PlayJazz

Did you hear the one about the jazz musician who won the lottery?

He kept gigging until it was gone.

We jazz musicians can be a pretty gloomy old lot sometimes. Unappreciated, largely ignored, embittered, naturally inclined to cynicism and simultaneously displaying superiority and inferiority complexes, it's unsurprising we're not the cheeriest of souls.

And let's face it, why should we be? We live in a world where the winner of 'X-Factor' automatically has a number one hit at Christmas and probably makes more money during their fifteen minutes of fame than Art Tatum made in his whole life?

I only mention this in passing due to the potentially provocative nature of the title of this post! As soon as anybody starts talking about anything relating to 'positive thinking', I want start jabbing sharp objects into my eyeballs and disembowelling myself with blunt ones.

So don't worry, you wont find me extolling the benefits of indulging in 'affirmations' or 'requests to the universe' here, I just want to share a subtle change in thinking that has helped me a lot recently.

You see, despite the Eeyore-ish tendencies of the average jazzer, you only have to engage us in conversation when a great record is playing and we become different people, filled with passion and enthusiasm;

"Oh yeah, listen to this bit...Man, I love the way he builds the tension there and then...BANG...releases it through the key change. That's just awesome!"

Despite the frustration and adversity we experience all too regularly, the love for the music never wanes and the excitement created when something is really cooking never fades - whether it's on a record or when we're actually nailing it on the bandstand ourselves.

Recently I've experienced a bit of a paradigm shift that gives me that feeling a bit more often and I thought I'd share it with you.

Part of the nature of being a jobbing jazz musician is that you tend to play a lot of scratch gigs. I'm not immune to this although I've made no secret of the fact that I think scratch gigs are killing live jazz. Nevertheless, they help pay the bills so, for the moment at least, they can be a necessary evil.

I've always known that I play very differently on these kind of gigs than at other times or when I'm practicing. I've always assumed it was something to do with the fact that I'm not used to playing with the rest of the band, or I'm often reading charts and playing material I don't know.

The same goes for recording. I never feel like I've really done myself justice on recordings and have previously put that down to the sterile nature of the studio environment, the physical distance between me and the other musicians and a whole host of other things.

Turns out it isn't any either of these things - it's me; I've been playing 'defensively'.

On some of the scratch gigs, particularly when playing with singers, and on some recording sessions I seem to drop into a rather unnecessarily generic-sounding mainstream style.

I've finally figured out that this happens because my internal goal is not to make something good happen, it's to be 'professional' and accurate and not make mistakes.

As a result, the music is usually fine and sounds perfectly competent, acceptable and pleasant, but it certainly doesn't get me excited. If I were in the audience on one of these gigs, I probably wouldn't rate myself very highly - "He's not a bad player but..."

When I realised this, I wondered if there were other areas and other times when I've been employing a 'defensive' attitude and when I gave it some thought I was amazed how many things in my life it applies to - both musical and non-musical.

I read once that there are only two basic desires that govern human all behaviour, the desire to gain pleasure and the desire to avoid pain.

In other words, we're always either moving towards or away from something. On reflection I think most people spend more time moving away from things - failure, rejection, discomfort, nervousness, judgement, humiliation and a million other real or imagined 'pains'.

As musicians, we may be more likely than most to adopt pain-avoidance as a default mode in our musical lives as we tie up so much of our self-worth in our playing. Whether real or imagined, the very thought of some kind of 'pain' can be enough to stagnate us.

This is what makes most of us naturally bad at hustling gigs and getting projects off the ground - we just don't want to run the risk of rejection or failure.

Now I know that I'm guilty of this, I can at least take some steps to try and avoid it. My new mantra is:

Try to do well. Don't try not to fail.

Already, adopting this attitude in the practice room is changing my playing. When I'm playing positively and trying to make it happen, I seem to be more creative, have far more ideas and fall back on clichés and stock-phrases less often.

I wrote a post a while ago entitled The Power Of Perception which talked about the role confidence plays in musical performance and how we can try to build a more confident attitude in general.

Now I've realised why confidence affects our playing so much: When I'm playing with confidence I'm trying to do well; when I'm not, I'm trying not to fail.

In a musical context 'try to do well' means; try and make it happen, try and create something good, get out of the comfort zone and let's get cooking.

Notice how all of those things are positive instructions and aren't related to to what I'm thinking or feeling, only what I'm doing.

Previously I'd be telling myself to be confident, be in control; not to be nervous, not to be worried about mistakes.

What's inspiring about my new mantra, and why I think it's a much better way of thinking, is that I'm not trying to tell myself what to be, merely what to do - which has got to be easier.

I know I'm seeing immediate benefits from adopting this attitude. I hope it helps some of you out there as well.

The internet is truly a double-edged sword. On one hand it allows us access to information on almost any topic imaginable. It has changed the way we interact with the world around us and has provided millions of people with an access to music unparalleled at any time in history.

On the other hand, whilst the amount of information on any given topic may be staggering, the quality and accuracy of that information varies enormously.

