Things that have helped me improve (tips!)

[jtizzle]

Hey guys, I just want to ramble a bit on myself and what I've done to start getting some improvement in my playing, most of this stuff I've seen in many posts and even teachers have told me, but I kind of shrugged off until now.

Here's a little back story:
I used to live in Fl until this past August, when I moved to New York. I was hoping that coming to New York, I would end up in a great music school (I'm a junior right now, third year), meet some great players, and have an amazing teacher. Turns out I was completely wrong. The college I transferred to has a really bad Jazz program. It's tiny (as in, not even enough people for a full big band). It has a very bad distribution, and the ensembles are horrible (my combo has about 6 guitarists, 4 of which are terrible, and not even music majors). My teacher is a great player, but I feel like I'm not getting much from him. I also haven't been able to get to jam sessions because I got in a car accident and my headlight is broken, I can't fix it because I have no money for that right now.

So anyways, I felt like I really should start teaching myself Jazz, and even with all these things going against me, I've started to feel some improvement because of my new practice schedule, which is what this post is all about.

I wasn't much of a practice guy (I would maybe do two hours a day of random scale work and then play over a few tunes without even knowing what I was doing, that was pretty much it). But my new practice schedule has had me feel much better about my playing, and I'm still working on it, but I feel really motivated, especially because of my goal of getting into NYU to get my masters and doctorate degrees.

So, straight to the point now. Here are some things I've done that maybe some beginners, intermediate, and even advanced players might want to check out and try:
- Listening: You can never listen to enough music, Jazz mainly. My roommate is a trumpet major, but all he listens to is ska, and I'm sorry to say, but he is really bad. He never even takes the time to listen to a little jazz, not mention practice it. Even after I gave him 32 GBs of just jazz music. I'm always looking out for new jazz albums or listening to old ones I have in storage. Just now for example, I opened my new copy of Gilad Hekselman's Hearts Wide Open and I'm going through that album (great stuff, might I add), but I also love going back to my Miles Davis stuff, my Coltrane stuff. I also just got a few weeks ago including some stuff by Harold Land and Tommy Smith.
As a guitarist, I suggest you mainly listen to guitar stuff, since it's your main instrument, you want to pick up that sound. Now, that doesn't mean you shouldn't listen to other instruments. Quite the opposite, Horn players teach you how to phrase, Piano players teach you how to comp, and so on. I would say your listening percentage should be about 60% guitar, 40% other instruments. At least that's me.

- Warm up:
Don't warm up with up-down scales at 500bpms. That doesn't do much for you. Work on something new. I've recently started doing scales in intervals, not major scales, but altered scales, such as the superlocrian, which is the one I'm fixing my attention to now the most. But if you're not there yet, work with your major scale and major modes. Try different patterns, different intervals. Same with arpeggios, don't just do 1-3-5-7. Go all the way up to the 13th (kind of like doing a scale in 3rds). Use subs, like with major arpeggios, do 1-3-5-7, then 3-5-7-9. Sub/alter your dominant arpeggios. Don't do the same thing all the time, do different fingerings.
Make your warm-up, as well as your practice, theoretical and use your mind for it too, not only your fingers.

- Scales:
I know practicing scales on your metronome is the norm, but I strongly go against relying on that practice. It's a good warm up, but for scales I would strongly suggest doing the "endless scale" exercise. It's more deeply explained in Mark Levine's Jazz Theory book. It's basically taking a song and going through the chords in scales in time, playing them in 8th notes, 8th triplets, 16ths, ect, all while you connect the scales with chord tones, so you're never stopping and you continue to the next chord where you left off in the one before. Do the same with arpeggios. Again, this makes you use your mind, and makes the scales practical, having you see where you can connect the shapes, or what notes lead to each other in different progressions.

- Transcribing:
I recently started working on All The Things You Are. Crazy song. What's really helped me get through it, more than the scale exercise and everything was transcribing. I've been working on two solos on this song. The Grant Green solo and the Lage Lund solo. Both are completely different styles, but are so similar. Once I analyzed the two solos (I transcribed myself) I saw many things that were happening in both solos, for example, the last 4 or 6 bars (When it goes from Dbmaj to Dbmin) they are both doing some chromatic things, very similar to each other. It amazed me how Lage does it so it sounds so much more modern, but at the same time Green is doing it in a complete different way. It's just something that helps you see how to do things depending on what you want to sound like. If you don't have a good ear or the song you want to do is too fast, use transcribe, and slow it down to as slow as 70% (anything lower isn't that much practical). And don't worry if it takes you too long. When I first started transcribing it would take me a whole week to just do a chorus to a song. Just do one thing when you transcribe. Notate it! Nothing helps you steal licks more than writing them down, which leads me to my next point.

- Keeping a vocabulary book:
Recently, I started working on my own licks, and I bought a new staff paper notebook just to write down licks that come up to me to play over certain progressions. You can even organize the notebook in many aspects, grouping certain progressions, by who it sounds like, by function, by how it moves, and so on.

- Chords & Chord-melody:
I don't practice playing chords with records, I'm horrible at transcribing voicings, and I might play a voicing that sounds off with the recorded accompanist, instead, I record myself play the head to a song and comp to that recording. I might record a bass part myself (usually a horrible one haha) so I can work with nicer voicings in the top 4 strings.
I also work on chord melody stuff in a very easy way. I open the real book, take a song, and play a voicing that has the melody note on top. If the melody note is not a chord tone, I'll alter the voicing. If it's a fast passage, harmonizing the melody in thirds works. Listen to other Solo players (Joe Pass is a great start) and listen to how he does the basic stuff (not the runs or the bass lines, among other things).

