I continue giving my son occasional jazz exercises as an add-on to his regular trumpet lesson material. Building upon our previous exercise of arpeggiating the chords of a 12-bar blues, we are currently jumbling the order of the chord tones, to create a variety of patterns to play through the blues progression.…
Logan and I have been arpeggiating our way through the 12-bar blues progression over the past week and a half. There hasn’t been any improvisation per se; but we are building a foundation for what will follow in future lessons. I am really enjoying practicing with my son and introducing…
Where does one begin when teaching jazz improv? This question, and the enormity of the topic, can be almost paralyzing. We don’t want to overwhelm or turn off a young student by introducing too much theory too soon, but at the same time, they need tangible materials with which to…
This is the start of a new blogging series where I will be sharing methods for introducing jazz improvisation to middle school band kids. Although I’ve taught jazz improv for many years at the university level, teaching it to kids is somewhat new to me. Also new to me is…