First jazz lesson in 35 years! All about Drop 2

Did this over Zoom.  Some challenges in getting setup because my SM57 is dying and Zoom has unexpected behavior.  I kept auditioning my setup (guitar through Helix, voice through mic, both into audio interface) and the recorded sound clip on the audio Settings page was terrible.  Turns out that "musicians mode" is not in effect when doing that little recording.  Once I went into an actual call i got it to work.

Teacher is Brian Monroney, a great player.  But can he teach?  Looks like he can.

I went through my background - punk bands, jazz guitar as a teen, accepted to Cornish, bailed and coming back to it later in life after doing rock and shreddy stuff.

We went over the current challenge of four new tunes, and spent time on Afro Blue.

Brian: you have two areas to work on.  1) the process of learning arrangements, tunes, and getting vocabulary together. 2) the musical aspect of hearing, improvising, creating lines, and making choices.

Drop the root, and don't have the root at the top or bottom.

Don't comp dynamically if the piano is doing it.  4 to the bar, Green style, is ok for that era of music.  Otherwise maybe alternate, or do sustained voicings while the piano comps.

I described how I can sight read chords, but not melodies or rhythm, and that I over-rely on my ear to pick up melodies and rhythms from others.  I can do that, which is good.

He went through "drop 2" voicings.  This enables chords to fit the fretboard better by avoiding close intervals.

1. Choose the inversion

2. Spell the chord from bottom to top.  Maybe drop the root, maybe also the 5th, leaving 3-4 notes

3. take second from top and move it to the bottom

4. now find that on the fretboard

I think alternatively one could spell the chord and choose the inversion that puts the favored note on the top in order to do voice leading.


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