Rehearsal 1-
Today we got our assessment task which was to go into small groups and play over a backing track doing improvisation. David, Scout and I got into a group and started to rehearse. We worked out it was in f major and decided to play the f blues to improvise. David was switching between saxophone and drums,, Scout scatting and I was on piano. We played the head over the backing track and then played around with out improvisations. We decided to have no backing track and instead, the piano, me just comping the chords while the head was playing and when the improvisations were going on. We also decided to finish with the head and then finish on f instead of finishing on an unresolved c chord. We felt this finished the song more as it was in the scale of f. Today we also used the song feeling good as a learning tool, mainly for scout to help her improve her scatting with a song that she was familiar with. We played this few a few times as we all knew it. Playing different songs also helped us expand our knowledge and apply improvisation skills to different styles of music. We did this with a few songs. This is what we did in our rehearsal today.
Rehearsal 2-
In this lesson we started by running through the song and working out the order of when everyone was going to improvise. We further improved our improvisations and just jammed through the song. As we had already had more knowledge of doing improvisations we decided to do something different for a bit of the lesson to so we jammed through other songs to have more variety and expand our knowledge. This made the lesson more enjoyable but also helped us. We worked out the structure of what we were going to do and further more improved our skills in this lesson.
Rehearsal 3-
Sophie joined our group in this lesson as she was away for the last 2 classes. We briefed her on what we were doing and soph played through it a few times with me comping the chords to get the feel of it. We readjusted the structure of the song and added a part to the end when we end on f now having a bit of a saxophone improvisation to finish the song off. we rehearsed it a few times. This is all i did today as i left after 20 minutes of class.
Rehearsal 4-
Today we played through it and added another two cycles to the song where David and I improved swapping every 2 bars. This added an extra layer to the song. We rehearsed this part a few times and then played through the whole song. Now the structure being starting with the head, Davids improvisation, Scouts improvisation, David and I swapping through improvisations every 2 bars for 2 cycles, then Sophie's improvisation then mine and then ending with the head and finishing on an f chord. We kept rehearsing and making it flow better. I feel like the thing we struggled with was the timing as we weren't playing with a drum set and weren't using the backing track so sometimes we got out of time. I also had to make sure to use dynamics through others improvisations so I wasn't over powering the improvisations. I thought all the improvisations were all coming together well. This is what we did today.
Rehearsal 5-
Today we were performing our improvisations. Scout wasn't there so in replace of her improvisation we played the head again. I feel this was the worst we played it when performing. I made quite a few chord errors and messed up in David and I's improvisation when we were switching each 2 bars. But I did get back to track and as a whole i don't think it was too bad. I was mainly nervous so this is why I think I messed up a bit but looking back it all still flowed even though it went out of time some of the time I still think we did well. The dynamics were good, timing got out, my improvisation just by myself was ok but could of been better, and the flow wasn't to bad because we got back on track. Over all I know we could of performed better but we still performed well.
Today we got our assessment task which was to go into small groups and play over a backing track doing improvisation. David, Scout and I got into a group and started to rehearse. We worked out it was in f major and decided to play the f blues to improvise. David was switching between saxophone and drums,, Scout scatting and I was on piano. We played the head over the backing track and then played around with out improvisations. We decided to have no backing track and instead, the piano, me just comping the chords while the head was playing and when the improvisations were going on. We also decided to finish with the head and then finish on f instead of finishing on an unresolved c chord. We felt this finished the song more as it was in the scale of f. Today we also used the song feeling good as a learning tool, mainly for scout to help her improve her scatting with a song that she was familiar with. We played this few a few times as we all knew it. Playing different songs also helped us expand our knowledge and apply improvisation skills to different styles of music. We did this with a few songs. This is what we did in our rehearsal today.
Rehearsal 2-
In this lesson we started by running through the song and working out the order of when everyone was going to improvise. We further improved our improvisations and just jammed through the song. As we had already had more knowledge of doing improvisations we decided to do something different for a bit of the lesson to so we jammed through other songs to have more variety and expand our knowledge. This made the lesson more enjoyable but also helped us. We worked out the structure of what we were going to do and further more improved our skills in this lesson.
Rehearsal 3-
Sophie joined our group in this lesson as she was away for the last 2 classes. We briefed her on what we were doing and soph played through it a few times with me comping the chords to get the feel of it. We readjusted the structure of the song and added a part to the end when we end on f now having a bit of a saxophone improvisation to finish the song off. we rehearsed it a few times. This is all i did today as i left after 20 minutes of class.
Rehearsal 4-
Today we played through it and added another two cycles to the song where David and I improved swapping every 2 bars. This added an extra layer to the song. We rehearsed this part a few times and then played through the whole song. Now the structure being starting with the head, Davids improvisation, Scouts improvisation, David and I swapping through improvisations every 2 bars for 2 cycles, then Sophie's improvisation then mine and then ending with the head and finishing on an f chord. We kept rehearsing and making it flow better. I feel like the thing we struggled with was the timing as we weren't playing with a drum set and weren't using the backing track so sometimes we got out of time. I also had to make sure to use dynamics through others improvisations so I wasn't over powering the improvisations. I thought all the improvisations were all coming together well. This is what we did today.
Rehearsal 5-
Today we were performing our improvisations. Scout wasn't there so in replace of her improvisation we played the head again. I feel this was the worst we played it when performing. I made quite a few chord errors and messed up in David and I's improvisation when we were switching each 2 bars. But I did get back to track and as a whole i don't think it was too bad. I was mainly nervous so this is why I think I messed up a bit but looking back it all still flowed even though it went out of time some of the time I still think we did well. The dynamics were good, timing got out, my improvisation just by myself was ok but could of been better, and the flow wasn't to bad because we got back on track. Over all I know we could of performed better but we still performed well.