Honorable mention was a trio date with my buddy and saxophonist Ponder East and bassist Chris Thomas. Chris plays in the Brian Blade Fellowship Band. He’s a super nice guy and a fantastic player. Ponder and I both agreed that Chris’ groove was a smooth as the glide of a 1972 Cadillac El Dorado at 35mph back in it’s day!

Ponder and I took our working jazz quartet into the studio in April to record some lesser known standards and a few of my originals. The group included Terry Bowness on B3 and Aaron Lack on drums. We’re hoping to have the CD out this fall. Also, a big thank you to all the people that came out to the Elephant Room for the tribute to Wes Montgomery. We had a great time and it was a really great experience getting all that music together. I’m already thinking about another tribute gig for my other guitar hero Grant Green. Stay tuned…

My blues/ R&B group, now titled The Chris Bell Group has been working more and more and things seem to be settling in regards to the personnel and the arrangements. It a fun group and I get to sing and explore all the music that started me on the guitar like BB King and T-Bone Walker as well as my present influences: Dr. John, Ray Charles, and Snooks Eaglin. Aaron Lack holds down the drum chair in the Chris Bell Group while bass whisperer Ed Friedland works his magic. What a rhythm section. You have to hear it to believe it. We’ll be at Momo’s in July for a couple of trio gigs. Check out my calendar for the details and if you’re at the gig, come up and say hello. Be well.

Here are some photos from the session.

Mr. Aaron Lack on the drums, Nick Litterski and Kyle Clayton doing business between tunes, Nick in the recording pit. I had to include a picture of my weapon of choice. My 1987 Gibson 335 just recently back from Ed Reynolds shop and it plays incredibly well. Shane made some great split pea soup as well.

The first lesson demonstrates a couple of melodic ideas to be played over minor 7 chords. Lesson 2 shows how to use those same melodic ideas over major 7 chords. Lessons 3 and 4 put all that stuff to work and show how these melodic ideas can be used to play over major and minor ii- V- I progressions. As many of you know, ii-V-I progressions are everywhere in the standard jazz repertory.

Hey, anybody who is out there playing this music well, spent a lot of time transcribing the masters.

My guess is that Scott feels as many of us do, that jazz is a language and in order to play it well you first learn to imitate, then assimilate, then finally innovate.  When I arrived at the Berklee College of Music, I was already making my living as a guitarist.  I could play all my scales in all the positions, but when I sat down and played a tune with my teacher he said, “Well, your playing a lot of guitar but your not playing a lot of music.”  From there we just tarted learning Wes Montgomery solos.  Then it was on to George Benson and Grant Green.  It wasn’t until I learned to play ( and I mean play them with only my teacher playing the chords, not just playing along with the recording) did I start to hear the sound of jazz.  It was then that I started to play “jazz” on the guitar as opposed to playing “jazz guitar.”

Begin by taking a simple major triad and play it to get the sound in your ears.  Then play the notes of the triad while you SING ALONG.  This is really important.  Singing along with what you are playing helps you develop a relationship between your hands and your ears.  Recognizing shapes on the guitar visually is not going to help.  Remember our goal is to hear how our  lines develop and conclude in real time (while we’re improvising). As you get comfortable singing the notes of the triad, begin to add diatonic approach notes to each chord tone to create motion back to one of the notes of the triad.  What you’ll begin to hear is a hierarchy among the notes of the diatonic scale.  Chord tones feel “at rest” while the other notes of the scale have a tendency to resolve to the nearest chord tone. After doing this for some time, expand the exercise to include chromatic approach tones to hear how these notes resolve as well.   Once you get comfortable working with the triad, extend it to include the 7th, 9th 11th and 13th.  I’m going to include a short video demonstrating how to get started so stand by. Good luck… oh and remember, if you have any questions please feel free to email me at belltowerbooking@gmail.com.

Chris

2009 has brought about some major changes in the way I approach my music… I’ve been singing which has turned out to be really fun and I think the shows have benefited in terms of the overall presentation… I enjoy playing in a jazz format but have longed to get away from the “parade of solos” that defines so many jazz performances these days… The group consists of me on guitar and vocals and Ponder East on Sax… from here we’ve been using Aaron Allen on bass most of the time (he’s a great player and so there have been times where he wasn’t available) and we’ve filled his spot with Johnny Vogelsang and Daniel Durham when Aaron couldn’t make it. IF you are in the area, we are playing at the Central Market (Westgate) the day after Christmas and it should be a fun show. I’m adding new tunes all the time and I’ve tried to pull from as many sources as possible.. Fats Waller, T-Bone Walker, Ray Charles, and so on… We go on at 6:30p and play until 9p. Hope to see you guys there.