How to Be More Creative Than A Deer
This is a box. This is your mind in a box. Many people’s minds never leave the box. Why? Thinking creatively is something we all do naturally. It’s our instinctive and ordinary way of being. To be creative is nothing less than being human. You can’t help but be creative. But back to the box. ...
FREE PRO PRO & PREMIUM
How to Transform Your Improvisation Over Your Summer Vacation
It’s already May and before you know it those lazy months of summer are going to sneak up on you. And just as quickly they’ll be gone, leaving you wishing you had more hours in the day to devote to your music. Before you find yourself in this all too familiar situation, here’s a quick ...
FREE PRO PRO & PREMIUM
20 Things Every Improviser Should Know
Being successful as a jazz musician isn’t all about practice routines, ii-V licks, or memorizing tunes. Sometimes getting to the next level as a player is all about having the right perspective. Here are 20 things every improviser should know… 1. Nobody’s checking for your music degree Just because you graduated with a degree in ...
FREE PRO PRO & PREMIUM
4 Ways to Spark the Creativity and Freedom in Your Improvising
How creative are you each time you play your instrument? Think about it for a second…are you actually creating new musical ideas in your solos? Are you actually free when you improvise?? As a creative improvising musicians, this is one question that we should all ask ourselves from time to time. It’s well known that ...
FREE PRO PRO & PREMIUM
Playing Colors, Imitating Movies, & Watching TV: Bizarre Jazz Improvisation Techniques
What if you could approach something in a completely new way than you’ve ever done before? What would happen? Perhaps an entire world of possibility exists from this new angle, but how do you get there? Trying completely outlandish, almost silly techniques can spawn immense creativity and improvement in one’s ability. In all art-forms, it’s ...
FREE PRO PRO & PREMIUM
Playing the Music of Now
Often times, we get pushed down a very narrow, prescribed path when it comes to learning and performing jazz. Without question, we get complacent with the established rules of others whether it’s the guidelines of an educational program, the expectations of the people around us, or the limits of a label for the music. We ...
FREE PRO PRO & PREMIUM
Listening to the Words of the Wise
Learning improvisation can be a curious process. Every now and then as we endeavor to educate ourselves musically, we hear bits of advice and pick up words of wisdom from master classes, videos, books, and conversations. Yet, we don’t really listen to these directions or take them to heart. The truth is that we can’t ...
FREE PRO PRO & PREMIUM
The “Idea” vs. the “Technique” in the Mind of the Artist
Imagine that you’re strolling through an art museum on a lazy afternoon. Leisurely, you walk past magnificent paintings, weave between rows of sculpture, and meander through various galleries, each showcasing a bygone era of human artistic accomplishment. By chance, a particular painting catches your eye from across the room. You’re immediately struck by the realistic ...
FREE PRO PRO & PREMIUM
Putting on the Pressure: How to Motivate Yourself in the Practice Room
Remember those times in school, where you were assigned a huge project and given a deadline to finish it by? You know, the ones where the teacher threw an enormous assignment at you as soon as you walked into the classroom: “Write a 15 page paper on the history of the French revolution and give ...
FREE PRO PRO & PREMIUM
Going Against The Grain
In learning most anything, there’s an accepted and standard way of approaching the material. There exists a typical method that emerged over the course of many years. In many disciplines, this method came about through trial and error, meticulously analyzing what techniques have worked best to allow an individual to excel as quickly and efficiently ...
FREE PRO PRO & PREMIUM
Four Ways to Reinvigorate the Practice of Technique
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 ...
FREE PRO PRO & PREMIUM
7 Harmonic Breakthroughs that Completely Changed My Playing
Every so often you’ll make a musical discovery that will drastically change the way you approach improvisation. One day you’re struggling over the same tunes, growing more and more frustrated with your own predictable patterns and then it hits you – you discover a secret that was hidden right before your eyes. A subtle mental, ...
FREE PRO PRO & PREMIUM