Jazz Advice

Do you find yourself having trouble remembering the solos you’ve transcribed?

Have you ever memorized the melody to a tune only to forget it a week later?

Do you have trouble recalling the chord progressions to your favorite standards?

If you are screaming “Yes, that’s me!”at the computer screen, then the solution to your problems can be summed up in one word: repetition. It’s not your lack of intelligence, your lack of motivation, or bad luck, it’s simply because you are not spending enough time to ingrain those things that you’re trying learn.

Now you might be saying, “Wait a minute, I repeat stuff in my practice all the time!” Yes, maybe for five or ten minutes, but are you repeating those lines, techniques, and progressions to the point that they are permanently ingrained in your brain and muscle memory? Will you be able to remember them a week or a month from now?

The underlying problem here is that we get bored very easily and the second we hear a hip sound, we can’t wait to jump ship and figure it out. This is a trap that every musician falls into at one point or another. We learn a new tune, pick up a new ii-V line, or work on our technique, and once we’ve got the basic idea we abandon it for the next best thing.

This simply won’t work if you want to make meaningful improvement as an improviser. The deceptive thing about the unfocused practicing … Read More

Amateurs phrase in a way that sounds boring and boxy. In contrast, professionals phrase in a way that gives excitement and forward motion to their playing.

In this article I’ll explore some tendencies that I’ve observed in the recordings of my heroes. Of course, your personal observations would result in different conclusions, which is why I highly suggest you transcribe and find tendencies that you observe. One thing to remember as well: These are not rules. They’re just things to be aware of and experiment with.

To illustrate the techniques, I’ll use the following example:

This is not a “bad” line and you will find similar lines throughout the jazz vocabulary, however, what we’re concerned with today is how to phrase in an exciting way and this line in isolation, as depicted, is quite boring. If you were to tag on an idea in front of it, or connect it to something else, immediately it would take on a new life, and that’s exactly what we’ll be talking about: how to take the ordinary and use it like a pro.

Avoid starting phrases on beat one

Amateurs constantly start phrases on beat one. This common way of starting a line allows the listener to easily predict where the next line will start. Consequently, there’s no interest to hold their attention and they stop listening.

Pros, while occasionally starting phrases on beat one, will more often than not start phrases on beats other than one. Instead of the original line, they … Read More

A reader writes:

It seems like everyone is taught the standard “off beat” articulation of swing eighth notes, but I feel that swing is really much more complicated. Why is it that some players seem to swing so hard while others do not? What’s the secret to swinging hard?

Yes, everyone is taught the standard “off beat” articulation of swing eighth notes, and you’re right, swing is much more complicated than that. It’s not even that it’s more complicated. It’s that swing cannot be defined by anything that you can write down.

Let’s try to write some swing down

Listen to Cannonball and Trane play over Grand Central: Cannonball swings so hard! He even comes right out of the gates with an incredible swinging line. Here it is notated below:

No matter what you do to better notate this example, add any articulation marking you like, there’s no way it will ever resemble the hard-swinging-in-your-face concept performed on the recording. The magic of swing is an aural experience and that’s where it will stay. Trying to write down swing and learn it from paper, or trying to learn it from concepts and exercises described in a book is a fruitless pursuit.

Variables in swing

Listening to different players swing, you can observe a number of variables that each player uniquely expresses with respect to their style of swing:

• The ratio between the lengths of adjacent notes.
• The accent of specific notes.
• The articulation of adjacent notes.
• The precise placement

… Read More

Every so often we make a musical discovery that drastically changes the way we approach improvisation. One day we are struggling over the same tunes, growing more and more frustrated with our own predictable patterns and then it hits us – we suddenly discover a secret that was hidden right before our eyes.

A subtle mental, aural, or physical shift occurs and we are able to approach improvisation in an entirely new way. From then on, our eyes (and ears) are opened to a wealth of new possibilities.

Looking back at the last fifteen years or so of my own journey to learn improvisation, I have made some very important musical discoveries that have changed the way I look at the music. Some of these discoveries came rather quickly, with a small amount of practice and others I had to struggle with for years before I had control of them.

Regardless of how long the discovery took, the result was the same: from that point on my ears changed and I took on a deeper understanding of the music. Most importantly, I now went into the practice room with a renewed excitement for improvising.

On my journey to find these breakthroughs, I looked for information in all sorts of places. Some of this information I found in books on how to improvise and some of it, in contrast, was not mentioned in any texts, videos, or lessons. Some of it was handed to me numerous times while I foolishly ignored … 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

“Play what you’re hearing in your head!”

These are the instructions that numerous books, videos, and educators tell us as we struggle to figure out how to play over chord progressions. The only problem in situations like these is, as beginners, we aren’t hearing anything in our heads.

Think back to the first time that you tried to improvise a line over a chord progression. If you were anything like me, you were frantically looking for the “right” notes to play and using the one scale that you memorized to find them. When you are learning to improvise, you are too busy racking your brain for scales and avoiding “wrong” notes, to use your ears or hear anything.

