Re: Re: Re: Dixieland music


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Posted by Wade on March 14, 2004 at 12:04:05:

In Reply to: Re: Re: Dixieland music posted by on March 14, 2004 at 10:02:45:

"Vanilla" is far too kind a description regarding those books.

Learn by doing - do by listening.

Purchase a so-called "Traditional Jazz Fake Book" that has lead sheets in it. Get a cheap one and make sure it is in concert pitch. Hand copy the melodies and chord changes in the right clefs and transpositions to make lead sheets for each of you. You will need one in concert pitch treble clef for piano, bass, guitar/banjo, and drums. Then you will need Bb treble clef sheets for clarinet, trumpet, and tenor sax. One Eb treble clef sheet is needed for the tenor sax. The trombone will, of course, read bass clef. You can choose to read from bass clef, but (trust me here) once you learn C treble clef your life will be easier - bass music is transposed up on octave, so they would just use the trombone part, which is always way above the staff. The treble clef parts are always within the staff and are cleaner looking when you are trying to read them. It is just a bit easier if you have learn it that way, in my opinion.

Make sure that your fake book has these tunes in the "right" (traditional) key so that you can find recordings easily.

Buy recordings. I really learned a lot from old Dukes of Dixieland recordings. You will be very poleased with these recordings, even if you do not end up studying them and merely enjoy them. Good stuff.

Dixieland harmonic progressions differ from contemporary jazz in a few ways. If you have some players from your jazz band that are learning to improvise, listen to them for guidance.

But point out to them that in Dixieland the changes are far simpler and are not to be altered or extended. And point out that supertonic chords ("2" chords) are altered from what they might expect. In contemporary jazz, they would often be written as minor seventh chords, but in traditional jazz they are mostly dominant seventh chords. This will confuse them when soloing if you don't explain it first. Two chords always have an accidental in them to make them major. Example:

All of Me

C / / / | / / / / | E7 / / / | / / / / | A7/ / / | / / / / | Dm/A7/| Dm/ / / |

E7 / / / | / / / /| Am/E7/| Am/ / /| D7/ / / |/ / / / | G7 / / / | / / / / |

C / / / | / / / /| E7/ / / | / / / / | A7/ / / | / / / / | Dm/A7/| Dm/ / / |

F / / / |Fm/ / / |C / / / |A7/ / / /|Dm7/ / /|G7/ / / /|C/ / / /|(G7)/ / / ||


Some times it is Dm and sometimes it is D7, which is unusual. Generally, Dixieland changes go: I, III, VI, II7, V7, I.

This sounds really hard. But so is learning an instrument. And if you learn properly, you can make some money and have a ton of fun doing it. Playing arrangements of improvised tunes is a little fun, but will become frustrating. Learn to teach yourself and find a coach for your group. You will be amazed at how easy it gets once you learn two or three tunes. You develop a system to put things together - like a non-reading garage band. Have lots of fun doing this!!

E-mail me if you have questions and I will try to point you to others here with more experience than I.

Learning this stuff is very experimental.

Wade


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