Improvisation
An unusual testimonial on the Art of Skill
The Art of Skill – the book Dave Liebman and I put together – is selling well. I’m getting a lot of positive feedback.
A simple test and training of your jazz ear
If you watched my masterclass entitled, The Magic of Deep Listening, you heard me describe something I like to do when I hear a non-musical tone out in the real world (airplane engine, train horn, animal, etc.) I sing that tone and play around with it.
Good advice from three jazz masters on finding one’s musical voice
One of my favorite things to ask great players is where players can discover their musical voice. One that reflects who they are within their technical abilities. This is a very abstract and philosophical topic, but one at the heart of playing jazz.
Steve Swallow and Dave Liebman on finding one’s musical personality
I had the thrill of interviewing bassist Steve Swallow last week for the next Jazz Master Summit. As I expected, Steve was a wealth of information about everything from bass pickups to zen.
Is jazz improvisation hard?
I saw this question online recently. The number of results for this question on Google is 6.1 million so it’s worth answering.
How to learn jazz improvisation
Jazz improvisation is similar to many skills that benefit from starting off with good habits and the right foundation. Here are three
The four stages of learning applied to jazz improvisation
Explanations of behaviors abound with quadrants. My favorite, of which many others are based on is the 1. Expressive, 2. Amiable, 3. Analytical, 4. Driver quadrant. We all have dominant parts of our personality that fall into these quadrants, usually more than one.
Michael Lake
Jazz/latin trombone, author, multimedia artist, marketer
The new book by Richie Beirach and me
Throughout the past year, Richie and I have been writing a book on jazz education. It is called Teaching and Learning Jazz: From tradition to
How you can play so much better right now
There is a fascinating process that I constantly see played out. Instantly, it can elevate the ability of players. They are amazed and delighted that
The finishing fetish
Before a rehearsal tonight, I was speaking with a couple of friends/bandmates about some of my improvisation methods They’ve been following a few of my lessons and
