How Jazzadvice Works
Lessons
Lessons explore specific ideas designed to stand on their own, but they become even more powerful when they start connecting.
Courses
Courses organize major topics like language and ear training into a clear progression, helping you build a deep understanding and knowledge, step by step.
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PRO is how members support Jazzadvice and gain access to our most in-depth lessons & courses, helping us continue to create the best work we can.
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5 Must-Know Bebop Tactics From Sonny Stitt
Bebop language is at the very heart of jazz. From the classic beboppers to the crazy out players, every great jazz improviser has spent time absorbing, imitating, and developing timeless bebop…
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15 Jazz Improvisation Projects You Can Do at Home
As musicians, we often dream big and set lofty goals for where we want our playing to go. And the one place where we go to turn these dreams into…
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How to Decode Greatness – The Process to Solve Any Jazz Improvisation Problem
Every single musician to ever embark on learning to improvise jazz runs into countless musical problems. That’s just the way it is. One problem after another, figuring out different ways…
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Miles Davis Chromatic Tactics: 3 Key Phrases To Know
When you think of intricate and flowing chromatic lines, you probably think of Miles Davis. In particular, those amazing musical phrases he often played with his second great quintet in…
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How to Stop Playing the Same Ideas in Every Solo
Do you ever get the sneaking suspicion that you’re playing the same solo over and over again? As if you’re traveling down a familiar well-worn path in every single tune,…
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10 Tritone Substitution Tactics from Kenny Dorham
Tritone Substitution is one of those terms you often hear tossed around in music theory classes. A definition to memorize, but not something that actually makes it into your playing……
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A Pentatonic Approach to Playing Outside on the Blues
As an improviser, the blues is central to everything that you do…at once a sound, a form, an expressiveness, and a medium through which you can tell your musical story. …
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How to Build Your Jazz Vocabulary Fast
When you’re first starting out on your journey learning how to play jazz, you’ll typically come across two different camps of how to go about things… One camp believes that…
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Use the Power of Imitation to Unlock Jazz Improvisation
As players today, we have a ton of resources to draw from in the practice room. But when it comes to the more musical areas of improvisation, something is missing.…
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12 Dexter Gordon Lines on Blue Bossa You’d Never Think Of
Blue Bossa is often referred to as a beginner jazz tune, but as you quickly find out as you start your journey into jazz, even these so-called “beginner” tunes are…
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The Inverted Arpeggio Trick
Bebop is by no means easy, but if you know specific bebop tricks that the great players use, you’ll set yourself up for success. In today’s video, you’ll learn one…
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The Sonny Stitt Playbook – His 2 Exercises to Master Minor
What if you had Sonny Stitt’s practice journal in your hands right now? All his genius lines and exercises written out. Everything, literally everything, complete with diagrams and descriptions of…
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A Lesson With Chet Baker: But Not For Me
What if there were a jazz musician that didn’t rely on scales, licks, or patterns, but instead sought only to play what they’d sing? What would this musician sound like?…
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15 Mistakes Beginner Jazz Improvisers Make
Every single person who wants to play jazz starts out as a beginner. There’s no way around it!! And over the first couple years of learning how to improvise, only…
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8 Awesome Blues Solos for Beginners to Transcribe
If you want to learn the language of jazz, then transcribing a blues solo should be at the top of your list! But if you’re just starting to transcribe jazz…
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Unlock Any Jazz Line With These 5 Simple Steps
In your daily search for musical information you’ve probably come across a “lick of the day,” various short musical excerpts from world famous jazz solos that are neatly written out……
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How to Beat the “I Don’t Know What to Play” Syndrome in Your Solos
You’re staring at a chord progression on a lead sheet. Thinking through the first few bars of a jazz standard. You’re getting ready to start your solo and carefully choosing…
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How to Practice in Your Head – Brain Training 101 For Jazz Musicians
After hours spent in the practice room are you still having trouble remembering the chord changes to a standard you endlessly practiced, or the details of a jazz line you…
FREE PRO PRO & PREMIUMIn-Depth Jazz Courses
While lessons generally explore individual ideas, our expansive courses provide a structured way to go deeper, organizing major concepts into a connected approach that develops understanding over time.
Jazz Theory Unlocked
Jazz Theory Unlocked
A clear approach to understanding harmony and how tunes actually work — focused on the “why” behind jazz theory, and how everything connects into one clear framework.
The Ear Training Method
The Ear Training Method
A structured ear training system designed to help you hear chord movement, learn tunes by ear, and connect sound directly to theory.
Melodic Power
Melodic Power
A super detailed exploration of jazz language, helping you move beyond scales and understand how strong melodies are really built.
Visualization for Jazz Improvisation
Visualization for Jazz Improvisation
A practical way to organize chords and progressions mentally, making it easier to memorize tunes and think clearly through chord changes.
Reprogramming the Musical Mind
Reprogramming the Musical Mind
A focused course on the performance aspect of playing, addressing confidence, creativity, and the mindset needed to perform and practice with ease.
Who is Jazzadvice?
We’re Forrest & Eric. We’ve spent years learning directly from some of the greatest jazz musicians of our time — including Mulgrew Miller, Rich Perry, and Harold Mabern — and many others who shaped how this music is actually played and passed down.
Jazzadvice exists to take the insights that are usually shared informally at the professional level and make them clear, practical, and usable — without watering them down or stripping away their depth.
Forrest Wernick
Saxophone
Forrest has spent years studying and performing across the country, learning directly from master musicians, with close study under Rich Perry and Harold Mabern.
Eric O’Donnell
Trumpet
Eric has spent years studying and performing throughout the East Coast, training with master musicians including Bill Mobley, Mulgrew Miller, and Jack Schantz.
Jazzadvice PRo
Joining Jazzadvice PRO is how members support everything we create and gain access to our most in-depth lessons and courses — where ideas have the space to connect, build, and compound over time.
Inside PRO, everything follows the same approach you see throughout Jazzadvice: going deep, focusing on how and why things work, and building an understanding that actually holds up when you play.
What PRO Unlocks
- Unlimited access to the full Jazzadvice lesson library — deep dives into harmony, improvisation, ear training, rhythm, and more, designed to be revisited as your playing evolves.
- In-depth jazz courses built as complete learning paths — structured programs that organize major topics into a connected progression and continue to reveal new insights over time.
- Everything new we create, included automatically — new lessons, courses, and tools added as Jazzadvice continues to grow and expand.
What PRO Supports
Jazzadvice PRO members are the reason Jazzadvice continues to grow. Your support allows us to push further, creating better resources designed to help you reach the next level in your playing.
We’re deeply grateful to every member who supports the site. It’s what keeps us motivated, inspired, and excited about where Jazzadvice is headed.
Start Where You Are
Wherever you are in your playing, Jazzadvice is built to help you move forward
Lessons
Explore the Lesson Library
Browse individual lessons that focus on specific ideas you can apply right away — and return to as your understanding grows.
Courses
Go Deeper with Courses
Work through structured courses that organize major topics into a clear progression, helping you build long-term understanding step by step.
PRO
Unlock Everything
PRO supports everything we create and gives you access to our most in-depth lessons, complete courses, and everything new we release.
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The ideas in this book grew out of years of lessons with great musicians of the tradition, thousands of hours studying recordings, wrong turns in the practice room, and deep conversations that slowly reshaped how we understood the music.
Each chapter explores a moment when something we thought we understood about jazz turned out to be incomplete and how seeing it differently changed everything.
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