What You Don’t Play Matters
We spend a lot of time thinking about what we want to play, but how often do we think about what we don’t want to play? I’m sure if you spent some time recording yourself or simply observing what you play, you’d find you’re playing some things that you actually do not want to play. ...
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3 Ways To Extend Your Range You Probably Haven’t Thought Of
The extreme ranges of any instrument express extreme emotion, but they’re not easy to tackle. The high register is notoriously difficult on most instruments and the low register is often under-developed and under-utilized. The standard approach towards these registers is to extend your scales and arpeggio exercises as high and as low as you can. ...
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The Underlying Purpose of Jazz Language
Learning language is arguably the most important aspect of learning to improvise. When you start to use the language you’ve worked on in your solos, you start to realize how powerful it truly is. You feel like a whole new perspective has been opened up to you – that you finally understand. But then, over ...
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Developing Musicality: Applying Scales vs. Applying Language
A recurring theme on this site seems to be language – acquiring, practicing, and applying the jazz language. There is a reason behind all the repetition, however. Language is a very powerful concept when it comes to improvisation and it’s an idea that can drastically change your mentality about the music. But, even before you ...
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Listening to the Words of the Wise
Learning improvisation can be a curious process. Every now and then as we endeavor to educate ourselves musically, we hear bits of advice and pick up words of wisdom from master classes, videos, books, and conversations. Yet, we don’t really listen to these directions or take them to heart. The truth is that we can’t ...
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Formulas For Applying Jazz Language To Different Harmonic Situations
As the article last Wednesday discussed, learning to apply language to tunes is crucial because it puts the language into context, allowing your ears and fingers to gain an understanding of how to integrate the language into your overarching concept. Over time, the language you practice this way will spontaneously materialize in new form, surprising ...
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How to Apply the Jazz Language that You’ve Transcribed
So you’ve transcribed some ii-V lines. You’ve even learned a few solos note for note directly from the record, but, despite your efforts, you’re not seeing the results you expected. Transcribing those lines from your favorite player didn’t transform you into the great improviser that everyone had promised. At the end of the day, improvisation ...
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Applying the Pareto Principle to Learning Jazz Improvisation
The commonly known Pareto Principle states that 80% of the effects of something, come from 20% of the causes. In terms of learning, this means: figure out where the largest gains can be made and focus on those. For some reason in learning most anything, we tend to give equal weight to everything. We give ...
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Ingraining Jazz Language Through Visualization
We talk a lot about ingraining language. It’s vital to have an array of ideas at your fingertips for any given harmonic situation. And these ideas should be so ingrained that you can easily make them your own with little effort. Visualization can speed up the process of ingraining language tremendously. Can’t visualize it, can’t ...
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Why Transcribing A Whole Solo Has Gotten You Nowhere
So you finally transcribed your first solo, but unfortunately, you don’t feel like you’re improving at the rapid rate you’d hoped for. Where did you go wrong? This is a common situation. I know people that have transcribed hundreds of solos, but little to none of it translates into their playing. Transcribing whole solos is ...
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How to Organize Jazz Licks, Lines, & Concepts – The Jazz Musician’s Journal
In an instant, musical ideas spring to life. Maybe you’re transcribing and stumble upon something you like, or perhaps you suddenly play an idea that seemed to come from nowhere! This probably happens to you all the time. In fact, I’ll bet you come up with something you like nearly every single time you practice. ...
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The Stages of Jazz Language
We talk about jazz language a lot: what it is, what it isn’t, how to get it, and what to do with it. We constantly strive to better communicate these aspects of learning language because of the vital role that language plays in successful improvisation. It’s essentially all the raw melodic material you draw from ...
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