PlayJazz

The Power of Positivity

Thu, 19 Nov 2009 13:18:07 +0100

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.

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Beware Of The Web!

Mon, 16 Nov 2009 19:56:25 +0100

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...

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Power Tips - Record Yourself

Thu, 12 Nov 2009 12:07:55 +0100

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...

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Quick Tips - Tritone Subsitution

Mon, 09 Nov 2009 01:32:09 +0100

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…

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Quick Tips - Pedal Tones

Thu, 05 Nov 2009 13:13:19 +0100

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...

Comments

Quick Tips - Jazz Blues

Mon, 02 Nov 2009 08:56:10 +0100

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.

Bb7 Bb7 Bb7 Bb7 Eb7 Eb7 Bb7 Bb7 F7 Eb7 Bb7 Bb7

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

Bb7 Eb7 Bb7 Bb7 Eb7 Eb7 Bb7 Bb7 F7 Eb7 Bb7 F7

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:

Bb7 Eb7 Bb7 Bb7 Eb7 Eb7 Bb7 G7 Cm7 F7 Bb7 / G7 / Cm7 / F7 /

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 Eb7 Bb7 Fm7 / Bb7 /

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.

Bb7 Eb7 Gm7 / C7 / Fm7 / Bb7 /

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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:

Bb7 Am7 / D7 / Gm7 / C7 / Fm7 / Bb7 / Eb7 Ebm7 / Ab7 / Dm7 / G7 / C#m7 / F#7 / Cm7 F7 Bb7 / G7 / Cm7 / F7 /

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.

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Power Tips - Don't Practice in All Keys!

Thu, 29 Oct 2009 15:12:07 +0100

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

Minor

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.

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Getting Better Faster (Part Two) - Power Tips

Thu, 29 Oct 2009 15:08:53 +0100

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.

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The Power Of Persistence

Mon, 26 Oct 2009 14:17:49 +0100

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."

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Getting Better Faster (Part One)

Thu, 22 Oct 2009 13:40:48 +0200

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.

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The Power of Perception

Mon, 19 Oct 2009 14:17:31 +0200

Confidence is an important part of being a performing musician. I've recently been thinking about the things that can build or diminish our confidence as performers and the effect that can have on our playing.

Unless you're a complete beginner, chances are you've experienced a day where you really felt you could do no wrong on the piano; you were 'in the zone'.

On days like this, everything seems to fall easily under our fingers, we're full of ideas and we manage to nail everything we attempt. These are the days we live for!

Unfortunately, for most of us, days like this seem to be the exception rather than the rule. It's not that we play terribly on other occasions, but from time to time we experience a gig or a session where we really feel like you're flying.

The question is, if this can happen sometimes, why doesn't it happen all the time?

Unfortunately, I don't know the answer but I have been becoming increasingly aware that the differences in quality in musical performances are noticed far more by the performer than the audience.

Bill Evans once described professional playing as having a minimum performance level. Through practice and dedication, you reach the stage where, even if you are having an off night, the music never sinks below this, perfectly acceptable, minimum level.

This is a great attitude to have, and if you're at the stage where you're good enough to gig regularly, you've probably developed an acceptable minimum level in your playing. This means that it's always going to sound OK. Sometimes, an audience won't even be able to tell the difference between your minimum level and when you're 'in the zone'.

This isn't because audiences are intrinsically uneducated or ignorant, but because the difference between your worst and best performance probably isn't anywhere near as extreme as you might think.

I was at a gig last played by a couple of local musicians I know. Afterwards, I was chatting to a couple of the players and I mentioned to the sax player that I had enjoyed a solo she had played on 'Night & Day'. She looked surprised and asked 'Really?' It was clear that she didn't think much of it herself.

I went on to explain that it was her tone that I had really appreciated on this song as she had produced a really nice 'Stan Getz' tone. At this she broke into a smile and said 'Oh yes, I love Stan Getz's sound'.

So why was she so surprised by my compliment? Presumably it was because she was thinking about some of the mistakes she had made in the solo or the couple of moments where things hadn't gone quite as she intended. She hadn't even thought about the quality of her tone as it was an intrinsic part of her 'minimum level' playing that she took for granted.

The thing is, it wasn't that I didn't notice any mistakes in the solo; I did, but I just didn't care. Overall, through a combination her sound and the good lines that she did nail, the solo was an enjoyable one.

As musicians, many of us somehow automatically focus on what goes wrong in a performance and not what goes right. It's easy to take so much of our ability for granted and to focus on the negatives.

The reality is that music without mistakes is not jazz. Sometimes those mistakes will be obvious to the audience, sometimes they won't, but I'll guarantee there isn't a jazz musician who has ever lived who has played a gig without making a single mistake – even the greats. That's part of the nature of improvisation.

When a musician is feeling particularly on form, he or she probably doesn't play too differently from when they're a bit nervous or lacking confidence. They'll probably attempt more things and take a few more risks but it's my contention that the key difference between whether they think of their performance as good or bad is one of attitude rather than a dramatic difference in the quality of playing.

Put simply, when musicians are playing confidently they're focusing less on mistakes.

If we can accept that mistakes are inevitable in improvised music and learn to focus on the overall picture created by our playing, we can start to quiet that nagging inner voice that judges us and bring us down when anything isn't executed perfectly.

It's important to recognise all the skills and attributes we have developed that make up our minimum performance level and it's also important to recognise that the audience appreciates a performance on an overall impression, not note by note.

I've never heard anyone say "What an incredible solo, so full of passion, originality and technical excellence. What a pity it was ruined by those couple of bum notes in the second chorus".

Equally, I've never heard anyone say "That was a great gig but when the bass player got lost in the third tune of the second set, it just ruined my whole evening".

Focusing on the minutae of your playing is like concentrating on grains of sand on a beach and ignoring the sea, and the sky and the general beauty of the natural landscape.

So, if you would to play with more confidence, you need to assess your musicality as a whole and give yourself credit for the things that you can do – after all, so many of them were only made possible through hours and hours of practice.

Try and keep the big picture in mind and experience the music like the audience does. Think about the solo, or the tune or even the gig as whole and don't get bogged down with judging every single phrase that you play – because nobody else is.

Confidence is simply a state of mind and whilst it's not always easy to control, it helps enormously to remember that if you have developed an acceptable minimum level of performance then you have earned the right to step on to that stage secure in the knowledge that even if you don't have a great night, it's still going to be fine.

Play with confidence, play with passion, play music you believe in and you'll never go wrong. Until next time…

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Find Your Voice

Thu, 15 Oct 2009 12:00:09 +0200

Here’s some bad news: The process of learning jazz is a constant, life-long endeavour and you’ll almost certainly die before you are 100% satisfied with your playing.

Here’s some good news: You don’t need to be technically perfect to make good music and entertain your audience. Sometimes you can turn your limitations into strengths.

Learning jazz is hard; and as time goes on, new players come along and develop another raft of stylistic conventions to learn and absorb.

A great emphasis is placed on the assimilation of ‘the tradition’ in jazz education and I’ve often felt jealous of guys like Bird and Diz in the past because I think ‘those guys were so lucky, they only had 40 years of music to absorb when they were learning and I’ve got over a hundred!’

Clark Terry, the famous trumpet player described the process of becoming a successful jazz player as follows:

Imitate
Assimilate
Innovate

Just think, when the bebop guys were starting out, all they needed to absorb was blues and swing styles and they could set about creating something new. Latin jazz was rare, Miles’ modal excursions wouldn’t be on the horizon at least another decade, the concept of Fusion didn’t really exist and Free Jazz was when the club didn’t charge a cover or the musicians from the club across the road had come over to sit in on their break.

The weight of ‘the tradition’ is now so heavy that it’s hugely intimidating for the emerging jazz player – and it will only get worse as the music continues to expand and develop.

Nevertheless, one thing that has always been true in jazz it that it is the players with their own unique sounds that stand out and move that tradition along. Put in its simplest terms; you have to find your own voice. This is so important that I’m going to say it again, in big letters:

You have to find your own voice.

And why is it so important that you find your own voice? Well two reasons really; firstly, if you imitate someone else, you’ll never be as good as them anyway. Have you ever heard any John Coltrane copycats? Have you come across any Charlie Parker wannabes? Have you ever seen anyone trying to play just like Oscar Peterson? Of course you have, there are a lot of clones out there. But have you ever heard one of them who sounded as good as the musicians they're slavishly copying? I’ll bet my hat you haven’t.

No matter how much they have developed their technique; no matter how much of the vocabulary they had down, these kinds of players will only ever be pale imitations of the Real Thing. That is why Trane and Bird and Oscar still shift albums by the bucketload. Charley Mingus had it right when he wrote a tune famously entitled ‘If Charlie Parker Were A Gunslinger, There’d Be A Lot Of Dead Copycats’ (later shortened to 'Gunslinging Bird).

The second reason for trying to find your own voice is that the world doesn’t need clones of great players to keep their styles alive – that’s what we have CDs and MP3s and DVDs for. If I want to listen to something that sounds like Miles Davis, why would I want to listen to somebody who has spent years copying Miles' sound, his tone, his technique, his phrasing, when I could just listen to the man himself with the touch of a button or a click of the mouse?

The pursuit of instrumental technique has become one of the holy grails of jazz performance with an unbelievable procession of virtuosos seemingly setting the bar for the level of technical facility required to play jazz.

However, when I think of players like Monk and Miles, I am reminded that technique in itself is no substitute for an original conception of the music. That's not to say that facility on the instrument is not a worthy goal but the development of that facility should be dictated purely by the player's musical conception.

Could Monk play like Art Tatum? No, he couldn't. Some would say that Monk didn't have the technique to play like Tatum but I think it's truer to say that Monk conceived the music in a different way than Art did. Look at it this way, could Art Tatum have played like Monk? Undoubtedly not, nobody plays like Monk!

