3 Things I Learned from the 2006 Kurt Rosenwinkel Berklee Workshop

This is an old blog post (from my Xanga blog LOL) that I’m sharing as is, recently found in my archives:

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Sunday, October 15, 2006

Kurt Rosenwinkel Workshop
Things I learned from his recent workshop at the Berklee Performance Center:

1. When he came to Berklee, he only knew the major scale. So whenever he found a weird chord, he used a major scale that fit the chord as best as possible. He also noted that later on he did make himself learn the melodic minor modes (he used a lydian b7 scale as an example.) He practiced improvising over one chord for hours using a looper set on infinite repeat.

2. His warmup routine is:

-major scales (whole range of the guitar) all twelve keys starting on G and through the cycle of 5ths.
-major scales via sequences through the same procedure.
-major pentatonic scale – same procedure
-after a while, he starts changing scales in the middle of the line (keeping the same direction -up or down but voiceled to the next scale tone of the next scale).
-later on he sings along with him playing the scale.

3. To combine chord work and lines, he “uses the other remaining fingers to grab whatever chord he can.”

I’ll blog a more detailed account of the workshop hopefully in the next post.

Cheers!
Az

Originally posted on 10/15/2006 9:57 PM on my old Xanga blog