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

Recently I’ve been studying and transcribing a lot of Miles from around 1956-1957. Albums like Cookin’, Relaxin’, and Workin’.

More than the notes or the harmonic devices in his solos, the one thing that sticks out about Miles is his sense of phrasing. This is what sets him apart and why so many listeners connect with his sound. Miles could play anything he wanted, but he always plays musically.

It takes an advanced and honest musician to improvise a melody that they are hearing in their heads amid the wash of constantly moving chords and time. And it takes an even more mature musician to not play all the scales, and patterns and language that they’ve practiced for hours.

Most people don’t realize how much it work and focus it takes to get to the point that you can free yourself from the theory and play something that you’re hearing and feeling.

This idea of phrasing and creating meaningful musical statements is one aspect of improvising that is missing from a lot of players’ solos. Improvising is not just using scales or inserting a pattern into a chord progression, in the end it’s all about creating music and performing personal melodies.

What is a musical phrase?

When you improvise a musical phrase, you essentially become a composer, creating new melodies on the spot over an established chord progression. Therefore, studying or at the very least becoming familiar with the elements of composition is essential for creating … Read More

Repetition. It’s one part of learning to improvise that’s par for the course. We practice scales over and over again until the technique is securely in our fingers, we spend hours repeatedly working out ii-V7 lines that we’ve transcribed, and we memorize the melodies and chord changes to numerous tunes until we can play them in our sleep.

The great part about all of this repetition is that when we finally have something ingrained into our ears and fingers, we can play it anywhere, especially under pressure.

However, the one drawback with this type of practice is that it’s extremely easy to get stuck in a rut. If you aren’t continually incorporating new language into your playing and searching for new creative approaches to those familiar progressions, you’ll be left with your same old musical approach – and this can be a problem.

In the past I would find myself frustrated, bored, and completely out of ideas on the standards I was practicing. It seemed like I couldn’t think of any new ideas to use over the chord progressions and that I was playing the same stuff over and over again. Although, this didn’t happen without reason. Looking back, the way I approached these tunes mentally and technically contributed significantly to how I played over them.

In the practice room I would play a melody, reading from a page in the real book, the same exact way every time. Instead of getting out the recording, I would turn on play-a-longs … Read More

Clark Terry is one of the living legends of this music.

He has played with every big name in jazz over the last half-century from the likes of Count Basie, Duke Ellington, Thelonious Monk, Oscar Peterson, to Ella Fitzgerald…the list could go on forever. With such a rich performing career spanning over six decades, he continues to play with today’s top musicians and inspire up and coming improvisers.

During school, I was lucky enough to have an impromptu lesson with the trumpet master. One night after a rehearsal for a gig, Clark came in unannounced to the practice rooms at our school looking to impart some wisdom to some aspiring musicians. Before I knew it I was sitting inches from Clark Terry’s bell and he was teaching me a tune by ear.

That sound that I had listened to for years on record was coming out of a horn a foot away from me. It was an experience that I will always remember. I don’t know what was more impressive, the fact that I was sitting down with a jazz legend or that Clark, age of 89, came into the music school practice rooms around 10 at night to hang out with students for free.

Pretty amazing, but then again Clark Terry has been dedicated to educating young jazz musicians for decades. He mentored a young Miles Davis and encouraged Quincy Jones as he was starting out as an arranger and trumpet player. With a track record like that, it’s … Read More

There are certain composers in the jazz tradition that have such a uniquely personal style that their compositions seem to take on a life of their own, becoming part of the jazz pantheon long after the lifetime of the writer. Composers like Duke Ellington, Charles Mingus, Wayne Shorter, and especially Thelonious Monk come immediately to mind. Monk’s tunes, exceptionally unique at the time – not unlike the man himself, have become beloved and frequently played jazz standards with the passage of time.

Everyone has probably played Straight No Chaser or Blue Monk at one time or another, but the music of Thelonious Monk runs much deeper than these frequently called blues heads. Many of the compositions of Monk are now standards and as numerous musicians continue to play his music, more tunes are being rediscovered and added to the standard songbook of the modern jazz musician. If you are serious about jazz, the musical contribution of Monk is one that can not be ignored.

