Band In A Jam

So, What Is Special About This Project? 

This project links guitar with wind and strings!

Band In A Jam is a unique music project featuring specially composed grooves in rock pop and jazz styles for junior or class band or rock band with guest orchestral instruments added. Tunes are melodic and instrumentation is flexible. There are lots of guitar opportunities, not just one!

This project teaches children how to improvise. Opportunities for improvisation are written into the score with suggested notes and scales for all instruments. The guitar books contain fretboard diagrams as well as notation and TAB versions of scales.

The parts are easy enough for beginners. Although arrangements sound skilled and complex, it is highly differentiated to cater for complete beginners and improvers alike and road tested in class guitar projects.

It is flexible! More than this however, there are parts available for whatever instrumentation the teacher chooses to utilize. It has been written in a way that allows it to function equally well in small group and band settings. My favourite product (as a teacher) is the CD-ROM which includes the pdf version of every book in the series. The price includes a limited printing license which makes it real value for money (one band, one school only).

Backtracks widen the appeal and help with small group and individual lessons. The audio CD serves as a prop for small group and individual lessons in which parts can be attempted. It can also be used as a music and movement warm up resource for listening prior to large group practice sessions.

Why was this project necessary? The main focus of the project was to provide a large group playing experience for guitar players and for this reason there are several guitar parts of varied difficulty levels to each piece in the set. The music was written in rock and pop genres to be more appealing than the folk tunes or "classics" that are normally the mainstay of beginner bands.

These pieces can be performed just as easily by a "guitar choir" as a mixed ensemble. Using specially written materials facilitates improvising. Why? It is difficult for young people to improvise original solos to music they already know by heart in full copyrighted form. They prefer to copy from TAB or MP3. This project will boost confidence!

The Bass and Drum handbook is a mainstay for rhythm sections. Bass parts can also be played by C bass instruments if desired, such as trombone. The written keyboard parts may be beyond the ability of beginners, but can be simplified or split if necessary.


The series also includes the full score and parts, a string handbook for Violin and Cello and a Woodwind and Brass handbook. These are available by direct link only.

Fantastic! by persimew

Band In A Jam - Conductor Score

Description: This is a band score of specially composed grooves in rock pop and jazz styles for junior or class band or rock band with guest orchestral instruments added. Opportunities are written in for improvisation with suggested notes and scales. It is highly differentiated to cater for complete beginners and improvers alike and road tested in class guitar projects. Copyright Year: © 2008
Print: £14.95
Download: £7.95

Band In A Jam Complete CD-ROM

This CD-ROM contains the complete text of the music books in the Band In A Jam project, including scales and diagrams and the full score. These are in pdf format for easy access in the classroom and easy display on an interactive whiteboard. Purchase price takes account of allowing the purchaser to print off parts as necessary for classroom or band use within their own school. The CD ROM also contains WAV files of the tunes in the project. Please note that these files will not usually play on a CD player. As this is a data disc they too can be listened to via interactive whiteboard. A separate audio CD is available for individual or home use with CD players.
Disk: £15.00

Band In A Jam - Audio Tracks

This is the audio CD for the Band In A Jam project. It is suitable for use as a backtrack for individual and small group teaching, as a guide for larger ensembles to listen to and aim for, as a vehicle for improvisation, or simply for listening and enjoying the instrumental tracks!
Disk: £7.99

Band In A Jam - Guitar

This book contains all the six string guitar parts for Band in a Jam which aims to encourage improvising in a band context. (This was written for KS2 and KS3 rock bands with orchestral parts added and is suitable also for guitar projects and class bands). This book contains all the parts for the guitars. Beginner parts have note names in the noteheads and stave size is larger to facilitate reading. Harder parts may also have TAB versions. Scales for jamming are given in easy, first position and higher position forms with notation and TAB. Each scale has a corresponding fretboard diagram showing most of the notes in the range of acoustic guitar. This is a very visual book, intended to be useful to all readers. A whole fretboard view of each scale (in diagram form with notenames) is also given for the more adventurous player. For the last tune only there are also suggested arpeggio patterns for tapping. These are in music, TAB and whole fretboard diagram form.
Print: £12.95
Download: £4.50

Band In A Jam - Bass and Drums

This book contains the bass and drum parts for Band In A Jam. It it also suitable for C bass instruments in a similar written range to bass guitar such as trombone. It includes scales and fretboard diagrams for the bass guitar player to improvise from, full drum and bass charts in notation plus TAB chart for the final piece.
Print: £9.95
Download: £4.50

