questioned how to solve these problems; both from a personal perspective, as well as with our students. We’ve built Downbeat Academy in an attempt to answer these questions by providing an environment that is friendly for all students, teachers, and professional musicians. How?

We’ve taken extreme care to build the technical foundation of Downbeat Academy with the ability to pivot, adjust, scale, and hopefully revolutionize the music education space. Meaning, we can build what our users want and need, and adjust that path based on the feedback we get. This plays into the overarching mission of Downbeat Academy to build a music education platform for every musician, by every musician.

We’ve tapped into our network of musicians, educators, and students to assess what 

As contributors, we all have experience in the professional operation of the music industry; from performance, education, and student perspectives. This enables us to maintain a robust feedback loop of the content we’re producing and how it’s being received by the community.

I’ve always suffered from starting projects with extreme vigor and tenacity; with every intent to see the project through to completion, but end up getting sidetracked and losing steam as the project progresses. I know that I’m not alone. My focus suffers from regularly bouncing around to different topics, concepts, and ideas throughout the day, sidetracking and interrupting me from other tasks and it’s something I’ve been working on for my entire adult life.

I also have a penchant for overworking myself and often “suffer” from the inability to turn off and stop working. I would like to thank my mother for this “work ethic,” who would get home at 8:30 or 9 every night after a day as the head coach of gymnastics at Seattle Pacific University and continue to do paperwork, plan for the season, and organize the youth program until midnight or later.

The road to getting here from a technical perspective has been one of exploration and experimentation, yet the road to getting here from a strategic and planning perspective has been the greatest challenge. Who would use it? Why should people read what we have to say? Will we be able to gain any traction? Skyler Floe, Greg Feingold, Thomas Graham, and I pondered all of the questions from numerous points of view and decided to take the next six months to build the current state of Downbeat Academy with a focus on user experience, fluid functionality, and scalability.

I think we’re on the right track, but we couldn’t successfully build a platform like this without feedback from the community. If you have any feedback that would help make this a positive experience for everybody looking to advance their knowledge of music or on their instrument, don’t hesitate to reach out and contact the team.

Greg, Skyler, and Thomas have shared this vision with me, not just as professional collaborators, but as close friends.. They continue to push the envelope forward in terms of what’s possible, what’s needed, and how to do our best to help students to the best of our ability.

We are by no means done with functionality, collaboration, and other features for Downbeat Academy, we’re really just getting started. Our to-do list of features and content types is, to put it simply...lengthy. We’re planning additional content like podcasts, video content, and related types, as well as more in-depth course content to deep dive into specific topics and methods.

Does this sound like something you’d like to contribute to? We’re a small team right now with a lofty mission. We need help. Shoot us a line and let us know how you might contribute to our mission. We’re always looking for new contributors from different musical walks of life. If that’s you, we’d love to chat!

The road to launching Downbeat Academy

 is a double LP that was recorded at The Village Vanguard in 2006 and is Kurt’s seventh album as a leader. The opening track, “Chords” seems like a simple modal waltz at first, opening with a piano riff over Gmin7. It’s a fast three, about quarter = 260, but the melody and harmonic rhythm move slowly so the groove doesn’t feel frantic. About 32 bars into the head, the harmonic rhythm picks up and goes from a chord every eight bars to two bars, and eventually a chord change every bar. The melody, however, maintains long tied notes that skate over the harmonic rhythm almost like a chant until the 64th measure of this 96 measure form. This is where Mark Turner and Kurt Rosenwinkel turn up the gas and begin playing technically demanding and fast pentatonic patterns in unison over mostly Ebmin7, but also dance through Gmaj7, F#maj7, Bbmaj7, and Amin7.

Just like the melody, Kurt uses the harmonic rhythm of the head to guide the density and complexity of his lines. In other words, when the harmonic rhythm and tonal center are more stable i.e. the modal Gmin7 to Bbmin7 to Gmin7 part, Kurt’s ideas are more motivic and simple harmonically. During the more intense sections that quickly jump from one non-functional chord to another, Kurt masterfully weaves through them with long chromatic eighth-note lines. This creates an overarching sense of tension and release throughout the solo.