Could Miles Davis play like Clifford Brown? For me, his recordings with Charlie Parker show Miles to be a competent rather than exceptional be-bop trumpeter. If Miles had stayed in within the be-bop genre for the rest of his career, I think it's fair to say that he wouldn't have gone on to become the most famous jazz musician in the world.

I believe the reason that Miles didn't excel at be-bop was that he was never truly enthralled with the be-bop idiom. He sought Bird out because he was the biggest name in jazz but as soon as he went out on his own, Miles ditched the acrobatics of be-bop and started developing the style and conception that would eventually result in the seminal recordings on 'Birth of the Cool'.

Perhaps the most interesting question of all is this; Did Miles and Monk conceive the music in the way they did because of a limitation in technique? Would having the technique of Art Tatum have made Monk into a different player? Would Miles still have had such an unmistakeable sound if he had developed the facility to play like Dizzy Gillespie?

Of course, we can only speculate at the answer. The one thing that does seem undeniably clear is that Monk and Miles are rightly revered as two of the greatest jazz musicians of all time, not because of their technical mastery of the their instruments, but because of their originality in musical conception and the distinctiveness of their musical voices.

Bill Evans once said "Technique is the ability to translate your ideas into sound through your instrument" and if this is true, it should always be remembered that ideas are more important than technique; technique is merely the vehicle that allows the expression of ideas. With this in mind, it would seem that Monk and Miles had every ounce of technique that they needed.

I am great believer in the liberating power of instrumental facility and I wouldn't want to give the impression here that I don't believe that technical development is an important part of learning to play jazz.

Nevertheless, what I do want to stress is this; you don't have to wait until you have great technique to try and develop an original voice.

Earlier in this article, I quoted Clark Terry's Imitate, Assimilate, Innovate formula and discussed how overwhelming it can be when trying to absorb the history of jazz. I think there is a real danger that jazz players can get so caught up in imitating and assimilating, that they never get round to innovating.

I would encourage all jazz musicians, whether they're beginners or advanced players, to strive to develop their own sound and their own way of playing the music. Study the tradition and learn from it, it is the basis of all that we do. Develop the facility on your instrument to express yourself without limitation, but don't ever be a slave to technique or beholden to convention and the perceived wisdoms of the past.

Whether we're talking about the all-time greats or the musicians at your local club, the players who truly stand out are not necessarily the ones who have the best technique, but those who have an individual sound and a unique way of conceiving the music

I know in the past, I have made the mistake of thinking that I would eventually start to develop my own sound once I had learned to swing like Oscar, play be-bop like Bud Powell and developed Herbie Hancock's harmonic mastery.

Of course this was mistake. Eventually I realised that no matter how much I study and practice, I'll never be able to play like any of those guys – which was kind of a depressing thought until I figured out what it really meant.

It meant that all I that was left was to try and play like me.

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A Call To Arms

Mon, 12 Oct 2009 11:17:01 +0200

There's been a lot written recently about a new study that claims that the jazz audience is dying and it looks clear that the music is going to face a challenge in finding new listeners in years to come. Now, more than ever, it is vital that there are players that have something original to say if jazz is not going to become a museum piece with an overwhelming past and no future.

Now I don't believe for one second that jazz is dead and I remain utterly convinced that it is a music that anyone can enjoy. I agree with Terry Treacher in the article I linked to that the challenge is how to market the music to a new generation.

However, I am also equally convinced that 95% of jazz gigs are derivative and boring and not helping the situation at all.

You know those gigs you see, the ones you probably play (I know I certainly do) where you turn out with a scratch band and plough through a load of standards in the usual mainstream way, in the way that you and every other jazz musician on the planet has done a million times before? The gigs where all the arrangements are more or less the same, where the endings of tunes are always either a cliché or a bit of a train wreck? The gigs where mixing it up consists of interchanging swing tunes, bossas and the odd ballad? The gigs that are basically just jam sessions but with the same line up for the whole night?

Those gigs are just boring; and they're killing jazz.

And just in case anyone reading this has been playing these gigs and is having a defensive, knee-jerk reaction that says I'm wrong, let me ask you this: when was the last time you told a load of your friends and family that they should come along to your scratch gig because it was going to be a great night?

Another equally valid question: when was the last time that you saw one of these gigs full of musicians who were there just to listen? Unless there is the opportunity to sit in or a big name is playing, even other jazz musicians can't be bothered to go to gigs most of the time. If the people who love jazz enough to dedicate huge chunks of their lives to absorbing and learning to play this music don’t find most gigs interesting enough to attend, then why should anyone else?

Look, I know as well as anyone how difficult it can be, especially if you're trying to make a living as a musician. So many of the venues are really booking background music and the pay is so bad for many of them that you can't afford to rehearse with a band for a one-off gig that pays you about minimum wage when you factor in travelling time, setting-up and packing-down gear and so on.

So I'm not saying that we shouldn't do the restaurant, function, background, 'wallpaper' gigs - after all, they're bread-and-butter for many of us and put food on the table. I understand all too well that we've got to earn money and pay the bills and, like most working musicians, I'm not in a position to turn away paying work because of some flighty delusion of my own worth as an 'artist'. But that doesn't mean that I have to sell my musical soul, it doesn't mean that I have to surrender my whole musical life for a pay-check, it doesn’t mean that has to be the only music I play.

What I am saying is this: if we want jazz to have a future, we all have a responsibility to pull our fingers out and start trying to come up with something worthwhile that's going to put bums on seats and create an audience. And just to be perfectly clear, this doesn't mean that we have to dumb the music down even further and turn it into bland jazz-pop or 'smooth' jazz. It means we have to start playing music we believe in and it means we’re going to have to start believing in ourselves.

I know too many good players who only ever play generic mainstream gigs with scratch bands – and it's such a huge waste. I do firmly believe that jazz has a future and I also firmly believe that we have the musicians with the creativity and passion and potential to take the music in new directions. I am also equally convinced that we can't just leave it to the 'big names' to do it for us.

Brad Mehldau may well be one of the most unique jazz voices to emerge for years and he has deservedly become a massive name in the music world; E.S.T. were a trio with a unique sound that started to bring jazz to an audience more familiar with rock and pop.

Does it then follow that the success of these artists should automatically make people want to come and listen to me going through the motions on the 'The Girl From Ipanema' in a local wine bar with a load of other jaded musicians who idly dream of getting a 'decent' gig, but who wouldn't have a proper band or any material to play even if they did?

If we are going to find a new audience for jazz then we all need to take responsibility and start playing some music that we are truly passionate about, that moves us and that sounds, not like a pastiche of every mainstream band the world has ever seen, but like us.

Now if it's the case that ploughing that well-established furrow of standards with scratch bands is what really gets your musical juices flowing, if that's what lights your spark and makes you glad to be a musician then you keep doing that and do it to the very best of you ability. But if that doesn't fill you up, if it doesn't satisfy your deepest creative desires then start playing something that does.

Rank-and-file jazz musicians have been musical prostitutes for too long. We have been watering down our music for an imagined audience we perceive as too ignorant, uneducated or uncool to appreciate the Real Thing. The irony is, not only are people who would be blown away by the Real Thing not coming to the gigs anymore - the people we assumed we were pandering too aren't coming either.

We've got to make a change, and as a global community of jazz musicians we need to do it together. We need to start making music that we would want to go and listen to ourselves. We need to show the world what's so great about this music that we love and we need to start doing it from the grassroots up. We need to get in front of people in our home towns and cities and start playing music we believe in. We've got to get some fire in our bellies, curb our cynicism and frustration and start believing in ourselves and the power of our music.

In other words, we need to start playing proper jazz. And we need to do it now.

Comments

Sort Your Head Out

Thu, 08 Oct 2009 15:48:40 +0200

The last couple of posts on blog have looked at overplaying as one of the most common pitfalls that jazz musicians of all levels should be wary of. If you want to catch up with those posts before reading this one, first click here and then here. The links will open in a new window so you can come back to this post when you're done.

I’ve mentioned before how ego can impair a musical performance. One of the most common causes of overplaying is a need to impress and demonstrate technical ability to other players.

This isn’t necessarily ‘showing off’, it can often be born out of feelings of inadequacy, or a lack of confidence in phrasing. Either way, if a player can learn to remove (or at least control) these impulses, he will produce a more musical and rounded performance.

Here are a couple of things I try and keep in mind to help keep the ego out of the equation:

Play for the music

A musician I admire a lot said this to me when I was first starting out - and it still ranks as one of the best pieces of advice I have ever been given. It means that every note you play should be in service of the music.

Have you ever been at a gig where somebody is playing or singing the melody of a tune and another player is putting fills in all around it, to the point where it overpowers the melody? Have you ever heard one player in an ensemble playing too loud? Have you ever heard somebody trying to force ‘cool’ licks and tricks into somewhere they really don’t belong?

Anyone doing any of the above isn't playing for the music. Instead they're focused on themselves, about how they sound and about what the audience thinks of them. Unfortunately for the player, this often backfires and has the opposite effect on the audience than they intended!

If you always try and serve the music, if you always keep the sound of the ensemble uppermost in your mind and play to make the group sound better, you should find yourself less prone to overplaying.

Make musical decisions

This goes hand in hand with the last point. Always ask yourself if you’re making a musical decision to play something. Are you playing those cool fourth voicings because they’ll sound great in this context and support the style of the soloist, or are you playing them because you can and everyone should know how hip you are? Are you switching to double time passages because it will take the musical direction of the solo to another level, or do you just want everyone to hear how big your chops are? Always second guess yourself and ask if you are making a decision for musical or egotistical reasons.

Listen

I mean really listen. And not just to yourself! It’s too easy to be aware of what everyone else is playing on an almost subconscious level. This is a particularly easy trap to fall into if you have done a lot of practice with playalongs or band-in-a-box.

