Jazz Advice

On a daily basis our senses are bombarded with information. Sights, sounds, smells, and tactile sensations come at us from every angle, vying for a piece of our cognitive awareness. It’s true that we can experience a multitude of stimuli at once, but focusing our mind and differentiating between these stimuli requires a specialized skill - attention.

The famed psychologist William James describes attention as such:

Everyone knows what attention is. It is the taking possession by the mind, in clear and vivid form, of one out of what seem several simultaneously possible objects or trains of thought. Focalization, concentration, of consciousness are of its essence. It implies withdrawal from some things in order to deal effectively with others, and is a condition which has a real opposite in the confused, dazed, scatterbrained state which in French is called distraction, and Zerstreutheit in German.

Attention is essential for taking in information, but it comes with a cost: we can only focus our attention on one piece of information at a time. It’s only by ignoring other streams of incoming information that we can effectively download that which we are focusing on.

Think back to the last time you were in a crowded room at a loud party: groups of colorfully dressed people and flashing lights, dozens of conversations happening simultaneously, the smell of hors d’oeuvres mixed with perfume, and a wave of heat emanating from a crowd of excited people.

Taking in everything at once results in sensual overload. … 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

In the recent article Hearing in Color, Forrest discussed the technique of how to develop hearing individual chord tones in the context of triads and 7th chords. Just as the individual chord tones in a chord have identifiable colors, the chords themselves have distinct sonorities that set them apart from one another.

The key to mastering these chords is to build upon information that we already have or pieces that are manageable. Instead of trying to tackle complex chords right off the bat in your ear training practice, it’s much more efficient and beneficial to start with the building blocks of any chord – the triad.

As jazz harmony has progressed, simple harmonies have evolved into some pretty complex sounds. This was accomplished by adding 7ths, b9ths, #9ths, 11ths, etc. to basic triads. At the heart of any chord lies a triad. Chords like V7#5, minor-Major 7, and Major 7#5 sound complex and look hard to figure out, but when you take away the upper chord tones, you’re left with just a triad. The trick to hearing and improvising over these chords lies in developing the ability to aurally identify the four basic triads.

The four basic triads

There’s only four triads: Major, Minor, Augmented, and Diminished. These four triad types are the basis for nearly every chord you’ll encounter. If you can immediately identify these four triads, once you add 7ths, 9ths, 11ths, and 13ths to the triad, it will be significantly easier to navigate these sounds. … Read More

Every chord tone has its own unique sound, its own unique color. Learning to hear these colors brings these sounds to life.

Match piano pitches accurately

The first step toward hearing these colors is to hear a sound, repeat it in your minds ear, and accurately reproduce it with your voice on your first try.

Go to the piano. Play a note near middle C, or wherever you can sing comfortably within your range. Clearly hear the note resonate in your mind.

Think about singing that pitch and prepare your vocal chords. Get them precisely where they need to be to sing the note. Your goal is to sing the note perfectly the first time. You don’t want to be sharp or flat. You want to be absolutely dead center on your first attempt.

Sing the note, paying close attention that you’re truly right on with the pitch.

Spend 15 minutes a day for a few weeks at this exercise and no matter how poor your singing, you’ll notice dramatic improvement at hitting the center of a note on your first try.

Understand chord tone colors

The second step in hearing these chord tone colors is to clearly understand what they are. It’s a difficult thing to describe. It’s like trying to describe the color green. I could say things like lush or nature, but how closely does that depict the color green? There’s no real tangible way that I could possibly describe to someone what green actually looks like.… Read More

In our first article of Fundamental Ear Training Exercises, we covered how to choose an ear training partner, the correct mindset to approach ear training with, and  exercises about singing & hearing intervals, harmonic intervals, and triads.

After you feel you’ve got a pretty good handle on everything presented in that previous article, it’s time to explore seventh chords. The easiest way to approach this group of chords is by focusing on just root position chords that contain a root, a third, a fifth, and a seventh.

No ninths, elevenths, or thirteenths to worry about just yet. Look for that in the next part of this series. However, we will be making alterations to the 5th, which in a sense is making alterations to the 11th and 13th (b5 is equal to #11 and #5 is equal to b13. See my notes for major 7b5 chords about why the b5 can be different that the #11).

Since we’re only concerned with seventh chords in root position containing chord tones 1357, there are 12 seventh chords that we’re going to hone in on:

Major seventh, Major seventh b5, Major seventh +5, Sus major seventh

Minor seventh, Minor major seventh, Half diminished seventh (aka minor seven flat five), Fully diminished seventh

Dominant seventh, Dominant seventh b5, Dominant seventh +5, and Sus dominant seventh

Notes on each seventh chord

Go to the piano and play these 12 chords. Work on hearing the intricacies of each chord.

There are some little tricks … Read More

Keep your eyes on the stars but keep your feet on the ground.Theodore Roosevelt

The fundamentals of ear training are largely glossed over. Developing one’s ear is seen as a linear track: learn your intervals, then your triads…and so on. But developing your ear is not a linear pursuit. Like improvisation, it’s a quest of constantly pushing forward, while simultaneously strengthening your roots.

