Afternoon in Paris 1

Here's today's recording: I thought there were a couple of melodic errors in the melody. the C on beat 3 of measure 3 was out of tune, and the 8th notes in the first ending were not as clean as they could be. Granted, this is not an easy melody to play, but it's not anything you aren't capable of. A little more practice should iron out the kinks. I love the balance during the bridge- especially the guitar comping.
Dom's opening lines in his solo were excellent. towards the end of the second A section it started to pull away from the changes a little bit. I'm glad that you all decided to mix up the solo order too.
Both Curran and Tyler had similar solos to Dom- strong openings (in Tyler's case, a guide tone line), and then a feeling of getting lost.
Christian took two choruses which was fine, but I felt that Christian was getting a little lost in the changes too- especially on the bridge.
To address this, consider practicing just the ii V I changes one key at a time until you feel comfortable with them.
The drums were good throughout. I liked the double tap on the snare to accent the melody in each chorus.

This song has a lot of promise. Keep at it!

Tenor Madness

This is the districts jazz audition piece. Play along, and learn the solo at the end. Don't forget, you can turn in those audition forms anytime. If you need one, they are on the board outside the office.

Ceora MIDI arrangement

Please excuse the audio quality of this arrangement. The computer is playing back the Finale MIDI data, and it could sound better. However, it does serve as a good reference to the arrangement parts- especially tenor sax and trombone.

Ceora

Nice job on this. We missed you Tyler, and hope you are feeling better. The guitar chords in the intro had a few little mistakes, no big deal. Just remember to vamp on the ii V I until the head begins on cue from Christian. There were a few obvious melody blunders in the head. Again, no big deal, I'm sure you know what you did, and I've heard you play this melody clean before. The background parts (Curran's part) need a little cleaning up too. I'll post a MIDI version of the arrangement soon so you can hear a computer version of how it's supposed to go. During the solos, Make sure the drum break occurs in the right place. I appreciate the fact that you went with it (jump off the cliff) and played with conviction, but you were a measure early. Very nice build in energy in the trumpet solo towards the end. Some of the notes were incorrect, meaning that they didn't fit with the chords but we'll fix that later. the energy was remarkable. For Curran's solo, I'd like to have you drill your guide tone line at home with the practice track a few dozen times. Really focus on smooth voice leading and let you ear be your guide. In the guitar solo, I'd like to hear more space between ideas. let the beauty of the chord progression come through. You played very well. Think more about your phrasing. Listen to the original recording for inspiration (Google Lee Morgan, Cornbread, Ceora) I mentioned in class the F7+9 chord and the use of the augmented arpeggio over it. Just to clarify, here's the deal: Any dominant chord with that + sign after it, or a dominant chord that uses a bunch of altered tones is considered an altered dominant chord. They are unstable and can take a variety of tensions. In this case, we're playing with the 5th degree by raising it up a half step (augmented) so the arpeggio is F,A,C#. Try resolving this to Bbmin7 (the next chord in the tune). The F is a common tone, the A can go to Bb(the root) and the C# can resolve to D (the 5th of Bbmin7). Lee Morgan uses this in his solo, and Dom used it in this recording.