Practicing
Warm up your ear for improvisation
We are all pretty good at warming up our bodies to play our instruments. Brass players require a little extra as we limber up the vibrating mechanism called our lips. For that, we play long tones, lip slurs, tonguing, etc.
Memorization and jazz improvisation
I received an email this morning from a classical pianist eager to improve her jazz skills. Her question involves memorization, which she considers her ‘weakest area’.
Fun with drone tracks
I enjoy crafting harmony tracks with which to practice. They are not usually jazz, but instead are more ethereal. Here’s one I like because the harmony slowly becomes more complex and ear-stretching.
The many benefits of recording yourself playing your instrument
Last week I sent out a video lesson from my course Improvisation Savvy. The lesson took players through the process of playing on their instrument the music that lives and is often trapped within their musical imagination.
Hearing and improving your time and rhythm
A jazz musician’s sense of time is one of if not the most important defining aspect of his or her playing. As a soloist, you can play “wrong” notes with a good time feel, and it will sound much better than “right” notes with a poor sense of time.
Bobby Shew on proper breathing for brass players
Bobby Shew is a well-known trumpet great. What people may not know is that he is also a world-class teacher. I had an opportunity to sit down with Bobby and ask him questions for close to three hours. We covered a lot of topics, but the nearest and dearest to his heart was on his method for breathing called the Wedge Method.
Michael Lake
Jazz/latin trombone, author, multimedia artist, marketer
The skill of simplicity
I’ve received a couple of emails this past week making basically the same point about Pocket Jazz that I thought was worth sharing and exploring.
Does popularity define an artist?
A comment was recently written in one of the Pocket Jazz lessons. It was a lengthy comment but it ended with these questions: When is
It’s all about your time
A LOT of you have taken advantage of my offer to sign up for Pocket Jazz for free. Some have come back asking when they