In other words, when the harmonic rhythm and tonal center are more stable i.e. the modal Amin7 to Cmin7 to Amin7 part, Kurt’s ideas are more motivic and simple harmonically.

Here are a few examples of how Kurt takes advantage of the resolved and slow-moving harmonic rhythm of the first third of the form by creating a simple rhythmic motif using only a few notes.

Shown above is Kurt’s opening eight bars of his second chorus. After a complex series of fast eighth-note lines to conclude his first chorus, Kurt uses the openness of the top of the form to create a rhythmic motif that almost implies a 5/4 meter.

Here is another example over the same part of the form. In this example, Kurt uses short diatonic runs over Amin7. Each iteration of the diatonic run uses slightly different rhythms, which ensures the line doesn’t become stale and repetitive.

Just like in the melody of the tune, Kurt uses the Ebmin7 to Ebmin7/Gb vamps as peaks of his choruses by playing pentatonic patterns that vary just enough that they do not sound stale or predetermined.

Shown above is one of many examples of Kurt’s use of pentatonics which can be found near the end of his first chorus. At the very end of the melody, Kurt plays a line leading into the top of his first solo chorus that uses this same technique while also incorporating another useful harmonic concept seen throughout this solo.

In both the melody and improvised solo, Kurt shows a particular method of weaving through the seemingly unrelated chords by finding a target note and creating a line with a chromatic approach note to the target chord tone. Below is the melody line that perfectly models this technique and operates as the basis for Kurt’s lines in each of his solo choruses at that part of the form.

Another method Kurt uses is finding a common tone between two chords and forming lines around the common tone.

Example 6

In this example, Kurt uses both methods of connecting non-functional chord progressions. From Emin7 to Gbmaj7, Kurt’s target chord tone is Bb, which he approaches from a chromatic tone above, B. In the next chord change from Gbmaj7 to Dmaj7, Kurt uses the common tone Gb/F# to connect the two unrelated chords.

In all of these examples, Kurt stays very inside the changes, using mainly pentatonics and diatonic tones that nicely fit in each chord while improvising. But there are moments in this solo where Kurt uses non-diatonic notes that really stretch the harmonic boundaries.

Example 7

In these two examples found at the beginning of Kurt’s second chorus, Kurt uses the major 3rd over a minor 7th chord. The first example sounds like a simple substitution of a Bb7 chord for a Bbmin7 chord. With the bass on a pedal, and a tacet piano, it was really up to Kurt to imply any chord he wanted to with his note choices. In the Gmin7 example, however, Kurt really stretches the possibilities of a minor 7th chord. By stacking four notes, F, G, B, and C, Kurt creates a simple sound palette in an otherwise very dissonant note choice. By resolving the line on a high C, Kurt implies that the B is functioning as a leading tone to C, which is a very consonant note in Gmin7. That being said, Kurt does not shy away from holding that Major 3rd either as seen in measure 224. At the top of the third and final chorus, Kurt changes up his approach over the pedal Gmin7 and Bbmin7 sections by creating lines that alternate between minor modes and implies dominant7b9 cadences.

Example 8

In the example above, we see how Kurt superimposes an D harmonic minor scale over Gmin7 and resolves it by using an Ebdim7 arpeggio as if to imply an Db7b9 chord.

Example 9

In the above excerpt is an example of how Kurt creates lines that alternate between two minor modes. In the first four bars, Kurt uses Bb harmonic minor and in the next four bars, raises the 6th scale degree to be in the Bb melodic minor.

This solo is an excellent example of pentatonic implementation in a largely melodic application, which is not a use case that regularly surfaces around that harmonic approach. This, combined with the solid connection to the form of the song, harmonic rhythm, and pacing constitutes an exhilarating solo that builds naturally and uses modern improvisational techniques while remaining grounded in the jazz tradition.

The Remedy (Live at the Village Vanguard)

 by Kurt Rosenwinkel on his website. If you enjoy it, purchase the album and support the artist directly!

How to shape your solos like Kurt Rosenwinkel