Practice Tip: Accumulative Scale Technique

opening run in Maurice Whitney's Introduction and Samba

Have you ever seen a run like the one above and thought there was no way you could play it cleanly?  So instead you just moved your fingers without even bothering looking at the notes, hoping to land on the next quarter note or eighth note at the right time.  Or would you like to learn how to play all scales BOTH clean and fast?

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More from Paul Hanson

In doing research for my interview with Paul Hanson, I came across his old website, jazzbassoon.com. Though he now has a new website (paulhansonmusic.com), I found some of that content very informative, and worth a reposting.  So please enjoy the following musings from Paul.  And as an added treat, a live recording of Paul playing Wayne Shorter's Fee-Fi-Fo-Fum in a duo with guitarist Steve Erquiaga.

 

Paul Hanson on Bassoon Technique:

I believe in a good classical foundation for the bassoon. Without being overly obvious-if a bassoon student does not have certain traditional skills on the instrument that student will have too hard a time taking on the difficulty of jazz and other improvised music forms.  The important point is that without studying long tones, etudes, excerpts and the like the bassoonist won't have the experience with the instrument necessary to tackle improvisation.

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