Inspiration for improvisers
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Jazz Advice and Tips, Playing Techniques
Articulation…tonguing notes, it seems like a pretty simple concept, right? Well, not exactly. It has taken me quite a while and a ton of practice to figure out how to articulate my lines correctly when I’m soloing. If you think about it, articulation is not really focused on in jazz education when compared to the …
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Ear Training, Playing Techniques
Being able to quickly hear, sing, and accurately identify intervals is essential to developing your improvisational ear. In this article, we’ve put together a plan for you to master your intervals in 28 days… For beginners, this will give you a much needed foundation. And for more advanced players, it will give you a chance …
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Kenny Dorham was one of the first trumpet players that I checked out when I was starting to listen to jazz and after years of studying the music he is still one of my favorite trumpet players. K.D. was a prominent figure throughout the stylistic changes of the music from bebop to the modern jazz …
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Jazz Advice and Tips, Jazz Standards
Learning tunes is a key part of every jazz musician’s practice plan, but one thing that can really help motivate you to learn a specific tune is to understand why that particular tune is so important. You see, each jazz standard contains vital pieces of information… Some have a lot of ii V7, while others …
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Inspiration, Jazz Advice and Tips
There are countless tips for jazz improvisation that you’ll want to remember, but these 10 are essential! 1.) Think quality over quantity Often we are in a hurry to ‘catch up.’ Wherever you are in your personal development as a jazz improviser, accept it. It’s okay if you only know a few tunes, or can …
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For most people, half diminished chords remain a mystery. Also known as minor 7b5 chords, they seem to fall by the wayside, never getting as much attention as major, dominant, or minor chords… The result: nearly everyone sucks at them Think about it. Are you as comfortable on Bb half diminished as Bb major? if …
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Playing Techniques, Premium Only
After playing a tune for a while, it can seem like you are playing the same ideas or licks over the changes every time. For example, you see a D minor chord and think “okay D minor, I can play a D dorian scale or a D harmonic minor scale or arpeggiate from the third…” …
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Inspiration, Jazz Advice and Tips, Playing Techniques
For a lot of musicians that are working to improve, it is easy to spend most of our practice time working on really complex harmonic and rhythmic concepts while fundamental skills, that we all basically know, are pushed to the back burner. This happens easily if you think about it; after progressing to and achieving …
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As improvisers we are always looking to create new harmonic concepts or to find new ways of soloing over traditional changes that are innovative and creative. Actually, for the past sixty years jazz musicians have been playing the same basic set of standard tunes, each generation making their stylistic mark on the history of the …
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Perspectives, Playing Techniques, Transcribing
Transcribing can be beneficial no matter how you do it. Often when I go to transcribe, I like to have a specific goal in mind of what I am aiming to accomplish, making for rapid improvement in areas that need the most work. It’s essentially a problem/solution approach: Identify what problems you’re having Find the …
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Inspiration, Jazz Advice and Tips
As a musician or any other creative individual, we get so wrapped up in what we are doing, that we often lose sight of everything else. Consequently, when something within our own little bubble is not going how we would like it to, our positivity plummets and our world comes crashing down. Here are some …
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It seems like jazz musicians are always thinking about tunes; knowing tunes, learning tunes, how does that one go again? Performing in different situations we are expected to know certain tunes that other musicians will call or even people in the audience will request. This can seem like a very daunting task at first and …