Meet the Authors
Bonnie and Brad have been like family since meeting at a Jazz Band rehearsal at Florida State University in …. ahh …. a while ago. We quickly discovered our musical interests and backgrounds had a certain synchronicity. Bonnie’s mother was a wonderful pianist who chose motherhood over a budding concert career. Brad’s father was a world class jazz pianist and arranger who chose to live in New York City and be a revered studio musician rather than travel the world as a revered performer. We both had very large musical shoes to fill. We became performers, composers and eventually teachers. Our feelings about jazz are nearly identical. We agree on what constitutes a great solo as opposed to a lesser solo. We appreciate the whole history of jazz from Dixieland to the most modern styles.
We also agree that teaching music at the elementary level and doing the work to get our National Board Certifications has prepared us to tackle the very difficult challenge of teaching jazz improvisation in an average music classroom. We devised scales that contained blues notes as well as the pentatonic scale that could be played on an Orff mallet instrument. We invented the Scatman to solve the problem of swing rhythm. Swing rhythm is unique – it is sort of triplet based (depending on the style of jazz). More importantly, the upbeat (second eighth) is accented. This is counter to almost all other styles of music. A jazz solo with the coolest most modern notes won’t sound very good with the wrong accents. But, a very simple harmonically limited solo with the right accents will sound great. The Scatman solves the problem as anyone can echo the rhythm using the scat syllables while improvising the pitches to play great jazz. We wanted a method that every music teacher could use comfortably and effectively so we include LOTS of CD tracks with each Orff song to assist with the learning of the melodies and Scatman soloing phrases – while continually modeling the correct jazz accents.
So come on, you know you want to sit-in. Become a Jazz Cat and you'll be a swingin’ hipster.
We also agree that teaching music at the elementary level and doing the work to get our National Board Certifications has prepared us to tackle the very difficult challenge of teaching jazz improvisation in an average music classroom. We devised scales that contained blues notes as well as the pentatonic scale that could be played on an Orff mallet instrument. We invented the Scatman to solve the problem of swing rhythm. Swing rhythm is unique – it is sort of triplet based (depending on the style of jazz). More importantly, the upbeat (second eighth) is accented. This is counter to almost all other styles of music. A jazz solo with the coolest most modern notes won’t sound very good with the wrong accents. But, a very simple harmonically limited solo with the right accents will sound great. The Scatman solves the problem as anyone can echo the rhythm using the scat syllables while improvising the pitches to play great jazz. We wanted a method that every music teacher could use comfortably and effectively so we include LOTS of CD tracks with each Orff song to assist with the learning of the melodies and Scatman soloing phrases – while continually modeling the correct jazz accents.
So come on, you know you want to sit-in. Become a Jazz Cat and you'll be a swingin’ hipster.
