Prep Material

Since Big Band Roulette setlists are learnt and rehearsed on the day of the gig, having a reasonable level of music reading is definitely useful. The best way to improve this is simply by practising, especially if you use real jazz/big band music to do so.

You can find freely-available big band music at Mind for Music or more general jazz music here. Any genre of music will do though, and a great resource for generating never-ending sight-reading material is Sight Reading Factory. If you want to specifically focus on reading rhythms, there is a great app called Perfect Ear that has a load of free rhythm training exercises that you can practise by tapping on your phone.

It is completely your choice as to whether you want to put yourself forwards for solos with Big Band Roulette. That said, if you want to improve your solo chops, here are some resources to help you do so.

To get started, you may want to checkout our kickstart guide on jazz soloing. There are also a plethora of jazz soloing resources on YouTube such as those by Chad Lefkowitz-Brown, Jens Larsen and Julian Bradley, as well as books on the topic such as Hal Crook’s How to Improvise. It may be best to find learning resources specifically tailed for your instrument (or at least your transposition) but this is not at all necessary—at an introductory level, the ideas behind jazz soloing are much the same for all instruments.

It’s important to not get too bogged down in theory, though. Think about how the best painters hone their craft: they don’t spend hours a day agonising over books about colour theory and “advanced palette construction”. Instead, they get inspired by others’ work and build experience through practising their art. In the same vein, a jazz musician should avoid considering music theory the be-all and end-all.

The best way to find inspiration for jazz soloing is by listening to, transcribing (writing down the notes) and then learning famous jazz solos. Transcribing can be a laborious process, however. Instead, a shortcut is to study an existing transcription. You can find many transcriptions on YouTube by independent creators or by serial transcribers such as George Collier, Sharp Eleven Music, and François Leduc.

Once you have some theory under your belt and have studied some famous solos for inspiration all you need to do is practice, practice, practice! This is often easiest when playing along to a backing track so you can hear how your solo lines fit into the underlying harmony. The de facto source for jazz backing tracks is the app iRealPro. Although it is not cheap (roughly £10 depending on the platform) it is worth every penny, accompanying you with any chord progression you download or write yourself, in an style, tempo, or key. As a free alternative, many jazz backing tracks are also available on YouTube (though with no ability to change key or tempo). Perhaps the largest collection comes from Martin Gioani with channels M2 and Backingtracks JAZZ being close contenders.

As with all genres, big band music comes with its own set of stylistic conventions and idiomatic embellishments. Although we will aim to offer as much stylistic advice as possible during rehearsals, there’s no harm in having a look at the most common practices in advance. For a quick dip into these topics, our jazz kickstart guides may be of interest.

One of the most comprehensive resources for stylistic big band playing is the US Army Jazz Ambassadors’ educational clinic. The video starts by introducing the “big band sound” and discussing how to appropriately play a variety of big band styles. Part 2 (from 17:24 onwards) is perhaps the most relevant section, introducing the unique (and rather flashy!) note embellishments that big band music is famous for.

Another brilliant resource is Jazz at Lincoln Center’s educational series, one for general players and one specifically targeted at rhythm section players. Although the series does tackle some technical material, it focuses a lot more on the philosophy of big band music—what makes a big band really swing? It offers advice on the role of each player in the big band and how they can best work with the other musicians to create a professional sound.

Finally, world-class big band composer Callum Au (alongside trumpeter Louis Dowdeswell) has created a set of short guides that discuss how to play and practise your big band instrument like a professional. These resources are not free (and we haven’t actually read them ourselves!) but they may be worth considering if your itching for more jazz resources!

For our larger concerts we aim to reserve at least one slot in the setlist for a guest arrangement by a student arranger. This is a great opportunity to build experience in big band arranging and hear your piece played for real (we will also make professional recordings of our guest arrangements once we have enough to justify a studio day!).

If you’ve already been selected to make a big band arrangement for us or you want to brush up on your skills before applying, you may wish to check out the following resources on the topic:

• Evan Roger’s big band arranging blog

• Pandemonium Big Band’s Big Band Arranging Secrets Revealed

• Arranging for Large Jazz Ensemble (not free, but highly recommended)

There is so much amazing big band music out there, that knowing where to start listening can be difficult. It would be impossible to give a comprehensive introduction, so instead, here is a list of a few “essential” albums to kickstart your listening. These have loosely organised these into a few “eras” of big band music based on their characteristics and history, but this is only a rough (and highly subjective!) guide. Once you find the sound you like, you can use last.fm to discover similar listening!

Swing Era Big Band

Popular between the early 1930s and late 1940s, swing music was famous for its danceability. A typical swing song has a strong, anchoring rhythm section with looser call and response between horn sections on top. This is the era of big band that gave birth to many star vocalists such as Ella Fitzgerald, Frank Sinatra, and Billie Holiday.

• Basie Straight Ahead (Count Basie)

• The Atomic Mr Basie (Count Basie)

• Diane Schuur & the Count Basie Orchestra (Count Basie)

• On the Sammy Side of the Street (Sammy Nestico)

• The Famous 1938 Carnegie Hall Jazz Concert (Benny Goodman)

• The Complete Ella In Berlin (Ella Fitzgerald)

Progressive Big Band

The 1950s saw a revitalisation of the big band genre, moving away from the vocal and dance focus of the latter decades, to make the big band itself the only focus. This era saw increased experimentation with modal harmony and extended technique as bandleaders tried to create their unique sound.

• Consummation (Thad Jones)

• Big Swing Face (Buddy Rich)

• Birks Works (Dizzy Gillespe)

• Nostalgia in Times Square (Charles Mingus)

• Gunslinging Birds (Charles Mingus)

Big Band Fusion

In the 1960s and 1970s, big band music found itself being fused with the popular genres of the day, namely rock, funk and soul. At a similar time, big band music was becoming showier than ever with the addition of blazingly-high “screamer” trumpet lines, made famous by Maynard Ferguson.

• Big Bop Nouveau (Maynard Ferguson)

• Carnival (Maynard Ferguson)

• Chameleon (Maynard Ferguson

• Big Band Bossa Nova (Quincy Jones)

• One More Once (Michel Camilo)

The Modern Big Band

At the start of the 21st century, big band music returned with a vengeance. This new era of big band is generally high-energy and in-your-face, with crisp harmony and tight rhythms.

• XXL (Gordon Goodwin)

• Swingin’ for the Fences (Gordon Goodwin)

• Cowboy Bebop (Seatbelts)

• Greatest Hits (Jacob Mann)

• Prime Time (Alan Baylock)

• Music of Pat Methany (Bob Curnow)

Swing Revival

In recent years big band music has had somewhat of a revival in popular music too. Its natural nostalgia and lush harmonies made it the perfect bedrock for modern crooners to build their careers upon.

• Swing When You’re Winning (Robbie Williams)

• Call Me Irresponsible (Michael Bublé)

• Rock Swings (Paul Anka)