Freddie Hubbard!

If you've never checked out Freddie Hubbard before, or if you're looking to buy your first jazz album (and the store is out of Miles Davis's "Kind of Blue,") you should go pick up Oliver Nelson's "Blues and the Abstract Truth." On it you'll hear Freddie Hubbard, the 24 year old trumpeter in this clip, tearing up some blues based modal tunes. It's a classic album, but so are all of Freddie's albums. What I (your favorite blog) love about Freddie is the element of surprise that he brings to every solo. He is constantly challenging the listener- playing fiery, tight and intense one moment, laid back and free the next. He always keeps you wondering...what is he going to do next? Hey, what are you going to do next? Let's have a sandwich.

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.

Hi, I am your psyche...

Please take a break from your AP course work for a moment, and give me, your psyche, a little something something. By something something I mean a video clip of the Miles Davis quintet (in 1959) Mr. Whalen found while taking a break from finding new ways to make the tune Mary Had a Little Lamb exciting for fifth graders. Just watching this clip will make you cool, for at least 10 whole minutes.


Now listen to how the song evolved in another clip from 1964, 5 years later.