Inspiration for improvisers
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Chords, Composition, Jazz Advice and Tips, Jazz Standards, Playing Techniques, Premium Only
The process of learning to improvise is a journey. A long and rewarding journey and one that is punctuated by a series of milestones. This can be hard to see from that comfy seat inside of your practice room, but take a step back from your daily routine and look at the path that brought …
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Ear Training, Jazz Advice and Tips, Jazz Standards, Premium Only
Everybody talks about learning tunes. I mean everybody. It’s the one common thread that pops up at jam sessions, on gigs, in music schools and in conversations with great players. Hey, what tune do you want to play next? Do you know this tune? What tunes are you working on? I really need to learn …
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Half-diminished chords are difficult, but they don’t have to be. In How to Not Suck At Half-diminished Chords, I presented a simple way to start to improve at these often neglected chords and if you practiced the exercise in that article, you will without a doubt have made progress. But even with some concentrated effort …
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Composition, Playing Techniques, Premium Only, Rhythm
Many times when we’re soloing we get boxed in so to speak. We think that when we’re on a particular chord, we must play that chord and that chord only. We have tunnel vision and there exists little possibility. One technique that dramatically relieves this boxed in sound and mindset is harmonic anticipation. Anticipating a …
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Chords, Composition, Jazz Language, Premium Only
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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Jazz Advice and Tips, Premium Only, Rhythm, Scales
We often get stuck in a rut when it comes to practicing technique. In the practice room we cover the same bases in our efforts to improve our overall technique. We run our major and minor scales in all 12 keys, we practice them in thirds and fourths and fifths, we use jazz articulation, we …
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Ear Training, Jazz Advice and Tips, Premium Only
Hearing larger intervals is difficult for most people. After a couple weeks of practicing your intervals, half-steps, whole steps, major and minor thirds, perfect fourths, perfect fifths, and major sixths fall into place, but the remaining few linger on, causing us trouble for eternity. There’s no reason why we can’t isolate these more difficult intervals …
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Chords, Composition, Jazz Language, Playing Techniques, Premium Only
Recently we received a question about non-standard progressions, specifically the type of progressions you see in Wayne Shorter and Joe Henderson tunes… These types of tunes are notoriously difficult, as they don’t seem to use the same predictable chord progressions that other jazz tunes do. A reader asks: When we’re learning, we go through a …
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Chords, Composition, Premium Only, Scales
A reader recently sent in this question: “I was wondering if you could explain to me how to interpret slash chords for soloing. It seems like different sources have conflicting information. Also, what would I do if I encountered a chord like C/Db, in which the top and bottom are not related diatonically?” Slash chords …
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Composition, Jazz Musicians, Jazz Standards, Premium Only
Repetition. It’s one part of learning to improvise that’s par for the course. We practice scales over and over again until the technique is securely in our fingers, we spend hours repeatedly working out ii-V7 lines that we’ve transcribed, and we memorize the melodies and chord changes to numerous tunes until we can play them …
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Chords, Composition, Playing Techniques, Premium Only
Everybody wants to play “outside” the chord changes. They think there is something mysterious about getting outside the changes. In my experience, the phenomenal players that I’ve studied with along with the legendary players I’ve learned from on recordings, approach playing outside the harmony much in the same way they approach playing inside the harmony: …
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Chords, Composition, Playing Techniques, Premium Only
If you took a quick survey and asked a few people to describe the components of bebop, you might come up with some answers like: “fast tempos, lots of notes, Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie, b9’s, b5’s, altered dominants, diminished scales.” While all of these are true, one of the most overlooked, but surprisingly simple devices …