Jazz Advice

Imagine that you’re strolling through an art museum on a lazy afternoon. Leisurely, you walk past magnificent paintings, weave between rows of sculpture, and meander through various galleries, each showcasing a bygone era of human artistic accomplishment. By chance, a particular painting catches your eye from across the room.

You’re immediately struck by the realistic landscape, the beckoning expression on the subject’s face, and the story depicted on that weathered canvas. The work triggers emotion, forgotten memories, and a peculiar sense of nostalgia. On some unconscious level you feel a mysterious connection to this work. This is your first impression, that visceral experience of the entire work as a whole felt from the first contact.

For some reason, you are compelled to take a few steps forward to get closer to the painting. As you inch toward the canvas, a subtle shift suddenly occurs. Your eyes open to another plane of visual awareness and a completely different side of the painting becomes the focus. Brush strokes become visible, an expressive palette of natural, earthy colors reveals itself, and curiously, imperfections become readily apparent.

At this level, the ideas and emotions portrayed in the work can not be separated from the artistic technique required to produce it – an actual person painstakingly created this! You can see the specific techniques that were used to create those intriguing visual effects that you experienced from afar. Questions begin to surface in your mind about the technical aspects of the painting: “How did the … 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

In Zen Buddhism there is a concept of the “beginner’s mind“. To quote Wikipedia:

“It refers to having an attitude of openness, eagerness, and lack of preconceptions when studying a subject, even when studying at an advanced level, just as a beginner in that subject would”

When we begin studying this music, we’re excited and open, but as we progress, we get caught in all sorts of traps and our beginner’s mind is lost.

An excess of information

The number one problem in advancing at jazz improvisation is the vast amount of excess information today. It should be be the opposite. More information on a subject should make it easier. It’s only logical. But what if that information is wrong? What if that information is only one perspective from an infinite amount of possible perspectives?

I’ve taken lessons with many of my favorite musicians today. What’s interesting is that they all had completely different viewpoints about what was important and they all had different ideas of where I should focus my time. Some of the viewpoints were in direct opposition to each other. Who is right and who is wrong?

Nobody is right or wrong. Each one of their suggestions is simply a reflection of their own concept of the music. It’s up to the student to take suggestions and figure out what to work into their own concept and what to filter out.

Something we’ve attempted to do on this site is share things that we’ve learned … Read More

There aren’t many things that we can all agree on when it comes to discussing the history of jazz, but one thing that we can come to a consensus on is that all the masters of this music had their own voice. Each and every one sounded unique and accomplished in their own way. Every time that you put on a great record, you hear distinct personalities coming through the speakers loud and clear.

We all want to create an original voice in jazz and hope to someday become an innovator, but this is not an easy task and few in the music have achieved both. However, you can do some very simple things to put you on the track to crafting your individual style. Here are eight ways to help you discover your very own musical direction and develop your voice as an improviser.

I) Listen to everything

To become a successful improviser and especially an original improviser, you need to expand your musical palate. Listening to Charlie Parker and Coltrane on repeat is great, but if you don’t explore other types of music you’re going to develop a very limited musical outlook. Worse yet, you could turn into yet another third-rate musical clone. Don’t fall into this trap.

Parker loved to listen to Stravinsky and Bartok. Coltrane studied Indian music. Not all jazz masters listened exclusively to jazz. In fact, jazz musicians have a long history of exploring all genres of music. Bach, Ravel, Debussy, Schoenberg, African music, … Read More

Improving at jazz improvisation is a process. It’s an interesting process because it’s both static and dynamic. It’s dynamic in the sense that it constantly involves bringing new ideas, material, and concepts into your playing, keeping you excited, motivated, and passionate about your own playing. And it’s static in the sense that you have to stay with things long enough for them to sink into your subconscious, having the capacity to creatively utilize them in the future.

The Reviewer

You know you’re a reviewer if you’re bored with your playing and feel like you’re in a rut. These symptoms indicate that at one point you learned a set amount of information and then stopped expanding your knowledge-base, hence, you’re bored with the same old lines you’re playing.

Most people tend to be reviewers. It has to do with our comfort zone. As we learn something new, our learning curve is straight up and we make giant leaps in progress very rapidly. Then, gradually, our progress slows, until it comes to a screeching halt.

At this point, we practice what we’re good at and ignore the aspects of our playing that need work. Consequently, we’re in a constant state of review. You’d think that the material we review would get more and more solid, but in this completely static mode, our lines and concepts actually get worse. Why is this?