When you use backing tracks in your practice, it’s natural to focus mostly on what you're playing but it’s vital you don’t do this on the bandstand. You need to keep your ears open at all times and try and give equal weight to all the instruments in your mind. This way, you’ll have a much better conception of the ensemble sound and will be much closer to perceiving the music as the audience does.

This is also just as true when you’re soloing. Truly listening to the musicians around you will suggest musical ideas and help to shape your solos. Remember, even if you’re soloing, it is still a group improvisation and working in harmony (no pun intended!) with the rhythm section will make you sound a million times better than if you close your ears and blithely try and impose your own, pre-determined musical agenda on the band.

Don’t peak too soon!

If you’re on gig, remember that there will be plenty of tunes and plenty of opportunities to demonstrate your prowess. A common mistake is to try and pack everything you know, all your best material into every solo. You don’t have to get it all into every tune and on a gig you will have ample opportunity to showcase everything you’ve got.

If you nail all your best tricks in your first solo, what will the audience listen to after that? Sometimes it’s wise to hold something back so that your whole set, just like a good arrangement, has a structure and a deliberate climax that the music can build towards. Try and think about your set as a musical whole and see the bigger musical picture outside of one solo in one tune.

Let it go

This is easier said than done, but before you hit your first note, try and let go of all your fears, your hopes, your insecurities, your need to impress, your need for respect and recognition and your desire to play well; all of these things will only hinder you on the bandstand. It can sometimes help to picture all of these things being formed into a ball in your mind, which you can mentally throw away before you play.

However you do it, allowing yourself to acknowledge all of the psychological factors that can get in the way and letting them go before you play, can result in a much more musical performance.

These are just a couple of tips that I’ve found have helped me to control some of the negative psychological factors that can stop me from playing to my best, but this is as much of an ongoing battle for me as for everyone else.

If you have any suggestions of your own for controlling your ego when playing, it’d be great if you could write a comment or send an email so everyone can benefit. If I get enough good tips I might collate them all into a reference-post containing all the best advice.

Until next time…

Comments

Why your ego sucks!

Mon, 05 Oct 2009 12:21:20 +0200

In my last post, I talked about the widespread problem of overplaying in jazz and suggested some tips for things to do in practice to help us play less but say more. If you didn’t see that article, you can check it out here.

As I mentioned in that post, overplaying has a lot to do with the way we practice when we're trying to remove any musical constraints caused by technical limitations. However, I’m also convinced that a large part of the problem is to do with psychological factors – perhaps most notably our egos.

There is an innate desire to impress when jazz musicians get together. The first question good players ask about another musician is ‘can he play?’ If you’re playing with musicians for the first time, you want to let them know that you can play, that you know what you’re doing. This often results in overplaying as you try to prove your worth and ability to the rest of the band.

Jam sessions are another minefield if you’re trying to avoid overplaying. They may have a long and noble tradition in the history of jazz, but they’re always full of players who are trying to impress each other as well as the audience. It’s inevitable that overplaying happens when the primary goal of the soloist is to showcase how good he is.

Even if you’re playing with a regular band, the need to impress, to prove your musical worth is never very far away. Have you ever had to take a solo after another player has really torn it up with a lot of high/fast/loud, technically amazing passages?

This is the situation that spawned cutting contests and though they’re unfashionable these days, cutting contests played a hugely important part in the development of jazz improvisation by making players focus on technical mastery and developing new vocabulary.

Many innovations in the music arose from players looking for new sounds to help them ‘cut’ other musicians and these contests no doubt contributed to the standards of technical excellence that modern jazz musicians must reach if they want to be taken seriously.

(Incidentally, the history of classical music contains many examples of similar contests and virtuosos like Pagannini and Liszt were probably involved in as many cutting contests as Oscar Peterson and Louis Armstrong. It’s no surprise that technical excellence is also mandatory in classical music.)

If you have ever followed a particularly brilliant solo, how did that make you feel? Didn’t you feel under pressure to match, or even top the brilliant pyrotechnics your colleague produced? Even if you decided you weren’t going to try and beat them at their own game, you probably played something obviously and deliberately simple to impress upon the listeners that you weren’t trying to compete. Either way, it is highly likely that your ego was dictating what you played - not than your musical mind.

This is the heart of the problem. Whenever ego is involved, we inevitably make poor musical decisions. We play too many notes, or too fast, or too loud, or too high; dynamic contrast is forgotten and it doesn’t normally result in us producing great art.

It’s a personal contention of mine that a lot of jazz can be pretty boring. For every truly great album in the history of jazz, there are probably 30 that are dull as ditchwater. I put this down a combination of the uniquely prolific output of the average jazz musician (nobody can be brilliant all the time) coupled with a slew of technical excellence that often belies the fact that there isn’t a lot of music being made.

Now don’t get me wrong, I’m not suggesting for a moment that the simple and spacious solo is by definition more musically interesting than the complicated and technically demanding one. I’m just pointing out that ego and the need to impress can play a big factor in musical decisions – usually to the detriment of the music.

Our goal as musicians should be to play music for the sake of the music itself, and to make musical decisions with no other considerations. Our ultimate aim should be to produce a performance totally unfettered by technical deficiencies or our own egotistical needs and sensibilities. It’s likely we may never get there, but that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t do all we can in pursuit of that ambition.

The next post will focus on overcoming the psychological factors I’ve mentioned here and look for ways to free us from our egos and allow us to concentrate on making music. I’ll look forward to seeing you then.

Comments

Shut Up!

Thu, 01 Oct 2009 20:24:48 +0200

Overplaying has got to be the most common mistake in jazz. In the overwhelming majority of jazz solos, there are very few moments when the soloist leaves a rest of more than a couple of beats. I think that overplaying is the biggest challenge we improvising musicians face – whatever level we’re at.

For the great players, overplaying is a purely aesthetical problem – i.e. would a good solo have been improved by leaving more space? However for most of us, overplaying leads to a whole host of problems when our facility doesn’t match our ambition - when our hands aren’t as quick as our brains.

Have you ever tried to execute an idea but had to pull out of it because you knew you weren’t going to pull it off? Of course, you have; everybody has. Even in fairly advanced players, this is more common than you might think – good players are just better at disguising it.

For example, a player may start a semiquaver (16th note) passage that he intends to run for 8 bars. However, he realises that he’s not going to get there and either ends the idea early or switches to triplets to make it easier to cope. If he does this competently, the listener may be none the wiser and assume that this is what he intended all along.

As improvisers, our ultimate goal is to able to play anything that we hear in our heads so, although it might not sound wrong, the player knows that he has fallen short of his original intention.

Most of our practice time is spent trying to get to the stage where our facility allows us to express anything we choose. This is why overplaying can have such a detrimental effect on our playing – and why we nearly all do it!

When we practice improvising over changes, in order to try and get to the stage where we can do anything, we often try and play everything. The goal is to get to the stage where technique doesn’t limit our ideas, our musical mind is in charge and all options are open to us on the bandstand.

Unfortunately, this means that we overplay all the time when practicing because we are trying to prepare for every contingency. However, what we play on the bandstand tends to mirror what we play in our practice time and, as a result, so many of us play too much.

I personally believe that even the great players are guilty of overplaying much of the time and that many solos would be improved with more space – it’s just that the great players are great at nailing everything they play so they still sound pretty awesome! If great players can be guilty of overplaying, and we’re all copying them, it’s not surprising that the problem is endemic.

Alas, I’m as guilty of playing too many notes as anyone, but I have been trying to address the problem recently in my own practice and I thought would share a couple of things I’ve found helpful.

The first comes from Randy Halberstadt’s excellent book Metaphors for the Musician. He suggests this exercise: When you start a solo an idea will pop into your musical brain. Ignore it. Shortly, if not instantly, another idea will occur. Ignore that one too. When the third idea pops up, that’s the one that you should play. Do this before starting every phrase. By waiting for the third idea, you automatically leave more space in your solos and the phrases are more separated.

(Incidentally this exercise is also a great one to use if you feel like you’re playing the same old ideas all the time as it forces you out of that technical autopilot that jazz musicians can get stuck on from time to time.)

My next suggestion is simply to spend some time practicing playing less. At first, it will feel really strange to leave so much space when you’re used to playing all the time, but it’s important to remember that your perception as a player of how much space you are leaving will often be very different to that of the listener. It may feel like you’re hardly playing anything at all and yet the listener will just hear some nicely spaced phrases.

This is why recording your practicing is invaluable and if you haven’t done it before you will be amazed at how little you can play without it sounding empty. For some reason, a rest always sounds longer when you’re playing it than when you’re listening to it!

Another good tip if you can record is to play a ‘normal’ solo on a tune you know well and use the recording to transcribe and ‘edit’ your solo – in the same way that a writer will go back and edit a draft of something he’s written. Throw out anything that sounds like overplaying and focus on retaining only the strongest phrases and ideas. Once you’ve done this, record the edited solo and compare the two. Chances are you’ll sound like a much better player on the edited version – even though you’re playing a lot less!

I hope that these tips are useful, but the physical causes of overplaying are only one contributing factor to this problem cropping up so often. The others are all in our minds and I’m currently drafting a couple of posts which will focus on the psychological causes of overplaying and see what can be done to overcome them.

Thanks for reading, and happy practicing!

Comments

Email PlayJazz

Mon, 28 Sep 2009 14:22:39 +0200

I've set up a new email address specifically for the blog if anyone has questions, queries, remarks or other feedback that they don't want to leave in the comments section. You can now email me at:

playjazzblog@yahoo.co.uk

Thanks!

Barry

PS Spouses/sons/associates of deposed/deceased African Kings/Princes shouldn't bother emailing - even if we are 'Brothers in Christ'.

PPS I know I haven't won any kind of lottery/prize draw by the simple virtue of not having entered any. Don't bother trying to tell me otherwise.