Whilst most of us are now internet-savvy enough to realise that there is no guarantee that information from untrusted sources on the web is accurate, I've recently been becoming concerned about something more dangerous than simple factual errors and inaccuracies - I'm talking about the 'received wisdom' of the web.

What got me thinking about this phenomenon wasn't directly related to music and, as I explain, you may be wondering what this has got to do with us as jazz musicians, so I'll ask you now to bear with me for a few paragraphs!

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Recently, as a freelance musician, I've been searching the web looking for advice on marketing myself and trying to view what I do from a more business-orientated standpoint (although I still think 'music business' is an oxymoron!).

In the course of researching what freelancers in other industries do, I stumbled across a whole host of information relating to 'lifestyle design' - which deals with the question of how to make the work you do fit the life you want to live - rather than the other way round.

For most people writing on the topic, this seems to mean leaving the 'day job' to become a freelance designer or blogger. These jobs allow a degree of location independence and many of the people attracted to the concept seem keen to travel.

What I found fascinating, and slightly disturbing, is that whilst there are a few people who seem to be actually out there walking the walk, there are many, many more who are clearly just talking the talk.

There are literally hundreds of people authoring websites and blogs that are proposing to teach people how to develop their lives in this direction, yet it soon becomes clear that there are precious few of those who are already living that life themselves.

For every Chris Guillebeau who makes a living through his website and is on a mission to visit every country in the world (he's done 119 out of 197 at the time of writing) there are countless wannabes who claim to know how to you can become financially independent and live your dream life.

The problem is that they are far from doing that themselves. And what's worse is that they don't see themselves as deliberately trying to mislead people, and would probably be horrified if they were accused of doing so.

They're all trying copy the model of the successful few - so they run blogs coaching people how to design the perfect life. Once they have developed a loyal, engaged readership they hope to monetise the endeavour by selling books and e-books, personal coaching sessions, public speaking, running workshops and so on.

The majority of these guys haven't made it yet - so how do they go about coaching others? Answer: They take the principles they have read about and learned on other sites or books and present them under their own banner.

In other words, it's second-hand knowledge - the guy presenting the concept doesn't necessarily know it works, only that it worked for someone else.

Furthermore, because these guys are trying to build traffic to their blogs, and believe that commenting on other blogs is a good way to do so, they visit other sites on the topic written by people in the same position.

If they see something on a site that sounds true or useful to them, they might blog about it themselves at some point. The second-hand knowledge has now become third-hand. Somebody else reads about that concept on that site and later blogs about it on their own. Third-hand becomes fourth hand...and round and round it goes.

Eventually, there are a whole load of sites that seem to have reached a consensus on the best way to go about things. For somebody new interested in the topic, there are so many sites saying the same thing that it seems clear that they must be right.

This is what I call the 'received wisdom' of the web - information that appears in so many places it leads you to believe that something must be true.

However, these lifestyle design sites are the perfect example of the dangers of this kind of thinking. One of the most honest bloggers in this area is J. D. Bentley who seems to have caused a stir recently on his blog Wage Slave Rebel with a couple of posts entitled Well-intentioned Liars and Bullshit With Bullets.

As a result of these posts, many lifestyle-design bloggers have since felt the need to be more transparent about their own circumstances. For the first time, visitors to their sites may be realising that these gurus are not yet leading the lives that they profess to be able to help you to create.

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The 'received wisdom' of the web affects every topic imaginable - and is certainly as applicable to learning to play jazz as it is to lifestyle design.

This makes it very difficult to know what is true and what isn't. Often, things that seem to be true at first glance turn out to be received wisdom under closer examination. A good example of this in a jazz context concerns rhythm changes.

Many, many sites and forums are full of people claiming that blues and rhythm changes are two equally essential cornerstones of jazz to be learned asap. However, the reality is that these days, you won't play rhythm changes anywhere near as often as you play blues.

Rhythm changes became very popular during the be-bop era and there were many tunes written over these familiar chord changes from George Gershwin's 'I Got Rhythm'. Tunes like 'Oleo', 'Anthropology' and 'Cottontail' are great examples and even the theme from 'The Flintstones' is a rhythm changes tune.

An enormous list of rhythm tunes has been compiled by the Trumpet Players' International Network and to the novice, it must seem clear that the received wisdom of the net is right in this case.

The only thing is, I think I've played fewer than five of the tunes on that list in the last 10 years. My personal experience as a gigging jazz musician is that rhythm changes tunes just aren't as popular as they used to be.

What I think has happened here is that older musicians used to teach the importance of learning rhythm changes because they were so popular in the past. There was a time when every jam session and gig would feature rhythm changes tunes and the advice was certainly sound. However, as the music has changed and developed, the popularity of these changes has diminished - especially when other material such as modal tunes and Latin Jazz has muscled its way into the jazz canon.

Yet the advice to study this chord progression in detail is still prevalent as a holy commandment on loads of jazz sites - THOU SHALT LEARN RHYTHM CHANGES!.

Many people are giving advice on jazz forums and websites that they've picked up 'second hand' from elsewhere. Just like the lifestyle designers I mentioned earlier, many of them are trying to appear more knowledgeable than they are - perhaps in attempt to 'fake it 'til they make it'.