Because our passion goes out the window, we become less and less excited about the stuff we’re playing day in and … Read More

Your mental approach to the things you do can have everything to do with your success or failure. The way that you think about everything from setting goals to learning actual skills directly affects how you will perform any number of tasks. This is especially true when it comes to practicing improvisation.

When we think about our goals in music and how we’re going to accomplish them, we can look at things in one of two ways. We can take a step back and a look at the big picture or we can take a magnifying glass to the task at hand and focus in on all the nitty-gritty details.

Both give us a surprisingly different perspective of the same music and in turn, can be useful in many different ways.

Take a moment to reflect upon your own mindset as you set your goals and head into the practice room. Are you constantly setting your sights on the big picture and the end result of your work or are you focused on the specific details that will lead you to achieving these goals? Maybe you do a little of each, or maybe you’ve never even thought about it at all?

The answer to these questions are more important than you may think and if you’ve been having trouble realizing your goals, the culprit may lie with your mental approach. Even though both approaches are essential for your improvement, there is a specific time and a place for each one, … Read More

What exactly is it that makes the musicians that we call “masters” great?

What sets them apart from everyone else? Is it their technique, their sound, their originality, the way they can play over chord progressions? Well…these are all pieces of their mastery, but what is the reason for their mastery?

These are questions that I’ve often wondered about over the years as I’ve worked to improve on my own. Can anyone truly reach this level of mastery, or are those idols that we look up to, from Bird and Miles to Trane and McCoy, simply super-human?

After spending time around some of the best musicians in New York, it gradually became clear to me that the top musicians in the world do indeed have a certain characteristic that sets them apart. It is something that is not uncommon with the best athletes in the world, the most successful entrepreneurs, or the most tenacious research scientists.

And encouragingly, this is something that we can all aspire to develop within ourselves.

When we first encounter greatness, it seems like a magical power, but when you begin to study it, this magic wears off and the path to greatness appears to be fairly obvious; obvious, but nonetheless remarkable. The same is true of achieving mastery in jazz.

Secret…?

This “secret” quite simply, is the incessant drive to keep improving.

Now I know that you were expecting a secret practice routine, an underground way of learning solos, or some secret harmonic technique. Every … Read More

In learning most anything, there’s an accepted and standard way of approaching the material. There exists a typical method that emerged over the course of many years. In many disciplines, this method came about through trial and error, meticulously analyzing what techniques have worked best to allow an individual to excel as quickly and efficiently as possible toward their desired goal.

Unfortunately, in jazz improvisation, this did not happen. In jazz, the standard method of learning today arose not from understanding how the masters of the music learned this art, but instead from the world of academia. These academic studies focused on the results of what the jazz legends produced and ignored in entirety their process of how they learned.

By studying and analyzing commonalities among the end product (great solos), these studies drew formal conclusions and neatly packaged them in a digestible way, making the world of jazz improvisation available to everyone, but watering it down for those who wish to learn it on a deeper level.

Ok, so it’s not quite as bad as I’m making it sound. No, there’s not this corrupt agency out to destroy the world of jazz and all its practitioners…although it would make an interesting plot for a movie. There’s not necessarily one group of people that created this watered down version of learning jazz that I’m labeling as “the academics.”

Nonetheless, this false paradigm does exist, it was created in an academic setting, and it does stagnate the learning process of those … Read More

The old maxim “A is for effort” does not apply when it comes to jazz improvisation or playing any style of music. Effort is the last thing you want. In fact, we seek effortlessness. When it comes to playing our instruments, the ultimate goal is to be as efficient as possible. No movement or mind-share wasted. Everything automatic. Controlled and precise.

Unfortunately, we often think we should be exerting effort to play our instruments. It’s not supposed to be easy right? Wrong. It is supposed to be easy. The actual physical and mental process of playing our instrument should be as easy as humanly possible.

How much work should it actually be?

This is completely objective because what you call “easy” is always going to differ from what I call “easy.” However, a good rule of thumb is that playing our instrument should not be much more difficult than breathing. If it is, you’re working too hard and your musicianship will greatly suffer.

This applies for any instrument. For example, if you sit down at the piano and your fingers stumble and strain to strike the keys, you’re not being efficient, and you will not be as free musically as you could be.

On a woodwind like the saxophone, if it takes quite a bit of effort to produce one note, just think about how much effort you’ll require to produce lines?

Everything: your mind, your body, your equipment…should all be aligned with the attitude of effortlessness and being as … 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