Five waltz etudes by Koran Agan

adrian

Hey all,

We've just made available this collection of five waltz etudes by NYC gypsy-jazzer Koran Agan. He wrote them especially to provide high-quality practice material for exercising both the left and right hands. Personally I've been working with them for the last few weeks and LOVE them...despite the fact that they've pointed out some holes in my technique... :-)

They're available in the interactive Soundslice interface, which means you get tab and notation, synced with Koran's studio recordings. You can slow down, loop, etc., and you also get Koran's backing tracks for each tune (change the "audio source" at the bottom of the interface). Works in any modern web browser, plus tablets / mobile devices.

You can listen to all the waltzes from this page, to get a sense of what you'd be learning -- just click the play button next to each title. Like all our stuff on Soundslice, the majority of the proceeds go directly to the artist, so you can feel good about it too. Hope you enjoy -

Adrian

Buco

You know I was never a big proponent of transcribing and similar in order to better yourself but I have to admit, the little bit I did I definitely noticed improvements in technique and tiny bits of the pieces I transcribed show up in my playing once in a while.
Either way I had to go for Valse de Sarajevo at the very least.

wim

they are very nice, thanks

adrian

@stuart -- Thanks for the heads up! I've fixed that audio preview issue in Safari.

Jim Kaznosky

Nice work as usual, Adrian. Between this and the Moignard lessons that were just released, I should be set for a little while.

swingnation

Koran is a monster player here in NYC. His phrasing is incredible so any instruction from him is going to be good.

stuart wrote: »

I feel a bit mean pointing it out because I'm a big fan of soundslice, but $25 is a bit steep for 7 minutes of music.

Gotta throw my 0.02 here. I get your point but, honestly, $25 is a bargain. Koran sells a book/CD with these etudes for $32 + shipping. So for less money than the book, you get all the etudes plus the ability to slow it down and it's in digital format. 7 minutes of music doesn't mean you're getting 7 minutes of education. I would spend good money on 1 minute of music if I can learn something that would improve my playing/technique. Plus, I really doubt Adrian/Koran are making big margins on this. I bet it's more a labor of love for now. So anything on Soundslice is a bargain to me if it furthers GJ education (and promotes one of our own members talents).

J

tobolek

adrian, not sure about some picking indications. for example, in Waltz No. 1 (Valse de Sarajevo), measure 19 : i would go for downstrokes all the way.

adrian

@tobolek -- Take that one up with Koran. :-) The upstrokes are fully intentional on his part. That particular bit of notation surprised me as well!

Buco

Here's what I got so far, still a work in progress. That C part with a lot of string skipping is tricky. At times I can nail it or if I slow it down I can play it fine. I didn't wanna obsess over nailing a perfect take and this is a realistic picture of where I'm at with this one anyway. Cool thing is that I took the idea of this string skipping and applied it at times when soloing over both minor and major chords, it can sound pretty sweet.

wim

good work!!

Buco

Thanks Wim