Thomas J. West Music

I have a rather unusual instrumentation for my wind students this year. I have four flutes, four clarinets, eight alto saxophones, two tenor saxophones, one trumpet, and two percussion. What in the world can you do with that?

The answer: arrange a jazz standard with rhythm section.

We're performing my arrangement of Herbie Hancock's "Watermelon Man" with myself comping on piano, our string bass student playing electric bass, and my two percussionists performing a composite drum set part. I've arranged it like a big band chart, with an intro, the whole band in unison on the head, a second chorus of the head with jazz harmonization of the long tones, a repeating solo section with cued backgrounds, a chorus of breakdown rhythms, a D.S. to the harmonized head, and a coda.

It's a good challenge, because even though "Watermelon Man" is not swung, our version has a fusion funk feel, complete with some blues scale 16th riffs they have to work on. Additionally, it gives me a chance to throw on the Aebersold recording and give them a chance to solo over an F blues scale. It's a good first exposure to improvisation for many of them. Everyone will have an opportunity to try soloing in class, then we will choose a half-dozen soloists to perform on the spring concert.

Another cool thing about this: catching the improv bug. I have printed out a copy of the Concert F blues scale transposed for each instrument, handed it out, and posted a pdf copy of it and an mp3 of the Aebersold track on my wind classes' Moodle page. They can jam on their own at home without fear of judgement. This especially is coming in handy because we unexpectedly are losing several days of rehearsals this coming week.

This tune is a challenge for them, but definitely one that is a good fit for them. Looking forward to seeing how it turns out and who amongst my wind players flexes their "jazz chops".

This article (c) 2012 Thomas J. West. All content on ThomasJWestMusic dot com is licensed under a Creative Contributions Attribution-No Derivative Works 3.0 License. Please contact the author before publishing on or off-line.

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