Like many of the innovators in this music, Monk’s music spanned across generations of musicians, even as the music underwent drastic changes. Today, his music continues to inspire and captivate musicians and listeners alike from all parts of the world. If you’ve just discovered the music of Monk, the best thing to do is to immerse yourself in his records and absorb the distinct style of this musical innovator. If you don’t already have the albums below, do yourself a favor by clicking on the album … Read More

In my first 3 Gems Harold Mabern Told Me, we learned how much Harold stresses: Relying on your ear, Being greedy for the music, and The difference between inspiration and motivation. Here’s 3 more to dwell on.

1.) Good music is good music

Harold would play all sorts of tunes in my lessons. Sometimes it was a straight-ahead jazz tune and sometimes it was a pop tune. It didn’t matter who wrote it, who performed it, or what the general public thought about it.

Often, he would take a pop tune and create his own arrangement, transforming it into a work of art. Don’t discriminate against non-jazz music. Trust your ear and figure out what makes particular music appeal to you. Good music = Good music.

2.) Learn your standards in all keys

Take tunes from the jazz-standard-repertoire and learn them in all keys. Some standards Harold loves and plays are not so familiar by many people today. Tunes like, “I Get Along Without You Very Well,” and “Let’s face the Music and Dance.”

You can tell when Harold plays these tunes that he has a connection with them; that he’s fallen in love with them. That’s how you should feel about the tunes you’re playing. So find some standards you like, develop a relationship with them, and learn them in all keys.

3.) Understand where players came from

In our combo rehearsals, Harold would write a few players on the chalk board and say “Who influenced all of … Read More

I used to frequent the Village Vanguard to go see my teacher Rich Perry perform all the time. As you gaze upon the walls of the Vanguard, you peer into the past; jazz legends, the inventors, live on the walls. You sit there in awe, knowing that at some point, they occupied the space you now occupy. And that thought leads to another: most of the jazz legends are not around anymore. The only window we will ever have to them is through their recordings.

Recordings and their limits

Jazz is meant to be heard live. Rarely caught on recordings, the energy permeates the venue and hits you right between the eyes. In my experience, hearing Michael Brecker, Stanley Turrentine, Kenny Garrett, and a handful of other incredible players live, greatly surpassed hearing them on recordings.

Recordings represent an extremely limited time and space in a musician’s life. Who knows what was going on in their life that month, that day, hour, or even that moment. Some recordings are flops. Not even Charlie Parker could be a perfect player all the time. And sometimes the way he was miked made him sound B-rate, and we all know, he’s not B-rate.

Just find the best

Get in the habit of finding a player’s recordings that showcase his absolute best playing. If a friend says he loves a specific player and you’re not so inclined to agree, ask him what his favorite album is. Chances are you’ve never heard … Read More

Kenny Dorham was one of the first trumpet players that I checked out when I was starting to listen to jazz and after years of studying the music he is still one of my favorite trumpet players. K.D. was a prominent figure throughout the stylistic changes of the music from bebop to the modern jazz of the 1960′s, but he received little widespread recognition compared to some of his contemporaries. Because of this, he was often called the “uncrowned king” of jazz trumpet. After really listening to his musical contributions though, it is clearly evident that Kenny Dorham is one of the masters of the music, a unique personal voice that deserves wider recognition. Check out this very rare clip of Kenny playing over his tune Short Story to see the “uncrowned king” in action:

K.D. arrived on the New York scene in the mid-1940′s as bebop was gaining momentum and quickly made his mark. He survived and thrived in a  music scene where trumpet players like Dizzy Gillespie, Fats Navarro and Howard McGhee were tearing it up. Dorham eventually joined Bird’s quintet after Miles left and shortly thereafter became a first call trumpet player for the top small groups in jazz. He became the trumpet player for one of the original versions of the Jazz Messengers, stood in for Clifford Brown after his tragic passing in the Brown/Roach Quintet, recorded with Monk and Sonny Rollins and continued on to record many landmark albums for Bluenote during it’s golden age … Read More