My new project with Richie Beirach
Since my interview with Richie Beirach for the Jazz Master Summit more than a year ago, we’ve collaborated on a great many writing projects for books and articles.
March 3, 2021 16 Comments
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Since my interview with Richie Beirach for the Jazz Master Summit more than a year ago, we’ve collaborated on a great many writing projects for books and articles.
I was forwarded a YouTube link yesterday of a young musician playing John Coltrane’s solo from Giant Steps note for note.
I received an email this morning from an enthusiastic sax player struggling to get better at playing jazz. He has started working with my book Jazz Patterns for Ear and wrote, “After playing the exercises in the book, I played a standard tune and immediately felt closer to the things I was playing”.
Give your ear a chance. It hears more than you give it credit for. Continue to practice your technique, run your scales, and learn about harmony, but when the time comes to play music over changes, just listen.
You show up at a jam session and Autumn Leaves, All the Things You Are, and Bye Bye Blackbird are called in their standard keys. You know the melody for each of those tunes and make your way pretty well through your soloing. Looking back, however, how well did you know those tunes?
I put out a challenge last week that was tied to a new lesson for my online course Improvisation Savvy. It involves singing an 8-bar improvisation over a provided rhythm track and then playing on one’s instrument a transcription of what was sung. The point is to hear your authentic music coming from your instrument.
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.
The Art of Skill – the book Dave Liebman and I put together – is selling well. I’m getting a lot of positive feedback.
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.
Jazz trombone, writer, multimedia artist, marketer
My recently turned 18-year old son is a passionate photographer. He’s got himself a little business where people pay him for senior photos, family portraits, sport team pictures, and other personal moments.
A couple weeks ago I sent Richie Beirach a YouTube clip from the movie Whiplash as a bit of levity. It was the scene where the teacher in the film Fletcher berates that poor trombone player for being out of tune. Spoiler alert:
I originally meant to write this as a reply to a comment Richie Beirach wrote on my blog. But as I started writing, I realized that this could be the springboard for something much more important.
I was forwarded a YouTube link yesterday of a young musician playing John Coltrane’s solo from Giant Steps note for note.
Tools for helping musicians at all levels learn about jazz and play to their full capability.