Dorian Michael
Friday, May 10 2:00 PM - 3:30 PM
NOTE: This Workshop requires a separately purchased ticket in addition to General Admission. Get Tickets
Blues Beyond Pentatonic
We’ve all had that moment where someone says “take another chorus” and we do. And then we play pretty much what we played the first time. And we think “when I see my favorite musicians there is more going on than the five note scale but I don’t know what it is.” This workshop will deal with the ways in which we can step up a plateau to play blues and related roots music with a wider musical vocabulary allowing us to play music that, because of its greater variety, is more interesting and emotionally deeper for you and your audience.
We will do a bit of music theory in this workshop but don't worry it'll only be in service of playing the blues. And we can look at several different styles of tunes; e.g. Nadine (Chuck Berry), Stormy Monday (T-Bone Walker), She Caught the Katy (Taj Mahal), and who knows what else and see how we can improvise meaningful solos within those chord progressions, rhythm types and genres.
We'll view our new material from both a linear (scale) viewpoint and vertical (chordal ) viewpoint. We will keep it practical, i.e. what are you going to use in the heat of battle. We will look at examples of double and triple stops to add another texture to our sound. And we will see how the things we learn also apply to honkytonk country and hard-bop jazz. We just might end up more versatile musicians. Couldn't hurt.
About Dorian
Dorian Michael started playing guitar as a seven-year old in Los Angeles just as folk music was about to have a renaissance of sorts and earthy acoustic music was his first guitar experience. He has been a working guitarist for four decades and in that time has played plenty of blues and folk, jazz and rock and roll. There has always been a huge variety of playing experience from smokey honky-tonks to theater orchestra pits. At some point along the way he started playing a few solo fingerstyle instrumentals, made a cd and decided he needed to hit the road and see if he could sell all those cds he had. Three solo cds and four ensemble cds later Dorian is still playing throughout the States and Canada. He calls his solo music “contemporary traditional”; original music that reflects his interest in a number of styles of music. These influences come through in his original material, but it is a contemporary music that grows from, rather than mimics, those influences. When he plays someone else’s music or a traditional piece he always manages to add a few surprises. Says Dorian, “Some music makes you feel, some makes you think and some music is just for the fun of it. I try to get to all those places in the space of a performance.”
dorianmichael.com
