Augie Blues

About The Composition

Augie Blues was written as an exercise for my senior year at McGill University. While practicing augmented arpeggios, I discovered a kind of rhythmic illusion could be created by playing the same pattern but offset slightly.

the time signature 12/8 is really special for many reasons. For one, 12 is a very useful number as it can be divided evenly by several other numbers. I use this regulary when working with large groups of musicians. For example, if you have 12 students, you can divide them into 2 (6 in each group), 3 (4 in each group), 4 (3 in each group) or 6 (2 in each group).

This quality of 12 enables melodies to also break up 12/8 into these groupings. I play with this in Augie Blues in addition to having the melody sometimes swung or straight.

The general form of this composition is a blues. During solos, at any point you can just break into a real bluesy form (divide 12/8 into 4) and then it is exactly the same as a standard 12 bar blues!

I am very thankful to Fraser Holland for helping me unlock my potential while studying in Montreal. This composition is dedicated to him