Preparing for Smalls
On Saturday the students came back after a two week hiatus for the holidays. We started playing over F blues and worked on transposing the changes from Bb. Everyone soloed over the form along with trading four’s with Luke, our drummer.
We segued into an up tempo version of Blue Monk and really worked on keeping the tempo steady. I’ve asked everyone to play the melody even the drummer. We worked on accenting the melody as a rhythm section.
We broke up sections on the ballad “In a Sentimental Mood”
for everyone to play on and played through the d and g harmonic minor scales. Since we had never played through the tune as a group I was happy to hear the band play through seamlessly. Our last tune of the day was How High the Moon. The challenge is keeping the form and using the melody in solo’s.
The students are progressing every week and I look forward to hearing them next Saturday.
