Happy New Year! Thank you to everyone that helped with the jam last year: educators, house-band musicians, MJJ board, the John and Carolyn Peterson Family Foundation, Madison Music Collective (our fiscal agent), volunteers at our plant sale, and everyone that attended or supported the jam. Thank you for helping us to grow and achieve our current success. We’re looking forward to many more great jams this year.
Our next jam is this Sun, Jan 6th, 2013 and we expect a large turnout as usual. Recent jams are averaging around 70 people total with 20 – 25 jammers. That’s a lot of musicians to fit in so we are extending the jam by a half hour; the jam now runs from 4-7:30.
The designated tune for this week is “Tune-Up,” and Dave Cooper is our educator. Dave posted a nice article about “Tune-Up” and playing 2-5-1′s on his site.
If you haven’t practiced 2-5-1′s before a good way to start is by listening and transcribing favorite lines from solos of “Tune-Up” or other tunes, or from heads of other tunes (the bridge of Night in Tunisia, for example). Bert Ligon’s approach using 3 common templates is also a useful starting point (see his site and books). It usually works best to learn one line at a time and take it through all 12 keys. The goal is to be able to hear the line in your head so well you can play it without thinking about the notes or intervals.
See you Sunday!
