Description
Trane for Trumpet
79 Exercises and Etudes on Giant Steps
When I tell people about Trane for Trumpet, I almost always begin by telling them that I wrote this book for myself. I struggled to improvise on John Coltrane’s famous standard, Gian Steps. The fast harmonic rhythm and almost symmetric root movement emphasize almost everything I struggled with as an improviser. To make matters worse, none of the books I found were helping.
Trane for Trumpet began as a shoebox with scraps of paper. Every time I had an idea I put it in the box. I collected these ideas for a couple years before I began assembling them into book form. When I had enough ideas to make an outline, I created new material for those spots in the outline that had none.
After the book was completed, I practiced it for two years before deciding to release it. In total, I practiced most of these exercises for over ten years before publishing the book.
Of all the books I’ve published, this was the most quiet release of them all. Now that I am looking back at the history of this book, I think this was because I didn’t want people to challenge me. I fully expected people to assume, since I wrote the book, that I must have mastered Giant Steps. Because that’s how people think. If you wrote a book, then you must be a master of that subject.
But remember, I wrote the book because I struggled with that tune, more so than most other tunes.
I was torn between the desire to make this book available, so that it can help other people work through Giant Steps, and keeping it quiet to avoid those sorts of confrontations.
Don’t misunderstand me. I can play Giant Steps now! And in fact, someone did officially challenge me – on YouTube – and I delivered. Check out the following video of me improvising on Giant Steps changes. It’s not bad. But it’s not my best tune. And THAT’S why I was always reluctant to aggressively publicize this book, because of people’s expectations. Here’s the video:
Progression
The book begins with simple exercises to help the students become acclimated with the major third progressions. These exercises are done in a style that I invented that I always called “horizontal/vertical patterns”. These patterns are largely unpublished, but I already had an entire library of them before I began working on the Trane for Trumpet book.
From the H/V patterns at the beginning, the book progresses to simple, common tone jazz etudes over Giant Steps changes.
After the common tone etudes, there are forced motif etudes.
The etudes change types a few different times until the etudes at the end, where they become more through composed and dissonant.
Practice Recommendations
I strongly recommend memorizing each of the etudes. The book can be used for sight reading, but if you are using it to learn to improvise on Giant Steps, then reading the etudes won’t help much.
Let’s be clear about the most important issue concerning Trane for Trumpet… this book is NOT intended to give you “licks” to play in your solos. The purpose of the book is to teach you the voice leading of these unusual chord progressions. If you memorize the etudes and exercises, then certain patterns will begin to float in your mind, over these chord progressions.
This means you will be able to play your own materials over those changes, but using the above mentioned patterns to be certain to remain inside the changes.
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