Inspiration for improvisers
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Chords, Composition, Jazz Advice and Tips, Premium Only, Scales
After you’ve been improvising jazz for a while, most chords are pretty familiar. You’re used to major, minor, dominant, and half diminished…but just as you thought you were getting a handle on things, a chord comes out of nowhere that makes you go “What is that?!?!” And not only do you have to figure out what …
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Inspiration, Myths, Perspectives
Learning how to improvise is not nearly as clear as people think. And what makes it worse is that there are quite a few myths about it. Today, in no particular order, we’re going to dispel five myths about jazz improvisation for you right now! Myth #1 When it comes to improvising, you either got …
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How to Practice Jazz, Playing Techniques
You’ve been thinking about it all day. As you ate breakfast. On your commute to work. And while you were sitting at your desk watching the seconds tick by. You need to practice. You need to start making progress and achieving your musical goals. And you need to do it right now! But before you …
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Composition, Jazz Musicians, Music Theory, Tunes
Always searching for a new sound to explore and share with the world, jazz musicians are constantly trying to evolve and push the music forward, reaching for something different and exciting… And this is exactly how modal jazz came about. Legends like Herbie Hancock, Bill Evans, Joe Henderson, Wayne Shorter, and Miles Davis began exploring …
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Jazz Advice and Tips, Jazz Language, Perspectives
Learning language is arguably the most important aspect of learning to improvise. When you start to use the language you’ve worked on in your solos, you start to realize how powerful it truly is. You feel like a whole new perspective has been opened up to you – that you finally understand. But then, over …
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Jazz Advice and Tips, Premium Only, Tunes
All the Things You Are is one of the first tunes musicians learn when it comes to jazz improvisation. But unlike many players think, it’s not exactly an “easy tune” or something that only beginners should play… The ability to create a musical solo on this tune requires a surprisingly deep understanding of harmony and …
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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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What exactly is it that makes the musicians that we call “masters” great? What sets them apart from everyone else? Is it their technique, their sound, their originality, the way they can play over chord progressions? Well…these are all pieces of their mastery, but what is the reason for their mastery? These are questions that …
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Ever feel like something is missing from your solos? You spend hours learning tunes and transcribing solos from your favorite recordings, you’ve memorized the chord progressions and diligently practiced the tricky fingerings, but when you listen back something is off. And it’s frustrating because you can’t quite place your finger on the problem… You’re playing …
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Jazz Advice and Tips, Premium Only, Rhythm, Scales
We often get stuck in a rut when it comes to practicing technique. In the practice room we cover the same bases in our efforts to improve our overall technique. We run our major and minor scales in all 12 keys, we practice them in thirds and fourths and fifths, we use jazz articulation, we …
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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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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 …