Band In A Jam - Keyboard

This is the keyboard manual for Band In A Jam. It contains the keyboard parts for the grooves in music notation. There are blank pages for teachers to notate possible riffs and chords in note name form if necessary or give practice instructions. It also contains easy to read scales for jamming (note names inside the heads). The keyboard parts are of at least grade 1 level, some of them are quite hard to play, but they may be simplified if necessary by playing separate hands or simply jamming.
Print: £4.95
Download: £2.50

Individual Pieces from the Project 

The links in this section will take you to www.sibeliusmusic.com. This is a safe site where you can purchase printable sheet music downloads. To do this, it is necessary to install Scorch. This software from Sibelius Music (Avid) enables printing sheet music direct. You may prefer simply to listen to the MP3s on the Sibelius site and purchase pdf and MP3 downloads from Lulu. I intend to provide links to individual MP3s in time.

Hot Stuff! by persimew

DolcieMuse Music Publications

Here is the Sibelius store where you can purchase my music or simply listen to and enjoy the MP3s of the individual pieces in the project. There is a lot of guitar music in this store and some of it is free too.

Bach to the Swamp

Oh my.... sometimes these things just develop a life of their own don't they? All I wanted to do was write a heavy rock groove for my series of guitar based improvisation pieces, then the organ piped up and we went Gothic! So, a good old Prog Rock score was born! This is for mixed ensemble, basically rock band with orchestra (violins, cellos, saxes, trumpets)and not forgetting synth (organ).The score does not include TAB parts (for neatness), but I have uploaded the files, so there are indeed some (edited) TAB parts available if you purchase the parts.

Fried Rice and Jam

This piece is for a small ensemble based around guitar, bass, drums, keyboard with (optional flute) and clarinet parts. The hardest part is very probably the optional clarinet which is in the in the delicious low register but unfortunately in F# minor. (Sorry, it is a guitar project!) This part could be transposed up an octave for sax or trumpet. The more upbest middle sections should feature simple solos taken by pupils and using the minor pentatonic scale. You may photocopy each individual part up to 3 times for group use.

Reggae Sundae

Frequently featured in Top Scores! This is a reggae groove with a nice, bouncey, child friendly rhythm. Composed for mixed ability guitar or pop group, with 2nd year WOPs class projects in mind, this is a highly differentiated activity. Instrumentation is for acoustic guitars, bass guitars (advanced one has the dub/melody line), drums and keyboard with an option for C melody instrument or acoustic guitar on the main tune. A middle section is intended for improvising using A minor pentatonic, thus fulfilling the composing element. All children can attempt this with initial support. The very simple beginner parts are intended for those who either start late, need extra support due to special needs, or just need extra time to learn their notes. Enjoy!

So Silky You're Apricot

A personal favourite. This soft latin jazz rock number is written for KS2/KS3 WOPs extension, class band, or mixed training band. The piece includes improvising opportunities for all using A natural minor. It features the electric guitar, keyboard and clarinet as main players. The drum kit part is tough, but could actually be played by a group on samba or class percussion instruments (ask me, and I will happily write and upload separate percussion parts). The style is gentle but funky. The title, So Silky You're Apricot is a dedication, lyrics may follow at some point.

Sticky Billy

From both the sales point of view, and the obvious enjoyment of children playing this, it is a hit with youngsters! I wrote this fun jazz/blues piece for class or beginner band. Naturally there are opportunities for improvisation (A blues scale) written in or it wouldn't be jazz!There are very simple three note parts for beginner violin, cello, tenor sax/Bb instruments and guitar. More advanced string players could play C melody (violin) and Bass guitar (cello) parts and improvise in the final section if desired!The piece uses blues riffs (ostinati) in a rockabilly / mainstream style, a la Jules Holland / Oscar Peterson. It features harder parts for electric and acoustic guitars, bass, keyboards and kit. This piece is highly differentiated and inclusive of all abilities.

Sticky Billy - Guitar Trio

This is a condensed version of the band piece for a mixed ability guitar group. Guitar 1 has the major themes and is playable by a guitarist at about grade 1/2 level. TAB line is included for poor readers. Guitar 2 is suitable for complete beginners and guitar 3 is great for moving students on to the bass register.