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 must pay once the free trial is up and my answer is “Never. It’s not a trial”. Am I just some wealthy philanthropist looking to spread good throughout the world? […]
Quick and easy jazz improvisation?
A marketing email hit my inbox last Thursday. It was promising the benefits of their special way of memorizing and practicing licks, that once cobbled together would make ‘improvising’ quick and easy. A whole system for playing instant jazz much like instant mashed potatoes. “Just add hot water. Your family will never taste the difference.” […]
Transforming TikTok into an online course
Pocket Jazz is coming. I am finishing up transforming the nearly 70 TikTok videos I produced earlier this year into an online course I am calling ‘Pocket Jazz’. I call it ‘Pocket Jazz’ since these 1 to 3-minute bite-sized jazz tips are formatted to TikTok within the vertical space of a phone screen. I recorded […]
Memorization for jazz solos?
A sax player eager to improve his improvisation skills reached out to me yesterday. He’s frustrated. He’s unsure of how to continue his learning. He really wants to play like his peers but fears that he might lack something fundamental that they seem to naturally possess. Sound familiar? He sent me a description from a […]
Collecting licks for your jazz solos
Your life won’t last forever
Have you done enough?
Are you simply baying at the moon?
Do not go gentle into that good night
What is wrong with the above?
What is the jazz vocabulary and how you can learn it?
I recently listened to a podcast from Brent Vaartstra of LearnJazzStandards.com. Brent does a nice job with his podcasts, and his latest should give us all some food for thought.
Quick and easy mastery of improvising jazz
Okay, let me come clean that the title of this post is completely misleading. But when you first saw it, admit that you had a tinge of excitement that it could be possible. Sorry about that, but I’m trying to make a point.
One fix to your jazz playing that will make you swing
My last couple of posts have been dedicated to time and rhythm.
So much of jazz education literature is obsessed almost exclusively to showing you the ‘right’ notes and scales to play
How is your sense of jazz time?
I’ve been listening to Youtube videos of jazz players. Not the stars, but players who most people would consider to be very capable.
Finding meaning for your jazz playing
I just read Viktor Frankl’s classic, Man’s Search For Meaning. It’s been on my reading list for a long time so my recent sojourn to the northern Arizona flower-covered mountains gave me the opportunity to finally read it.
So you REALLY think staring at chords helps you improvise better?
Learning to play jazz starts with the exploration of chords. You learn D minor to G7 to C major and all sorts of permutations of that progression and many others.
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’.
