Student Performances
Live performances at the Student Showcase.
Special thanks to:
Guest performer - Karen Hirabayashi (sax)
Band - Angus Milne (bass) and James Walker (drums)
Videography - Brendan Ashmore
Photography - Benjamin Tolkin
Sound engineers - Kane Whitelam and Ryan Chan
Adam Tomlinson playing Superstition by Stevie Wonder.
Taking influence from Indonesian band Jakarta Blues Factory, this arrangement and version features heavier overdriven and distorted tones for the main riff without losing the funky feel with the occasional sparkling clean guitar part.
Declan Armour playing Sultans of Swing by Dire Straits.
As you can tell, tons of work went into learning the intricate guitar fills/ad-libs by Mark Knopfler, as well as transcribing the solo and applying some ideas in the outro!
Recordings
Featuring students performing in various settings from playing solo over backing tracks to guitar duos, across a range of styles.
Morgan’s transcription of Guthrie Govan’s solo on Man Alive (from JamTrackCentral). This track is in the key of D minor, uses some ‘jazzier’ chords like diminished and altered chords like dominant 7th flat 9th. The style is pretty much a fusion of jazz chromatic lines mixed with rock licks against a 5/4 rhythm!
There Will Never Be Another You is a jazz standard often called at jam sessions, perhaps because it features a memorable melody along with a recognisable chord progression. The chords transition nicely and smoothly as you’ll hear, with more complex sounding textures such as half-diminished and sub-dominant minor in the harmony.
Going through a few choruses of a blues standard called Sweet Home Chicago (Eric Clapton version). Starting off by comping through the chords in a 12-bar blues progression, onto the intro section featuring a memorable riff, then closing off with an improvised solo. Well done Adam!
George Benson is one of those jazz guitar masters who can sing and play at the same time. Whilst being a hardcore jazz player proficient in classic bebop styles, he cut pop and smooth jazz records which enjoyed mainstream success. Here we have slowed down the track Affirmation in order to find out more about how he articulates notes.
Sunny - Guitar Duo
This is a very common tune for players who are starting to get in touch with jazz since the chords are simple enough to understand and improvise on using pentatonic language (as Samson demonstrates!). The rhythm is also very easy to get in to from bossa comping to full-on funk it up! The challenge is to take a balance between playing pentatonic notes and adding in the occasional chord tone to show the chord changes, sounding more complex by following chromatic tones. We also play a slightly different turnaround at the end of every chorus - nothing beats a descending bass line!