Tag: saxophone

Learning By Ear

I recently had the opportunity to make a couple of videos for young students on learning music by ear.  The opportunity was through the Seattle Repertory Jazz Orchestra’s Jazz Scholars program, of which I am proud to be a part.  I believe that learning music by ear and transcription is an invaluable part of playing […]

Vocabulary

I’ve been talking with students about the use of vocabulary, “licks”, and learned musical sentences in improvisation in 20th century Black American Music.  If we compare music to visual art, I think sometimes it can be helpful to practice improvisation more like creating a collage than trying to paint something completely new on a blank […]

Writing

Hi all, It feels good to be a little more active in blog posting, so thank you to any of you that have checked out what I’ve been writing the past couple of months! Polyrhythmics recently finished several days writing new music together, which is always very exciting.  Last time around, I had a few […]

3 Months In

So here I am, almost 3 months into working exclusively as a musician and teacher. It feels as though my workdays have become compressed; lessons can’t start until kids get out of school, and gigs and rehearsals are almost always at night, plus most gigs are squeezed onto the Fridays and Saturdays of the week.  […]