Jazz Education Advice Needed

Jazz Education Advice Needed

I got an email from subscriber yesterday and I thought I would pass along the request to someone who knows more than me about materials out there for teaching young aspiring jazz players.  Here is the text....

I wondered if I might impose on you for a recommendation or two. You might remember that I teach at a resource center for home-schooling families, and I'll have a small combo for the first time this Fall, middle to high school. Jazz will be something new to most of them, and I'm looking for some very inexpensive rhythm and scale exercises for warm-ups and to teach some common rhythms and syncopation. Any direction you can give (no pun intended) would be greatly appreciated.

Can anyone make any suggestions here?  If you can, just click on the "comments" link below and your comment will be pasted on this page just below this text.  Thanks!

Sammy Nestico - The Complete Arranger is Excellent

Sammy Nestico - The Complete Arranger" is Excellent

Whenever I start a new chart, I always feel like an arranging newbie.  You would think after 25 years and hundreds of charts later I would be able to just whip them off and make them sound good.  For me, that's not the case. 

I played a boat cruise gig with Chris Riddle (Nelson's son) a number of years back on the Mississipi and he told alot of terrific stories of the Sinatra years when his dad was writing alot of charts for Frank and Capitol records.  One that stuck in my mind was that he would board a plane in NYC to LA with just a blank scorepad.  By the time he arrived in LA the chart was finished and ready to give to the copyist.  Must be nice!

Anyway, on my quest for more arranging knowledge, I finally picked up Sammy Nestico's book called The Complete Arranger. (I know, I know, I should have had this in my library years ago....) After going through it more than a few times, I can only say that I highly recommend it to anyone interested in arranging for big band or orchestra.  The musical examples are terrific (although not long enough for me!) and there are tons of musical excerpts to learn from.  And Sammy never writes a chart that doesn't just sound perfect.  Everything fits.  Perfectly balanced.  That's the hardest thing too when it comes to writing I think, just getting everything to flow from beginning to end, to tell a story.

The Complete Arranger is on Amazon used right now for alot less than I paid!  But even at $50 it's a bargain.

PDFjazzmusic.com Blog is Back

PDFjazzmusic.com Blog is Back

Hi everyone, it has been awhile since I posted to the blog
but I wanted to let you know that it is back and I plan
on posting a few times a week this time around.

I'll be sharing my 2 cents on everything from jazz cd's to
big band charts, to big band writers, to books on jazz -
kind of a stream of conciousness kind of thing on
jazz, the music biz and big band music in general. 
Your comments are welcome, please leave them.

If you didn't get a chance to pick up a nice chart on
A Touch of Your Lips, you can help me test a new
pay system and get a nice chart (I think so anyway)
very inexpensively.  CLICK HERE to check it out.
Only available though until Sept 1, 2005.

That's it for now