Adult and High School Instrumental Classes

Jazz Clinics in the Adult /High School workshop are organized by level. This allows students of different experience and age levels to study and learn an environment that can challenge but not overwhelm them.

 

Assigned levels are:

 

Level 1 - Jazz Beginner

Level 2 - Jazz Beginner / Intermediate

Level 3 - Jazz Intermediate

Level 4 - Jazz Advanced

 

Students can choose their own clinics according to interest; we advise students the difficulty levels of clinics by providing an enrollment questionnaire and later, an online jazz theory quiz. The level placement is only shared with the student and serves as a guide; students will have the final choice in clinics. At any point of the workshop, including during a clinic, a student may change clinics.

 

There are three subheadings of clinics:

 

Improvisation

Feel/Groove/Time

Ear Training

Jazz Aesthetics

 

Six clinics are offered to each student, two per workshop day. Each clinic will have four levels offered according to the difficulty of the subject matter.

 

Tuesday:

Melody Improvisation Clinic (Level 1, 2, 3, and 4)

Feel/Groove/Time Clinic (Level 1, 2, 3, and 4)

 

Wednesday:

Rhythm Improvisation Clinic (Level 1, 2, 3, and 4)

Ear-Training Clinic (Level 1, 2, 3, and 4)

 

Thursday:

Harmony Improvisation Clinic (Level 1, 2, 3, and 4)

Jazz Aesthetics Clinic (Level 1, 2, 3, and 4)

 

On Monday, students will participate in a jazz instrument class. Most instruments will have a subdivision of beginning and advanced classes.

 

On Friday, there will be a Detroit jazz-listening room class, where students have the choice of attending a class from 8 different styles of jazz and artists from Detroit. Each is taught by a faculty member; students guided by this instructor, will actively listen to the style and communicate thoughts about it.

 

An example of how the Level breakdown might be in a particular clinic:

 

FOR EXAMPLE:

Tuesday 10am - Melody Improvisation Class

Level 1 - How to play a blues scale

Level 2 - How to use repetition in the blues

Level 3 - How to add ii-V-I melodic language to the blues

Level 4 - How John Coltrane would improvise over the blues

 

You can see that each Level is linked together under melodic improvisation and the blues, but offers different, specific skills to jazz musicians of different experience.

 

It is the philosophy of the workshop that students play as much as possible. While lecturing can be important in some circumstances, this is a hands-on workshop, where you attend to play as much as possible. Classrooms are comfortable with modern amenities like Smart TVs and sound systems. All classrooms are on the same building level, adjacent to one-another, so moving between rooms is easy.

 

A list of clinics will be offered before the workshop so students can plan their schedules according to interest and learning comfort. All clinics are taught by professional jazz educators with both performance and classroom experience.