Whatever their reasons, these people are not really helping anybody and if you are looking to the internet to help you develop as a jazz musician, it's easy to be led down a blind alley.

In itself the rhythm changes example is a fairly harmless incidence as studying rhythm changes won't do you any harm and I-vi-ii-V progressions are still found in many tunes; but it's certainly nowhere near as essential to do so these days as it was 40 years ago.

The point is this: Just because something gets written a lot, it isn't necessarily true.

There is a lot of extremely good advice online but there is also a lot of rubbish written and it's always a danger to rely exclusively on the web as a source of information for learning to play. The best thing you can do is try to talk more experienced players, who you have heard play and respect and ask them if there's something you've read online that you aren't sure about.

Most good players will always take time to help and advise those who aren't quite as far along the road as they are - after all, everyone's been a beginner at some stage and we're all on the same journey.

Also, trust your own instincts and experience and if something you have been told doesn't ring true then don't naturally assume you're the one at fault.

As for those of us trying to help through the web, we have a responsibility not to publish second-hand material and only give advice that we know to be true through our own experience and skills.

I promise I'll always try to do that on this blog but I would advise everyone to be extremely careful with the internet and to make it only one of many resources you use in your musical development.

In other words: Question everything you read online - even this! ;-)

Until next time...

By far the quickest way I know of to improve is simply to listen to your own playing. Recording yourself will highlight a whole host of things, both good and bad, that you just won't be aware of when you're actually playing.

Long before I was any kind of player, I always felt I had a passion and understanding for the music. I could listen to players who were definitely further along the road than I was, but felt sure that I knew what could be improved in their performances.

I could never understand how it was so obvious to me what other people needed to work on but I was never sure what I should be prioritising when it came to my own playing.

The reason for this is that you are often too close to, and too involved with your own circumstances to be objective. In performing, you are often too wrapped up in the creative process and too focused on the minutae of what you're doing to appreciate fully how you sound in the context of the tune, the balance of the ensemble and the performance as a whole.

Recording yourself allows you to 'step back' from the act of creation and review your performance more objectively - hearing yourself as a listener not a player. Once you start to understand how listeners and your peers are hearing you, you will start to see what should be the next priority in your development.

So without further ado, here is the PlayJazz guide to getting the most out of recording yourself:

Record Everything

Gigs, rehearsals, jams, practice sessions - the more you can listen to yourself playing, the better you will understand where you truly are as a performer. Also, recording yourself a lot will even out the natural fluctuations caused by those 'good days' or 'off days' that randomly seem to affect us all from time to time.

I started out recording myself using tapes (remember those!?) and then moved to a minidisc recorder, but today's technology makes it easier than ever to grab a rough recording of a performance. Whether you use a minidisc, a digital recorder, a laptop, a dictaphone, an mp3 player or even your mobile phone, make sure it's always with you and put to good use.

It's not important to record in brilliant quality - you're not making an album here. All you need is a good idea of your overall sound and how you fit in with the ensemble if you're playing in a band situation.

Don't listen to a recording straight away

So you recorded the gig and decide to listen to it in the car on the way home. This is probably the worst thing you can do if you're intending to be objective about your own playing.

If the memory of the performance, of actually playing those notes is still fresh in your mind, you're not going to listen objectively. You'll be overly focused on your own playing, you'll only pay scant attention to what the rest of the band is doing and you'll magnify all the mistakes in your own mind becuase you can still actually remember making them.

It's much better to wait a couple of days before listening back to a recording of a gig, rehearsal or jam session as you'll be farther away from the physicality of playing that music and will find it easier to see the bigger picture.

The same principle applies if you've ever been in the studio and tried to mix on the same day as recording a track - it just never works because you're too close to the music making.

It's fine to listen back immediately to recordings of your solo practice, as you obviously need that immediate feedback to see if you're on the right lines. However, it's also a good idea to revisit personal practice recordings after a couple of days and see if you still feel the same about what you were doing. Sometimes you'll get a pleasant surprise and you'll sound better than you thought. Other times you'll find things to work on that you didn't notice the first time. Either way, the same principle of objectivity through distance applies.

Don't just listen to yourself

When reviewing ensemble playing, it's important to listen to the whole band - not just you! One of the key improvements you can make through recording band performances is to understand how you can fit into the ensemble better. Hearing yourself in the context of the band sound is probably one of the hardest things to do while you're on stage - especially if the acoustics in the room aren't great or the on-stage sound isn't the best.

Try to listen to the band as a single unit rather than the collection of individuals you know it to be. Do you complement the overall feel of the ensemble? Are you playing too much? Are you playing in the appropriate style for the material? Is what you're doing adding to the big picture? Does the audience buy into you as part of a collective musical entity?

This is especially important if you play with a lot of scratch bands. The keys to this type of ensemble is being flexible enough to fit in with the other players on the gig.

If you're a pianist playing with a mainstream singer, this probably isn't the place to showcase all your cool fourth and altered dominant voicings. Your job here is to support the vocalist in the style they sing in - not to prove how brilliant you are.

