Rhythmic awareness and flexibility is where it's at. Rhythm is by far the most important thing for an improviser and in this episode we talk about how you can supercharge your vocabulary work and become the most flexible musician in the room. Learning vocabulary is a fine line between sounding like yourself with influences and becoming a carbon copy of someone else. The first obviously being the better outcome. If we inject our vocabulary work with some of our own rhythms or just simply … [Read more...]

This week we are talking about pentatonic scales. The tough part about pentatonics are the fact that it's a five note scale and the majority of what we play is in 2 or 4 note patterns. Our job is to turn these five note groupings into something we can use in 4/4 or 2/4. Something that we can get into our playing almost immediately and see real results. The patterns in this episode range from extremely easy to much more complicated so make sure you really digest what a pentatonic scale is first, … [Read more...]

This week wraps up our series on upper structures. We have already covered major seventh chords and minor seventh chords. This week we'll focus on the dominant chord. It's important to realize that there are so many possibilities for dominant chords when it comes to altered notes and superimposing different chords over the top. We will cover some basics here but this is one chord quality where there is a lot more work to be done down the road. Have fun and enjoy the episode!   GET THE … [Read more...]

This week I talk about accountability and what that means to musicians when we are usually only accountable to ourselves. … [Read more...]

This is the second in our 3 part series on upper structures. Last week we looked at the major seventh chord and this week we pivot to the minor seventh chord. The upper structure for this chord keeps everything diatonic and isn't very hard to understand. Again, we utilize the 9th, 11th, and 13th and learn how to play these notes as a substitute chord. Remember that you have to have the basic chord tones completely down and memorized before moving on to this material. These notes and structures … [Read more...]

I'm really excited for this week's episode as this is one of my favorite things to practice. Upper structures are the key to unlocking the most interesting sounds from any chord. This week, in part 1, we are focusing on the major seventh chord and what notes we can add to our playing to make things a little bit more interesting. I'll warn you that this material is a little bit more advanced than some of the other things I bring you on this podcast so get your basic chord tones down first before … [Read more...]