Inspiration for improvisers
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The Brazilian composer Antonio Carlos Jobim is well known to improvisers with dozens of tunes frequently played and recorded in the jazz repertoire. However, one song in particular stands out… The “Garota de Ipanema” or The Girl from Ipanema. Composed in 1963, it propelled a Bossa Nova wave around the world and was recorded by …
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Jazz Advice and Tips, Jazz Musicians, Premium Only, Tunes
Every musician dreams of creating solos full of flowing melodic lines. To play compelling ideas over fast tunes, ballads, complex chord progressions, and standard forms like the blues or rhythm changes… The only problem is that most of us are trying to achieve this melodic vision with the same old scales and exercises, piecing them …
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Blues, Jazz Advice and Tips, Premium Only
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. And it’s something that you’ll be dealing with as long as you play an instrument. You see, the best players not only understand this song …
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Chords, Composition, Jazz Advice and Tips, Premium Only
Learning jazz chords can be a frustrating obstacle on your path to becoming a better improviser. But what a lot of players forget is that the process isn’t just about memorizing chord symbols from a lead sheet and hoping for the best… The key to improving lies in understanding how each chord functions and developing …
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Composition, Jazz Advice and Tips, Tunes
Learning tunes goes hand in hand with being a jazz musician. But if you’ve ever tried to learn a tune by ear or attempted to memorize a list of jazz standards, you know it’s not the easiest task in the world… In fact it can be downright frustrating. Like many musicians, I struggled for years …
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Jazz Advice and Tips, Premium Only
Kenny Dorham is one of the enduring masters of this art form, spanning the history from the bebop era to the musical explorations of the 1960s. His playing and compositions are instantly recognizable for their melodic beauty and harmonic sophistication…required listening for any serious player. You see, studying one of his solos – or even …
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Composition, Jazz Advice and Tips, Playing Techniques
You dream of becoming the type of player that can improvise with ease over any tune. A musician with an endless supply of creative ideas to play at a moment’s notice… But right now you’re struggling to create compelling ideas over the jazz repertoire. Maybe you don’t know which notes to choose in your lines …
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Chords, Composition, Jazz Advice and Tips, Jazz Musicians, Tunes
There are a lot of skills you need in jazz improvisation…Developing great ears, a knowledge of tunes, instrumental technique, and a mastery of jazz language… But there’s one question that gets to the heart of the matter for any soloist… Can you come up with interesting musical ideas over a single chord? Without the aid …
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Blues, Jazz Advice and Tips, Jazz Standards, Tunes
As musicians, we often treat the songs of the jazz repertoire in the same predictable way. We learn the chords, memorize the notes of the melody, and then we skip ahead to the important stuff – Improvising our own solos over the tune… But is this really all that jazz standards are good for?? For …
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Jazz Advice and Tips, Jazz Musicians, Jazz Standards, Playing Techniques
Take The A Train is one of the most classic jazz standards you’ll ever come across. Composed by Billy Strayhorn, the tune quickly became the featured tune of The Duke Ellington Orchestra after his son Mercer Ellington found a draft of the tune in the trash… Clearly, Strayhorn was his own worst critic, so it’s …
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Chords, Composition, Jazz Advice and Tips, Music Theory
When I started learning how to improvise, the one thing I really wanted to figure out was how to create improvised lines like my musical heroes… Listening to players like Miles, Bird, Coltrane, and countless others, I wanted to learn exactly which notes to choose on a chord and how to turn these notes into …
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Jazz Advice and Tips, Jazz Musicians
There is a common saying in learning the art of jazz improvisation… “If you want to sound like your favorite player, don’t just copy them, copy their musical heroes.” The logic goes, that rather than just copying and reproducing a master musician’s solo note for note, you should also model their process of becoming a …