Jazz Advice

On this site we’ve frequently written about learning tunes. This is no coincidence – learning tunes goes hand in hand with improving as an improviser.

Whether you’re practicing, performing, or simply listening to a few records with some friends you’re dealing directly with tunes. Keeping this in mind, building a solid repertoire of tunes should be near the top of your practice list as a serious musician.

If you haven’t done so already, be sure to check out some of the these articles to help you get started with building your repertoire:

• A Blueprint for Building your Repertoire
• 10 Key Tunes
• 5 Tunes you should know and why
• Do you know that tune?
• How to learn a tune in 30 minutes
• Thoughts on learning tunes
• 5 Secrets to learning tunes

These articles are a good place to begin when you want to start building a solid base of tunes that you’ll feel confident performing, but what’s your next step?

If you’ve learned a handful of tunes and have a solid grasp of chord progressions, the answer is simple – you just need to learn more tunes.

However, this simple solution isn’t as easy as it sounds. As soon as you get into the practice room things begin to look a little different. The prospect of picking out one tune to learn from the hundreds upon hundreds of standards out there can be an overwhelming and even depressing process.

Where do I even begin? Why choose one tune and not another? … Read More

Music is meant to be heard live.

There is no substitute for the visceral experience of sitting in an audience and soaking up a great live performance. Not only hearing the music, but feeling the physical vibrations of those melodies, chords and rhythms. Seeing the interaction between musicians as they collectively create music in the moment and experiencing the excitement of the audience.

This is what improvisation is all about.

As a performer, experiencing a great live performance is like a shot of adrenaline for your musical motivation. When you witness music at its highest level, you can’t help feeling like you need to rush into the practice room. Your inspiration is immediately renewed and you suddenly have a new focus for your musical direction.

Any way you look at it, there is no substitute for the atmosphere of an intimate live music venue. You can rub shoulders with the greats and be in an environment where people not only love jazz, but are often serious about pursuing it themselves.

All of this live music sounds great, but what if you don’t live in New York City, the jazz capital of the world? What if you don’t even have a venue for live jazz within a 100 mile radius of your home? Are you just out of luck when it comes to experiencing this music?

Of course not! It’s 2013 and the world is a much more connected place. Thanks to the web, there are some key resources to utilize … Read More

It’s a new year.

I guess that means we should be making some resolutions right about now.

New beginnings, a fresh start and all that other good stuff. For most people making “resolutions” translates into sitting down and writing out a list of goals. It’s not a bad exercise to do every now and then and anyways, it feels good seeing those big goals on paper that you’ve always hoped to achieve.

But honestly, how often are resolutions actually followed through?

You’ve probably made dozens of resolutions over the past few years. Most of the time these hopeful goals just fall to the wayside and wither away, but every now and then we actually stick with one and complete it.

Have you ever wondered why those goals are the ones that we stick with? When you make those resolutions and set out to pursue these goals do you actually have a choice in the matter or is it a game of chance where you just roll the dice and wait for the results?

To get the answer just take a look in the rear view mirror. Every skill that you posses today is the result of a goal that was successfully accomplished in the past. Whether it’s a sport, a musical instrument or some specialized knowledge that you’ve acquired, these goals weren’t accomplished in one sitting, you worked on them consistently for years.

From your perspective today it can seem like you’ve always had these skills, but they started out … Read More

I can’t understand why people are frightened of new ideas. I’m frightened of the old ones.~John Cage

At some point as an improviser, whether you welcome it with open arms or avoid it like the plague, you’re going to be faced with the chance to compose. That’s right – you, alone in a practice room writing your own music.

You may be excited to explore this creative opportunity or maybe the idea of staring at a blank sheet of staff paper immediately induces fear and doubt. Whatever your initial reaction, the opportunity to compose your own music will always there and if you truly want to move forward musically, there are a number of practical reasons that you should give composition a try.

You may want to perform some of your own music for once, rather than another long set spent rehashing worn out standards. You might have an assignment for one of your classes or a request for an upcoming gig. Or maybe for some strange reason you have this melodic fragment that keeps ringing in your ears everywhere you go.

We all have different musical backgrounds. Up to this point you might’ve tried your hand at a few originals or maybe you’ve sketched out a simple chord progression and left it at that.

However, if you’re like a lot of improvisers, composing music remains this elusive task that you keep meaning to do, but never seem to get around to actually starting or finishing – and this … Read More

If there is one thing about playing jazz that’s shrouded in mystery, it is improvisation.

Improvisation exists in other types of music, even in musical traditions from the far reaches of the globe, but in jazz it goes much deeper. It is somehow vitally tied to the spirit of the music, and it’s not just musicians who recognize the power of the improvised solo. This essence has been captured in everything from literature to movies to pop culture.

There is something alluring about the idea of the jazz musician; a creative soul channeling the intangible through their instrument, essentially creating something out of nothing.

However, despite all of the attention, we still can’t seem to define this creative endeavor. You can get a degree in jazz studies, you can study the philosophy behind improvisation and creativity, and you can even scan the brains of improvising musicians to discover the secret pathways of the mind in its most creative state, but there still seem to be more questions than answers.

