Jazz Advice

1. Nobody’s checking for your music degree

Just because you graduated with a degree in jazz studies and minored in Coltrane licks doesn’t mean that you know how to play. Music school has its benefits, but it’s not the end of the road for your musical education – in fact, if you picked up the right skills, it’s just the beginning.

On the flip side, if you’ve never went to music school it doesn’t mean that you can’t play. Becoming a great player takes the same type of work, whether you’re enrolled in a music school or learning on your own with the records. In the end, here’s what matters: Can you play?

2. Keep going back to the fundamentals

When it comes to improvisation, your improvement stems from the basic building blocks of musicianship. Still can’t hear a ii-V progression and rusty on your major scales, but continually trying to improvise over difficult tunes? That’s like trying to be a world-class olympic swimmer and not knowing how to do the back-stroke. Stop setting yourself up for frustration of failure. Start by building a solid foundation of technique, ear training, and language and go from there.

3. Talent is great, but skill and perseverance win every time

Not every person has the same kinds of talents, so you discover what yours are and work with them.~Frank Gehry

A natural affinity or ability for something is great, but to succeed at improvisation you need to tirelessly develop your skills day … Read More

Let’s face it, improvisation is hard enough as it is, even when we do spend the time in the practice room. But however much we study or practice, there are some key factors that can destroy our creativity and ability to improvise in seconds.

We’ve all experienced this feeling before in performance. You hear an idea or a line in your head and for some reason or another it doesn’t come out of your instrument. It seems that something is preventing you from playing over those chord changes with ease. Sometimes it’s even hard just to find a good idea to play!

All too often we think the excuse lies in some area that we have no control over or we look for some hidden problem that is keeping us from playing the way we envision.

We get questions all the time from people encountering these issues with improvising. Most of the time people are looking for some hidden problem that is holding them back. I totally relate with this experience and remember looking to advanced harmonic concepts and special techniques to solve my problems.

Nine times out of ten however, the issue lies with one of 5 key areas of musicianship that I’ve listed below. Think of this list as the 5 pre-requisites that you need to have down before you graduate to improvising on the stage.

Without them, improvising is like trying to take the final exam after you’ve skipped all the classes – you’re going to be … Read More

It’s the time of year again when we make ambitious lists of resolutions and let me tell you, 2012 is shaping up to be different. Seriously…all those other years were just practice runs, this year we’re actually going to follow through on our resolutions.

It’s very easy to make hopeful resolutions and music is no exception. For jazz musicians, this means making lists of tunes we want to learn, solos we want to transcribe, and setting lofty practice goals. A year ago, you may recall that we made a list of 100 resolutions for the jazz musicians.

Think back, did you attempt to do any of those resolutions? More importantly did you complete any of them?

You’re not alone if you fell short. The reality is that most of the goals that we set musically are never met, this is just how things work. We get ambitious and set lofty goals for ourselves and then we rush into the practice room.

However, after a few weeks this ambition runs out and frustration slowly sets in and all that we’re left with is this unattainable goal hanging over our heads. So much for setting our sights for the stars.

It’s not a numbers game

For many aspiring musicians, learning to play jazz becomes a numbers game. You need to know more tunes, more ii-V lines, transcribe more solos, have more technique, play it faster, play it higher, etc.

More is better.

This mentality is transferred into the practice room and is … Read More

Oftentimes, 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 get sucked into a mindset that is not particularly true and one that’s not our own. After years of this, it can be eye opening just to remember that you can determine what it is that you want to get out of this music.

“What are my goals with improvisation?” Do you want to sound good at the local jam session, to play like Charlie Parker, to express yourself creatively, to develop your own voice in this music, to simply play music with others?

The possibilities are endless and we all have our reasons and goals when it comes to learning improvisation. Some of us have very high ambitions and work diligently everyday to improve, while some of us pursue improvisation as a hobby, simply for the fun of it.

If you look very closely, however, the true reason that we’re all drawn to this form of expression is not merely an external one. From the professional to the layman, there is an inherent satisfaction in creating in the moment; creating your own sound, expressing your personal view, and playing the sound of your time.

The music that is created in the moment. This is … Read More

In talking, practicing, and performing with many musicians over the years, it seems that a number of players are having trouble getting started with improvisation. Even more have a hard time moving forward, but can’t seem to figure out why.

Time is spent in the practice room day after day, yet no results.

There seems to be a hidden trap that many musicians unconsciously enter each day they step into the practice room. It’s something that we’re all susceptible to and a trap that we enter willingly time after time.

We can’t see it because it’s disguised as ambition. It develops as a result of our attempts to uphold an image as a serious improviser and even though we know better, we fall victim to the lure of this pitfall again and again.

Start simple, stay simple

So what is this trap? Why, it’s so simple that it doesn’t even seem like that big of a deal: skipping over the basics.

The main reason that so many players have trouble learning or progressing with improvisation year after year is that they continue to skip over the fundamentals. It’s as simple as that. It doesn’t have anything to do with talent or a willingness to get into the practice room, the problem lies with the actual content the practice session itself.

