Henry T.

Law

Essay 2 Standard 2

In my education, I have had many opportunities to arrange, create and improvise

specifically in the jazz setting. I have been in a swing combo, a Latin jazz combo, a big band

and taken improvisation lessons all playing the trombone learning how to improvise at a higher

level with the goal of teaching it later in life. I have also taken music theory courses to hone my

skills of creating and composing music using the skill to compose simple pieces for trombone,

brass quintet and septet, and a jazz combo. My friends and I recently formed our own Latin

combo called “Los Yumas” that plays at local live music venues and with a dance studio during

their salsa dance class. In the ensemble, we have had to arrange every piece we play for our

specific instrumentation and the style we want. We have arranged everything from pop charts,

traditional Cuban songs, and jazz standards to fit our needs. We have even invited area

percussion students to sit in on the ensemble and learn a new style that will help them in their

future endeavors as musicians.

Currently in my own private trombone studio, I teach my students a few lessons a

semester on jazz and how to improvise over simple blues progressions as well as how to identify

what key or scale they should use to play over simple jazz standards. It is a slow process, but

they are learning one other skill to make them a better musician. I also write out their individual

warm-up putting it in notation software and give it to them to practice. In my future classroom,

students will have the option to play in a jazz ensemble having more and more opportunities to

improvise their own melodies. Part of jazz is also transcribing and arranging parts or solos to fit

the needs of the ensemble. I will both give students the tools for success in the transcription

process and help them to create the best final product possible to perform.
 Jazz has been instrumental in my process of learning how to create, improvise, and

arrange giving me skills to play chords on the piano, learn simple bass lines, and learning many

ways to communicate to others what needs to be taught. In my current and future classroom

students will be guided through the process of improvisation, creation, and arrangement to put in

their bag of tricks to use later in their musical career.