PPPS I'm really not interested in increasing my length or girth, nor do I require any kind of boner pills - regardless of how unbelievable the price is.

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Jazz isn't dead...

Mon, 28 Sep 2009 14:09:16 +0200

Over the summer, I’ve been going to quite a few local gigs and making a real effort to support the grassroots jazz scene after reading some research done by the Musician’s Union which shows a fall in the number of small venues in the UK featuring live music.

Two things have become abundantly clear to me over the last couple of months:

There are plenty of talented musicians around who aren’t getting the recognition they deserve.
There are plenty of talented musicians around who just don’t help themselves.

To save you the bother of having to go to any gigs yourself, I have compiled my research into the following, free and incredibly handy guide...

The Free And Incredibly Handy PlayJazz Five Point Guide On How To Put People Off Coming To Any More Of Your Gigs

1. Don’t decide what you’re going to play in advance

It always looks really cool if everyone can tell you haven't spent any time thinking about what tunes you’re going to play. It’s even better if you spend 3 or 4 minutes between each song debating what you should do next with the rest of the band and flicking though fake books. If you can turn your back on the audience, that’s even better.

Make sure the gap between songs is always long enough for the audience to start getting bored and begin chattering. This way, the people who don’t take the opportunity to slip out the door won’t be listening when you do eventually start your next tune.

There is no such thing as taking too long to pick a tune, but however long it takes, never, ever, discuss the ending of that tune so it’s always a bit of a train wreck when you get there.

2. Make sure you look a mess

Wear the oldest, scruffiest clothes you can. Ideally, you’ll look like you’ve just crawled out of a hedge to start playing. Shorts and flip-flops in the summer months are hugely appropriate (especially on evening gigs) and the audience will think you must be super-hip and cool not to care about what they think you look like.

As an added bonus, the person who has booked you will be really happy that you’re more casually dressed than even his scruffiest customers because everyone will be able to tell who is in the band.

What’s more, he will then recognise the fact that you are artists forced to jump through his corporate-bullshit hoops to pay the bills and he’ll respect you for not comforming to any bourgeois ideas about the ‘tone of the place’. If he wants your genius, he gets it on your terms, right?

3. Ignore the audience

Try not to talk to or otherwise engage the audience in any way whatsoever. Ignore them as much as possible and pretend you’re just rehearsing in a garage somewhere. If the audience isn’t hip enough to realise how awesome your music is then that’s their loss isn’t it?

Don’t announce tunes or explain anything about what you’re doing – if it’s a standard, they should know it and if it’s an original, the music should speak for itself, man.

If it’s a particularly quiet night, then some kind of snotty, knowingly ironic remark about the size of the audience will always go down well.

And if you absolutely must say something over the mic, make sure it’s one positioned at the bell of a saxophone so you have to crouch down or bend double to talk into it. When you do talk, make sure you mumble unintelligibly and never look directly into the audience or they’ll know you’re selling out.

4. Don’t vary your set

If you want to be really hip, make sure all your tunes are mid to up-tempo numbers and play them at full-volume. Make sure everybody solos on every tune and that solos follow in the same order. For example, the correct arrangement for all quintet tunes is:

Head
Horn solo
Other horn solo
Piano solo
Bass solo
Drum solo or trading 4’s
Out head

This should never be deviated from. If you have funny ideas about 'variety' then you are allowed to have the drums solo only on every third tune - but the rest remains unaltered.

Play the same solo on every tune if you can. The correct formula is to start with some token short phrases (so it’s clear you’re ‘telling a story’) for a couple a bars before launching into a frenzy of double-timing for the remaining 98% of the solo.

If you’re a horn player, you should get up to the top end of your range as soon as you can and stay there. The dynamic marking should never fall below fffffffffffffffffffffffffff - unless you have a collapsed lung. ffffffffffffff is acceptable in such cases.

Make sure you never leave a silence longer than two beats and, particularly if you’re a horn player, make sure that all that pesky space around the melodic phrases of the out-head gets filled with gems of improvisational genius.

Make sure everybody plays all the time; Never create space, texture or dynamic by letting instruments sit out.

If you must ignore the earlier advice and play a ballad, make sure it always ends with a Sonny Rollins-esque unaccompanied saxophone cadenza before the final chord.

5. Drink (lots) on stage

Let's face it, this is a terrible gig isn’t it? You don’t want to be playing in some crappy bar or restaurant, you should at the very least be in a proper jazz club – if not a concert hall, so why shouldn’t you have a drink?

Besides, as soon as you start playing, the audience will recognise your musical genius for what it is and understand the only way you can stand to play here is by numbing the pain with alcohol. I mean, they might be here voluntarily but you have no choice – you have to be here. They’ll understand that this place may be alright for them, but they’re not tortured geniuses are they?

It’s perfectly acceptable to use the lengthy down-time between songs to acquire more alcohol – just unhook your instrument and go to the bar. If you’re already some kind of sell-out and are worried it may look unprofessional, then simply ask someone to bring you more drink over the microphone.

Besides, drink never affected your ability to play and you’re probably looser after a couple. In fact, if Branford called you up tomorrow to play at the Royal Festival Hall, you wouldn’t go on stage without a pint in your hand would you?

_________________________

Stick with the advice above and you’ll go far. Always remember, jazz is not entertainment, it’s art and you should do everything in your power to make people understand that, being a jazz musician, you’re more cultured, sensitive, intelligent, hip and creative than they are.

If the world’s not yet smart enough for your unique genius or society has dumbed down too much to appreciate jazz - that’s not your problem is it? You stick to your guns my friend and don’t think of doing anything differently. After all, as Frank Zappa famously said ‘Jazz isn’t dead, it just smells funny’.

Comments

Setting Practice Goals

Thu, 24 Sep 2009 11:37:47 +0200

I went round to a bass player's house the other day for a bit of a jam. I'm always interested in how other musicians practice and the way they approach their music. As I sat at the piano, I noticed a piece of paper pinned to the wall outlining a list of things to practice. It said something like:

Scales& Arpeggios
Major & minor ii-V-I's in all keys
Rhythm changes (all keys)
New tunes
Maintaining existing repertoire

"Interesting routine" I said "Do you manage to stick to it?"
"No" he said with a laugh "does anyone?"

I've written before about practice routines and how they're not as useful as people may tell you, but something has occurred to me recently in structuring my own practice that I thought may be worth discussing.

Here in Liverpool, there's a very good gig and jam session that takes place on a Tuesday night. Sometimes, when I'm practicing on a Tuesday afternoon I think about learning a new tune to play at the session that night.

So I pick out a tune and start working on it. I play the head through a couple of times and then start blowing over the changes. Now, improvising is by far my favourite part of playing jazz and once I get into this, this inevitably takes up the majority of the session.

Unfortunately, several times I've got to the jam and not been able to call the tune because, whilst I know the changes and can blow over them perfectly competently, I realise I can't remember the melody!

For me, improvising is the icing on my musical cake. It's the tastiest, most exciting bit that makes it interesting and appealing and delicious! Unfortunately, the basic melody is the cake itself and if you don't have that, you have nothing to put the icing on!

I don't know if this is a common experience or it's just me, but I do know that I can avoid this situation by simply deciding exactly what it is I want to achieve at the start of the session and making sure that all the bases are covered by the time I finish.

You see, if I don't consciously direct myself to do things that need to be done, the creative part of my brain takes over and just drags all my attention to whatever is the most fun at the moment – in my case, that's blowing over the changes, not learning the melody.

I think that the creative nature and desire to express that musicians naturally have makes it hard for us to stick to regimented regimes such as the one my friend had pinned up in his practice room. However, this doesn't mean that we can't take care of all the details in our playing if we want to improve.

I have found it helpful to think about my practice as consisting of two distinct disciplines - Big Picture Practice and Detail Practice.

Big Picture Practice relates to the music as a whole. It could just involve sight-reading the melody or ploughing through the changes and getting from the top of the chart to the bottom. When learning an uptempo tune, it could involve ramping the tempo up and simply trying to exist on the tune at that speed.

Whatever it involves, Big Picture Practice deals with a thing in its entirety and is useful for two reasons.

It helps you to conceive a tune as a whole and not a series of sections bolted together. Understanding the 'big picture' always makes for a more musical performance when it's time to play live.
It helps you learn how to cope with music you haven't had a lot of time to prepare – an essential skill at any gig or jam session.

Detail practice is just the opposite. It involves breaking things down and working on the...well...details! For different players, that will involve different things; for me that could be making sure I have memorised the pesky melody properly! For somebody else, it may be something different. Whatever it is, Detail Practice involves perfecting things you have been fudging in Big Picture practice

To take a different example, let's say you're learning to blow on "All The Things You Are" (or All The Chords There Are as it's sometimes called!). You have been doing Big Picture Practice for a while and can get through the tune, making all the correct key changes and staying in the right key. People listening may not realise there are any details that need work.

However, when you switch to Detail Practice, you now go into more depth. For example, you may be fine on the 'A' section but what about the 'B' – especially that tricky bit in E major? Are you always playing the same ideas in that part to get by?

Big picture Practice may have helped you to cope in that section, but in Detail Practice you now go into depth and make sure you can really nail it.

Generally this involves working on expanding your options – it could be working on different scales you could use in your improvisation or coming up with more chord voicings instead of the default ones you have used to get by in Big Picture Practice.

Whatever it is, you narrow the focus, expand your possibilities and take care of the details.

This way of thinking doesn't only apply to tunes either. Let's say you're trying to learn a new scale for improvising over ii-V-I progressions. You may start with detail practice, getting the basic scale under your fingers.

Then, once you have it down, you may put on a playalong and try to take it through all the keys.

Finally you would note the keys that aren't as fluent as some of the others (because there's always a couple isn't there?), switch back to Detail Practice and iron out the flaws.

