Inspired by the young jazz recorder virtuoso, Tali Rubinstein - a geezer my age should learn from the young instead of pretend we're one of them - and this incredible lecture, demonstration by Gary Burton, I'm going to try to work through and begin to deal with the scales and chords in all of the keys (including Db, Gb and other alternative enharmonic equivalents) and resources of improvisation on a cheap, plastic, though in-tune, recorder this year. I figure it's my last chance, if I can't do it with the 2 octaves plus one note on a recorder I'll never do it. I'd rather do it on a different instrument but figure if I don't get it in my ear and under my hands on a recorder that's never going to happen at my time of life.
Especially useful is his exposition of 10 jazz scales and the families of chords associated with them early in the video. I had to go over it, taking notes a number of times before I got the three I wasn't already familiar with. His advice on how to practice those strikes me as some of the most useful advice I've ever heard in a lecture on music theory and musical practice and, believe me, I've sat through more hours of those than you'd care to believe.
Of course that's only one kind of jazz improvisation. If I get this far I might go and explore things like the Messiaen scales that Nelson Veras uses or the "harmonic expansions" Hristo Vitchev talks about in other videos. Music is infinitely expansive and able to always be new, those suckers who settle for listening to the same old, same old, same old, served up in the same way for fifty years are suckers. Or maybe they just were never listening to it anymore than they were noticing the wall paper.
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