Jazz Advice

A common question that many improvisers often have is “How do I connect chords when I’m soloing?”

Improvising over one chord is simple enough, however when you begin to play tunes with actual chord progressions, creating and connecting lines becomes a bit more challenging. This musical obstacle goes to the heart of the skills you need as an improviser and the solution, like many obstacles we encounter in music, is simple in theory yet significantly more involved in implementation.

Imagine for a moment that you took away all the theory terminology, the voice leading rules, the maze of scales and the chord symbol jargon that you normally encounter as an improviser. What would you be left with? You’d be left with sound – that’s it! Despite everything that our brains get caught up in as we try to create a solo, the harmonic aspect of improvisation boils down to sound: Individual sounds (chords) and the relationships between these sounds.

As an improviser a theoretical understanding and technical proficiency are the first steps when approaching these harmonic relationships, but your ultimate goal is melody. Can you create a seamless melody over these sounds and subsequent chord progressions? Herein lies the creative challenge that improvisation poses to us every time we attempt to play a tune.

Your ability to play melodies over a chord progression is directly related to how well you can hear the individual chords of a progression and the relationships between them. If you want to play effortlessly … Read More

Everyone knows they should learn tunes straight from recordings and not from a lead sheet, but it’s not that simple. Figuring out what’s happening melodically and harmonically is super challenging for most people, and it’s so convenient just to print out a lead sheet.

Forget the lead sheet. Anything you learn with your mind and not your ear will not stay with you unless you constantly review it. Anything you truly learn with your ear will stay with you for a lifetime. Here are some things that if put into practice, will make you wonder why you hadn’t been learning tunes from recordings all along.

First impressions matter

In terms of the way you relate to a tune, first impressions are everything. Many people today think All the Things You Are, Just Friends, and Stella By Starlight are lame boring songs. Even though these are some of my favorites, surprisingly, I can relate to this attitude because many tunes still sound far from exciting in my mind. But why? Why do certain tunes have no spark, no energy, no life? Why do some tunes feel impossible to solo over?

It’s all about first impressions: how you were first introduced to the tune. Was it an assignment? The first time you heard it, was it from a play-along track? Or had you never heard it, and just played it from a lead sheet?

As you first conceptualize a tune, it becomes an entity with a certain vibe to it … Read More

The process of learning to improvise is a journey. A long and rewarding journey and one that is punctuated by a series of milestones.

This can be hard to see from that comfy seat inside of your practice room, but take a step back from your daily routine and look at the path that brought you to where you are today.

You played your first notes, you learned your first scale, you learned your first tune, you figured out the inner workings of a chord progression, you got fluent in all 12 keys, you worked on the blues and rhythm changes, you learned your first ii-V- I line, you transcribed your first solo…

As you begin your musical journey these milestones are huge and transform you at a personal level. Your first notes on your instrument turned you into a musician. Your first solo over that chord progression made you an improviser.

These leaps forward changed your identity and set you apart from everyone around you. However the better you get, these breakthroughs are fewer and far between. More effort and determination is required to make even the smallest step forward.

But even the small steps forward are essential to your improvement and gradually move you toward your goal of becoming a great improviser. This musical path that you’re on can be as long or short as you want it to be. Your destination can be the sound that you hear on your favorite records or maybe you … Read More

Play it slow. Feel every beat. Subdvide. Hear every note. Concentrate on every single detail.

There are dozens of different ways to describe the process of slow practice, yet it seems that the majority of successful musicians in any genre are saying “practice slowly!”

Every teacher that I’ve ever had, from classical players to lead trumpet players to accomplished improvisers, has stressed the importance of focused slow practice. I’ve heard it in masterclasses, I’ve read about it in books, and I’ve watched it in video clips.

It doesn’t matter if you’re working on the Mendelssohn Violin Concerto or figuring out how to solo over Confirmation, s-l-o-w p-r-a-c-t-i-c-e is oddly enough the quickest way to your goal. Check out the great Itzhak Perlman discussing the benefits of slow practice:

I guess it makes sense, right? The slower you go and the more time you have to process information, the easier it is to learn something. And the faster you learn something, the more efficient you’ll be at improving and achieving your goals.

There’s a sort of contradictory, Yin and Yang quality to all of this that you have to come to terms with. To play fast, you must practice slowly. To play the high notes, you must first master the low notes. To innovate you must assimilate the past. These phrases are easy to remember and have a nice ring to them, but practicing in this fashion is another story.

Number one, it’s counter-intuitive and two, it’s flat out hard … Read More

Each day when you get your instrument out of its case and set out to practice improvisation, your goal is to play the right notes. Whether it’s playing with great technique and great sound or finding the best line to play over that new tune, you’re looking for the fastest way to sound good over all those chords that you stumble upon.

Lucky for us, the right notes have been laid out for us in theory books and on the pages of play-a-long tracks. But have you ever stopped to ask yourself: “Why exactly are those notes the “right notes?”

What is it that makes them right and the other notes wrong? Are we just following the rules of music theory on blind faith or are those “right notes” right because we hear them that way?

Music theory is important in understanding the inner workings of harmony, but the true test of the “right notes”comes with your ear. What does it sound like? The interesting aspect of music is that this “sound” is different for every person. Listening is a truly subjective endeavor. What one person hears as pleasing, another person can find unlistenable, even unbearable.