Sure, it gets easier as you progress as an improviser: you learn many more scales, memorize chord progressions, transcribe solos, and figure out harmonic patterns. However, whether you like to admit it or not, with all of these tools that you pick up, you are still relying heavily on a mental knowledge of the music.

The bottom line here is that the majority of us aren’t using our ears nearly enough as we improvise. If you continually feel like improvising has become a repetitive exercise or that you keep returning to the same patterns and licks as you play over tunes, then this article is for you.

Confronting the gap between our ears and our minds

It’s a simple fact, it is much easier to understand a concept mentally than to actually … Read More

Recently we received a question about non-standard progressions, specifically the type of progressions you see in Wayne Shorter and Joe Henderson tunes:

When we’re learning, we go through a lot of bebop progressions and ii-Vs. But when it comes to playing more modern tunes (such as some Joe Henderson and Wayne Shorter tunes), I feel like a good amount of my bop language starts to break down. By this I mean how do you connect distantly (if at all) related chords while still being melodic?

Dealing with these seemingly different chord progressions presents a challenge to those who have not encountered things of this sort before. Thankfully, upon further investigation you’ll understand how to use what you already know to effortlessly glide through these changes.

The chords make sense at close examination

In general, chord progressions have to have some sort of logic behind them to make them sound the particular way that they do. Upon first hearing, it may be difficult to understand how these less familiar progressions are constructed, however, work to simplify them and they’ll become clear.

Listen to Wayne Shorter’s Nefertiti:

Here’s the first eight measure of Nefertiti:

Confusing? Let’s take a closer look. The first two chords are simply progressing in cycle movement. The qualities of the chords, major 7b5 and sus, and Herbie’s unique voicings are what give them their unique sound, but other than that, nothing out of the ordinary.

Measures 3 and 4 consist of a minor ii V progression … Read More

Things are not always what they appear to be. Sometimes the standard advice does not get you where you want to go. Here’s an idea: approach what you’re trying to achieve by doing the opposite. Now, this won’t work for everything, but it very well may solve the nagging problems you just can’t seem to figure out.

Here’s just a few examples of how to harness the power of opposites.

To play loud, play soft

Our first inclination when wanting to play loud is to blow our brains out and pump as much air as humanly possible through the horn in hopes of producing a loud sound. This wildly unfocused column of air will have a difficult time activating your instrument and making it resonate at its full capacity.

Instead of approaching loud playing this way, use the opposite tactic: practice playing softly.

How can practicing softly teach you how to play loudly? Using the saxophone as an example, playing loud is not a pure function of how much air you input into the instrument. In fact, it has more to do with how you focus your air.

First practice reducing your volume to a faint whisper and learning to focus your air stream like a laser beam. Then, gradually increase the volume while you keep this focus.

Through this process of learning to play loud by playing soft, you’ll notice a dramatic change in the way you put air through your horn, yielding much more volume and more control.… Read More

We receive countless emails expressing gratitude for Jazzadvice.com and we greatly appreciate the thousands of people that visit each and every week. It’s because of you (our awesome readers) that we continue to write on a weekly basis and find new ways to communicate things, striving to be clearer and clearer. To our readers, a sincere thank you.

But as a reader, it’s not easy. There’s so much here and it’s growing all the time. On top of that, you have many resources that you draw from for your daily practice as well, including books, dvds, teachers, and friends.

With all this direction, how can you get the most out of an article, while staying focused, and not feeling overwhelmed?

Understand the core thesis and where it comes from

Any article, jazz or not, has a main point or central objective. In general, this can be gleamed from the title. While you read any article about jazz improvisation, constantly ask yourself how each section connects to this core thesis.

Once you grasp the concept the article is discussing, determine what kind of article it is. Is it about ear training? Is it a harmonic concept? Or is it just some thoughts to think about?

Why classify an article like this? By classifying everything you read about learning jazz improvisation into categories, you’ll soon realize that most of what you learn fits into only a handful of topics. Consequently, you’ll feel less overwhelmed because with every new thing you read, you’ll … Read More

As melodic improvisers, we are naturally focused on the harmonic aspect of what we are playing. After all, there’s nothing worse than playing wrong notes, right? Our minds are so concerned with what key a tune is in, what note choices work well over a specific chord, and how to navigate a difficult progression, that other aspects of musicality tend to be ignored.

As a result, the rhythmic aspect of our improvised lines tend to be the first thing that is thrown to the wayside as we solo. It’s goes without saying that notes and chords are important in creating a great solo, but your time and rhythmic conception are just as essential to expressing yourself musically.

For non-drummers, developing an advanced sense of rhythm can be quite an undertaking. To go from the perspective of only worrying about keeping time in 4/4, to playing successfully in odd meters or even using polyrhythms in your solos takes some serious practice. A reader recently wrote in on this subject:

I’d like to get deeper into rhythmic displacement. I’ve practiced three against four and five against four. It works so far, but I don’t get it to the point that it sounds musical and not just mathematical. I would greatly appreciate learning about some approaches to rhythmic displacement.

Master the basics

The key to progressing at any skill is to first master the basics. This proves to be true whether you are working on instrumental technique, playing over chord changes, or are … Read More