Paul Hirsh
jazz panpipe pioneer and designerRecent Comments
Author Archives: jazzpanflute
Lines of Least Resistance and Trusting to Chance
I once asked South African jazz harmonica player Adam Glasser if it wouldn’t be more practical to have an isomorphic chromatic harmonica laid out around the two whole tone scales, to make intervallic improvising intuitive and everything you play freely transposable. … Continue reading
Why Saxophonists are so Annoying
Last week a friend, who remembered me from back in the day when I used to play saxophone, invited me to come on a gig with him in Paris. I wondered how come he didn’t know any sax players in … Continue reading
Posted in Moves notation, Musicianship
Tagged chromatic exercises, chromatic patterns, Coltrane Licks, John Coltrane, Slonimsky
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MOVES: Melodic Freedom for the Classically Chained
Followers of this blog (both of you) will have noticed that I like to quote the NLP adage: “The Map is not the Territory”. And one of my main beefs about most traditional musical instruments, when it comes to learning … Continue reading
Posted in Interval Training, Moves notation, Musicianship
Tagged chromatic exercises, Classical theory, ear training, guitar scales, improvisation method, improvising, interval names, interval training, intervallic awareness, intervallic improvising, intervallic notation, intuitive improvising, MOVES notation
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Playing like singing in the shower
In my ongoing research into finding the best instrument for learning to “play like singing in the shower”, and in the process helping you, the gentle reader, to do the same, one instrument I have placed near the top of … Continue reading
Affirmative Action for the Piano
One takeaway from my recent experience in a Montessori school was the evident glee with which the children attacked a pentatonic balafon brought in by one of the teachers, contrasting with their apparent lack of interest in the expensive chromatic … Continue reading
Adding colour to the diminished scale
It is easy to slip into the idea, from studying harmony textbooks, that the only way to form scale-tone chords is to make stacks building upward from each note of the scale, skipping every other note. Then depending on how … Continue reading
Posted in Moves notation, Music Theory
Tagged chord sequences, diminished scale, harmony, Olivier Messiaen, synaesthesia, Turangalila
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Why Montessori Bells Get it Wrong (2)
“Why are those ones black?” The little girl was four years old and had asked the one question I couldn’t answer in a way she could understand. I wanted to see how children used these Montessori bells and what could … Continue reading
Posted in Intuitive Instruments, Music Education
Tagged K4-ed, Montessori, musical education
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The Science of Licks
Continuing from my recent post on the philosophy of licks, one of the measures of a good lick is how it messes with the listener’s cognition and fries his brain. It arrives too fast for you to take it all … Continue reading
Posted in Music Theory, Musicality
Tagged chromatic patterns, Coltrane Licks, exotic scales, hot licks, John Coltrane
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Violin Mind and Guitar Mind or Why You Should Learn Two Instruments
Here is an exercise that builds on a fragment from John Coltrane’s solo on Giant Steps that gets you through all the major triads (4 3) and half diminished arpeggios (3 3 4). In the original context the half diminished is actually … Continue reading
Posted in Intuitive Instruments, Musicianship
Tagged diminished, guitar tab, half diminished, major, minor, Saxophone, triads, violin, wholetone panflute
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Intervallic Awareness for Improvisers 