Sometimes it has to do with personal taste, but more often not it has to do with exposure and experience. I remember the first time I listened to Schoenberg’s Pirot Lunaire:

To my untrained ear, it sounded overly dissonant, almost like noise. However, putting it on today it sounds surprisingly accessible. The piece … Read More

One of the questions we’ve been getting a lot lately is where to start learning jazz improvisation. There’s so much information out there, that knowing where to start is a complete nightmare.

If I could start again today, I’d ignore nearly all the information out there in terms of method books and do my best to learn this music the same way that the greats learned. They didn’t have books filled with transcriptions of their favorite players. They didn’t have real-books or fake-books packed with sheet music of tunes. And they certainly didn’t have play-along records that they could pop in and jam with.

They learned from the recordings of their heroes, coupled with playing with others.

Now don’t get me wrong. It’s up to you whether you use any of these materials and even play-alongs can be used effectively, however, why fix it if it’s not broken?

In other words, people were learning how to play jazz long before any of this material existed and they certainly sounded just fine Sure, the convenience of playing with a play-along record when you have no one to jam with can be fun and beneficial, but in my experience, as well as observing countless other musicians’ experiences, nearly all these resources distract you from the pathway that will get you where you want to go.

Where to start

Here’s a checklist to get you started learning jazz improvisation. If you simply go through the checklist, you’ll be well on your way … Read More

Just learn a few ii V licks in all keys, learn how to use them, and that’s jazz, right? Unfortunately not.

ii Vs make up the bulk of chord progressions found in all western music from classical to pop music, hence, ii Vs are necessary to master. However, a common result from working on ii Vs a lot is something that sounds like a combination of noodling around and plugging in ii V licks. We never want to sound like were noodling around, and we’d much prefer to sound spontaneous and interesting than uninspired and predictable.

When we finally decide to start devoting time to studying ii Vs, our ears open a ton and we get excited, as if we’ve found the key to unlock everything. Studying ii Vs does unlock a ton of mystery and will greatly help you improve as an improviser, but know that that this study is only part of the picture.

Getting stuck in ii V land

We all practice ii Vs. We practice lines over them, we practice freely improvising over them, and we try to figure out how to use any concept we’re working on over them, but to what end?

Somewhere in this mess of working on ii Vs, we lose track of the real goal: to sound musical. That’s right. To actually say something with what we’re playing. But when all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail.

What happens when we get enthralled with ii Vs … Read More

Recently we’ve gotten a few questions regarding chord tones: how to work on hearing them, how to aim for them in your lines, and how to connect them when you’re improvising over a chord progression.

Understanding the sound and function of chord tones is important to your success as an improviser. However, it’s important to remember that chord tones are not the only aspect of improvising that you need to worry about. In fact, focusing only on these specific notes or ways to connect them when you improvise can lead you in the opposite direction then you’re aiming for.

Think of this ability to hear, understand, and utilize chord tones in your solos as yet another skill in your improvisational arsenal, one of many that you use daily to create the lines you’re hearing in your head. In other words, chord tones should just be one piece of the puzzle, not your only way to construct material to improvise with.

With this in mind, here are concepts to think about that will put you on track to understanding and using chord tones to your advantage. Along with each practice idea, I’ve included some links to some of our articles that will guide you through the process of acquiring these skills.

I) Adjusting your mental approach

While the focus of improvising should be the sound of the music, the way that you think about chords and their respective chord tones can have a huge impact on the way you play. The … Read More

Half-diminished chords are difficult, but they don’t have to be. In How to Not Suck At Half-diminished Chords, I presented a simple way to start to improve at these often neglected chords and if you practiced the exercise in that article, you will without a doubt have made progress.

But even with some concentrated effort on those exercises, half-diminished chords are probably still giving you a tough time.

Why does this particular chord cause us so much trouble and what can we do about it?

Incomplete information

The only reason half-diminished chords are difficult is because we’re given incomplete information about how to approach them. Jazz theory instructs us to play the locrian mode. So, what do we do with this information? We make a short cut so we can remember in real-time how to play over a half-diminished chord.

The line of thought goes something like this: Oh, B half diminished is just the locrian mode (7th mode) of C major. Great…that means whenever I see a half-diminished chord I’ll simply go up a half-step and play the major scale.

If that sounds like you, that’s why you suck at half-diminished chords. As How To Not Suck At Half-diminished Chords notes, the locrian mode is a starting place. That’s it.

And that being said, it’s actually a quite confusing starting place. Take for instance the half-diminished chord in this iii Vi ii V:

What does the B half-diminished chord have to do with C major? The answer: Nothing! … Read More

In a recent question from a reader, I was asked why in many examples on this site do I denote the iii chord in a iii Vi ii V as half-diminished?

This is an excellent question. In many lead sheets you see the iii chord denoted as minor and many theory books claim that the iii chord should always be minor because that’s how you would derive it from the tonic key.

So, what’s correct? We’ll get there later…

The thing you have to remember for now is that chords are sounds. It almost seems dumb saying that, but we often forget that simple fact. Chords are not just symbols on paper. They are living, breathing, aural entities that work together to create a progression.

A progression “works” because one chord pushes to the next. That’s why it’s called a progression…it progresses. It’s this sense of forward motion within progressions that allow you to make many different decisions on what chords you specifically play at any given time.

Lead sheets are leading you astray

I remember years ago learning tunes from play-along recordings with the written music in front of me and no matter what, I couldn’t seem to sound “right.”

I finally took it upon myself to learn one of the tunes I was working on straight from the recording. At first, it took a lot longer and I was terribly frustrated, but it got much easier. And then, I realized, wait a minute, the piano is not playing … Read More