Ensemble Project Entry 3 – The Pioneers or the Cotton Club

It seems since our first decision as an ensemble to take on the phenomenon of jazz there has been mixed views and support. The band itself seems to be falling down this route, still struggling to decide on a strong research view to choose from. At the moment the choice lies between “pioneers of Jazz” and “Songs from The Cotton Club (New York)” however now that we have an efficient and fast way to communicate with each other it shouldn’t be too hard to put together a set list for next week’s rehearsals. In practice I already feel we are improving significantly and beginning to understand the style better with each chosen track. This week our lecture came in and filmed our progress and enquired into our song choice. For the video we played the popular Bossa Nova “Girl from Ipanema.” And overall played well and used dynamics extensively to our advantage. Although this song is significantly under our belt I have a feeling that with our alteration in research we may have to scrap it! Even if this is the case “The Take Five” are hopefully soon to be a gigging band outside of college and so the more tracks the better to add to our repertoire! That’s about it for this week but I shall keep all 0 followers up to date on what the chosen research project will be!

Ensemble Project Entry 2 - The Take Five

My jazz ensemble project now known by the more original name “The Take Five” has now accomplished a second successful practice with three possible tracks well under way. Now that last week’s excitement and enthusiasm has simmered slightly the band has had time to consider our proposal in an attempt to narrow down our chosen project to a more doable topic. As we have recently found out, Jazz is an incredibly broad style with hundreds of sub genres being created as the years went on. To cover all of these from the birth of Jazz to modern day in our show and research report would almost be an impossible task given the time we have. With this mind we have managed to minimise our project to researching jazz from only the 40’s to the 60’s, exploring how it evolved in this period and how from the classics new styles, structures, harmony and many other attributes came to pass. As we stand at the moment I still feel that we are focusing mainly on our song choices without actually researching each ones relevance to the project in hand. With time though, I hope that both will come together making our project proposal a strong candidate for a high grade. Jazz is a genre I love but know very little about and so with time I hope the experience of all of this will educate me greatly in the phenomenon. We soon hope to be rehearsing twice a week and already have a few offers for small gigs just to get us warmed up for the final show however it is still the early days . Well that’s all for now! An update will follow next week!

Ensemble Project Entry 1 All Jazzed Up!

So it’s the first week back at college and already my ensemble project is well underway. After discussing with others the genre they were most interested in I have managed to get involved in a 5 piece line up to study the progression of Jazz. Although our line up of drums, keyboard, two electric guitars and electric bass is not the most sought after to tackle the genre I hope that we will be able to put our own twist and personality into each song while keeping mainly to the originals structure and feel. As a progressing musician I feel that putting a signature sound to a performance is important and so look forward to the challenge of finding balance between tradition and originality. As the first rehearsal draws to an end we feel as a group there is a strong understanding of where we want to go with this project titled “The Progression of Jazz”. Starting out with such innovators as Gershwin we hope to take a famous figure from each decade and perform one of their songs gradually revealing how Jazz has evolved and branched off into other genres, such as the creative polyrhythmic jazz of Dave Brubeck to the Jazz - Funk fusion of Herbie Hancock! With a few songs in mind for next week I look forward to researching into the evolution of this genre and the challenges that playing this style on drums will bring to me. I feel that Jazz is a rarely performed style at Perth College and hope that with time and enthusiasm this project will help to make the style more popular with the institute. By this time next week it is hopeful that we will have our first possible three tracks laid down and learned. I’ll update the blog next week on how this has come to pass!

Introduction

The aim of this blog is to regularly update the progress of both my Individual and Ensemble project as they develop throughout the year. The blog will mainly focus on my progress with both bands, evidence that we have been rehearsing and general research into both assignments. Stay alert for my first ensemble project entry as we get started in first semester!