This is a dream experience for guitarists of any age; Travel to Kyoto, Japan, the most beautiful city in the world, have the chance to play in many settings- two-guitar duo, guitar-bass duo, guitar trio, organ trio, with piano, with vocalists- get a firm grip on jazz theory and harmony, expand your repertoire, and make major strides toward developing your own unique improvisational voice.
THE EXPERIENCE INCLUDES THE FOLLOWING;
7 days of intensive 3 hour workshops
Private accommodations with western style bed and private bath
2 nights in Japanese jazz clubs hearing some of the best musicians Japan has to offer
5 dinners, some of which will include some of the same Japanese musicians we will hear live in the clubs for discussion, conversation, and cultural exchange
2 guided tours with two of the best tour guides in Kyoto to discover the amazing temples, gardens and neighborhoods of the city!
HERE IS SOME OF WHAT THE WORKSHOPS WILL COVER:
Improvisation: Developing Your Own Voice
Jazz is a non-verbal means of expression by which we can communicate feelings and emotions that are beyond the scope of words. What makes a great solo? How do we develop our own voice, our own personal and unique way of playing and expressing ourselves?
Scales, Variations, Intervals, Developing Control and Mastery
How can we develop the ideas we have in our solos? How can we develop the mastery to take our ideas where we want? How can we develop our ideas so as to "tell a story" in our solos? How can we play new things in our solos, things we've never played before, and go places we've never gone before?
Jazz Harmony and Repertoire- Standards, Standards and more Standards
The strongest melody that we can find over any given set of chords is the original melody of the song. Let's play tunes, standards as well as some lesser known material and explore the idea of how to play those melodies both expressively and in our own way. Plus, repertoire by some of the great composers in jazz history-pianists, guitarists, saxophonists, bassists and others and how to adapt their writing to guitar.
The Art of the Ballad
Ballads, ballads and more ballads. How to be expressive at a slow tempo.
Blues: The Common Ground
The blues is a simple 12 bar form, but it's variations are seemingly endless. Blues is a common link between so many forms of music and underlies everything we play. We'll play the blues, explore some of it's many forms, and take a look at approaches to blues taken in the compositions of Charlie Parker, Thelonious Monk, and others.
Chords- Comping- Reharmonization
New chord forms, reharmonization, and approaches to comping when playing with instrumentalists, vocalists, and also within the context of the rhythm section.
All workshop participants receive the following folios (to keep): Blues based melodies, I Got Rhythm based melodies, Ballads, Latin melodies and Contrafacts (melodies composed over the harmony of a standard). Plus compositions of Bud Powell, Thelonious Monk, Wes Montgomery, Charlie Parker, Dexter Gordon, and Sonny Clark. Plus guitar-related technical matters such as major scale forms and variations, interval studies, arpeggio studies, chromatic scale forms and variations, and alternate picking studies.
Special Guests
We will have special guests over the course of the 10 days and a chance to discuss the way they approach their music, what inspired them to play jazz, what it's like to play on the jazz scene in Japan, and many other topics which, no doubt, will end up going in a number of different and unforseen directions.
Playing in various formats:
Playing with organ trio, Playing with vocalists, Playing in a quartet with piano
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