This is a performance of Butterfly featuring Herbie Hancock and Roy Hargrove and Marcus Miller. One thing I took note of from this performance was the way that Herbie Hancock was comping behind Roy Hargrove (around 6:00). He comes in strong with chord progressions after the each trumpet phrase, and towards the end the measures, […]

Keith Jarrett uses a lot of pentatonic based melody lines, and he plays through the chord changes. Although his technical skill is impressive as always, I’m always more intrigued by the way that his melodies tend to sound like songs that were precomposed. To be able to generate melodies that sound so natural in an […]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OWwaTnX_vtU (actual song begins around ~2:30) This is one of the busier renditions of On Green Dolphin Street, but it really showcases the talent of all the musicians. And you can hear that they build from simple things. For example, around 3:30, Chick Corea uses just one note and deviates from it slightly and uses […]

Not necessarily jazz, but the entire performance is based off improvising over a song. Cory Henry is a master of a lot of things. One of these things is communication with other musicians. You can see him giving a lot of verbal and non-verbal cues to the drummer. Even when I saw him live in […]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YgqrnvyDvWI Is this blues? I hear a IV chord on the fifth measure, I think. This is really just an excuse for me to post another video with Oscar Peterson in it. But I paid a lot of attention to the saxophone player, thinking about the microtonal music we talked about in class. Since saxophonists […]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xOzcnxzQZSs So many things I could say about this performance and about Oscar Peterson…I guess the first thing I noticed was his attention to voicing. Though not quite as explicit as Keith Garrett, Peterson carries his voicings to completion and you can hear the movement of the lines, especially in the beginning of the piece. […]

Art Tatum uses a lot of parallel movement in his licks. I can’t quite figure out what intervals they are, but they sound so rich and full. I also noticed his technicality – the arpeggiation he does in his left hand is something I only associated with classical music, but he does it so effortlessly.

  Does anyone know what the title of this piece is?