If you play in a different style from the rest of the band, no matter how well you play, the audience won't buy into the ensemble as a whole and they will blame you for not fitting in, rather than the band for not being hip to your style.

Don't be too hard on yourself

If you're listening to yourself in order to see how you can improve, it's important not just to listen only for your weak points and beat yourself up for things that go wrong. Make sure you acknowledge every aspect of your performance - the good as well as the bad.

Remember, the goal of listening to yourself is to point you in the right direction. The purpose here is not to judge or blame yourself for not being as good as you think you should or want to be. Chances are, there will be a lot of things on the recording that you are doing really well and it's hugely important that you don't take these for granted. Remember, there was a time when you couldn't do the things you now consider easy.

Another good tip in this regard is...

Revisit old recordings and feel good!

A good way to feel better about where you are at is to remember where you've come from.

Revisiting old recordings is a great way to highlight how much you've improved. Listening to a gig from 6 months ago and knowing that you're a better player now is very satisfying as it proves that you are making progress.

Realising how far you've come proves that you're only going to continue to improve and can give your fragile musician's ego a boost.

Always remember that you may well be a better player in six months time, but you're also a better player now than you were six months ago. Listening to your past performances will help you avoid driving yourself crazy with negativity and give yourself credit for what you have accomplished.

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If you're not already recording yourself, I hope this post has persuaded you how useful it can be. It's been really helpful to me in the past and is still the best way I know to assess my playing accurately. Good luck, and see you next time...

Quick Tips seem to be this blog's equivalent of buses - after waiting ages for one, three come along at once!

In recent posts on jazz blues progressions and pedal tones I referred to a common jazz reharmonisation technique known as tritone substitution. I thought it would help some of you get the most out of those posts if I looked at this device in a little more detail.

Essentially, tritone substitution involves substituting a dominant chord with another dominant rooted a tritone away from the root of the original chord.

Don't panic if that doesn't make sense just yet – all will become clear!

Firstly, let's define a tritone:

• A tritone is an alternative term describing the interval of an augmented fourth or diminished fifth – for example, the distance between C and F#.
• This interval is called a tritone because it consists of exactly three tones (or whole-steps).
• A tritone divides the octave exactly in half – there are three tones between middle C and the F# above it. There are also three tones from that F# to the C above.

Now, let's look at tritone substitution in action. Here is a ii-V-I progression in the key of C major:

Dm7 G7 | Cmaj7 |

The dominant chord in this case is G7. The note of Db is a tritone away from G so here we can substitute a Db7 chord for the original G7:

Dm7 Db7 | Cmaj7 |

Here is another example in the key of Eb major. The ii-V-I progression in this key is:

Fm7 Bb7 | Ebmaj7 |

The dominant chord in this progression is Bb7. E is a tritone away from Bb so we can substitute a dominant chord built on the root of E.

Fm7 E7 | Ebmaj7 |

Notice how the substitution causes a chromatic root motion – the roots of the chords descend by a semitone (half-step) each time, resulting in smooth bass movement in the altered progression.

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Tritone substitution is not just limited to ii-V-I progressions though – in fact you can use it almost anywhere you see a dominant chord. For example, the middle 8 of 'I Got Rhythm' features dominant chords moving around the cycle of fifths. If the tune was in the key of Bb, this progression would be:

D7 | D7 | G7 | G7 | C7 | C7 | F7 | F7 |

You can use tritone substitution on any or all of these chords. A popular choice here is to substitute the G7 and F7 chords to give a descending chromatic bass movement for the whole 8 bars:

D7 | D7 | Db7 | Db7 | C7 | C7 | B7 | B7 |

This gives a very powerful sense of inevitability to the progression which culminates in the next bar when the harmony returns to the tonic of Bb.

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Whilst you can use tritone substitution at any time in the performance of a tune, if you wish to use it in the head, it's important to consider what's happening in the melody.

For example, let's say we're looking at a Bb7 chord and the melody note is a D. D is the third of a Bb7 chord and this is a very consonant sound. If we use tritone substitution and change the Bb7 to E7, the melody note now becomes the seventh of the chord. This is still a consonance so there's no problem.

However, it's a different story if the melody note is Bb. This is the root of the original Bb7 chord and about as consonant as you can get! If we substitute E7 here, the melody note now becomes the b5 of the underlying chord. This will be very dissonant.

This doesn't mean that we should not use the substitution here - in fact changing the chord to an E7b5 may give an unexpected twist here. Sometimes this can breathe new life into a familiar tune - but it can also sound terrible in the wrong context.

In other words, it's important to consider the implications of the substitution for the melody notes and to be aware that we may be creating dissonance where there was originally melodic consonance.

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Now you know how to use tritone substitution, the obvious question are 'How does it work?' and 'Why do the substitute chords have to be rooted on a note a tritone away rather than any other interval?'

