[OT] Berklee Jazz Improvisation with Gary Burton

Sorry for the late heads up, but this course just started another run (last Monday). I have seen a lot of good reviews for this course but never caught it on previous passes. The first assignment is due this coming Thursday, so it can be fully completed for those interested. Course info can be found here: https://www.coursera.org/course/improvisation

Taking it now.  LOTS of good stuff on Coursera.

I was surprised at how much work some of those freebies pile on.  I have a tremendous amount of respect for Mr Burton, and was definitely a happy camper taking a class with him teaching me a bit about jazz improvisational soloing approach.
 
Now if I could only get my left hand to stop playing Billy Joel to go along with the Bill Evans my right hand is now soloing to, I would be in BUSINESS!  DOH!
 
Bob Bone
 

Yeah guitar always seemed a lot easier to learn chords and scales on due to the simple shiftability of box patterns which don't care what key you're in. I can see tone patterns much more clearly on guitar. However, this comes with a trade off in that guitars have multiple instances of each note, whereas pianos have one instance of each note. Of course when you're an accomplished player this works to your advantage because there are many ways of fingering the same phrase and so you can play things with a lot less hand movement than you can on a piano, but the multiple possibilities can easily confuse or overwhelm a beginner.

Some of the greatest and most passionate musicians that we know of from the past 120 years could play the same note over and over manage to and not sound boxed in.
 
Warnings about box patterns rarely seem to acknowledge how much of the music we enjoy are indeed, simply patterns.
 
 
 

I enjoy recognizing patterns as I am playing through "rhythm changes". My ear seems to lead and my mind seems to follow.
 
That's my idea of good fun. :-)
 
 

I have not delved into anything for Week 3 yet, but he seemed to be taking the perspective (in Week 2) of the scales being applicable to the underlying chord being played (without regard to the chord progression). My take on what was presented with this is that the four dominant 7th chord scales are applied to the underlying chord only. Again, I have not done anything with Week 3 where it seems he explains this further, but I assume the Lydian b7 scale is "most applicable" to the dim7 chord (so 4 of the notes in that scale match the chord notes played).
 
For the Altered scale, he mentioned in the videos that the 5th is sort of an optional note, since the 5th is always acceptable to the root note of the chord (after he said that I was scratching my head as to why it is not included, since I have never seen those three dominant 7th scales before).

Oh! Yeah... I seem to fall into that one myself at times... for the longest time I could not shift between Dsus4 and D without doing a pull off with my pinky. After catching myself doing that enough times "out of habit," I finally sat down one day and played Boston's "More than a Feeling" several times just to force myself to LIFT my pinky off that string.

lol
http://stabilitynetwork.blob.core.windows.net/g-tunes/20141022_JazzClass_Week3.mp3
 
This was my jam for week 3. Nothing close to the brave assertions I made about what I might play over it.
 
I mixed it to -13 dB b/c I think 13 is lucky. ;-)