Lena Bloch

Masterclass on improvisation and jazz harmony

Emphasis: "Contemporary aspects of Lennie Tristano's teaching legacy"

topics covered:
• the importance and meaning of learning fundamentals of music for an
improvising artist
• how to learn and practice a "new" tune
• how to practice tonal and rhythmic material at home
• some special techniques and exercises towards better sense of melody and rhythm
• psychological obstacles in improvising/performing and how to deal with them

The topics might overlap and be presented in a different order, depending on how
the communication with students develops.
Generally, I prefer a conversation-demonstration style, with questions and
comments, rather than a lecture-handouts style. I believe, it is very important to be
able to ask questions as they arise, in a given moment.
Demonstration will include students playing (solo), singing, clapping and me
leading them, joining them or observing (commenting).
Some Details

1. Learning fundamentals of music

In our age of wide-spread academic approach to jazz education, there are several problems with a
student being prepared on fundamentals of music. Tristano repeatedly stated that his goal is to
train his students to become thorough musicians, with understanding of harmony, melody and
rhythm in a universal sense. Jazz educational institutions today tend to emphasize the "jazziness"
of musical aspects they teach, resulting at times in confusion and over-complexity. Especially it
is true in relation to modal theory and the concept of "scales over chords". As Warne Marsh said,
in his interview in 1982, "Modal theory does not provide a way to modulate from one key to
another". Being busy with new "concepts" of jazz improvisation, students have no time and no
attention left for basic things, like intervals, triads and inversions, scales in all keys - all that
singing, hearing and playing. I would like to talk about what these fundamentals are and how to
practice them, so they'd be completely interiorized.

2. How to learn a new tune

I would like to talk and demonstrate how to learn the melody of a tune in its primary form first. It
is a bit different with different types of tunes - a song (a "standard"), typically the one which is
originally sung with lyrics, a jazz original which has a melody that can have lyrics added later
(like "Little Niles" or Waltz For Debby"), and a "line"-type of a tune, which refers to scat-like
sounding melodic line (Confirmation, Subconscious-Lee, etc.). There are several steps to
learning a tune and interiorizing it, as opposed to simple memorization.

3. Some special techniques and exercises

Here I would like to relate closely to my experience of studying with Lee Konitz (as well as in
the chapter "Psychological obstacles") and share what we have been doing together and how he
practiced himself.
The exercises have to be tried right away. During my teaching, I realized that they are not fool-
proof, and I have to make sure a student understands how to use them.
First one is called "slow improvising" and is related to improvising on a simple well-known tune
in an extremely slow tempo (50 bpm or less), without any accompaniment, with no smaller note-
values than eight-note triplets. Like Lee used to say "No double-time!". ONLY and necessarily
with a metronome.
Second is "trading eights (or choruses, or fourths)" with oneself, alternatively singing and
playing one's instrument. If it is a chord-instrument, single line only, no chords. No
accompaniment. Either with metronome or without. This exercise has to be explained more
thoroughfully.

Here are some aspects and directions I would like to cover and elaborate on.
Psychological obstacles and mental barriers in improvising and performing
music are of great importance to address.
Overall, the purpose of this masterclass is to provide a students with means to
establish a connection between his/her personality, as he/she perceives it, and
his/her real self, provide several tools to help him/her to discover a real inner
voice and become an authentic performer who sounds like no one else in the
world.
This, I believe, has been the ultimate goal of the pedagogy of Lennie Tristano
and Connie Crothers, is the ultimate goal of Lee Konitz, who describes himself a
"student of music", and I hope to be able to carry this tradition on.

Lena Bloch
Brooklyn,
September 1, 2016