This week we are talking about a horrible affliction that affects many jazz musicians. The good news is, this disease can be cured with a little bit of hard work and you don't even have to see a doctor! Many folks center everything they do around the root of the chord. It's a safe bet and the root of the chord is printed right on the sheet music, making it the easiest and most convenient note play at any time. The problem with this is that our solos and phrases become boring and predictable … [Read more...]

Welcome to our first ever interview episode! One of the things I love most about being a musician is getting to hang out with other great players and talk to them about what's going on in their lives and careers. From here on out, I would like to bring you one or two conversations a month from people in the jazz and music world that I think are doing great things. Jason Heath runs the Contrabass Conversations Podcast and is truly one of the nicest and most important people in the music world. … [Read more...]

Editing is one of the toughest things you can do in life. Whether editing your writing or editing what you say in certain situations, choosing what to include and what to leave out are crucial. The same holds true for improvising. Sometimes not playing something can be just as powerful, if note more, than playing it. The heroes we look up to were masters of editing and a well placed rest could bring you almost to tears. We are going to take the same Coltrane line we used in episode 64 and … [Read more...]

Phil Woods was a true giant in jazz history. One of the preeminent saxophonists after Charlie Parker, Woods took the alto to new heights and has a legacy that will live on forever in jazz history. This week we are pulling two lines out of his solo on Blue Bossa and finding out what makes them tick. The first line demonstrates some fundamentals that will get us away from playing only 8th notes when it comes to a turnaround. Sometimes we can get in the habit of thinking that we need to fill every … [Read more...]

This weeks we give your practice plan some new life. Accomplish more by doing less!                         … [Read more...]

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...]