Inspiration for improvisers
Eric 
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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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Learning a jazz standard or solo transcription can be a tricky process for any musician. But what many players forget is that you don’t have to tackle the entire piece of music at once… The truth is, taking one small section of a tune and studying how your favorite players approach it in a solo …
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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 Musicians, Playing Techniques, Premium Only
Beyond scales, music theory, and all those memorized licks lies something that gets to the core of what improvisation is all about – the art of crafting musical ideas. It’s what we often refer to as phrasing… The ability to take a tune, hear its melody, understand its chord progression, and then focus on that …
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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 …