Course Code: MEL 3070
Academic Year: 2023-2024
This course is designed for upper-year students with an interest in jazz improvisation and performance. The class explores logical approaches to improvisatory practices while encouraging students to utilize presented information in their own way. Students work to cultivate their own musical individualism and style on given repertoire. Each class involves a lecture that addresses specific performance techniques followed by discussion and an opportunity for students to workshop and apply the material in a performative, communal, participatory and ensemble settings. Topics include, but are not limited to: major and minor Bop scale theory, motivic development, an introduction and study of the music of John Coltrane and the theory of Coltrane reharmonization substitutions, diminished scales, major and minor II-V-I substitutions, rhythmical considerations and the use of four-note linear groupings and advanced four-note linear groupings as applied to Coltrane compositions and substitutions.