Tag Archives: Coltrane Licks

Lines of Least Resistance and Trusting to Chance

Posted on July 30, 2015 by

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 →

Posted in Intuitive Instruments, Musicianship | Tagged , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Why Saxophonists are so Annoying

Posted on June 27, 2015 by

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 , , , , | Leave a comment

The Science of Licks

Posted on April 21, 2015 by

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 , , , , | 1 Comment

The Philosophy of Licks

Posted on March 1, 2015 by

What is a lick? A lick is a musical phrase. But not every musical phrase is a lick. To qualify as a lick, the phrase must stand out in some way. As far back as I can remember, licks were … Continue reading →

Posted in Musicianship, Scale Practice | Tagged , , , , , | 3 Comments

Intervallic improvising

Posted on August 14, 2014 by

When making analyses of great solos, jazz teachers like to look at the scales and arpeggios used and try to relate them to the underlying chord sequence. The operation consists of extracting all the notes in a passage and stringing them out … Continue reading →

Posted in Interval Training, Moves notation, Music Theory | Tagged , , , , , , , | 1 Comment