Technique Building
Lessons
Practicing ‘Deck the Halls’ for 2015 Christmas Project
In this lesson I am going to show you how to use the extract principle to help you play the more challenging sections of Deck the Halls.
Dan’s Scale Primer
Do you struggle to play quavers, triplets and semiquavers in sight reading?
Do your fingers feel like jelly when you’re trying to improvise quickly?
Do you ‘know’ your scales only to find out when tested that they are not as secure as you would like?
Digital Patterns – A Practice Tip from Chris Potter
Digital Patterns are an exercise which I learnt from Chris Potter – you simply take a 2 or 4 note grouping and move it around the instrument. In this video my student Matthew Nixon joins us and demonstrates how he has practiced (or not) Digital Patterns in his practice routine.
Modes – (On Sax)
Modes are simply just extensions to our usual scales. In this lesson I show you how to apply modes in your practice and build up the technique to be able to play them in pieces.
Chords
Growing up, my first saxophone teacher used to tell me about 9th and 11th chords. I was too proud to actually ask what they were and politely nodded as he showed me super locrian modes over altered dominant scales, and my minded drifted as a teenager does onto more important things such as football, girls and what I was having for dinner.
Lydian, Lydian Dominant and Lydian Augmented Modes
In this video I talk further about how to practice these scales and allow them to become part of your vocabulary.
4 Note Cells / Digital Patterns
Digital patterns or 4 note cells are an important building block of improvisation. These 4 note groupings are such an important part of the jazz language that it is ESSENTIAL that you know them and practice them carefully, in ALL KEYS!
John Coltrane and Harmonic Minor Scales
In this video I explain how to play the Harmonic Minor scales and how John Coltrane (and others) used these scales in their solos.
Grouping Digital Patterns
In this lesson we look at combining two digital patterns together to form an 8 note pattern. The key to getting this into your vocabulary is practicing it in isolation at first and then applying it to particular pieces.
Play Brecker Scales
In this weeks lesson, I show you how to play one of Brecker’s signature scales, the ‘diminished’ or ‘octatonic’ scale.
Play Pentatonics with Coltrane
In today’s lesson we are going to look a the great Duke Ellington standard, ‘In a Sentimental Mood’ in order to look at the major pentatonic scale in another setting.
Dan’s Scale Primer – Part 2
So many people, (myself included,) find that their fingers can feel like they are tied in knots. This becomes increasingly apparent when you are trying to execute difficult passages of music. It can also cause issues when you’re sight reading as passages that are ‘unfamiliar’ can be difficult to play accurately.
2020 Christmas Project – Using the Extracts
Lydian Augmented Scales
Lydian Augmented Scales are a great way to navigate Minor 7b5 chords and Major 7th chords.
Modes on the Melodic Minor
Modes on the Harmonic Minor Scale
Modes of the Melodic Minor with Chords
Practising scales is really important and is a critically important part of any successful practice regime