Jazz Advice

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

Grab a sheet of paper or take the following quiz mentally and record your response time for each:

1. What’s a ii V in the key of F# major?
2. If the V7 of a ii V progression is Ab7, what’s the ii chord?
3. What’s a iii Vi in the key of Db major?
4. If the ii chord of a ii V progression is C# minor, what’s the V7 chord?
5. If the ii V of a key is F- Bb7, what’s the VI7 of the key?

Now, judge your answers based on correctness and speed of response. Did any of them take you more than a split second?

Be honest with yourself. Chances are a couple of these questions took at least a few seconds for you to answer. You may not think that a few seconds is a big deal, I mean, you got the correct answer, right?

The problem is that after even a second of thought we can totally lose our creative focus. The more ingrained these fundamental progressions are, the less we have to think, and the freer we become.

Chord independence

Why is it difficult to quickly conjure some chords, while others are easy? We’re very used to encountering chords in a set way. For example, after A- we expect D7. Or after D7, we expect G major. But even standards mix and match these basic chord progressions.

These slight rearrangements of the chords can shift us just enough to make it so we screw up. For … Read More

As the article last Wednesday discussed, learning to apply language to tunes is crucial because it puts the language into context, allowing your ears and fingers to gain an understanding of how to integrate the language into your overarching concept. Over time, the language you practice this way will spontaneously materialize in new form, surprising even you.

You’ll naturally change the language, combine it with other things you know, or even use it in a totally different spot than it was originally. That’s what we’re talking about today: using language in a different place than its original harmonic context. There exist many formulas, which once known will seem obvious, that will assist you in transferring a musical idea to a variety of new situations.

Of course you cannot use these formulas blindly. You must fully understand the melodic material you’re working with and experiment with what works best with those specific lines. Some lines will work perfectly with a particular formula, whereas others won’t work at all.

These formulas are intended to get you thinking about common places that you can take a piece of language. Use them as a starting point to discover other transformation points for your language that you can continue to draw from as you acquire more and more language.

Major line: use over the minor chord a minor 3rd down

This would be: F major to D minor. This is one of my favorites because it is so simple and so effective. It works well … Read More

The commonly known Pareto Principle states that 80% of the effects of something, come from 20% of the causes. In terms of learning, this means: figure out where the largest gains can be made and focus on those.

For some reason in learning most anything, we tend to give equal weight to everything. We give equal weight to everything because we just don’t know what’s more important, so we deem everything important.

A visual that comes to mind is something I see at the gym all the time: a huge overweight guy doing fore-arm exercises. Now don’t get me wrong. It’s awesome that he’s decided he wants to make a change and he’s taken action by going to the gym. The problem is that he’s focused on something so small that he will never yield the results he so desires.

Many people have documented what they believe to be the high value exercises one should do to see maximum gains in strength and weight-loss. By researching what these are and spending the majority of his time on these things, this man could actually get to where he wants to go.

Similarly in improvisation, people work on all sorts of things that have little benefit to their skill as an improvisor. Why work harder if you can work smarter? Stop wasting your time and put all your time into the 20% of stuff that will cover the 80% of everything you’ll ever need.

Two Fives

Learning how to play over ii … Read More

We all have lines we use frequently. Some lines we use so much, that we can’t stand them, criticizing ourselves for playing them over and over, thinking we’re being unoriginal and uncreative.

It’s ok. Even the masters repeat themselves often. When you’ve got some specific language to this point, where it’s coming out naturally and spontaneously but too much, that’s actually a good thing. It means it’s becoming yours. But the mistake most people make is they stop there, thinking that now they need to figure how not to play the line so much.

Instead of trying to rid the line from your vocabulary, learn to apply concepts to your playing that will morph the language you’ve learned into something new.

Enclosure is one such concept that can transform your stale lines into something exciting and inspired.

Enclosure explained

Enclosure is quite simple. In its most basic form, a chord tone is selected and the surrounding notes below and above are inserted before the chord tone. The inserted notes can be related chromatically, diatonically, or both. In the examples below, the first is enclosed diatonically (within the key of C) and the second chromatically (it just so happens that the 4th lies a half step above the 3rd, making this diatonically related note chromatic as well)

You hear enclosure used everywhere, especially when bebop was at its height. Charlie Parker loved this device and used it all the time. Listen closely to his solo on Kim and you’ll instantly hear it:… Read More