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Etudes composed by Billy Newman while studyingwith Dennis Sandole
Dennis Sandole was a very unique teacher and individual. His lessons were structured in A-, B-, C- and D-weeks. A-week was devoted to a line based on one harmonic principle such as superimposed triads. During an 11 month span you would have put the C triad against every other major triad for the first week of the month. His line (which was written especially for you) would bring out the sounds of this superimposition in a musical way. You would learn the line in 12 keys or positions on your instrument in preparation for B-week. A set of chord changes from the line would be the basis of composition for another part of your A-week assignment. A simple melody was provided in A-week which you had to harmonize or arrange along each of the six strings. This lead to placing the melody in the bass register with chordal accompaniment above. Melody in the middle on G or D string, with bass below and little textural voices above on B and E was most challenging. Of course the most common was done: melody in the high strings with bass and chords below. The melodies were all laid horizontally across the neck leading to a greater vision of the architecture of the fingerboard through the process of arranging. The compositional etudes here are examples of this work done for that particular week.
Note: The recording quality is horrible on all the Sandole examples. They were recorded on a mono cassette recorder with built in mic. The objective is to give an idea to visitors here of the working process of my study with Sandole and of the variety of composition cells bred. I don't even know where some of the matching music is for the smaller exercises.
| "Etude 1" | AAC (974KB) | | MP3 (925KB) |
| "Etude 2" | AAC (1.2MB) | | MP3 (1.1MB) |
| "Etude 3" | AAC (678KB) | | MP3 (630KB) |
| "Etude 11" | AAC (1.1MB) | | MP3 (1.0MB) |
