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#1 2009-10-24 08:01:44
- LucyShrenker
- Just arrived
- Registered: 2009-10-24
- Posts: 2
music for small combo plus strings
All high school instrumentalists have been grouped together in one ensemble meeting four times a week at my school this year. I am looking for suggestions of music that I can adapt for this group without too much rewriting of parts. Here is a list of the instrumentation. Most of the students are fairly advanced. So far I have adapted a couple of folk music pieces written for mixed strings with guitar chords and I have rewritten parts in B flat and E flat and had the pianist play chords and the percussionist ad lib. Mariachi music kind of fits except that there is no piano, drums, E flat and we don't have a vocalist. We've done a grade 2 orchestra piece with lots of doubling of parts and left the guitars out. I'm looking into the possibility of adapting some jazz music. I can occasionally work with subgroups for which music selection is easy but I still need to work with the entire group together most of the time. I would really welcome and general or specific suggestions.
4 violins
1 viola
1 cello
1 bass
4 flutes
2 alto sax
1 tenor sax
1 trumpet
1 percussionist with a drum set
1 pianist
4 guitarists who can only read chords and tabs
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#2 2009-10-24 17:07:25
- andrewg
- 2009 October Jazz Mentor
- Registered: 2009-06-24
- Posts: 3
Re: music for small combo plus strings
Hi, Lucy
This is a great question. Is there anyone out there who has music for this type of ensemble? I am also going to ask one of my colleagues who is a jazz bassist and a successful high school orchestra director for any information.
One thought is to teach the tune "C Jam Blues" to your ensemble by ear. It is a 12 bar blues tune and the melody is comprised of two notes: sol and do. (In the key of C the notes are g and c; I have also taught this tune in B-Flat and F--so then the title is inappropriate!). One should easily find versions of this song on YouTube, etc.
You could have your bass player walk a blues line, have your drummer set a groove, and have your pianist comp, and have your guitar players play the melody or share with the comping responsibilities. (Under your guidance, of course). You could even have the students devise simple countermelodies and/or background riffs to play. In a nutshell, if you teach everyone the blues scale your ensemble could have a basic start to playing a real jazz tune.
I did this with my beginning band class back in the day and it was very successful. The kids, teachers, and parents really enjoyed it. And honestly, these beginners were improvising at a higher level than some of the high school students!
Andrew Goodrich
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#3 Today 21:07:53
- stringsalive20
- Just arrived
- Registered: 2009-11-20
- Posts: 2
Re: music for small combo plus strings
I was in a seminar course with Dennis DiBlasio in which we had a relatively mixed group. What he did with it was: basically treated it like a group lesson at first; teaching the modes, and how they are built, as well as some just practical theory. We each read out of some Aebersold books, like volume 54 (Maiden Voyage) or 64 (Four and More), - something inexpensive that would force everyone to be reading from the same set of changes - and then he would have us drill the chords: play up the arpeggio, the arpeggio to the 9th, up the arpeggio to the 9th and down the mode, etc. It worked out really well, and forced the group to think about what they were playing. THen he would tell us to pick maybe the 3rd, 7th, or 9th of the chord, and give us a rhythm to play it on. In a way, we were arranging for ourselves in a primitive fashion. Then we would each have to solo over the piece, while the rest of the class played parts of the chords, and Denny comped. On occasion, we would also have to write out solos for the next class and perform them.
If you know the material, this method can take a lot of the work off of you because you don't exactly have to write out an entire arrangement, and puts some more work on the students - though they won't realize it - and they learn the basics of arranging.If your students are interested, this can be really fun for them.
Another good set of books that I know of are the Real Easy Books. They have a lot of tunes in them, and include some generic bass lines, some piano voicings, and some guitar voicings for each tune. These are great for guitarists, especially since most high school guitar players don't have a large chordal vocabulary.
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