Taught by renowned trumpet player
Ralph Alessi
Ralph Alessi provides a toolkit of ideas, exercises, and games to help you become a well-rounded improvisor. In this course, he looks at how to build comfort with chord progressions, extend your harmonic palette, become a melody-driven player, and strengthen your sense of rhythm.
Practicing Harmony
Perhaps you improvise by ear, and are ready to develop a more rigorous understanding of harmony. How can we take harmony out of the realm of theory and start applying it to our instruments? Ralph provides a systematic way of approaching a chord progression – starting very simply and using a variety of techniques to reach more compliated sounds. He also shares some thoughts on practice apps like iRealPro and tools like transcribing.
Melody and Rhythm
Ralph shares exercises from Lee Konitz and Steve Coleman that address our connection to the melody and our rhythmic independence. He uses Body and Soul to demonstrate playing a solo based entirely on the melody, a C blues to demonstrate the skill of walking a bass line on the trumpet, and shares a few game-like exercises you can try to test your awareness of time and form.
Click here to download the course workbook PDF and see the full syllabus →Improvising trumpeter Ralph Alessi splits his time between Brooklyn and Bern, Switzerland and has performed with Fred Hersch, Steve Coleman, Ravi Coltrane, Jason Moran, Sam Rivers, and many others.
read full bio →Preview our curated selection of trombone courses below. With lessons covering fundamentals, technical training, style and interpretation, you won't find a more thorough and enriching learning experience anywhere else.
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