The beauty of this way of thinking is that you don't have to do Big Picture and Detail Practice one after the other or even in the same session - just do whichever you're in the mood for. However, I would advise you to keep a written record of what you need to work on when it's time for Detail Practice so you don't forget.

Sometimes, you can feel really motivated to do Detail Practice – this is what lets you stick to that rigid regime on the wall for a few days before you give in! If you are in that mood then definitely go to town on the details. If not, work on the Big Picture for something else and do details another day.

As long as you make sure you have done both kinds of practice before trying something new on the bandstand and you'll almost certainly give a good account of yourself.

By thinking in this way, you can add structure your practice sessions whilst still being creative and flexible. What's more, you can avoid the guilt and frustration that comes from setting yourself impossible practice goals that you can't and won't stick to.

Give it a try and let me know if it works for you.

Comments

Quick Tip - Step Up!

Mon, 21 Sep 2009 06:56:54 +0200

Here’s a quick tip for adding a touch of the unexpected to the ending of a tune and holding the audience’s attention until the very last bar.

Quite simply, if a tune in a major key finishes on chord I, delay the resolution by playing a maj7 chord a half-step above the tonic before you finally hit the I chord. In other words, if the piece finishes on an F chord, hit a Gb first.

Let’s look at a notated example to give you an idea of the sound. Many pieces end using a standard ii-V-I progression.

We can delay the resolution temporarily by hitting a Gbmaj7 chord before ending on the Fmaj7. Remember, Gbmaj7 is a half-step above the final chord of this piece. Our ending could now look this:

Don’t worry if you can’t reach the tenths in the left hand in the above examples. You can always play the top note on the lower stave with your right hand if you wish and feel free to voice the chords however you like once you have grasped the basic principle.

This technique is particularly effective if the melody ends on the keynote as that will be the major 7th of the penultimate chord and the root of the final one. In the key of F major, the note of ‘F’ is both the major 7th in a Gbmaj7 chord and the root of an Fmaj7 chord.

There are a probably millions of tunes that end on the tonic but here are a couple of suggestions for common tunes to get you started. I’ve tried to ensure the copy/commonly played keys are all different so you can master the technique in different tonalities:

I Should Care (C major)
Stardust (Db Major)
Blue Daniel (D major)
Misty (Eb Major)
Georgia On My Mind (E major)
I Thought About You (F major)
Here’s That Rainy Day (G major)
All The Things You Are (Ab major)
Triste (A major)
Everything Happens To Me (Bb Major)

That should cover 10 out of the 12 keys! If anyone has any suggestions for tunes that end on the keynote in Gb or B major, please let me know.

Enjoy!

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PlayJazz with a Playalong?

Thu, 17 Sep 2009 13:05:14 +0200

Last time, I talked about backing tracks, playalongs and the increasingly common role they play in musicians’ development. Whilst I believe that playalongs are a fantastic tool, there are some things I think it important to keep in mind if you intend to use them in your practice. Here is the PlayJazz guide to getting the most from Playalongs.

Listen!

The thing that makes working with playalongs different from real musicians is that playalongs are always the same. Even if you’re using a program like Band-in-a-box, which is capable of providing some variation in the rhythm section parts, the ‘backing’ is consistent but broadly unchanging.

You must be careful that using playalongs doesn’t result in you teaching yourself to ignore a rhythm section. If you’re shredding changes with a frequently used playalong, it can be easy to focus almost exclusively on what you are doing – after all, you know exactly how the rhythm section will play; exactly the same as always.

Focusing only on your playing is a bad habit that you don’t want to take onto the bandstand. The best jazz performances are ones where the musicians are really listening to each other, feeding each other ideas and improvising as a group.

Even when one musician is soloing, the others aren’t there to provide ‘backing’. They are also improvising, working with the soloist to provide counterpoint to his ideas and give him suggestions and options about the direction of the music.

The repetitive and predictable nature of playalongs means it can be easy to relegate the rhythm section to your subconscious and make it all about you. Don’t let this happen.

Variety is the spice of life

It is also important not to use playalongs exclusively for practicing tunes or progressions. One of the delights of playing jazz is that you never play a tune the same way twice. If you sit in at a session to play ‘Stella’ and have only ever played it as medium swing (because that’s how it is on your playalong), you’re going to struggle if the rest of the band decides to do it as a blistering Samba.

You should practice tunes in different styles, at different tempos and with different changes, aiming to become becoming flexible and versatile – two hallmarks of a good jazz player.

Don’t stop making music

Playalongs are often used in technical practice when learning how to navigate through certain changes. Often, the goal in these sessions is to be able to shred through these changes without stopping. After all, on the bandstand, you don’t want to be limited by technical deficiencies and if you can shred through chorus after chorus of a tune without stopping, you will have the facility to play much more of what you hear in your head.

There’s nothing wrong with this; but if you do this kind of practice with playalongs, you must make sure you balance it with other, more musical playing. Don’t fall into the trap of playing with a band as you would with a playalong.

On stage, what you practice most tends to come out in your playing and if all you’ve have been doing for the last fortnight is unmusically shredding with a playalong, guess what you’ll sound like on the gig?

Practice not just shredding changes, but spend time working on how to structure a solo, developing thematic ideas, phrasing and all the other things that make a great jazz solo more than a technical exercise

Turn off the piano channel

Another potential downfall with the repetitive nature of a playalong is that you can allow your phrasing on a tune to be dictated by what the pianist plays on the record – especially if you have worked with the record a lot and know what it’s going to sound like.

Turn off the piano channel every now and again so you have the freedom to direct your lines anywhere you wish. In a live situation, the piano (or any chordal instrument) will work with the soloist, but ultimately, the soloist should have the ultimate say on where the music goes next.

Don’t EVER use playalongs live

This is a personal bugbear of mine, but I have had the misfortune a couple of times to come across solos or duos in pubs and restaurants using playalongs as backing tracks. Please don’t do this. It sounds rubbish and it’s tacky.

Apart from anything else, many jazz fans are also players and as soon as they hear Jamey Aebersold counting off the tune they’ll know exactly what you’re up to, how little effort you’ve put into the gig and they won’t be impressed. I don’t care if your favourite music of all time really is “ii-V-I in all keys”, leave the playalongs in the practice room where they belong!

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In summary, whilst playalongs are undoubtedly a great resource, they are no substitute for interacting with real musicians. Jazz is at it’s finest when a group of players are all working together, improvising as a group and driving the music forward (and at it’s worst when they’re ignoring each other and going through the motions).

If I had to condense the post to one point it would be this: Playalongs are useful and should be used as one part of your practice routine. However, relying too much on them, or using them exclusively can lead to bad habits which will lead to you coming unstuck when it’s time to play real music in the real world.

PlayJazz, with a PlayAlong? By all means, but PlayMusic - always.

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On Not Finding a Teacher (Part 2)

Mon, 14 Sep 2009 10:17:33 +0200

Generally, I think that studying with a good teacher is the best way to learn jazz. However, good teachers can be hard to find. Fortunately, there are lots of resources on the market that can help the improving jazzer on his/her quest.

In the previous post, we looked at some of the books that I've found useful in the past, and today I want to talk about the best way to use another potentially fabulous learning tool – the playalong.

In recent times, The playalong has become an increasingly common tool amongst students of jazz. With the advent of digital media, the ubiquity of portable audio players and the ability to offer specialist products to the whole world via the internet, there has never been a wider range of playalong material to choose from.

The most famous playalongs are probably the Jamey Aebersold series of recordings. These have been around for a long time; they were initially released in the era of records and tapes (you may have to google those terms if you're under a certain age!) and the range has continued to expand over the years. Today there are well over a hundred volumes in the series.

An Aebersold playalong is essentially a recording of real musicians providing backing tracks for improvisation. The CDs come with books containing lead sheets and instructional material concerning improvisation. There are three main categories of Aebersold playalong:

1. Collections of standards (such as Autumn Leaves, Girl from Ipanema, Stella etc.)

2. Recordings of tunes by a particular artist or composer eg (Charlie Parker, Miles Davis, Duke Ellington etc.)

3. Records dealing with specific study topics such as the ii-V-I progression, turnarounds, blues, rhythm changes etc.

The recordings have the bass and piano tracks panned fully to left or right channel so musicians that play those instruments can effectively mute a part with the balance control on their hi-fi.

A more recent option for generating backing tracks is the Band-in-a-Box software from PG Music. Unlike a pre-recorded playalong, here you simply enter a chord progression using standard chord symbols (like Bbmaj7, G7#5 etc) select a style and a backing track is generated for you to work with.

As you are essentially dealing with midi information, you have a whole host of options you don't have with audio playalongs, such as altering the tempo, changing the key, muting any instrument or changing the style. For example, you could punch in the chords to Nature Boy, practice it as a slow bossa and, with a couple of mouse clicks, transform it to an up-tempo swinger.

The flexibility of midi files makes them a popular choice for providing backing tracks and there are many you can find free on the web which naturally vary in quality. However, as a tuition aid, I can heartily recommend the excellent and FREE midi files of Doug McKenzie.

Doug is a very talented pianist and is passionate about helping others to learn jazz. Many of the free files on his site contain markers embedded in the song which describe some of the techniques he is using at that particular point in the music.

The great advantage of this is you can hear a cool sound and instantly find out how it's being made: It's like sitting next to someone while they're playing and getting them to stop and show you what they did when something grabs your attention!

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In recent years, the playalong has become an increasingly important tool for learning jazz as the opportunities to play live on a regular basis have been dramatically reduced.

Before being replaced by DJs and recorded music, live bands were pretty much everywhere. In those now long-gone halcyon days, if you wanted music in a venue you hired a band and demand for live music meant that making your living solely from gigging was not only possible, but normal. This contrasts dramatically with the current situation when even the finest musicians often have to rely on other sources of income (such as teaching) to make a living in the field.

