Playing Through the Changes - Martin Miller's Music and Improvisation

Masters in Mechanics
#1

THIS TOPIC IS LINKED TO A CRACKING THE CODE WEBSITE PAGE. View the original page here: https://troygrady.com/2017/10/13/playing-through-the-changes-martin-millers-music/

Quick announcement — we just added the “Playing Through the Changes with Martin Miller” video to the Cracking the Code platform.

You can find the interview here:

Martin Miller’s Music - Playing Through the Changes

Many of you may have seen this already as we released the download a while back. But we hadn’t gotten it up on the new site yet…so, now it’s there! Just the video for now, but we’ll work on tablature too.

This is a one-hour, hands-on investigation of Martin’s process for building improvisational chops — deconstructing his process for improvising over flowing chord changes, and arriving at a simple checklist that anyone can follow to start developing a mature improvisational vocabulary. We also address the nature of improvisation, the different challenges of fretted and keyboard improvisation, the altered scale and its use in soloing over the V chord, the II-V-I progression, and more.

This is a great counterpart to our first interview with Martin, which focused more on the mechanical side of his playing. We recommend watching 'em both!

5 Likes
#2

Sorry for reviving such an old thread, but I wanna say that I appreciate you guys doing this sort of content as well! Very insightful.
@Troy Do you happen to remember what John Scofield video you’re talking about at 46:42? I’ve searched for it but I can’t find it. Do you remember if it was part of a longer lesson or just a clip?

1 Like
#3

It’s a longer clinic, done at a music school (Berklee? MI?) in the '80s. Here’s a section of it I found with some Googling:

I’m not seeing the longer one on the first page of YouTube results, but this is the clinic you’re looking for. If you see the aviators and the beard and the VHS, you’re in the ballpark.

What I like about this is it’s super to-the-point and practical, and you can really hear the difference in the flavor of the different modes he walks through. This is really how I think these things should be taught.

3 Likes
#4

If you see the aviators and the beard and the VHS, you’re in the ballpark.

I actually saw this clip but wasn’t sure that was the one you were referring to. Awesome! I’ll find it :slight_smile:

What I like about this is it’s super to-the-point and practical, and you can really hear the difference in the flavor of the different modes he walks through. This is really how I think these things should be taught.

Definitely. Glad we still have records of these old instructional videos.

#5

For anyone interested, the clip is taken from “John Scofield On Improvisation”. Released in 1989. Youtube doesn’t have the full version as Troy said, but it can still be found elsewhere by just googling for it.

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#6

This is great. Found the whole video after some web sleuthing.

Edit: I guess the forum doesn’t like youku.com links?
Double Edit: Was able to manually add. The magic autolinker kept removing it.

#7

Somehow I didn’t see this earlier - Miller is a spectacular player and a really thoughtful musician, so I’ll definitely have to make some time this weekend to watch this.