Craig Hamilton’s Jazz Workshop (1)

On the 26th of November Craig Hamilton held the first of his two workshops
aimed at showing how improvisation isn’t just beneficial for performances, but
also for practice and even composition.
He began by explaining the basic structure of a jazz piece, which may be split into
2 sections; the head, or main theme, and the improvisations. After which he
played “Take the A train”-(Miles Davis) with his own improvisations, and
explained the way in which he fitted the notes together, and that listening to
particular virtuosic soloists is one of the best ways to learn phrasing.
More interestingly for me was his discussion of Jazz chords and harmony. He
said that adding 7th and 9ths to chords is a simple way to make them more
typically Jazz sounding. Also with regards to melody he played different melodies
on the trumpet over backing tracks and showed how the use of sequence at a
different pitch balances repetition and variation. I have since used this
knowledge of harmony and improvisation to improve my own piano playing
skills.
Furthermore he emphasized the importance of silence in music, and how artists
such as Count Bassie have exploited this, as a result of this I listened to great Jazz
pianists such as Count Bassie, and Duke Ellington and played through some of
their songs whilst trying to emulate their solos, this has improved my skills as a
pianist as well as well as improving my pitch and rhythm recognition.
In addition to this he also gave the audience a paper copy of one of Jamey
Aebersold’s jazz books, which details; how different scales can be applied over
the chords, ear training exercises and ‘Things that create interest when soloing.’
I found these three sections to be the most useful as whilst the understanding the
chords and added harmonies is fairly simple, I had difficulty in the articulation of
the notes and knowing which scales or modes can be used to create interesting
‘dissonances’
Later he played other tracks such as ‘Perdido’, ‘Doxy’ and “Summertime”, again
illustrating how solos from one piece can be transcribed to the other, and how
material is often ‘quoted’ from other famous pieces, these inter-textual
references are what often keeps our interest held. Another common practice is to
keep the same chord progression and change the melody, which allows for
countless permutations.
He finished the workshop by detailing how it is most efficient to practice and
said that you should always practice slowly, but with the correct timing, and
gradually increase the speed, as it can be quite difficult to rectify mistakes once
they are learnt. On a final note he mentioned the software ‘I-RealPro’ which
would form a large part of the next workshop.