The teacher of the blues class I started attending at the Jerusalem Academy of Music and Dance, Yaki Levi, a great drummer and pianist, assigned "Freedom Jazz Dance" to us, a famous song by Eddie Harris. He wanted us to learn it because it's all on a single chord: Bb7. After a week of working on it, I still don't have it in my ears or under my fingers, and I've been playing it both on flute and on tenor sax. Maybe if I just did it in one key it would be easier. But I should be able to hear how it goes.
In general I'm not very good at playing what I hear and memorizing. I can play a bunch of standards by memory, but I haven't really learned the changes, the chords underlying the melody, because I find that very difficult.
But there are no chords to memorize in this case. So why am I having trouble remembering a fairly simple song: two measures (15 notes), then two measures of rests, then another two measures (12 notes), and another two measures of rests, then four measures (32 notes), for a total of 59 notes. That shouldn't be an impossible feat of memorization.
However, the song doesn't have a conventional melody. It's composed of leaps up and down that move in fourths without spelling out chords. Obviously the key is to understand the logic of the piece, and I'm working on it.
Perhaps by dint of drilling it, the logic will come clear to me.
In general I'm not very good at playing what I hear and memorizing. I can play a bunch of standards by memory, but I haven't really learned the changes, the chords underlying the melody, because I find that very difficult.
But there are no chords to memorize in this case. So why am I having trouble remembering a fairly simple song: two measures (15 notes), then two measures of rests, then another two measures (12 notes), and another two measures of rests, then four measures (32 notes), for a total of 59 notes. That shouldn't be an impossible feat of memorization.
However, the song doesn't have a conventional melody. It's composed of leaps up and down that move in fourths without spelling out chords. Obviously the key is to understand the logic of the piece, and I'm working on it.
Perhaps by dint of drilling it, the logic will come clear to me.
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