The answer lies in the relationship between the third and seventh of dominant chords a tritone apart. In a V-I resolution, the tones in the dominant chord that demand to resolve to the tonic are the third and seventh. In the resolution of a G7 chord (spelled G, B, D, F) to C major (spelled C, E, G), it is the B and F of the G7 that resolve in semitones to C and E – the root and third of the I chord. If you have access to a piano, play only these notes and listen how they contain the primary sound of the V-I resolution.

Now let's compare a G7 chord to its tritone substitute – Db7:

G7 – G, B, D, F
Db7 – Db, F, Ab, Cb

The third and seventh of the G7 chord are B and F respectively. The third and seventh of Db7 are F and Cb. Cb is enharmonically the same note as B so the primary resolution tones are the same in both chords.

• When G7 resolves to C major, the notes of B and F resolve by semitones to C and E.
• When Db7 resolves to C major, the notes of F and Cb resolve by semitones to E and C

In other words, G7 and Db7 are interchangeable because the tension notes that want to resolve are the same in both chords.

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At first, the sound of tritone substitution may be a little strange, but with a little practice you'll discover it to be a powerful tool that can add variety to familiar progressions and breathe new life into old tunes. Like most substitutions, if it's overused it can become very irritating, but a well placed tritone sub can keep the audience on its toes.

I hope you've found this useful. Until next time…

A pedal tone is a tone sustained in the bass while the harmony moves in the upper voices.

Pedal tones are a great way to add a sense of movement to a tune and are particularly good for intros. This Quick Tip will give you a few examples of how pedal tones can be used at the start of a tune.

Have a look at this example (click for a larger version):

The note of C in the bass is repeated throughout the four bars while the harmony on top moves up and down diatonic triads. As we are in the key of F major, and C is the fifth degree of the F major scale, we can call this a dominant pedal as the main focus of the harmony is the tension created by the dominant C which will resolve eventually down to the tonic of F.

I have written all the examples as lasting four bars, but you can repeat the vamp as many times as you like, which makes it a really flexible device.

The next example features a slight variation at the end (click for a larger version):

The change of movement at the final chord (Bb/C instead of Gm/C) adds a twist to the sound and strengthens the entry of the melody in the next bar.

If you want the intro to last for more than 4 bars, I would recommend repeating the first 2 bars as many times as necessary and then using the last 2 to bring in the main tune. This can be a great way to signal to your singer or horn player that they should come in.

Despite the different voicings, The underlying harmony is very similar - Gm/C is just another way of notating a C9 chord (no third) and Bb/C is a common voicing for a C sus chord. The slash chords make for an easy way of describing the movement, but the underlying feel of the harmony is very much that of the dominant C7 chord.

You can further emphasise the introduction of the melody in this way (click for a large version):

In this example, Bb/C has been changed to Bbm/C which gives the sound of a C7susb9 chord - a more colourful sound that resolves very smoothly down to the tonic of F.

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There are many varieties of dominant pedal introductions and another common technique is to play a turnaround chord sequence over the pedal as shown below (click for a large version):

This intro features what is basically a I-Vi-ii-V sequence over a C pedal. In the variation below, the harmony is the same but the right hand plays a couple of common 'rootless' voicings in the final bar to add variety.

You can take these examples just as they are and use them in your own playing or, if you have a little theory knowledge, you can try and come up with your own variations. I haven't notated the following suggestions, as I don't want to swamp any beginners with too much information. If you are a beginner, feel free to ignore the next bits as I'll explain them in more detail in future articles.

For the slightly more experienced player, you could make all the upper chords dominant chords:

F/C D7/C | G7/C C7 |

You could then use tritone subs on some or all of those dominants for a more colourful sound. I'm fond of this version:

F/C AB7/C | Db7/C C7alt |

You get the idea. There are so many possibilities for pedal intros that
a little experimentation is well worthwhile.

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Finally, if you're not a pianist or bass player and you want this kind of sound, just ask the rhythm section to set up the tune on a dominant pedal and they'll do the rest.

I hope you've found this tip useful. I'll revisit some of the concepts I've mentioned like tritone subs and slash chords in future articles, so don't worry if you don't fully understand everything in this post. My hope is that, whatever level you're at, there has been something you can use here. Until next time...

Whilst jazz may have been born from the blues, it went on to develop its own, separate identity whilst keeping much of the phrasing and deliberate dissonance that characterises the older musical form.

The 12-bar blues is still a hugely common sequence in jazz, but these days the way jazz and blues musicians approach this form is quite different.

Here is a standard 12-bar progression in the key of Bb.

This is the most basic form of the blues but this common variant is also played by many blues players.

Notice the addition of the Eb7 chord in the second bar and the F7 chord in the final bar. Both of these are progressions you will hear played on blues recordings by everyone from Robert Johnson to B.B. King.

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By contrast, jazz blues tends to have more harmonic movement created by altering parts of standard blues progressions. As jazz musicians love to reharmonise, there are many 12-bar blues sequences but the following is probably the most common jazz blues progression:

Here bars 7-10 have been reharmonised with a I-VI-ii-V progression. This works because the V chord, F7 resolves down a fifth to Bb so the harmonic movement sounds smooth. The same progression is used as a turnaround in the final two bars (each chord is played for 2 beats in these bars).

