Tag: music

The following is an extract from my FREE PDF document of scale and arpeggio exercises for jazz trombone. I am publishing part of the introductory notes here because it might be of interest to others who have posted similar articles. RELATED SCALES An important aspect of harmony in jazz improvisation is the matter of related scales. All diatonic […]

We sometimes hear about orchestral, or harmonic, strata. As so often happens, in any field of endeavour, seemingly obscure and complex ideas actually exist all around us. The idea is this: by treating large groups of sound as collections of smaller layers we not only achieve a more controllable method (especially of combining instrumental sections) […]

A while ago I was standing in a bar with my son and a group of his friends. The juke box was pulsing out its message at very high volume. Now, I have very wide musical tastes and sitting in a trombone section right in front of five trumpets for much of my musical life […]

I believe many young composers are constrained by unnecessary inhibitions that develop during the learning process. I know I was, in my early days. My previous posts have dealt with some of these – parallels etc. – but there are others. Again, it’s important to establish an ‘overview’ which is where one of my favourite […]