In practical terms, the improving musician no longer gets to ‘go to school on the bandstand’ and this means that a lot of a musician's development must happen in the practice room.

As a result, playalongs have become increasingly popular and, used in the correct way, they can be an invaluable practice tool. However, there are some pitfalls that you need to be aware of so the next post on this blog will talk specifically about the best way to work with playalongs, what to keep in mind when using them and how to make sure that they aid, not damage your development.

I hope you'll check it out.

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Product Links - A Disclaimer...

Mon, 14 Sep 2009 09:56:21 +0200

Recently, I've been looking at some of the resources available to the jazz student who is trying to teach himself - and I'm about to post another article on this topic.

As I was finishing that particular article this morning, it occurred to me that it contains links to commerical products which may colour your perception of what I have to say. I want to be clear about why those links are there and what my involvement with these products is, as I'm bound to talk about available products and resources in the future.

I am not affiliated with any of the companies or products I mention anywhere on the site. Naturally, if you click on a (blatantly obvious) Amazon associate link and buy a product then PlayJazz will get a small commission which I will use to pay the costs of maintaining the blog – the same goes for the google ads on the right.

However, I have no commercial association with any of the other sites/products I may link to on PlayJazz and they are in the blog purely because I think they could be of interest and useful to you as a developing musician.

The 'Hidden Gems' series is the perfect example of this. A cynic might think that I write those articles to make commissions but the truth is that I write them because I genuinely love the albums I write about. Yes, I stick an Amazon link in the article but I'm not really bothered whether you buy it from Amazon or not. I would just love you to have a listen because I think the albums are awesome.

Sure, if you want to buy a product after reading about it on here, I'll gladly take a commission. Why wouldn't I? However, generating commissions is NOT the purpose of this site.

In all honesty, I'm not even doing the amazon affiliate link thing properly. At the moment, those links just send you to amazon.co.uk (as it's my home country) but I'm well aware that a lot of people who read this blog are from the US so they should be taken to amazon.com.

Apparently, if I sign up as an affiliate on all the amazons, there is some geo-uber-thingy that I could use to take you to the amazon for the country your server is in - but I haven't got round to figuring that out yet. Hardly the behaviour of a commercial mastermind eh?

I don't write this blog to make money – which is just as well as I'd starve if I did! The purpose of this blog is to help people learn to play jazz, allow me to share some of the stuff I've picked up along the way, and (to be brutally honest) to give me the opportunity to shoot my mouth off about the music I am passionate about and the way I think it should be played.

The reason I'm keen to make this clear is that any products I mention on here are ones that I've used myself and recommend to my students all the time. I don't want you to be reading any of my advice thinking that it is a sales pitch.

It's not.

Right, with that out the way, on with the blog...

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On not finding a teacher (Part 1)

Thu, 10 Sep 2009 11:13:18 +0200

In the last post I talked about the best way to select a teacher. However, many people will live in areas where there isn’t much choice. Jazz musicians often move to cities seeking more opportunities to play, but if you live outside the city it may be a struggle to find a suitable teacher.

Fortunately, there are many products on the market today that are designed to help you develop your own playing and in this and a couple of future posts, I’ll be taking a look at some of the most popular resources. First up is…

Books

There are hundreds of tuition books on the market covering all kinds of instruments, methods and approaches to playing. There are books about harmony, theory, chord voicings, soloing, intros and endings, turnarounds, licks and pretty much every aspect of jazz you can think of.

Books can play a useful role in learning – particularly in regard to understanding harmony and theory. In fact, most of my basic jazz theory knowledge came from them and there are plenty of useful techniques I still use regularly that I got from books. In a moment, I’ll mention a couple of titles I have personally found useful, but first of all, a word on book learning in general.

The great thing about books is that you can absorb the information at your own pace. If you don’t get something straight away, you can always come back to it at a later date when you’re ready. Many books contain a lot of information and you will return to them many times over the years as you improve and are ready to assimilate material that was previously too advanced.

There are more books on the market than ever before and whilst it’s always great to have so much information available, beware of falling into the trap of buying books instead of practicing! Some people will buy book after book, constantly searching for the the magic sound or the secret jazz scale that will suddenly make them sound like a jazz musician.

Buying books does not automatically make you a better player and is not a substitute for practice. You will not absorb anything by osmosis so if you do choose to learn from books, make sure you read them with your instrument and put the techniques into practice or you’re wasting your time.

Also, whilst books are useful in some respects they are totally useless in others. They’re great for learning theory, voicings, and approaches but you’ll never learn to swing or have good time from a book. You can’t learn to play purely from books so make them just one part of your development.

The Jazz Piano Book

The book that I first bought when I started learning jazz was Mark Levine’s The Jazz Piano Book after it had been recommended by a couple of more experienced players. I was very glad I did.

In this comprehensive volume, the material ranges from the very simple (intervals and triads) to the more complex, (fourth chords, upper structures and melodic minor harmony) and the material is generally easy to read and well explained.

Most of my basic knowledge about chord/scale relationships came from this book and Mark does a great job of explaining how chords and scales are essentially the same thing and how to select a scale for improvisation based on a chord symbol.

There’s a huge amount of information on voicings here; everything from skeletal Bud Powell voicings to quartals, ‘So What’ Chords and upper structures are covered and I have kept returning to this book whenever I’ve felt the need to expand my harmonic palette. I still haven’t absorbed everything. The section on latin jazz and salsa is also excellent and explains clave and montuno patterns beautifully.

Whilst I would thoroughly recommend this book, I do have a couple of criticisms.

Firstly, this is not really a book you should work through from front to back. The chapters are organised in strange order; for example, Chapter Four is devoted to sus and ‘phrygian’ (susb9) chords. The latter are hardly essential knowledge for the beginning jazz pianist.

The author claims the book is designed to increase in difficulty as it goes on but I don’t think the format really works – if that is the case then should tritone substitution (chapter 6) be considered significantly easier to understand than pentatonic scales (chapter 15)?

Secondly, the book focuses very much on playing piano as part of group. If it’s learning to play solo piano you’re really after, this book isn’t going to be quite as useful. The chapter on stride piano is good, but is about the only one specifically aimed at the solo pianist.

Thirdly, whilst the book contains lots of good information on chord/scale relationships it doesn’t really go into too much detail about building a solo. Once you have learned to associate a particular chord with a scale (or scales) then you’re on your own. The soloing approach is exclusively scale based (there is almost no mention of lines built using chord tones and chromatic approach notes for example) and there is no real help with phrasing or advice on building idiomatic jazz lines.

Finally, this may be something that’s a personal gripe, but some of the musical examples given seem a little esoteric. Mark has tried very hard to keep his examples within the context of compositions by major artists and tunes that you are likely to play. However, sometimes the desire to stick to this criteria can make them hard to contextualise. For example:

“in figure 14-6…the upper structure #IV minor chords are on the third and fourth beats of the sixth bar of Thelonius Monk’s ‘Ask Me Now’.”

In cases like this, there is just the one bar of notated music shown. Even if you already know ‘Ask Me Now’, it’s hard to place one bar in the context of a tune. If you don’t know the tune, you’re going to have to go and get a lead sheet from somewhere to give the example context and meaning.

I do understand the desire to keep examples relevant to the repertoire of a working jazz musician, but sometimes I think the information could be better conveyed by an exercise written specifically for the purpose.

If a student has to go and find a lead sheet and learn a tune to contextualise a single bar of voicings, it wouldn’t be surprising if he/she lost focus or, worse still, simply turned the page without absorbing the material.

Despite these criticisms, if you aspire to play jazz piano in a group, this book will act as an invaluable resource that you’ll find yourself returning to time and time again as you continue to improve.

The Jazz Piano Book is well worth the investment as long as you don’t look at it as an progressive method book. You’ll get much more out of it if you view the chapters a series of individual articles on different aspects of jazz piano and dip in and out whenever you’re ready to tackle a new topic.

The Jazz Theory Book

For other instumentalists, the The Jazz Theory Book is probably a better bet. A lot of the information is the same as in the jazz piano book, but the chord/scale theory is a little more detailed and also looks at some common chord progressions.

There is also more information here about building solos, although the focus is still very much on a scale-based approach to improvisation. Sequencing, bebop scales and playing outside are covered in some depth and the section on pentatonic scales is more comprehensive than in The Jazz Piano Book.

The final third of the book is devoted to reharmonisation. None of this material appears in the other book and is an excellent study of ways that chords can be altered or substituted to give new sounds and add a personal twist to a familiar tune. This is one of the strongest parts of the book and I haven’t seen such a detailed look at reharmonisation anywhere else.

Overall, like its predecessor, The Jazz Theory Book is crammed full of useful information and I have found myself returning to it time and again over the years. Again, it should be treated as a reference volume rather than a method book – although there are often useful exercises included that are well worth studying.

The examples can still be hard to contextualise sometimes and it should be noted that whilst the chord/scale approach is probably the one most employed by the modern jazz musician, it’s certainly not the only approach to improvisation.

Despite a couple of criticisms, The Jazz Theory Book is still a fantastic resource and improving jazz musicians will find a wealth of knowledge in its pages.

Metaphors for the Musician

Randy Halberstadt’s Metaphors for the Musician is one of my very favourite jazz books. Again, this is not a jazz manual but a collection of hints and tips regarding some of the most common issues that Randy has seen students struggling with .

Whereas Mark Levine’s approach can be erudite and professorial, Randy’s is friendly, informal and designed to put you at ease. The book is filled with metaphors, personal anecdotes, humour and a warmth that hardly makes it seem like you’re learning anything at all. This is the book to turn to if you’re feeling insecure about your playing or having a ‘I’m never going to get there’ moment; Randy’s voice is always understanding, sympathetic and reassuring.

His ‘harmonic astronomy’ metaphor is particularly novel and illuminating and is highly recommended to the beginner looking to figure out how the harmony in jazz standards functions.