This progression is one that you can use whenever anyone calls a blues at a jam session as it's considered to be the 'standard' progression for jazz blues.

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From here, you can continue to reharmonise the changes in many ways. The most important movement in the blues is the one from the opening chord (Bb7) in the first bar to the chord a fourth higher in the fourth bar (Eb7).

This relationship really defines the blues and these bars are almost never altered. However, you can alter the rest of the progression however you like.

As the chords in a blues are all dominant seventh chords, a common technique is to precede the dominant by its ii chord. For example, the first line could be played as:

Bb7 is the dominant chord from the key of Eb major and has been preceded by the ii chord from that key - Fm7.

The progression can be further reharmonised by preceding the ii chord with a dominant chord a fifth above that. That, in turn can be prededed by it's ii chord until you end up cycling through ii-V progressions until you hit the Eb7 in the fourth bar.

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Reharmonising using ii-V progressions was a key device of the be-bop era and Charlie Parker used this technique on a set of reharmonised blues changes that have become so common they're named after him. Sometimes a blues will be called and someone will call out 'Parker changes'. This is what they mean:

Here Parker reharmonises using ii-V progressions in two different ways. In the first four bars, as illustrated earlier, he precedes each dominant chord with a ii chord and each of those is preceded by a dominant chord a fifth above.

In the next four bars, ii-V progressions descend in semitones or half-steps until the final ii-V returns him to the 'home' chord of Bb7.

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Because this is supposed to be a 'Quick Tip' (which is already considerably longer than I originally intended!), I won't go into a more detailed analysis here, but if you don't really understand the theory behind the reharmonisations, don't worry too much!

The main thing is to learn the 'standard' jazz blues progression and to be aware that a jazz blues can feature many reharmonisations and be more harmonically dense than the 12-bar progressions commonly played by blues artists.

The most common keys for jazz blues are Bb and F. Eb, Ab, G and C also crop up from time to time. If you're following the advice in my last Power Tip then these are the keys to focus on first.

I'll almost certainly revisit the blues at some point in the future to examine how to approach improvising over jazz blues sequences but in the meantime, I hope you've found this Quick Tip useful.

Ok, to get the new Power Tips series underway with a bang, we'll start with something controversial! Power Tip Number one is:

Don't practice everything in every key

Nearly every instructional book I've ever read has talked about the importance of practicing everything in every key and whilst it's true that doing so will eventually yield you a fluency and competence that you won't get any other way, the reality is that you will play in some keys more that others.

The time you're most likely to play in unusual keys is when you're working with singers, but even then their arrangements are likely to be written in as 'sensible' a key as possible. For example, if they can comfortably sing a tune in B major then Bb or C Major are also likely to work equally well, being only a semitone away.

The other reason given for practicing in all keys is that jazz tunes modulate a lot through many keys, and you're likely to encounter every key at some stage. This is true, but again, there are certain keys that you just don't spend much time in.

Whilst there are some tunes that will modulate to the less common keys, they tend not to stay in these keys for very long. This means that you have to be able to play something effective in these keys but, to get by, you don't need the same fluency and number of options in these keys as you do in more common keys such as Eb and Bb.

With this in mind, if you're in a hurry, you're probably better off concentrating on the more common keys. For example, if your goal is to learn the 'A Train' ending so it's always an option on the bandstand, just concentrate on the keys that standards tend to be written in for now and then move onto something else. After all, practicing it in all keys when you'll only ever play it in half of them may not be the best use of your time if you want to show an improvement immediately.

My personal experience suggests that the most common keys for standards are:

Major

• Eb
• Bb
• F
• C
• G

Minor

• Cm
• Gm
• Am

If you're learning endings or intros then these are the keys to focus on. Whilst the other keys may crop up in the middle of of a tune for a few bars, there are very few tunes written in those keys so for noticeably quick development then concentrate on the most common keys.

This isn't to say that standards are never written in the less common keys, for example 'Stardust' is in Db, 'Triste' is in A and 'Wave' is in D - but these are definitely exceptions to the rule.

The same goes for improvising. In addition to the common 'home' keys, Ab, Db, Gb, A, E and D do occur regularly in standards but they tend only to modulate to these keys for a short time. Be able to cope in these keys, but focus your efforts on the others for quick improvement.

Remember, your goal is to develop quickly here so by focusing on the keys you'll spend the most time playing in, you'll be developing a fluency that will be more noticeable to the audience and your peers straight away.

Finally, it's important to point out that you will eventually need to practice in all the keys as true instrumental facility is developed that way. However, if you want to work on something you can use on your next gig or session, whether it's a voicing, a lick, an intro/ending phrase or anything else, concentrating on the common keys will let you start using it straight away in real musical situations.

Every jazz student I've ever met (myself included) is in a hurry. We all want to get better – and fast. In the last two posts, I've talked about the way this can impede our development by causing us to flip-flop from one thing to the next, driven either by the fear that we're practicing the wrong thing, or that what we're doing isn't working. If you want to check those posts out first, you can do so here and here.

