Great lesson today. I feel like we’re always able to cover a large range of topics. Here’s a review of the exercises we worked on. Try to incorporate these into your practice. 

  1. 5 note slurs – Move the air forward here & don’t get psyched out by the high G. You were killing it today and then you got into your head! Try different starting points/ fingerings to work your way up in a comfortable way. Feel free to just slur between individual notes to iron out the creases as well. 
  2. Single note articulation – This is great for breathing, tonging and range. Be patient; take your time to breathe, set up and tongue one note as clearly as possible. Start on C and work your way up. You can do this in octaves as well for an extra challenge… low C, high C, low C#, high C#, etc… 
  3. Major scales with varied articulation – Slur everything, legato tongue, and staccato tongue. Move the air forwards and crescendo to create momentum. 
  4. Major scales with note variation/ patterns – The thirds & triads were sounding really nice today! Those are great for activating your mind and fingers. After playing through some major scales, pick one note to change (b7, b3, etc) and play around from there. Try to get comfortable playing and hearing these different scales.

Sonny moon for two! Nice job learning the melody by ear. Spend some time this week playing along with the recording to get everything solidified in the melody. Aim for rhythmic & phrasing accuracy. Listen to how sonny improvises using the melody and try to imitate that the best you can. The more you experiment at this stage the better!! You can also pick a simple motif of one or two notes and try to develop that in unique ways.