As the author is a pianist, there is also a wealth of information on chord voicings and here you will find information on voicings for solo, duo, trio and quartet playing that can serve as a basic toolkit for playing in any situation.

As Randy says himself, Metaphors for the Musician is not designed to be a how-to-book but is a collection of ‘nuggets’ designed to sit along more comprehensive books on jazz theory and improvisation.

____________________________

These three books have been the ones that I have learnt the most from over the years and, whilst I will certainly review other books from time to time, it would have to be a very special book that would replace any of these in my recommendations. It is true that they’re not cheap but I’m convinced they remain a valuable investment if you’re learning to play.

However, keeping the cost in mind, I would initially recommend going for the Randy Halberstadt book and one of the Levine books. This combination will cover a hell of a lot of bases for you – providing you practice!

Don’t forget that buying book or reading books is NOT practicing and the information on the page is only of use if you put it into practice on your instrument.

Next time we return to look at self-tuition material, we’ll be taking a look at the pros and cons of playalongs and how they should best be used.

Until then, good luck and don’t forget to practice!

Comments

On Finding a Teacher

Mon, 07 Sep 2009 12:11:36 +0200

I’ve always believed that you teach yourself music – particularly jazz. Learning to play is not simply about obtaining knowledge you don’t possess from someone who does: Music is an art, not a science.

A musical journey is a very personal odyssey and, for the most part, you’re on your own. However, a good teacher can help to lay strong foundations for your playing, speed up your learning process and generally point you in the right direction.

However, finding a specialist jazz teacher can be a tricky venture – particularly if you’re inexperienced and don’t know what to look for. To help out, here’s some advice I would offer for your search.

Listen to the teacher play before you take lessons

Anyone can advertise as a teacher. The majority of pupils are beginners and some teachers claim to teach styles or instruments they’re not particularly proficient at because a smattering of knowledge allows them to bluff their way through with a beginner.

One example of this is classical teachers claiming to teach jazz when they can’t blow themselves to save their lives. In the U.K. these kind of teachers may have been on a one-day workshop to ‘learn’ how to teach jazz and will simply put the student through the ABRSM ‘jazz’ syllabuses without laying proper foundations for jazz playing.

For this reason, you should always get a potential teacher to play for you. It’s also wise to ask them to improvise something to make sure they haven’t just learned arrangements of jazz tunes from sheet music. Many teachers offer free trial lessons or consultations before asking you to commit to lessons and it’s wise to take advantage of these to make sure that the teacher can Walk The Walk.

Know what you want to learn

Often, pupils looking for a jazz teacher will be intermediate players; they may have had classical lessons or already have some jazz ability but are looking to develop.

If this is you, it’s important to be clear about what you are looking to learn. For example, if you play piano, do you want to develop purely as a solo pianist or are you more interested in skills you can develop to play with others? What style do you want to play in? which players do you admire? Are you looking for help to be a better soloist or do you need someone to help you understand jazz harmony and theory?

If you are clear about what you want to learn you will have a better experience than simply presenting yourself as an empty vessel for the teacher to fill with knowledge. If you are learning what you are most interested in then you’re more likely to practice. There’s no point sitting through lessons in stride piano if you have no interest in playing solo and just want to learn how to play in a band.

There are so many aspects to jazz that it’s impossible to learn everything at once so pick what you’re most interested in at the moment and get someone to teach you about that. You can always go in a different direction later if you wish.

Make sure your teacher can teach you what you want to learn

Again, this will apply most to players who already have some knowledge. There are many different styles and approaches to playing jazz and even really good players can’t do it all.

For example, if you specifically want lessons in how to comp like Herbie Hancock, there’s no point studying with a guy who plays like Erroll Garner – even if he is a great player. He probably won’t have the knowledge to teach you what you want to know. Similarly, if you want to learn to read lead sheets, there’s no point studying with a guy who can’t read music but blows up a storm on the bandstand.

Now a good teacher may make you study earlier styles before they start to introduce more modern sounds and that’s perfectly fine. However, it’s important to ensure that they do have the ability to teach you what you want to learn – or at least are honest about what they can teach you. If in doubt, refer to the rule above and get them to play for you.

Ask around

Recommendation is a good way to find a teacher so if you know somebody having lessons, it’s a good way to find out what a teacher’s methods are and what they are able to teach.

It’s also worth asking players you hear for lessons if you particularly admire their playing. Not many musicians make a living purely from performing and most players will teach. Don’t be afraid to approach them after a gig, chances are they’ll be glad of the opportunity to earn some money! However, it may be wise to simply give them your number or take their card and save the in-depth discussion of your development for another time as players don’t necessarily want to have huge discussions when they’ve just walked off stage.

Take different lessons with different people

There is no law that says you have to stay with one teacher forever. In fact, you can often broaden your experience by studying with different people with different knowledge.

There’s also nothing wrong with arranging one-off or short-term lessons with some players even if you’re already taking long-term lessons with a teacher. For example, you may be an intermediate player who is happy with their current lessons but you hear someone playing one night who thrills you with their unusual harmonic approach. There is nothing wrong with asking that player for a couple of lessons specifically in re-harmonisation whilst continuing with your normal lessons.

You’re not married and it’s not cheating!

Different strokes for different folks

So you’ve been studying with a teacher for a while and have been working on soloing using chord tones and passing notes and it’s slowly coming together. You take some lessons with another local player you admire and they tell you that approach is old hat - you should really be thinking scales if you want to get anywhere. Who do you believe? The answer is, whoever you like, or neither, or both!

There are many different approaches to playing jazz and there is often value in all of them. Chances are, you’ll end up trying different approaches as you develop until you find the combination that best suits you. Teachers will naturally lean-towards the approaches that helped them but that doesn’t mean they’re the ones that will necessarily be right for you.

If you do uncover different approaches from different teachers, go with your instinct for what will suit you best. After all, you can change approach if what you’re doing isn’t working for you (and probably will!)

Do as you’re told!

It always amuses me that people will pay good money for a teacher to tell them the best way to do something then don’t do it! If you have followed the advice above, found a teacher who you know can play and has the ability to teach you what you want to learn, then you may as well do as they tell you.

It’s surprising how many people will attend a lesson, make all the right noises and then go away and not do any of the work they’re been set by the teacher. This is a waste of everybody’s time and your money. If you’re not going to do the work, don’t take the lessons!

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Whilst I firmly believe that a good teacher is worth their weight in gold, I am aware that in some areas it can be very difficult to find any jazz teachers. If this applies to you, don’t panic; the next post will talk about some of the ways you can teach yourself and I’ll be taking a look at some of the resources available to today’s developing jazzer.

Good luck in your search.

Comments

Hidden Gems - Jim Mullen. Burns.

Thu, 03 Sep 2009 12:26:14 +0200

For those of you not from the UK, you may not be overly familiar with the name of Jim Mullen – but trust me, you’re missing out.

Jim is one of the finest jazz guitarists of his generation – and probably one of the most exciting and consistently entertaining live improvisers I’ve heard. He started out playing bass as a child in his native Glasgow, before making the switch to guitar in his teens. He is self-taught and has developed a high-energy, full-throttle, individual approach to improvisation that gives him a unique and instantly recognisable sound.

On his 2000 album Jim Mullen Burns, Jim looked to his Scottish roots and chose to reinterpret the songs of Robert Burns from a jazz perspective. To help him do this he secured the services of some of his favourite collaborators – pianist Gareth Williams, bassist Mick Hutton and drummer Gary Husband.

The result is a fascinating blend of the old and the new, with the folky and highly singable melodies of Robert Burns arranged with respect but sculpted beautifully into modern jazz vehicles for the hard-swinging approach of this quartet.

From the start of the opening track ‘Count the Lawin’’ the cards are laid on the table. Jim Mullen is fully of fiery blues ferocity and this is perfectly offset by Gareth Williams’ rhythmically innovative and harmonically colourful approach to each tune. In keeping with the source material, Mick Hutton’s bass playing is delightfully understated yet solid as a rock and Gary Husband propels the music ever forward with a lightness of touch that leaves plenty of space for the soloists to go wherever they choose.

Most of the tunes are straight-ahead swing but never become repetitive or dull with the delightful waltz ‘Banks and Braes’ and the achingly beautiful ballad ‘The Lea Rig’ providing contrast to the 4/4 pyrotechnics that characterise much of this record.

Burns is a thoroughly enjoyable and original album and the juxtaposition of the modern jazz approach and age-old folk melodies works beautifully. This kind of combination so often falls flat on its face but here it results in joyous and uplifting music that will have you tapping your foot from the very first bar. Highly recommended.

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Quick Tip - The #11 Ending

Mon, 31 Aug 2009 14:26:07 +0200

Here’s a quick tip for a chord to end a piece on which will give it a cool and ambiguous unresolved feeling that you’ve probably heard on recordings before.

Ok, here’s the rule. If the piece ends on a I chord, you can substitute it for a dominant 7#11 chord built on the same root. Now, don’t worry if that doesn’t make sense at the moment, I’ll explain in more detail shortly. First, here it is in notation in the key of C major.

This example just shows basic four note voicings for the Dm7 and G7 chords. However, look at the last chord. Instead of the expected I chord, here we have C and Bb in the left hand, implying some kind of C7 chord and the right hand is playing D, F# and A - the 9th, #11th and 13th of a C7 chord.

Note that there is no third in this voicing which is why it has an ambiguous sound. Also, having a dominant chord, rather than the normal C, Cmaj7 or C6 chord at the end of this progression makes it sound rather unresolved.

As this is a quick tip, I won’t go into the full theory behind the chord extensions but if you don’t really understand it theoretically, it doesn’t matter. There is an easy rule that will help you to play this sound in any key.

• Play root and seventh in your left hand.
• Play a major triad a tone (whole-step) above the root note in your right hand.

