Inspiration for improvisers
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Ear Training, Jazz Advice and Tips, Visualization
What is a jazz musician’s most important tool? Is it their ear? Their technique? The concepts at their disposal? All of these are extremely important, but without this one specific tool, they’re all useless… The jazz musician’s most important tool is their memory. Harold Mabern used to drive this point home to us all the …
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Jazz Advice and Tips, Jazz Language, Jazz Musicians, Jazz Standards
Bebop language is at the very heart of jazz. From the classic beboppers to the crazy out players, every great jazz improviser has spent time absorbing, imitating, and developing timeless bebop language. There’s just something about the feel, phrasing, and voice leading of bebop language that’s crucial for every jazz musician to understand… And to gain …
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Ear Training, Jazz Advice and Tips, Perspectives, Playing Techniques, Transcribing
I’m always trying to learn new bits of language.” – Michael Brecker. There are a lot of things to practice. What is truly vital to practice if you want to get better at improvising? Plain and simple: Language. Spending time with the actual language of jazz, the recordings of the greats, should be your number …
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How to Practice Jazz, Jazz Advice and Tips, Jazz Education, Jazz Language, Jazz Standards, Perspectives
I wish I could tell you it’s all fun. That every time you practice music is meant to be super creative, interesting, and joyful. That it never feels like you’re just working and trudging through. But the truth is, until we have devices from The Matrix that can hook up to your head and teach …
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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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It’s been a while since you’ve picked up your horn, sat down to the piano, or even thought about practicing. As time goes by, it gets more and more difficult to get that spark going again. Ok, time to get out of this rut and do something about it. Here are 27 ideas to get …
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How to Practice Jazz, Premium Only
In case you were starting to mistake jazz musicians for super-humans…Or highly talented individuals that know thousands of tunes, have perfect pitch, and transcribe solos in mere minutes, I thought I’d write a post to correct that picture in your mind. In fact, I want to show you one of the most important rules when …
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Ear Training, Jazz Advice and Tips, Perspectives
Hey, did you just hear that? Look, did you just see that? Wait, can you feel that? What’s that smell? Wait…what?! On a daily basis our senses are bombarded with information. Sights, sounds, smells, and tactile sensations come at us from every angle, vying for a precious scrap of our cognitive awareness. Despite our best …
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Jazz Advice and Tips, Jazz Education, Perspectives
In jazz education, one thing that you encounter right off the bat are rules. There seem to be rules for every aspect of the music: Which scales you’re allowed to use over certain chords, which chord tones you’re supposed to land on, how to correctly employ voice leading in a line, what notes to avoid …
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In today’s world, it’s easy to be overwhelmed. We live in a time of excess information and much of it is misleading. But supposing you’ve separated the good stuff from the stack, it still feels like there’s so much to learn… Take this site for instance. I’d like to think that we have a ton …
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Let’s face it. As improvising musicians, we’ve become obsessed with notes. Obsessed with harmony, chords, and scales. Which scales to use over which chord progressions, which diminished scales to play over dominant chords, how to play “outside,” how to play “inside,” which chords can be substituted for others…We even reduce entire sounds, full of infinite …
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Inspiration, Jazz Advice and Tips
You’re a musician. Or at least you used to be one…You played an instrument in high school, faithfully took private lessons, and performed at dozens of recitals and concerts. Maybe you even went on to study in college. There’s a guitar sitting in your closet, a piano in the spare room gathering dust, and a …