Jean-Christophe Van Dam

Dad of 4. Clarinet - Contrabass Jazz, Klezmer and Folk Musician. Author, composer, arranger, ensembles conductor.

I regularly animate sessions for musicians in traditional music, improvisation. I produced a lot of exercises which are progressively edited and published on this page for clarinet and double bass. I developed my own method to learn musical improvisation that I could "practice", experience, challenge along the multiple sessions I animated.

By this page, I propose exercices for clarinet and contrabass based on traditional airs, as well as little arrangements for small chamber music groups. The idea is to use this fabulous common asset we have with traditional music to introduce them in the learning process.

The approach to use "music parts" in traditional music is at least uncommun, and to be honest, often strong criticized. Most traditional musicians prevent from leaning on paper as - i acknowledge that - it's difficult to be fully available for the music experience when most of our musician is lost in the written notes. I definitively accept this position.

On the other hand, I learned from the multiple sessions I animated those last years that Learning from ear is not reachable to all.. or not yet. What work for some musicians do not work for all. I also learned that working on good parts allow to save a lot of time in rehearsal and in the Learning process. Consider - il you buy on of my parts - that your investment will be fully recovered when yoy don' t need it anymore.

As I like this full set of pieces, i propose a large number of them arranged for some little groups, then this marvellous music can be played by all the musicians, whatever is your preferred Learning method.

Enjoy.

Jeancri

Clarinet exercices contain the theme from traditional and folk music and multiple variations, allowing to practice for advanced clarinet players.

Contrabass exercices are often simple transcription, where a contrabass fingering is proposed.