Thursday March 2nd
Did not practice last night, went to dinner and a movie with Giselle.
Wednesday March 1st
Jam was cancelled due to guitar player injury. Practiced Pat Metheny's "Song For Bilbao" a great uptempo Brazilian tune. The chart I used was from Lucas Pickfords website and was far more accurate than the Real Book version. Not a tricky tune but fun to play. Grooving, modal harmonies for the A and B sections modulating between a Csus9 and a GbMaj7#11 chord. Although they are a tritone a way (the Devil's interval ;) they share many of the same notes and actually resolve well.

Also worked on Wes Montgomery's "Four On Six" a super fast jazz burner that has been covered by everybody. On iTunes I found original recordings, Latin and Surf versions. All unique and valid although I prefer the original and the Latin tinged John Abercrombie versions.

Joe Henderson's "Inner Urge" was also on the table. I have an original Blue Note recording with Joe and possibly Elvin Jones (RIP) that goes for 11 min 33 sec. and also have a funky/hiphop version by the B Sharp Jazz Quartet. Both are cool but I would prefer the grooving version and I think this new trio I am going to play with (we still have not jammed yet) is into that idea. I have to say that Joe was full of great ideas for solos and in fact took another solo before the head out and after the bass and piano finished their turns.

Monday Feb 28th
Busy night. BCP rehearsal, short but sweet. We worked for an hour and a half and busted out a new tune from scratch. All 3 of us were able to equally contribute and with great enthusiasm I might add. I am thinking of calling it "The Gamut" as it contains several of Brian's melodic ideas, Jesse's rhythmic punches and my basslines all in a variety of rhythmic flavors. Very exciting to be composing and in fact I have several ideas that will work nicely for other original tunes. More to come.

After BCP was a lesson with Kai. 2 lessons in as many days, cool. We continued to work on spontaneous composition and I felt more confident and thus solid. I came up with two different chord progressions while he added the chord qualities to those progressions. A melody was added to the second of the two that worked well. Simple but cool. The crux of the lesson was to write a melody in the first chorus and then solo on the second then pass it on. We went back and forth like that for a while then added the second section with the melody. It took me a while to play the melody he wrote correctly, it involved playing the first note on the first 16th after beat 2. A few moments of finding the notes and looping the line and I got it right, YAY!