Today was the first day in which we played in our assigned groups for this improvisation block, Knife and Fork. I can't remember which one I'm in, but I knew which room I was supposed to be in, so I just went with it and walked in, and asked Simon if this was my group.
It was.
We worked on one song today; So What, by Miles Davis from his album "Kind of Blue" (I'm getting a tad sick of the amount of times I mention that album in my posts). We were given two songs to learn last week (the other being Impressions, By John Coltrane).
The group was without a bassist today, so instead of doing any improvising or melody playing at all, I was tasked with providing a walking bass on my left hand. Which, shockingly enough, I hadn't really done before. So that was a bit new. I made it too simple; I just went up the D Dorian Scale, added a Db in before I hit the octave D and played alternative notes on the way down. Or something. A dead bear could have played what I played today, meaning I need to look up playing effective walking bass lines sooner rather than later, because it will no doubt come up in something else at some point in the near future.
The focus today was playing the AABA structure, which consisted of 4 rounds of D Dorian, 2 rounds of Eb Dorian, then 2 rounds of D Dorian, wash, rinse, repeat. Once we got that structure in our heads (which admittedly, took longer than it should have...) it was just a case of us, the rhythm section, comprised of Jason on drums, Mario comping on his classical guitar, and myself playing the bassline on my left hand, playing as a backing for our two violinists, Aimee and Lauren, and our singer, Fiona. They seemed to improvise rather well, Fiona especially, seeing as she managed to sing through the key change rather seamlessly, unphased. This may have been a fluke. She said it was, at least.
For our next class, I intend to learn the two songs inside out and have a go at both improvising and waking along with a bass line (because bassists are unreliable). I'll also read up on what Simon told me to read, which is a chapter in The Jazz Piano book which uses so what as an example of modal improvisation.
Seems every week, I'm learning something new. Even if that thing is me learning that there's something I can't do and need to work on. Which it is most of the time.
