Thoughts and exercises to strengthen your hearing of intonation
I recently wrote three posts on MusicSavvy.com on intonation. The first one includes some interesting tracks for strengthening your sense of accurate pitch. I think you’ll find it helpful. Take a read and a listen…
The other skill we need to improve on as a group is swing. Here’s a post containing an exercise and a bunch of listening examples to help you better hear jazz swing.
Practice Tracks
Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer
I recorded two things that I recommend you practice with: 1. the rhythm just on one note. Remove the difficulty of hitting all the notes and strengthen your ability to articulate the rhythms and swing feel. Just play along with one note (D above my Bb?)
This track is my playing of the lines within the arrangement.
Old Devil Moon 170bpm
By popular demand, here are practice tracks for the solo section at performance speed starting with this first one with ML playing the lead part.
This one is the the rhythm section alone.
Old Devil Moon 150bpm
Below are some practice tracks for getting the notes to the solo under your fingers. I’ve recorded the lead over rhythm section. The first track is at 150 bpm, which I think is a good intermediate tempo. I’ll add a faster version shortly.
And if you want to practice your part with the rhythm section alone, play the following track.
I Remember Clifford
These tracks are primarily for Michael Eastin who is playing lead on this. The first track contains the second trombone part that is a duet with the lead bone for the intro. I placed a drum track throughout that 8-bar duet. I inserted the drums in order to help keep time if needed. Once that is not needed, play over the second track that has only the second bone for the first 8 bar intro. No drums in those first 8 bars.
The piano, bass, and drums play through bar 40, which is the end of the lead trombone melody and the start of the piano solo.
The following track is the 8 bar intro without drums. Rhythm section plays to the piano solo at bar 40.
