Workshops

Children Songwriting
Starting with the history of the blues, covering down-home Blues, Rock & Roll and Jazz. The children are guided through a step-by-step process that teaches them how to write songs. Using literacy as the main objective, each workshop covers grammar, spelling, rhythm, musical terms, rhyming and poetry put to music. Listen to Dom's Children's Song, Momma, It's Cold Out Here featuring vocalist Devin Ratray.

Duets: How Piano and Guitar Can Learn To Play Together and Love It.
Dom Minasi, guitar, Michael Jefry Stevens, piano
It’s unusual to hear two chordal and percussive instruments play well together. This workshop will encompass the different techniques needed to do just that.  Dom Minasi & Michael Jefry Stevens will demonstrate single note improv, chords, chordal clusters, the use of the ‘wall of sound, concept’ space, odd time signatures with the 4/4 meter, how to listen while still being free and yet stay musical at all times.

Reading Rhythms
A four- week intensive course to jump-start musicians and singers to read basic and complicated rhythms. Based on Dom’s recently published: A Singer’s Guide to Reading Rhythms.

Lectures

Learning the Orchestra
A one-hour per week, for four weeks, lecture designed to teach children what the instruments of the orchestra look and sound like

Harmonic Substitution for Guitar
A lecture and demonstration with handouts from Dom’s new book A Guitarists’ Ultimate Guide To Chord Construction and Substitution. The lecture covers chord structuring, en-harmonic chords, essentials of chromatic substitution, when to substitute and when not to substitute. Chord melodies.

Improvisation
A lecture and demonstration on the different approaches to improvising which includes scales, chromatics, intervals, harmonic resources and Dom's own particular method based on his book Stress Points.

Improvisation for String/Woodwind/Brass Ensembles
For Those Who have Never Improvised Before
Original though compose music, is used as a beginning approach to free form improvisation. Students will be guided every step of the way to let go and listen, create & harmonize with other musicians to form music they are not accustom to playing.

The Art of Takin’ It Out (for all instruments)
Dom Minasi-guitar, Ken Filiano-bass and Jackson Krall-drums, demonstrate, perform and discuss how to incorporate, within the jazz repertoire 21st century techniques. Using the arrangement of Satin Doll, from their Takin' The Duke Out CD (CDM Records) and other standards, they will give examples of some of the ways to incorporate free-form improvisation, motifs and pedal tones within the same arrangement. The trio will also demonstrate both the ‘in & out ' versions of improvising and how to create soundscapes and re-harmonizations based on Dom's books, A Guitarist Ultimate Guide to Chord Construction and Substitution (D.O.M.Music Pub.) and Stress Points (Sunrise Artistries). Handouts are available.

"The Art of Takin It Out" is now available for purchase at Mike's Master Class