Scatadoodledoo

Graded jazz pieces for solo flute, recently set on the new Trinity College syllabus for all 8 grades.

The story behind Scatadoodledoo:

‘One day when I was at home practising my flute for aJazz gig, I had a particularly hard chart with lots of key changes and I just couldn’t get into the flow of it. I was thinking logically and thinking of the chord symbols and just thinking, thinking, thinking which anyone whoimprovises knows is a sure way to stop you being ‘in the flow’. Being a Jazz singer, I love to scat sing and so I soon found myself putting my flute down and scat singing through the chart instead. I wasn’t thinking, I wasjustscatting around with my ‘do-be-doos’ and I was really getting into it and enjoying myself, feeling so free in comparison to when I was improvising on the flute. That’s when I had the idea to sing and play on my flute at thesame time… I figured that all I needed to do was practice playing on my flute what I was singing at the same time and I’d be sorted with this hard chart in front of me. I started off simply at first, but the more I practised,the more I found my voice and fingers working together until it literally felt like they were ‘one’ and I was ‘singing my flute’. Then when I took my voice out of it and all that remained was the sound of my flute, that feeling of’singing’ still remained and I felt a freedom in my flute improvising that had been missing before. This discovery completely changed my jazz flute playing and to this day it is still my favourite way of practisingimprovising.

‘Scatadoodledoo’ is to encourage all Jazz flautists to start thinking of their flute as the voice they are scat singing with. The pieces range from grade one through to grade eight. Although the moreadvanced pieces like ‘scatastrophy’ and ‘scatterbrain’ have sections where the flautist has a chance to actually play and sing at the same time, it is never too early to practice this method whether it be with scales or withbeginner pieces like ‘Scat Walker’.

I hope you enjoy playing these as much as I enjoyed writing them.’

Alicia Hart