8 Techniques Mark Turner Uses to Dominate the Blues
If you’ve ever listened to Mark Turner you’ve probably wondered the same thing as me…What the hell is he playing? Rather than coming from the mind of an improviser, his solos sound like the work of an ambitious architect. Complex structures reaching into the stratosphere, lines with impossibly wide leaps, columns of arpeggios, and winding ...
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5 Steps to Becoming A Lyrical Master With Altered Dominants: A Lesson With Stan Getz
Alterations are at the heart of jazz. In no other genre of music can you freely alter chords in a such a fluid and flexible manner. As chords whiz by, the soloist has the freedom to add all sorts of chord alterations to their melodic lines. But it requires a sense of how these altered ...
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7 KIller Turnarounds for Your Next Jazz Solo
If you’ve spent any time practicing jazz improvisation, chances are you’ve heard of the turnaround. Those little two bar chord progressions that pop up at the ends of tunes or in the middle of your solo, leading you back to the top of the form. But what you might not realize is that these turnarounds ...
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Why Giant Steps is Easier Than You Think: 4 Simple Steps to a Stellar Solo
Most improvisers cringe when they hear the words Giant Steps. Their hearts start pounding and they frantically try to remember the patterns they’ve worked out over the chord progression. If you’ve ever tried to play over this tune, I’m sure you know the feeling… Chords flying by at a breakneck speed, awkward changes, and fingers ...
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How to Play Outside Like a Pro: 4 Techniques That’ll Make the ‘Wrong’ Notes Sound Right
You’ve heard solos with wrong notes. Unfortunate note choices that make you cringe, questionable scales that clash with the chords, and licks that sound forced and unnatural. But I’m guessing you’ve also heard players that can make any note sound good over any chord, as if they can simply improvise whatever they want. Here’s the ...
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8 Things No One Tells You About Learning Jazz Improvisation
People will tell you all sorts of things about learning jazz improvisation. But no one tells you many of the things that could actually help you the most. As we practice jazz improvisation, we develop a concept of how we think we should go about learning things. This concept primarily comes from what our teachers, ...
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5 Easy Tricks With Approach Notes That Will Make You Sound Like a Pro
Ever wonder how the best players seem to improvise brilliant lines without any effort? All while you’re struggling to make even the simplest chord tones sound good. If you’re like most players you know this frustration. However, the solution doesn’t lie with a hidden secret or advanced music theory – it all goes back to ...
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Stop right there! Don’t Touch Your Instrument until You Do these 4 Simple Exercises
All practice is not created equal. There’s the practice that’s fun. You’re in a room with your instrument and maybe a few friends and you just start playing. The minutes fly by, but you’re not exactly working. Then there’s the practice that feels like homework. You’ve got a lesson or a concert coming up so ...
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10 Exercises to Practice When You’ve Run Out of Ideas
We often get a ton of great questions from our readers about what to practice. These inquiries range from players that are stuck in a daily musical rut to aspiring improvisers that simply don’t know the next step to take in the practice room. The truth is, every musician encounters frustrating days on their instrument ...
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How One Note Can Change Your Ears and Spark Your Creativity
Can one note really change your ears and improve your creativity? Surprisingly, the answer is yes. But let me explain…A few years ago I took a lesson with the great trumpet player, improviser and composer Ingrid Jensen. As I hopped on the the N train and headed to the lesson I looked over my practice ...
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Quadruple Your Jazz Language in 10 Minutes
Learning jazz language is vital to your success as an improvisor. Without it you’re truly lost. You may know a scale, a chord, a concept…but without the fundamental ideas of what to do with these tools, you’ll aimlessly wander through the harmony. These fundamental ideas are gleaned from learning and studying language. A reader recently ...
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3 Highly Effective Ear Training Exercises You Can Do All By Yourself
We’ve presented tons of exercises on how to practice ear training, but many require that you have someone to train with. So what do you do when you don’t have a partner? When you have no one to practice ear training with there’s just as many exercises you can do and better yet, you can ...
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