The Remington warm-up for jazz band
(Updated August 2020) Greetings, jazz band director. I imagine your Google search has delivered you here in your pursuit to see how you can apply this classic band exercise to your jazz ensemble’s warm-up.
Whether or not this your first time directing a jazz ensemble, I believe I can help you with a Remington Exercise in four variations using “jazz chords” and designed to instruct students on the uses and common practices of harmony in a jazz setting. This is a workout for the rhythm section as well as the horns.
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What You Get
Variation A: Major
Variation B: Minor
These variations are great for middle/high school ensembles that are still learning the essentials of how to play and tune in a jazz setting. Every tuning note is heard within each chord’s triad. these variations stay in one key signature and use standard chord progressions that each last one measure apiece. Nothing tricky here!
Variation C: Functional harmony
This gets a little more complicated for your rhythm section. Variation C introduces a slew of basic chord progressions that they will see in jazz standards, big band and most modern jazz tunes. This includes the ii-V-I progression in major and minor keys, the IV-VII-I progression, the use of a secondary dominant (I-II7), some ii-V-I sequences, a deceptive cadence from major to minor, and some diminished chords. Additionally, the tuning notes begin to rely on 4th, 6th abd 7th of some chords.
Variation D: Advanced functional harmony
Everything and the kitchen sink! The harmony moves quickly here (usually in two beats) and will give your rhythm section a headache trying to keep up. There are several quick modulations and extended voicings against the tuning notes. Good luck!
How to Use This Exercise
Use it “as-is” and focus on primarily on tuning and blending with your rhythm section playing along!
Use an isolated four-beat rhythm to play on each written tuning note. This can help work on your band’s articulations. This can also be done in different styles—not just a 4/4 swing feel.
Make this a voice-leading exercise. Have your students write a sequence (1-2-3-5, etc) to be modulated and played on each chord/starting note. This is similar to the Patterns for Jazz approach and works great for Variations A & B.
Have chord players write their own voicings over written notes (using closed harmony for pianists). This is fun to teach the essentials of voicings and “box in” harmony players by limiting their choices.
Similarly, have younger bassists write out their own walking bass lines. Make sure that they are using notes from the actual chord on beats 1 and 3. Add depth by asking for a more vertical or horizontal line.
Original post from 2010:
If you're a wind player, particularly a brass player (and ESPECIALLY a trombone player!), then you are probably aware of the Remington warm-up method. It's probably the most used warm-up method and tuning exercise for band students. But, just in case you are NOT aware of this method: the idea began with Emory Remington trying to teach his trombone students how to play 1) in tune, 2) with good sound and 3) with a good legato articulation. Eventually, he developed this exercise (expanded and published by Donald Hunsberger): [slideshare id=1798433&doc=theremingtonwarmupstudies-090801081739-phpapp01&type=d]
Simple, eh? That's why it's used so often. The idea is that by limiting the notes to those on the same harmonic partial, the trombone student focuses solely on articulation, sound and slide positioning (tuning). Because it's an incremental exercise utilizing descending half-steps, it should be easy for a student to hear and understand when each interval is in or out of tune. At the University of Houston Moores School of Music, the wind ensemble program uses a similar warm-up based on the descending F major scale, a method popularized, and probably initiated by, Director Emeritus (and Texas band legend) Eddie Green.
That being said, you can imagine my challenge directing a bunch of wind ensemble students for their first outing in a jazz ensemble. In wind band, these students usually only encounter the major, minor and diminished chords; so they're only used to hearing the I-3-5 and sometimes 7 or 9 chord tones. My goal was to get 15 horn players to start hearing the extended jazz harmonies that rely on 7-9-11-13 chord tones and their varying alterations. So as a transitional tool, I wrote out the Remington warm-up harmonized in a jazz context. It's my gift to you, the jazz band directors of the world:
Jazz Remington Warmup
It has proven to be quite useful. It not only gets the students to hear extended harmony, but it also allows the the rhythm section to participate and work on getting around the keys. I tried to keep the exercise simple, with each written note occupying only a 1-3-4-5-7-9 chord tone. This way, it's not too hard a stretch for the horn players to hear how the chord progression relates to the written "melody". It's also endlessly variable:
The exercise can be re-harmonized infinitely and there are numerous substitutions for the chords written here (but I do stress that each variation maintain a chord progression rather than unrelated chords back to back)
Sometimes I would have the lower instruments play the roots to even out the balance of 15 horn players to 4 rhythm section players
I would often substitute a rhythmic idea for the whole note to work on articulation, style and phrasing with the horns
It's also great for music theory pop quizzes: "What chordal tone are we on now? How does this chord progression function?"
I hope this helps, and best of luck to anyone who uses this exercise!