Inspiration for improvisers
Forrest 
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Every chord tone has its own unique sound, its own unique color. Learning to hear these colors brings these sounds to life. This crucial ear training is often overlooked or even talked about. Take your time and study it carefully… Match piano pitches accurately The first step toward hearing these colors is to hear a …
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Music is the space between the notes – Claude Debussy. The use of space is what defines our lines. Learning how to control our use of space allows us to define our lines precisely how we want to. To gain this control, we must focus our attention on where we rest. Most of our practice …
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We often talk about jazz language and how a primary way to integrate it into your playing is by applying that language to specific parts of tunes. By forcing yourself to use some piece of language over a tune in predetermined spots, your ear and your fingers learn how to put that piece of language …
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The difference between many subjects and jazz improvisation is that the latter has no single correct and well-defined path. Every person takes a different route depending how they learn, how they hear, what they want to sound like, and countless other factors. Because we all are shooting for different musical goals and have different ways …
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Rhythm is often thrown to the wayside, in favor of working on harmony and melody. Perhaps this disregard is caused by a lack of understanding about how to approach this aspect of improvisation. Here’s a simple and effective process to find and incorporate new rhythms into your playing. Step 1: Choose a chorus You’ll need …
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We have met the enemy and he is us – Pogo We all want to get better and we always will. There’s never a point where a musician thinks, “Well, I think I’m good enough now. Guess that’s it.” What’s stopping us? What’s holding us back from becoming the player we wish to be? The …
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Chords, Composition, Ear Training
In our first article of Fundamental Ear Training Exercises, we covered how to choose an ear training partner, the correct mindset to approach ear training with, and exercises about singing & hearing intervals, harmonic intervals, and triads. After you feel you’ve got a pretty good handle on everything presented in that previous article, it’s time …
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Jazz Advice and Tips, Perspectives
Jazz education has steadily become increasingly popular and for good reason: playing jazz is fun! In an attempt to make jazz improvisation accessible to everyone, much of the learning material has been reduced and packaged in a manner to get people playing at a mediocre level more quickly. The problem is that these methods get …
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Jazz musicians and educators constantly discuss the topic of jazz licks. It’s always up for debate…Should you learn them? Is it okay to play them over and over in your jazz solos? Does it matter where you get these licks from? If you’re discussing licks, you’ve already missed the boat. You don’t want to know …
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The harmonic and melodic aspects of practicing jazz improvisation take up the bulk of our time. Consequently, developing a strong sense of time falls by the wayside. I’m as guilty as anyone else, thinking that somehow, it would just take care of itself. Unfortunately, things don’t work that way… The people who have “great time” …
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Keep your eyes on the stars but keep your feet on the ground – Theodore Roosevelt. The fundamentals of ear training are largely glossed over. Developing one’s ear is seen as a linear track: learn your intervals, then your triads…and so on… But developing your ear is not a linear pursuit. Like improvisation, it’s a …
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Ever spend a lot of time learning a tune, only to realize that you’ve completely forgotten it a few weeks later? When you’re not achieving your desired results in pretty much anything, check your methods. What’s your process? What’s your approach? After detailing your current methods, you can then easily modify them to realign yourself …