Check this against the example above. The root and 7th of a C7 chord are in the left hand and a D major triad is in the right.

If you wanted to play this in the key of Bb, you would play Bb and Ab (the root and seventh of a Bb7 chord) in your left hand, and a C major triad in your right. Here it is in notation:

If this sounds very strange to you at the moment, don’t be surprised. Part of learning jazz involves letting your ear become accustomed to new sounds so make sure you try it out a few times before passing judgement.

Finally, if you’re playing with a bass player, chances are he will hit a root note at the end of the piece so you are free to play the third in your left hand if you wish. This is shown below, again in Bb.

Similarly, if you do have a bass player, you could also leave the root out of the Cm7 and F7 chords and add some other notes to make a more interesting voicing. However, that's a lesson for another day and it's the sound of #11 chord I'd like you to take from this little tip.

Remember, this particular substitution only works for the last chord of a piece - use it anywhere else and you will get some funny looks from anybody listening!

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Here comes the post, man

Thu, 27 Aug 2009 14:54:18 +0200

Just to let you know that from now on, PlayJazz will be updated on a Monday and a Thursday so make sure you check in then for some fabulous new content.

Of course, you could always swing your pointer to the right-hand side of the page and do the funky 'subscribe' thang - that way you'll never miss out!

Either way, thanks for reading and hope to 'see' you again soon...

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What to practice to get gigs (Part 2)

Thu, 27 Aug 2009 11:06:51 +0200

In my last post, I talked about the difficulty in knowing what to work on as an emerging jazz player. Sometimes, the sheer amount of things you need to master can seem overwhelming and it’s hard to know where to start.

However, in my experience there are several basic aspects of musicianship and jazz playing that are an absolute must for anyone hoping to get gigs with other musicians. Today, I’d like to carry on with that list of essentials but if you missed the first part of this article, or want to remind yourself what I’ve already covered, you can check it out here.

Right, on with the golden rules…!

Know your place!

Learn to keep the structure of the tune in your head so that you don’t get lost if you’re not playing during your bandmates’ solos. Learn to trade fours and eights and come back in at the right place.

When soloing, as long as you start and finish in the right place, most people don’t care as much as you may imagine about how you sound. However, it doesn’t matter if someone is blowing up a storm - if they always overrun and spoil the first five or six bars of the next solo or the singer’s entrance, they’ll drop down the pecking order.

Singers and horn players, don’t switch off during rhythm section solos. Always listen to what’s going on - even if you’re not playing or singing. Know where you are in the tune and make sure you come back in the right place.

Swing When You're Winning – and when you're not!

Learn to swing. As Duke said ‘It Don’t Mean A Thing If It Ain’t Got That Swing’. If a jazz group isn’t swinging, it’s in trouble. This is particularly important for drummers as you’ll be responsible for much of the swing feel.

Remember that swing feel is really hard to define but it’s much more than the approximated tied-triplet figure that gets written in many tuition books. If you need any proof, punch that rhythm into a sequencer and see if it’ll swing like Elivin Jones. It won’t.

Authentic swing feel is probably one of the hardest things to develop and I’ll probably write an article on it in more detail in the future. For now, the best advice I can give you is play along with recordings of your favourite players. Don’t try and duplicate exactly what they’re doing, but rather try and play with the same rhythmic feel.

The biggest compliment one jazz musician can pay to another is ‘he really swings’.

Top and tail

Learn common intros and endings. The ends of tunes are probably the most perilous part of jam session or scratch band performances and things go wrong here more than anywhere else.

There are certain common ways to end a tune such as repeating the last four bars three times or using a ‘Basie' or 'A-train' ending. Learn what the most common conventions are and be able to execute them on the spot in any key.

Some tunes have intros from famous recordings that get played a lot (Charlie Parker’s intro to All The Things You Are or Red Garland’s intro to If I Were a Bell for example). If you know these, you’ll gain kudos.

Know any good tunes?

Learn the most popular tunes. In any city or area, there tend to be standards that get called all the time. Listen to other players’ gigs and jam sessions, make a note of the most commonly played tunes and make sure you learn them. This will often differ from city to city so make sure you do your homework locally.

Keep the Customer Satisfied

Learn tunes that are likely to get requested on gigs by non-jazz fans (things like Fly Me To The Moon, The Girl From Ipanema and Take Five get asked for regularly by punters). If you can handle common requests at the drop of a hat, your band mates will be glad they booked you.

Don't forget to make sure you can play 'Happy Birthday'.

If you don't know, ask

Don’t be afraid to ask for help. I’ve found that most musicians (good ones anyway) are only too happy to help out someone less experienced as they’ve been there themselves.

If you want to know what tunes always get requested, ask. If you want to know what the most common tunes called at the local jam session are, ask. If you want to know what the ending for the tune you made a hash of should have been, ask.

If more experienced players can see you are working hard to improve, they’ll often cut you some slack or give you more leeway than someone who pretends they know it all.

Don’t worry about appearing foolish – just remember that every great musician has been at your stage of development at some point in their musical career.

And don’t forget what it’s like when the time comes when you are the experienced player and the new guys could use your help. What goes around, comes around.

It's (not) All About You Baby

Play for the group, not for yourself. Remember that the audience is there to hear the band play, not just you. Listen to the other players and look for ways to improve the group sound. Don’t just be thinking how you can show off all your best tricks or how you can stand out individually.

Too many players are playing to the imaginary listener who plays their instrument and are constantly trying to prove how good they are. Remember that you are one part of an ensemble and the ensemble sound is more important that your part in it. Play for the group and serve the music and you’ll go far.

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I hope that you’ve found these tips useful. All the things mentioned here and in my previous post have something in common – they make the group sound better and make it easier for the other musicians to play. If you can do that consistently, your name will be at the top of the list because people will want to play with you.

Make sure you can do the things I’ve talked about and do them consistently well. If you focus on these things as a priority, not only will you develop a rock-solid foundation for all your playing, but you’ll start to get a reputation as a ‘safe pair of hands’. Always remember that if you’re making life easier for the bandleader and the other musicians, you will get hired time and again.

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What to practice to get gigs (Part 1)

Mon, 24 Aug 2009 16:37:29 +0200

One of the most intimidating aspects of learning to play jazz is that there seems to be so much to learn. What’s worse, as you improve you continually uncover more things to work on.

Sometimes it feels like you reach the top of a mountain, only to find there’s another higher mountain in front of you that demands to be climbed.

The sheer amount of material to study and assimilate can lead to players becoming confused about what they should be practicing from one moment to the next. Often this means that they flit from one topic to the next without mastering any. Sometimes it leads to an uneven balance of skills in their playing.

Everybody ends up in a situation like this sooner or later. The good news is that with perseverance and by being aware of your weaknesses, your playing will eventually even out.

However, if you want to improve quickly and become an in-demand player, there are some basic aspects of musicianship that you need to get down at the earliest opportunity. Many jazz musicians spend most of their practice time working on improvising solos when soloing is probably the least important consideration when deciding who you want on a scratch gig.

So what are the important things to work on? Here, and in my next post, I’ll list some of the most common skills that people look for in instrumentalists. If you make sure you master these and do them consistently well at jam sessions and gigs, I guarantee you that the phone will start to ring. The tips are not in any particular order of priority but they’re all essential!

Get good time

Good time is probably the most important skill you can develop in playing jazz and yet it’s something that so many beginners neglect. If you don’t have good time nothing else that you can do really matters. Good time is the foundation of everything that happens in a jazz performance.

Learn to feel the pulse of a piece and internalise it so you don’t need anyone to tell you where the downbeat is. Good time will mean you won't get thrown if the drummer plays some cross rhythms or a melody is phrased it in an unusual way. Buy a metronome and make it your best friend. This will help with the next essential, which is also part of good time...

Don’t speed up or slow down

There’s nothing more uncomfortable than playing with someone who is continuously dragging you back or straining at the leash to speed up. The foundation of most mainstream jazz is a solid tempo that doesn’t fluctuate for the duration of the piece. Learn to be solidly ‘in the pocket’ and you’ll get the call over supposedly better players who don’t have such a solid sense of time.

For drummers and bass players, this is even more important because if you get it wrong, the whole performance will fall to bits (no pressure then!). A player with good time will always be in demand because he makes it easier for the other musicians to play.

Voicings

If you play a chordal instrument, learn basic voicings for every chord in every key and be able to execute them instantaneously.

Don’t worry about learning lots of different voicings to start with, just make sure you can hit any chord at any given moment: it’s no use knowing 20 voicings and substitutions for G7 if you trip up on B7#9.

Your main job when playing with other people is to provide the harmonic platform for the music. Lots of voicing options are icing; being able to hit at least one correct voicing for every chord in every key is cake.

Learn commonly played styles

Learn to play idiomatically. For most mainstream jazz gigs you’ll need to be able to play 4/4 swing at fast and slow tempos, jazz waltzes, ballads, bossa novas and possibly sambas. Learn stylistically appropriate rhythms and techniques for these different disciplines and your playing will sound authentic.

For example, if you’re a pianist playing bossa nova, make sure you understand clave and learn some idiomatic comping rhythms. If you get these basic styles down, you’ll be ok on 95% of tunes that get called in mainstream gigs.

Learn to read lead sheets and chord charts

It’s essential that if somebody hands you a chart and counts to four, you can play through that chart without getting lost or hitting a million wrong notes. Soloing over unfamiliar changes should be less of a priority to start with than getting the head right. Learn to sight-read melodies. Chordal players, make sure you can hit all those chords at the right time.

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If you can’t do any of the above things and you want to play live, forget whatever you’re working on and get them down. I promise you that not only will you get more gigs, you will be building an invaluable and rock solid foundation to your playing that will always serve you well.

Next time I’ll continue my list of things that will get you hired but until then, remember that getting hired is not about being the best player ever; it’s about doing basic things, and doing them well.

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