Because everyone wants to be better now, I'm starting a new series called Power Tips. Like Quick Tips and Hidden Gems, these posts will pop up from time to time and they'll focus on things that will yield an immediate improvement in your playing.

(btw I am aware I haven't written any Quick Tips or Hidden Gems for a while, but rest assured there are some in the pipeline for the coming weeks!)

Before I post the first Power Tip, let me first make a point about instructional methods. Most students, even if they're teaching themselves, are following some kind of method. Whether the method comes from a teacher or a tuition book, the goal is likely to be to help you develop as an all-round musician in the long term.

This is a very sensible approach and if you follow the advice and put in the work, chances are you'll eventually end up as a monster player. However, if you're in a real hurry to see big improvements in your playing, it's important to realise that all methods are developed with the benefit of hindsight.

In other words, the person developing the method, didn't follow that method themselves to become the player they are. What they have done, is looked at all the skills they have developed over the years and tried to codify them into a linear and logical method.

There's nothing wrong with this but the reality is that most musicians' development isn't linear but organic and often sporadic. With this in mind, if you're patient and looking to develop solidly and completely as a musician then stick to the methods – they'll certainly do that for you.

However, if you’re looking to make improvements that will be immediately noticeable, and by that I mean on-the-next-gig kind of noticeable then Power Tips could help you out. I'm going to post the first tip immediately after this to get the ball rolling. I hope you find them useful.

Last time on the blog, I talked about the frustration caused by being afraid that you're practicing the wrong thing. In that post, I also claimed that any practice you do will help you get better as a musician's improvement is very rarely linear and there is a basic relationship between the amount of time spent practicing and the level of musicianship reached.

However, what most emerging players are looking for is the key to improving faster. As promised, I will be posting some hints and tips on how to take your playing to the next level in the shortest time, but first I think it's important to talk about attitudes to practice and outline a couple of things I feel are absolutely vital for students to remember if they're going to improve.

The first is all about dedication. To put it simply:

Never Give In

Winston Churchill once famously said:

"Never give in. Never give in. Never, never, never, never - in nothing, great or small, large or petty - never give in, except to convictions of honour and good sense."

There will be times when you just don't seem to be able to master a certain aspect of playing, even though you feel you are doing all the right things. When this happens the temptation is to second-guess yourself and give it up as a bad idea.

For me, the key in what Churchill said that makes the attitude applicable to musicians was never to give in 'except to convictions of honour and good sense'.

If you feel sure that you're doing the right things but it's not happening for you, stick with it - chances are you're right on the verge of a breakthrough. What many of us don't always realise is that improvement often comes through a combination of persistence and the knowledge encapsulated in the next point:

If you can't see it immediately, it doesn't mean you're not improving

After studying jazz for around a year or so, I had learned enough to realise that my playing really lacked an authentic swing feel. I asked a couple of musicians I admired and turned to some tutor books and they all seemed to say the same thing – "The answers are in your record collection".

Most of the advice was to play along with records and try to emulate the phrasing of players I admired. I had always admired the way Oscar Peterson swung and decided to go to school with him. For weeks, I would put his recordings on and busk along with them. I wasn't trying to transcribe the notes Oscar was playing but merely trying to mimic the swing-feel he epitomised in his improvised lines.

Well the results were inconsistent to say the least. I would have false epiphanies and think I had it down, only to find that after a half hour break, I was right back to the start. I was so tempted to give up and try and find another way to progress. I must admit, I did try a lot of fairly useless things, like playing about with minute rhythmic variations in swung eighths in sequencers, trying to come up with a mathematical formula that I could apply to my playing.

Of course, it didn't work and I still wasn't swinging. Nevertheless, I carried on playing along with Oscar because so many people had told me it would help and the approach itself made sense to me – even if it didn't appear to be working out. I had read so many times that the greats of the past had learned from playing along to records that I believed it had to be the right way to go.

And then, one day everything just seemed to click and I found that I was finally playing eighth notes that actually swung.! What's more, I could do it all the time, it didn't evaporate if I had a break from the instrument.

Looking back, I realise my mistake was thinking that the rhythm of the eighth notes was at fault when I wasn't swinging because I wasn't accenting the off-beats correctly. A good teacher would have sorted that out for me fairly quickly but I didn't have money for lessons at the time.

Yet all those hours playing along with OP were invaluable in laying a solid foundation for my appreciation of the way a swung line should sound. It was only persistence and my belief that I was doing the right thing that finally allowed me to succeed.

There was nothing different about the day it all came together but it was the cumulative effect of the work I had done that helped me to achieve my goal. If I had abandoned my approach when it didn't immediately yield results I would never have got there. I couldn't see it at the time, but every hour playing with those records was improving my playing.

This brings us nicely to the third thing it's vital to remember when practicing:

Plateaus are natural

Have you ever gone through a phase where you practiced and practiced but your playing seemed to be stuck in a rut? This happens to EVERY musician at some stage and, whilst plateaus are both frustrating and frustratingly unpredictable, it helps if you can accept that they're just a natural part of learning and not beat yourself up about it.

