We'll be meeting every other Monday, in one large swinging group. Check out the calendar for workshop dates. Our sessions, this spring, will have a fairly narrow focus, for a change. Here are some goals:

• continuing to learn how to get around fluidly on your instrument with a good tone, and good time
• developing more coherent linear phrasing
• injecting chromaticism into your melodies

We'll be tending to the blues and rhythm changes, using, as the foundation, bebop scales.

Last night, we played over a Bb7 chord/scale using the mixolydian bebop scale. We played through some exercises, confining ourselves (temporarily) to the following rules:

• only diatonic motion (no arpeggios or skips)
• start phrase on beat one (kind of an arbitrary rule, but a rule, for now)
• if starting on a non-chord tone, make it a quarter note (there are other ways of handling starting on non-chord tones, and we'll get to those)
• change direction only on chord tones

We traded fours, using the scale/rules and one of the two common phrase endings, as described in David Baker's "How to Play Bebop" series.