Go to any practice room in any music school and you’ll hear players trying to play as fast as they can on the hardest tunes that they can find. … Read More

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 accept these words of wisdom. Well, at least not until we discover their validity for ourselves. We need to be hit in the gut emotionally and we need to see the light with our own two eyes.

This is the funny thing about human nature. People can tell you repeatedly how to do things, whether it’s how to eat right, how to exercise, or how to play jazz, until they are blue in the face. But, until you change your diet, hit the gym, and start transcribing solos, experiencing these tangible results for yourself, this information has no impact on you.

You have to have that light bulb moment where you realize “Oh yeah, this stuff actually does work…” You need to realize that you’re not some exception to the rules that everyone else is following, these words apply to you and they can help you. You simply need to listen.

For me, this moment came after I moved to New York. All of a sudden I was in a musical environment where the level was extremely high. From seeing my heroes play nightly in clubs to seeing unknown players tearing it up at jam … Read More

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 landscape, the beckoning expression on the subject’s face, and the story depicted on that weathered canvas. The work triggers emotion, forgotten memories, and a peculiar sense of nostalgia. On some unconscious level you feel a mysterious connection to this work. This is your first impression, that visceral experience of the entire work as a whole felt from the first contact.

For some reason, you are compelled to take a few steps forward to get closer to the painting. As you inch toward the canvas, a subtle shift suddenly occurs. Your eyes open to another plane of visual awareness and a completely different side of the painting becomes the focus. Brush strokes become visible, an expressive palette of natural, earthy colors reveals itself, and curiously, imperfections become readily apparent.

At this level, the ideas and emotions portrayed in the work can not be separated from the artistic technique required to produce it – an actual person painstakingly created this! You can see the specific techniques that were used to create those intriguing visual effects that you experienced from afar. Questions begin to surface in your mind about the technical aspects of the painting: “How did the … Read More

There’s one important idea that we must remember as musicians: When you practice, you create habits.

Think about it, this is essentially the reason that we set out to practice in the first place. By consciously focusing on a single exercise or technique for hours at a time, we ingrain these skills on an unconscious level. Then when the time comes for us to play, we don’t have to think to perform these actions, they’re produced naturally out of habit.

However, like many things in life, this process is not as cut and dry as it appears. For every habit that we consciously set out to create, we also create habits that we’re unaware of, and these habits are the ones that get us into trouble.

Losing your mental focus

In the practice room, it is surprisingly easy to lose focus and to let some bad habits creep in, especially when we’re improvising. At times like this, we are concentrating so hard on making the changes that we forget about playing our instrument. If this sounds all too familiar, don’t worry, this is something that all players struggle with and must learn to overcome.

Over the years, I’ve heard numerous accomplished players sound completely different when they try to improvise. In the practice room they have a great sound and poise as they play their instrument, but when they are faced with improvising a solo over a chord progression they fall apart. Their sound goes out the window, they … Read More

Learning the hard way??

You thought you came here to find an easier way to learn improvisation, right? Well to be honest, the easier way is not always the best way and if you’re in something for the long run, getting things right from the start can save you a lot of time and years of frustration.

Don’t let the title throw you, it’s not actually learning the hard way, it’s just learning, period. Over the years, the term “learning” has slowly come to mean something else. Instead of actually studying and mastering a skill, “learning” has evolved into memorizing the main facts and pieces of a skill; in other words, the goal is proficiency rather than mastery.

When we learn something today, we find the shortcuts that give us the desired results with the least amount of effort. We start with a guide book, an outline, a list of definitions, a cheat sheet, and we can even look up the answers if we get lost. Whatever the task is, we want to be able to perform it well right away. The actual skill is not as important as the end results.

This is not necessarily a bad thing, and in many cases it’s the most efficient way to learn things. If you want to pass an exam in school, memorize the formulas, the definitions, and the dates, and you’ll pass the test. Traveling to another country? Get a guide book, learn a few key phrases in the native … Read More

A reader recently asked:

At my college, to get into the lab bands you have to be a really great sight-reader. What are some ways to become a great reader besides just saying “read whatever you can.” I am decent at sight-reading, but I want to take it to that next level. How do I go about doing this?

It goes without saying that sight-reading is an important skill to have as a musician. You sight-read new pieces in your rehearsals, you need it when you sub for a big band, and it’s a dreaded part of the audition process. It is by no means the most important skill to have as a musician, but if you want to be a “working” musician, it is something that you definitely need.

This is a great question, but it’s also one that often gets answered with the vague, apathetic answers that you mentioned. Telling someone to “just sight-read more,” no matter how well-intentioned, is not going to help them improve.

Sight-reading, like many other techniques that we develop as musicians, is a skill – a skill that can be learned and continually improved upon. Rather than putting yourself in a room and trying to blindly improve your sight-reading chops by doing it over and over again, look at the specific elements involved in this skill and work on developing them.

It’s Sight-Reading

Somehow, we’ve all had this idea put into our heads that sight-reading is this completely new skill that we … Read More