As in the example above, sometimes it takes a while until the cumulative effect of practice leads to a tangible improvement. The key is to make sure that you are working in ways that you feel confident will improve your playing in the long run and just keep putting in the hours. You will go up to the next level eventually.

________________________

The advice in this post could realistically be summarised in a couple of main points:

• Never give up
• Don't demand instant results
• Trust your methods

The last point is particularly important as trusting your methods will allow you to keep working when the improvement doesn't seem to be happening.

This does mean you need to pick your methods carefully. If you have a teacher with a method you trust that's great, but if you're teaching yourself, don't be drawn by fads or experimental approaches if you're in a rut.

It doesn't mean that you should stick blindly to something that's clearly not working but confidence in approach really helps when it all seems like an uphill struggle. Remember Churchill qualified his 'never give up' with 'except… to good sense'. Trust your own judgment and instincts – if any approach just doesn't feel right to you then find one that does and go to work on that.

Whilst this has been quite a philosophical post, developing the right attitude to practice is vital if you're going to stick with it through all the undulations, peaks and troughs that are an unavoidable part of learning to play. Developing the right mindset will do more to help you improve quickly than anything else.

In the next post, I'll be returning to those practical tips I promised to speed up your development, but for now I'll leave you with some words of wisdom from Bill Evans about the power of persistence and dedication in practice:

"I believe in things that are developed through hard work. I always like people who have developed long and hard, especially through introspection and a lot of dedication. I think what they arrive at is usually a much deeper and more beautiful thing than the person who seems to have that ability and fluidity from the beginning. I say this because it's a good message to give to young talents who feel as I used to."

Like many musicians, I am constantly trying new methods and approaches in my personal practice. If I hear a new sound on a record or come across a new way of approaching something, I'll often try it out in the practice room to see if it's going to suit me. Sometimes it does and sometimes it doesn't.

These days I'm fairly sanguine about trying different things, but I remember a time when I lived in fear that I was practicing the 'wrong thing'. What to practice is the question that torments jazz students on a daily basis.

I have talked before about how the enormity of topics that an emerging jazz musician has to study can be overwhelming. So many developing players continuously flip-flop from one topic to the next, from one instructional method to another, desperately looking for the 'right' approach – in other words, the one that's going to make them a better player overnight.

If this is you, even though you might be logically aware that such a method probably isn’t out there, there is something beguiling about the lure of the new. Maybe, just maybe, you'll stumble across something that makes everything fall into place and you'll suddenly be the monster player you always dreamed.

The bad news is, of course, that the magic pill, the golden method or the secret jazz scale does not exist, and musicians only improve by putting in the hours at their instrument. Anybody who tells you differently is selling something.

There is a basic and obvious correlation between the amount of practice done and the degree of improvement. It is rumoured that Charlie Parker used to practice 14 hours a day and John Coltrane would practice so much that he often fell asleep with the saxophone in his mouth.

It's not really surprising that these are the two most influential saxophone players of all time is it?

Charlie Parker has always been a source of encouragement to me because, unlike some players, there is a lot of documented evidence about a time when he couldn't play.

It can be easy to imagine the great players simply springing from nowhere, fully formed as musicians and just waiting for the world to catch on to their genius.

This is primarily because they sound great on all the recordings – even early ones where they may not have found their unique voice yet. However, the reality is that they were only allowed to record when they had reached the stage of sounding great. Nobody gives recording contracts to musicians who can't play (well, not in the jazz world anyway!) and they were only allowed into the studio after years of hard work, study and practice.

It can be so easy to forget that even the great musicians had to spend years in the obscurity of the woodshed. There isn't much information on most players about these years for the simple fact that they weren't famous yet. And why weren't they famous? Because they couldn't play!

That is why Bird's story is so encouraging. There are stories of him turning up at Jam sessions in Kansas City and being terrible. And I mean in an only-knowing-two-tunes-and-not-realising-there-were-different-keys kind of terrible. There are many musicians who remember him when he didn't have a clue what he was doing. It's hugely inspiring and reassuring to know that even someone as great as Charlie Parker used to suck!

If we accept that there is a direct link between practice and improvement then, finally, here's the good news:

It doesn't matter what you practice.

Honestly. As long as you are spending time with your instrument you will get better. Musicians generally develop in organic and non-linear ways and every moment you spend making music on your instrument will contribute to your development.

This means that there's no need to worry while you are studying one thing whether you should be studying something else - because anything you do study will contribute to your development as a musician.

Whilst there may be those who initially disagree with that statement, look at this way: If you practiced anything for 14 hours a day for the next six months, would you be a better musician at the end of that period?

Now having said all that, the question that musicians ask most often is not "How do I get better?" but "How do I get better faster!?"

Everybody's in a hurry to improve quickly and the amount of things you need to master to play jazz even competently is huge. Sometimes it feels like it will be impossible to get through it all in one lifetime.

Unfortunately, impatience alone will not make you into a better player – if it did we'd all be masters by now! Next time I'll be sharing some tips on things you can focus on to try and maximise your development and speed up the process as much as you can.

Until then, please don't worry about what you're practicing – just make sure you are. If you're practicing, you're getting better. It's as simple as that.