Choose your ear training partner wisely

Finding someone to practice ear training with makes it more beneficial and more fun. Find someone around your level and who is willing to practice with you at least three times a week. Ideally, you’d have a roommate or neighbor who’s willing to practice daily.

The most important aspect of choosing someone to practice ear training with has to do with attitude. You want to work with someone that will not criticize or judge you because you make mistakes. And similarly, you should adopt an attitude of understanding and respect for the current level of the person you’re working with.

I’ve practiced with people before where I’ve felt that if I said the wrong answer, they would think less of me as a musician, or make fun of me because I screwed up a basic exercise. This situation will cripple your learning, rendering your ear training sessions virtually useless.

Choose your ear training partner wisely. Aim to develop a relationship of mutual encouragement and your practices will be enjoyable and rewarding.

Ear training mindset

Many people practice ear training as … Read More

Have you ever wondered why great pianists, guitarists, bassists, and drummers often sing along as they improvise? Ever noticed how many of the best horn players also happen to be great singers? Great musicians all over, seem to have developed the ability to sing somewhere along the way, whether they’ve had formal training or not. For all of us, from the musical innovator to the weekend music lover, singing is a natural part of musical development and artistic expression. The voice is in fact our first instrument and one that everyone can play. For serious musicians, though, the voice is a crucial part of our technique and one that can always be improved upon.

One concept that is not often talked about, yet immensely important, is the gap between our ears and what is coming out of our instruments. The fact is that what is easily understood aurally, rarely is translated to our instruments without any work. Internalizing this music takes hours of repeated listening and imitation until it finally appears in our day to day playing. As improvisers, we rely heavily on our ears to hear the music going on around us, but this is only a small part of developing our ears to their full potential. The real skill comes not in simple identification of intervals and chords, but in the ability to recreate what we hear instantaneously – singing.

Singing a musical idea naturally creates a strong physical connection between our ears and the sounds that we’re … Read More

tran•scribe

transitive verb

a: to make a written copy of

b: to make a copy of (dictated or recorded matter) in longhand or on a machine

c: to paraphrase or summarize in writing

d: to represent (sound) by means of phonetic symbols

This is the definition I found for the word transcribe when I looked it up in the Merriam-Webster dictionary recently. I was curious to get to the bottom of what transcribing actually meant, a word that I had heard for years as I was learning to improvise. Since I became interested in jazz, transcribing solos was continuously touted as the “secret” to learning improvisation. Jazz musicians and educators constantly talked about transcribing solos, tunes, and lines, but it seemed that there was a conflict in what was actually meant by the word transcribe, as well as the reason behind doing it.

Throughout the years, I’ve met amazing improvisers that claimed they’ve never transcribed a solo and have come across others that say they’ve transcribed hundreds of solos. I’ve had teachers that didn’t write solos down, but had numerous solos memorized to the point where they could sing and finger through them without their instruments. On the other hand, I’ve encountered players that had dozens of solos written down, but didn’t seem to retain any of it or improve by doing so. So who is right and why are there so many discrepancies if everyone is “transcribing”?

Even though we may not always believe … Read More

On this site we frequently write about the benefits of ear training for improvising, with  good reason. Hearing and singing intervals, melodies, chord progressions, etc. is one area of daily practice that will directly affect your improvising for the better. However, ear training isn’t only limited to improving your harmonic sensitivity. Developing rhythmic awareness and the ability to internalize all aspects of time can also be improved through ear training exercises.

The concept of time for improvisers is just as important as navigating the intricacies of a chord progression. Although this may seem obvious, it’s a fact that is largely ignored by harmonic players, especially in educational settings. The reality is, a soloist who plays with bad time, whether it’s rushing, accenting weird beats, or just plan not swinging, might as well be playing wrong notes. The end result is the same: a negative effect on the listener.

Improving your time and rhythmic awareness requires daily practice. Just because you aren’t a drummer, doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t be focusing on rhythmic concepts in the practice room. In fact, it means that you should be concentrating on time even more. Attaining rhythmic freedom is an achievable goal and the path there starts with training our ears to hear time in the same way that we hear melodies.

Hear it, internalize it, don’t think about it

The reason we practice ear training is to internalize the sound of what we’re trying to play, so when we’re improvising, it’s one less thing … Read More

A reader recently wrote:

I was reading your “6 mistakes” article and was intrigued by the first rule. I would be more than happy to toss my lousy sixth edition real book, but have some questions about learning tunes by ear. When I’m blowing through changes or learning licks, it all comes down to the chords. So I depend on the changes in the book.  On recordings, a lot of the time all I can hear is the linear solo, and can’t hear the changes in the rhythm section.  So when I learn a standard by ear, how should I approach figuring out the changes?

This is a great question and one that I’ve often struggled with myself. Sure, it’s simple enough to get the melody from a record without looking at a book, but deciphering all the chord changes can be another story. Whether it’s because of a poorly recorded track, a fast tempo, or just flat-out inexperience, taking the time to figure out each chord to a standard can be frustrating.

So why not look up the changes in a real book?

A chart in the real book represents just one version of a tune taken from one recording. That chart  may have been based on substituted chord changes, a different key, or even an embellished melody. You have no way of knowing unless you check out the record for yourself. Many times, I have learned a tune from a book only to realize too late … Read More