As a composer, I feel it’s important that everyone in the band is able to reference the same information, especially when it comes to improvising on this music. With that in mind, I often write in “piano grand staff” and that way, everyone is on the same page..literally (bad pun-sorry about that…). Incidentally, this is something I learned from Dave D back when when I was a student at the Banff Centre.

I thought I’d offer up a sample of what one of my charts looks like. This piece, “Machinery”, goes through several time zones and meters but really was just built off of a couple of contrasting themes. A big inspiration while writing this piece was the desire to compose music that blurred what was composed and improvised. On top of that, I wanted to create a piece that allowed the guys in the band to really shape the outcome while maintaining the character of the composition. You can listen to a sample of Machinery here and just click on “Machinery PDF” below to download the chart as well…(FYI, the written material starts about 53 seconds into the track). This post is open for comments so let me know what you think. Thanks.

Machinery PDF