This Month's Topic: Something Scary To Work On

How do you like me and my buffalo friend? I played the JazzTrax Catalina Festival in October, and the island has buffalo! Supposedly they were brought over in the 1920's to film a Western movie, and left there. So now...if you want to know where the buffalo roam - it's Catalina Island...26 miles off the coast of California!

Happy Halloween!!!

Hey Hey, here we are coming up on Halloween. That means for some us winter is right around the corner, which is a great time to stay in and do some practicing and writing. Although every season is good for practicing, winter just seems like it is better for me because it is too cold to do anything else here in the Big Windy (Chicago).

Now, let's talk chops, licks or whatever you may call them. I know a lot of you ask how do I come up with good licks to play on my solos. Well, first what is the song saying or what is head of the song (the melody )? When putting together your solo try to incorporate melody from the head or lyric to keep the flow of what the tune is doing. If you are playing jazz you more than likely will go outside of the melodic structure and the root notes, which is sometimes called playing outside. For those of you playing pop, rock and other types of music, more than likely you will not venture into playing outside although you can. When I say outside I mean like playing in another key other than the key of the chord changes. If you are playing, for instance, in A minor at points play licks in in B flat,. It can be tricky because your ear has to become accustomed to hearing things like that, and it can sound out of tune to you but if you use the modes correctly it will make sense. Try playing a straight A minor groove and rip a half step up. The thing is to find notes to lead you into the next key. Also try moving up from the B flat to B and so forth and so on. This should be interesting to open another thing for you to challenge yourself with. Let me know how this works for you.

Well, as usual the road is calling your boy out again. I am off to Iowa and Florida this week. Remember, be very careful this Halloween and take care of your little brothers and sisters who trick or treat. And if you are out trick or treating yourself stay with a group and look out for one another - the world can be cruel sometimes so Be Careful!

Stay in touch and I will be back atcha next month.

Peace, Nico

P.S. Forward this newsletter to your friends or sign them up yourself by sending an email to jazz@nickcolionne.com. You can also sign up on line at my website, www.nickcolionne.com or on my MySpace page, www.myspace.com/nickcolionne. Adults welcome, too.