Courses

In this course, classically trained woodwind students will gain hands-on experience with jazz nomenclature, chord/scale relationships, basic woodwind jazz articulation, jazz vocabulary, and standard jazz repertoire. This course emphasizes helping classically trained performers gain the confidence to improvise and uses classical concepts and terminology to bridge the gap into the jazz world before introducing the jazz terminology. In-class playing assignments will give students practice in the application of theoretical, technical, and stylistic improvisational skills. Specific stylistic woodwind concepts are reinforced through the study and performance of selected transcribed solos.

This course teaches efficient and mindful practice techniques in order to maximize the outcome of students’ practice sessions. Practicing is often a lonely and unfocused state. In order to become more efficient and connected to practicing, players need to share their practice journeys with each other. In this course, students will keep practice journals for assessment of progress and reflection, share students’ practice videos for assistance and comments, monitor personal focus in the practice journal, identify issues, and make suggestions for improvement. Through a shared critical lens, students will learn how to effectively and efficiently practice their instruments. This course is housed in the Woodwind Department but is open to all students. 

This lab is designed to support performance majors enrolled in Recital Prep 211, 212 and 311 in learning the required repertoire for these courses. Students will learn the fourteen tunes from the Recital Prep Tune List for the semester they are currently enrolled in. Students will learn the melody, the bass-line, chord changes from a classic recording of each tune, and important guide-tone lines. Additionally, students will practice a variety of chord, scale, and vocabulary exercises over the tunes. Students will be exposed to scientifically validated memorization and retention strategies, and consistent tune review will be a major focus of the course. The tune repertoire will change every semester.

Although the course is designed for woodwind performance majors seeking help with the Recital Prep tune requirements, this class is appropriate for any student seeking strategies to build up a long-term tune repertoire, and/or seeking help learning to improvise from memory. 

This course examines and explores the role and presence of woodwinds and their relationship to politics, race, religion, and identity. It approaches the music of the 20th century via key woodwind players, as a human activity, enmeshed in social, political, philosophical, religious, and individual contexts.

A lab designed to give beginning and intermediate woodwind students hands-on experience with jazz nomenclature, chord scale relationships, basic woodwind jazz articulation, jazz vocabulary, and standard jazz repertoire. In-class playing assignments will give students practice in the application of theoretical, technical, and stylistic improvisational skills. The study and performance of selected transcribed solos will support learning of specific stylistic woodwind concepts.

This course teaches students how to produce a crystal clear sound on saxophone (soprano, alto, tenor, and baritone) and clarinet (soprano and bass). Topics covered include: embouchure and lip placement, airstream flow and movement, intonation, longtone exercises, volume control and performance, low volume playing, subtone, overtone and harmonics, mouthpiece/reeds usage, projection, and maintaining consistent practice routines even while traveling. Students will develop the discipline necessary to use a correct practical routine which will help them develop a strong and solid sound, and will also acquire the flexibility to apply this knowledge in a creative way. 

This course examines jazz with a focus on understanding the provenance of the music itself; in this case, the African continent, and in particular West African countries such as (modern day names) Benin, Togo, Senegal, and others. This class will focus on exploring the music of some of these cultures and in particular students will discuss and learn the rhythms that connect the music from these countries to their musical culture here in the United States and in the Americas. They will learn rhythms such as bembé and Abakuá and others, and how these are connected to jazz music.

In this course, students will learn how to use technology as an extension of their instrument in a solo setting. In-depth presentations and hands-on interaction with a wide variety of FX pedals are combined with required weekly lab use to provide students with an extensive survey of sonic possibilities. Students learn to use preamps, equalizers, harmonizers, delay, reverb, envelope filter, chorus, phasers, and compressors in coordination with a loop station culminating in a solo performance as the class’s final. Various assignments and projects along the way will help refine students' visions for the final exam.

This course focuses on the study and application of the improvisational approaches developed by John Coltrane during his first three periods: hard bop, tonic systems, and modal jazz. For each of the three periods, Coltrane’s improvisational vocabulary, harmonic and rhythmic approach, repertoire, and unique techniques will be covered. Students will gain a working understanding of these various approaches as well as an ability to apply them to their own music in their own way. In-class playing, transcriptions, handouts, and systematic approaches will be covered. Transcriptions will be analyzed in class.

In this course, students will focus on building repertoire, improvisation, and arranging/composition using the music of Charles Mingus. The instructor will introduce different compositions each week, either by recording or style, and students will listen to the original and subsequent inspired recordings, workshop the material, and brainstorm various ideas on how to start and shape an arrangement in class based on instrumentation. Weekly assignments will include creating new arrangements and/or medleys of material introduced and improvising. Students will play through arrangements in class in the spirit of the "jazz workshop" (Mingus's own term for workshopping new material with his band). Students will also study and discuss how he crafted his compositions.

Each week the instructor will introduce one to two tunes for students to learn, either from the great American songbook or a jazz standard. Recordings will be introduced, as well as a foundational practice of utilizing the song as part of a practice routine. Exercises such as playing the roots of the chords, roots and fifths, outlining each chord, and playing bass lines through the changes in time will be explored. Assignments will include performing these exercises, composing contrafacts (new melodies) over the tunes, improvising over the changes, and writing out solos in the spirit of melodic development.

A continuation of ILWD-211 Woodwind Improvisational Lab 1, designed for the intermediate woodwind principal. Continued work with chord scales, jazz articulation, and standard jazz repertoire; study and performance of jazz solo transcriptions.