"Why Your Music is Important"

"Sweet" Sue Terry has some valuable insight she'd like to share.  She is a wonderful alto saxophonist, and an inspiration to musicians everywhere, hopefully her words will inspire you.

My Way

Learn what you will from this clip, it's a really good one...

Spiraling out of here

Steve Coleman is a NYC based alto saxophonist and the founder/leader of a method of improvisation known as M-Base. M-base is an acronym for "Macro - Basic Array of Structured Extemporizations." The wording is a perhaps a little heavy, and can make your eyes water if you stare at it long enough. Simply put, it's a way to express musical experiences through improvisation and rhythm.

I've included THIS LINK to show you that there are more ways to improvise than knowing chords, scales and patterns. In it Steve describes how to play with a Symmetrical Movement Concept. It's a pretty deep read, but makes sense. If you get good at this, you'll be one of about 5 people on earth who know how to play like that. Steve posts most of his music online for free distribution. You definitely should check it out. HERE is a good example of his playing, it's about as dark and funky as saxophone playing gets. Give it about 15 seconds, to go from solo to band. This album changed the way I make music. Always, always, always be receptive to new ideas!

How to build a solo 101

If you can get past Miles's outfit and Kenny's hat and just close your eyes and listen, you'll get more out of this video. It's an interesting lesson in playing over a funk-esque vamp, without many chord changes. Listen to all the "tension" notes Kenny Garrett applies, and the way he keeps things fresh with different rhythmic motives.

Here is a practice idea for you, crank up some hip-hop (rap works best) on your radio (97.1 FM) and practice a new scale over what you hear. Try a concert C harmonic minor scale. Some notes will work, some won't, but you'll get a better understanding of the tension of the notes you're playing against a static background. It's fun to experiment, and challenging to stay interesting. By the way, I think Kenny's mic wasn't sounding right, so he played into Miles's to be heard the way he wanted.