Jazz Duets

Etudes for Phrasing and Articulation

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  • Suggested Retail Price: $14.99
  • Format: Book
  • Pages: 80
  • Dimensions: 9x12
  • ISBN: 9780876392065
  • SKU: 00302151
  • Publication Date: November 03, 2020

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Winner of a 2020-21 Revere Award for “Best Cover Design!” (Kristen Anhalt, Graphic Artist)

Learn to play with jazz phrasing and articulation. These 27 duets are in jazz and jazz-influenced styles such as swing, bebop, funk, samba, and others. They are appropriate for performance by any melodic instruments.

The duets feature independent contrapuntal lines, and practicing them will give you intimate insight into how these constructs sound and can be used to create a wide variety of colors. You will improve your ear, sense of timing, phrasing, and your facility in bringing theoretical principles into musical expression.

You will learn to use:

• jazz staccato and legato articulations, and how they differ from similar symbols in classical practice

• a wide variety of scales, modes, harmonies, and other structures.

• various meters and ways of interpreting them and their beat organizations and subdivisions

• phrasing within and between measures

• swing feel

“The idea of duets with both voices being the PRIME voice seems such a logical concept—and in my experience, a really refreshingly stimulating one, as I personally always had to work hard to produce a satisfactory counterline in a composition or arrangement where attention was drawn to either or both lines. 

“In working through these duets, I ended up recording one part and then playing the other part against it, and was delighted with the results.

“To me, this has strong compositional and orchestrational potential: MORE than a mere counterline type result; something new in a familiar vein, and with added substance! So I have now added another tool (as it were) to my compositional toolbox, for which I give my humble thanks.”

Michael Gibbs, Composer, Conductor, Arranger, Producer, Trombonist, and Keyboardist

“These duets are interesting, challenging, and fun to play. They capture a total spectrum of musical styles and cover an enormous range of technical issues facing instrumentalists. The written material prior to each duet is very valuable, insightful, and informative. Dick has written for me and my big band, and all of his charts have been well written, challenging, and a joy to perform.”

Dave Stahl, Band leader, trumpeter (Woody Herman, Buddy Rich, Liza Minelli, many Broadway shows)

“This is a very interesting duet book. While many jazz duet books are easy enough to use as fun sight-reading pieces, this book will take some work and creates a wonderful means for practicing jazz rhythms, scales, phrasing and interpretation. Richard Lowell has created a series of duets that will challenge your reading, articulation, and phrasing skills, while improving your technical ability on the instrument. I have played through many of the duets and find that both parts are equally challenging and can stand alone as melodic and harmonic musical statements.”

Mike Vax, Trumpeter (Stan Kenton Big Band, Stan Kenton Legacy Orchestra, many big bands) 

Authors

Richard Lowell

Richard (Dick) Lowell is a trumpet player, composer, arranger, and educator who has written for and recorded with jazz luminaries…