Alas, improvising continues to remain an elusive mystery.

As musicians hard at work developing this skill in the practice room, we often get lost in the music. It can be all too easy to lose the ability to look at the music objectively from an outside perspective and after some time, we’re no longer able to hear music with a naive untrained ear.

We become part of the music and suddenly we see the world in a different way. It’s … 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

In today’s world, it’s easy to be overwhelmed. We live in a time of excess information and much of it is misleading. But supposing you’ve separated the good stuff from the stack, it still feels like there’s so much to learn.

Take this site for instance. I’d like to think that we have a ton of excellent information here, and receiving daily notes of thanks from readers affirms my assumption. But, meandering through the pages, it’s quite easy to get overwhelmed. Just as you thought you had a handle on everything, you realize, wait…I need to learn that…and that…and that…and…eventually, you feel so overwhelmed that instead of choosing action, you choose inaction. You do nothing.

That’s what happens when we feel overwhelmed. We shut down. Nothing is possible and we stop progressing.

But, it’s quite easy to rid yourself of this madness. Feeling overwhelmed is nothing but an inability to see the big picture. When you see how information is logically grouped together and how these groups are inter-related, your brain can understand on a conceptual and emotional level that the subject at hand is approachable in a structured and simple fashion.

The power of logical groupings

Depending on who you ask, there are roughly 640 muscles in the human body. Imagine if a body builder had to focus on each one of these muscles each time he went to the gym. In about two minutes, he’d get frustrated, overwhelmed, and leave.

Of course no body builder would ever think … Read More

What if you could approach something in a completely new way than you’ve ever done before? What would happen? Perhaps an entire world of possibility exists from this new angle, but how do you get there?

Trying completely outlandish, almost silly techniques can spawn immense creativity and improvement in one’s ability. In all art-forms, it’s those who were willing to try something new and go against the grain that defined a new level, pushing the art-form to new heights. Not only in art, but also in sports, entertainment, and even in science this holds true.

The only way to make these new discoveries is to take on a new perspective. Implementing techniques that seem slightly bizarre is one way to remove your current filters, and give a 180 to your entire concept.

Being influenced by objects

I remember one afternoon in a combo rehearsal, Cecil Bridgewater suddenly stopped the entire group, starkly looked at me and said, “Forrest. Play your shirt.” I gazed back in confusion. Play my shirt? What the heck does that mean? Seriously, what does he want me to play??!!

I looked down at my shirt. It displayed two silhouetted figures in the night. A dark yet vibrant magenta light emanated from the edge of each outline.

I looked back up at Cecil and the band, counted them off, and began to play. I didn’t think about chords, although I knew perfectly where I was in the form. I didn’t focus on any sort of harmonic concept. … Read More

“Jazz is about being in the moment”Herbie Hancock

If jazz is all about being in the moment, but all our practice time is dedicated to figuring out what we want to play when we perform, then how are we supposed to be in the moment when we perform?

There’s this strange dichotomy…

On one side, jazz improvisation is very rehearsed. And on the other, it’s very spontaneous. In between these two sides is a ginormous gray area. It’s this gray area in the middle where people get lost.

Trust the process

Jazz is about being in the moment. Like Herbie says, it’s not about playing what you’ve practiced, it’s about here. Now. This moment. That’s what jazz is.

But, why are our efforts in the practice room so thought out, so calculated, so uninspired, when we’re trying to achieve something on stage that sounds as though it were created in the moment?

It seems counter-intuitive: rehearse concepts and language over and over with the goal of improvising in the moment when you perform. Because this sounds so counter-intuitive, most people do not practice this way. They assume that because they are trying to conjure up a purely improvised performance, they should practice this way as well.

This could not be further from the truth. The process of achieving successful results in jazz improvisation is thought-out, repetitive, and slow. As you will read later, there are infinite ways to instill plenty of creativity and spontaneity into this seemingly dry process, … Read More

While we typically focus on ways to improve, this article is all about how to be mediocre. Now, chances are you don’t want to be mediocre, so while many of these listed points are tongue-in-cheek, they will provide you with insight into what not to do, if you wish to be better than mediocre.

Mediocre tip #1: Avoid transcribing at all costs

Convince yourself that great players never transcribed and choose to believe that they invented everything they played, straight from their own mind. When teachers or friends suggest that you transcribe, act like you’re above it and reply, “I’m looking to do my own thing.”

Perhaps if you’re in music school though, you’re required to transcribe for an assignment. Make sure you don’t transcribe in the manner we refer to here, but rather just try to write the notes down on paper as quickly as possible. That way you’ll avoid learning any of the language or concepts in the solo, while still being able to talk about what the soloist is doing.

If you really feel the urge to know what someone is playing, search frantically for a transcription of the solo. If you can’t find it online, you could always purchase a book of transcriptions. These are great tools to help you avoid transcribing all together, ensuring you never rise above mediocre.

Mediocre tip #2: Always learn tunes from fake books

Act like it’s impossible to learn tunes off records. Argue that you must learn the authoritative … Read More