Study: Lee Morgan's "Raggedy Ann"
My fifteen-year-old son is playing trumpet in his high school jazz ensemble for the first time. (He also plays mellophone in marching band and French horn in symphonic band, which means we spend a small fortune on various oils...) His instructor has all of the jazz students keep a weekly listening log, where they pick a tune and analyze it on various levels. For those who might be interested, I have posted scans of the log form down below. (The form, by the way, is the creation of Chet Chwalik at http://www.thetuningnote.com .) I think this is a great resource for closely, attentively studying how a piece is put together and performed. Last week my son picked one of Dizzy Gillespie's umpteen versions of "Salt Peanuts", which I thought was a pretty cool choice with some unusual aspects to it. I didn't really assist him with the analysis, but we talked about it quite a bit afterwards and he went back and added some points to the form. This week I got to select the