Jazz Advice

Ever spend a lot of time learning a tune, only to realize that you’ve completely forgotten it a few weeks later?

When you’re not achieving your desired results in pretty much anything, check your methods. What’s your process? What’s your approach? After detailing your current methods, you can then easily modify them to realign yourself with your goals.

If your current method of learning a tune is: find the Aebersold play-along track, flip it on, read the written music and go on like that for hours, days, or even years hoping for the best, just stop now. While there are countless ways to use play-alongs effectively, this is not one of them.

I’m not going to dwell on this point because I say it in nearly every article: learn the tune from the recordings. I know it’s difficult. I know it takes time. I know sometimes you can’t hear what chord it is or what the bass player is playing.

For any given tune, dozens of recordings exist. On any given track, dozens of courses go by. There are plenty of opportunities to figure out what’s going on harmonically, rhythmically, and melodically in virtually any tune.

This article could end here. It could end here because if you spent a significant time to learn a tune off the record in this manner, you would have the ability to easily recall that tune. Sure, you may have to think about it for a minute, or clear your mind and hear … Read More

A reader recently wrote in the following question:

I used to play classical guitar, then stopped for a couple of years, and am now trying to teach myself jazz guitar. Here’s the thing:  I’m a college student.  Between classes, homework, and work,  it’s hard to get in practice time.  What would you recommend working on the most if I only have maybe 30-45 minutes a day? Sometimes it’s difficult knowing where to start/what to do…

I think most people can relate to this reader’s question. Being crunched for time is just how it is these days. Not to worry. You can still make huge positive leaps in your playing with very little time.

Scope and depth

The concept of scope and depth relates to how broad and deep a selection of anything may be. With regards to practicing, scope has to do with how many topics we choose to cover during any given practice session and depth describes how deeply we study each of these particular topics.

Most people’s practice sessions tend to be broad in scope and shallow in depth. For instance, they’ll attempt to tackle tone exercises, dozens of scales in all keys, five new tunes, and what ever else they can cram into an hour! On top of that, the method they approach each of these topics with may be completely inefficient. For example, most people tend to learn new tunes from play-along recordings as opposed to learning them off the record, or they make one of … Read More

People are always spouting out the phrase, “Hey man, you should know this tune,” and they are probably right. But the attitude of knowing a tune just to know it, simply doesn’t make sense to me. I need some better reason than people play it down at some local crappy jam session.

As a teacher or mentor, next time you find yourself telling a student they should know a particular tune, give them some reasons why they should know it.

And the reasons should be better than, “You just should know it.” Help them out, by giving them some extra insights into why  the tune is so important to their musical development. Not only will it help them, but it will also make you clarify what valuable information is contained within the tune.

• 1.) Cherokee

  • Why you should know it
  • It contains over half of the possible twelve ii-Vs. Play it in two keys and you’re working on all of your ii-Vs. When ii-Vs make up more than 80% of the chord changes you’ll encounter in jazz, I’d say this is worth your time.

• 2.) Stella By Starlight

  • Why you should know it
  • Cuz minor two fives (especially half diminished chords) are a bitch.

• 3.) Confirmation

  • Why you should know it
  • You’ll constantly run in to one-measure ii-Vs descending by whole steps. Learning to navigate this progression without thinking is a must.

• 4.) All The Things You Are

  • Why you should know it
  • The cycle movement of the

… Read More

It seems like jazz musicians are always thinking about tunes; knowing tunes, learning tunes, how does that one go again? Performing in different situations we are expected to know certain tunes that other musicians will call or even people in the audience will request. This can seem like a very daunting task at first and really it seems like there are always more tunes to learn, but by learning and practicing tunes in a structured way you can start to build a lasting repertoire.

Learn it by ear

Although at first learning a melody and changes to a standard in this way can seem more difficult than simply reading the music from a real book, the benefits of figuring out tunes by ear is much greater…actually it is not even close compared to reading from a page. When you try to memorize a tune out of a real book, you are taking your ears completely out of the equation. Visually you can see everything and mentally understand it, but unless your memory is photographic you won’t be able to remember the tune an hour from now let alone the next day.

Using your ears and instrument to figure out melodies and chord progressions physically connects you to the music and this along with repetition is the key to memorization. Take for example, all the language learning software out there today that are based upon this very concept. In these programs you hear a phrase in the language you are trying … Read More