Course Code: MEL 4071
Academic Year: 2024-2025
This course is designed for upper-year students with an interest in jazz improvisation and performance. The class explores logical approaches to improvisatory practices while encouraging students to utilize presented information in their own way. Students work to cultivate their own musical individualism and style on given repertoire. Class involves a lecture that addresses specific performance techniques followed by discussion and an opportunity for students to workshop and apply the material in a performative, communal, participatory and ensemble settings. Topics include, but are not limited to shifting accents,3,5, and7 beat figures, playing in odd meters, traditional, parallel and jazz minor reharmonization techniques, hexatonic scales and intervallic improvisation.