This week is all about your mind, body, instrument connection. This episode will also help you tremendously with your ears. Drones have been something that musicians have used for a long time to help them with just about everything that has to do with playing an instrument and playing any type of music. This week, we take a look at some effective strategies to use with a sitar-like drone and many of the things you can gain from doing this on a regular basis in your practice routine. I hope you … [Read more...]

This week continues our journey on making the metronome the center of our focus. Last week I gave you some deceivingly simle exercises that will make a huge impact on your playing if you take them seriuosly. This week we take things a step further and really challenge ourselves to play some complicated material in perfect time with the metronome. We are looking at triplets of all kinds, sixteenth notes, and then in the final exercises, fluidly switching between them taking our time to the next … [Read more...]

This week is all about the metronome. I did an episode way back when that touched on working with the metronome, but this week we are getting a whole lot deeper with it. Do you ever focus your practice time on developing a deep connection with this device? If you don't, it might be a good idea to add this into the mix. Most of us think that the only requirement to having good time is to have the metronome on while we are playing. This is great, but we don't develop that deep understanding of … [Read more...]

This week is all about shaking up your practice routine and doing something that might seem crazy or impractical. Would you like to support the creators of this podcast? If so, please head over to our Patreon page and show your love by donating $3 or more each month. You get incredible benefits and this keeps the podcast coming at you regularly. Thanks so much! … [Read more...]

This week we are talking about and studying one of the true architects of jazz as we know it. Louis Armstrong basically started it all. We are studying an excerpt from his transcription on Hotter Than That. Louis teaches us a lot in these few short bars. What can we do to make one chord sound great over a longer period of time? What do we do when we are not using a million chord substitutions and not playing bebop? All of these questions and more will be answered in this week's episode so tune … [Read more...]

This week is all about an extremely old set of tunes and what they can do for you and your playing. Would you like to support the creators of this podcast? If so, please head over to our Patreon page and show your love by donating $3 or more each month. You get incredible benefits and this keeps the podcast coming at you regularly. Thanks so much! … [Read more...]

This week we continue with our series about playing the blues in multiple keys at once. In this episode we change from learning a simple melody in minor thirds, to actually improvising. I have included a simple way for you to quickly wrap your own ear and the listener's ear to the new key and make it clear what we are doing. By quickly arpeggiating the first chord of the new key, we make it very clear that there is a shift happening. Remember that this material is a little bit on the advanced … [Read more...]

Are you a visual learner? I know I am and I have been investigating ways to make this work to my advantage. Would you like to support the creators of this podcast? If so, please head over to our Patreon page and show your love by donating $3 or more each month. You get incredible benefits and this keeps the podcast coming at you regularly. Thanks so much! … [Read more...]

This week's episode is a little bit on the advanced side of things. We are going to learn how to quickly tonisize new keys and really be on top of our game in terms of thinking on our feet. This was an exercise that one of my professors in graduate school had me do on a regular basis and it helped me out a lot. This exercise not only will help the brain but will also get you to hear things in a brand new way. By using the relationship of minor thirds we can easily transition between keys … [Read more...]

This week is all about a listening format that is coming back to prominence and is easier than ever to incorporate into your life. Vinyl is the way to listen, especially to jazz! Would you like to support the creators of this podcast? If so, please head over to our Patreon page and show your love by donating $3 or more each month. You get incredible benefits and this keeps the podcast coming at you regularly. Thanks so much! … [Read more...]