I got a questions from one of our listeners, Andrew about how he could improve his skills of learning tunes by ear. I thought that this was a great topic to do an episode on as it concerns one of the most important parts of playing jazz: ear training. This is a particularly hard part of ear training because it requires us to figure out harmony as well as melody and rhythm. This skill can also come in very handy when we want to play a tune or piece that has not been charted out anywhere. This … [Read more...]

This weeks episode is all about triad pairs. This is going to be the first in a series of shows on this topic but fair warning, they won't be in order week after week. I'm going to pepper them in every few weeks to give you a chance to work on them. The first episode in the series will be about major triads a whole step apart. The first thing you need to do is get familiar with the pattern of these triads played back to back. You're also going to want to get used to the sound so that when you … [Read more...]

We are starting a new monthly thing here at the 10 Minute Jazz Lesson Podcast. Every month, on the third episode of the month, we will learn a new piece of vocabulary over a commonly used chord progression. This is meant for us to learn great material over chord changes that we will see everyday as an improvising jazz musician. If you aren't dedicating at least a part of your practice routine to learning new vocabulary, you should be! This week we take a look at what is perhaps the most … [Read more...]

Are you ready for part 2 of our whole tone series? If you haven't checked out part one, make sure that you go back and check that out. It's required listening if you want to get the most out of this week's episode. Part 1 was geared towards getting the whole tone scale into your brain and under your fingers. This week we get to the fun stuff! We are going to start plugging the whole tone scale into chord progressions that we will see on a regular basis. We start with augmented ii-V7-I … [Read more...]

This week we are going to take a look at an important scale in jazz: The Whole Tone Scale. there are many different uses for this scale in all kinds of situations and we will get to that in part 2. This week we are going to cover the basics and get this scale under our fingers. I'm presenting you with some select exercises to get the whole tone scale into your ears and under your fingers. We are going to start developing some flexibility with the scale so next week we have the technique down … [Read more...]