Summit School of Traditional Music and Culture

David Grisman, Ella Fitzgerald, B.B. King , Alison Krause, Kieth Jarrett, Bela Fleck; what connects these diverse artists is their ability to improvise. Once the melody of a tune has been performed, these artists delve into themselves and bring out new melodies on the spot to play over the tune’s chord progression. Seems like magic? Not entirely. In this course, we’ll take some basic song forms (Blues, Country, Swing, Folk) over which you can create your own melodies using tones inherent to the song’s chord scheme. The basic building block for the course will be the major scale (do, re, mi, fa, sol, la, ti, do), which can then be molded into other scales and modes, which sit nicely over given chords. Pre-requisite to this class is an ability to play simple melodies and chords (if applicable) on your instrument. Willingness to learn to read music is important, but students will not be expected to sight-read at performance speed. 6-8 students. Thursdays, 6:30-7:45pm