The last couple of weeks I have been working on a series on 12-bar blues arrangements, primarily aimed at beginners. But I’ve been learning loads myself. It’s been super interesting and fun and something I would encourage all of you to try out.
When we improvise we are composing on the spot. But many times when you learn a new concept it’s pretty hard to just compose with it right away, and that is why I feel that learning set arrangements (I call them studies) can be very helpful, for both the arranger and the learner.
I’m just releasing one later today which is a study on the use of the 6th interval in the blues. It’s a classic blues move used by most of the great masters and I started out thinking the challenge would be making it musical and interesting as a study. But it turned out that stopping myself from exploring the idea further was the biggest problem - and the that’s the thing I think many of you out there would benefit from if you’ve not tried to make ‘an arrangement’ before.
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