- Sight Reading:
This is a quick one, take the real book, open it, go through 5 pages every night just sight reading. Use a metronome, though! the point of sight reading isn't stumbling through a phrase 50 times. Assume you're at a jam session and you're playing the song, you can't stop-and-go on phrases, you have to skip them and keep time. You can even try this with your metronome at 40, just keep time.

- Playing:
So the last one is just playing. I suggest having play along tracks for this one, preferably something you can make an mp3 file out of. Band in a Box is great, but it's a little too robotic, and you can look at the chords while you play. Here's what I do.
I got a bunch of Aebersold files from a friend, so what I do is I take those, plug them into Audacity, and record myself play along to them, then after the track is done, I listen to myself, then I mute the rhythm track, and listen to myself play without accompaniment to see if I'm actually making the changes. Whenever there's a section I make the changes, if I like the lick I played, I'll transcribe it and notate it in my handy-dandy licks book. If I don't make the changes in a certain part, I'll work on that section by itself, come up with a few licks and then play on it again.
I'll also work on handicapping myself in certain moments, like if I'm not playing in good time, I'll limit myself to playing 8th notes or quarter notes, strictly in 4 bar phrases. If I can't make some changes, I'll limit myself to playing only the arpeggios. If I seem to be all over the place, I'll limit myself to playing only a certain motif/lick that goes with the changes. Today I did this with ATTYA, I just did a 1-2-3-1 motif through the whole form and then took another chorus starting with the same thing but slightly developing it, but staying in there.

Don't forget, 90% of the time you work with a metronome, it should be clicking on beats 2 and 4 (if you're playing in 4/4). The 10% that it's on all beats is only for when you sight read something for the first few times. Keep it on all 4 beats, and you should be counting 8th notes with your voice, as in saying "One-and-Two-and-Three-and-Four-and". Trust me, no matter how ridiculous you think it looks, it works.

Those are my pointers for practicing. All of these aspects I try to get in every day, my practice time usually spans for somewhere between 4-6 hours a day. Listening is the only thing that I don't include in my routine, because I'm doing that all the time

Anyways, I know this is a really long post, but if you're reading this, it hopefully means you read the whole thing. Hope this helps some of you out there.

[Franklin52]

jtizzle,

Thanks for taking the time to write this post, I'm sure your tips are valuable for a lot of us.

Regards

[smokinguit]

Jtizzle,

No, your post was not too long. Lots of good points. I especially like your toughts on transcribing and keeping a book of staff paper for licks from other players and yourself. It's obvious that you are a truly driven player, and with that kind of drive you're likely to succeed.

[Gramps]

I like the fact that you took matters into your own hands when the music program you chose didn't pan out. That is a skill you can use for the rest of your life.

Keep up the good work and thanks for sharing.

[AlsoRan]

Great thoughts!

After reading a lot of instructional books and online websites such as this one, and after watching many dvds, I came to a lot of the same conclusions that you did.

I have spent quite a bit of time memorizing songs and working on chops, I am now working on/internalizing learning licks that work over certain regularly encountered jazz chord changes.

Some of the licks are from Jazz Book/CDs, while others are from my head. For both the original licks and those that I learned from others, I am analyzing each one to see what scale or arpeggio, etc.. it is based on, and any chromatic movement it may contain. I want to be able to know each lick intimately. My goal is to be able to morph these licks into small expressive solos, hopefully getting to the point where I can spit out large licks and modify them on the fly. This seems to be the way many players have approached improvising and it works well with the way that I think and understand music.

I don't have a lot of time to practice ( 1 hour a day during the week, maybe 2 per day on weekends), but I am slowly making progress towards my goal of being able to improvise on the fly.

I have also been squeezing in chord work to improve my comping skills. And like you said, listening to piano players, such as Horace Silver has been very valuable. My comping skills are lagging behind my soloing skills, but both are coming along at a pace that is realistic for my situation.

In the end, I hope to have a "catalog" of recorded riffs organized on my computer in such a way that I can can group them together into related families. I hope to be able to play with them to create more and more licks that are related. That is still a ways down the road....

Thanks for the post. It let me know I might be on the right track.

[jmstritt]

I think that this is great advice for developing players. I have been playing jazz for years, and my practice routine is not much different from yours. People will always search for a shortcut or a magic teacher or book, but you have all the tools you need! Learn your scales, arpeggios, chords, digital patterns, and licks and then use those tools to learn tunes. I don't have a ton of practice time right now (Usually 30 mins to 1 hour a day), because I work a 40 hour job and usually have 2 or 3 gigs plus 1 or 2 rehearsals a week, but if you are focused you can accomplish a lot in even 30 minutes.

The thing that people don't realize is that how much you practice doesn't make you better, how well you practice makes you better. Endlessly running scales won't make you a good player, playing tunes makes you a better player.

The one thing I would add is that I think you need to listen to less guitar players. This is just my opinion so take it with a grain of salt, but most jazz guitar music isn't important to jazz music as a whole. Really it boils down to Smokin at the Half Note, The Increadible Jazz Guitar of Wes Montgomery, Sonny Rollins The Bridge, and the Kenny Burrell stuff with Jimmy Smith. Think about it, I have taken several jazz history courses both when I was in a performing arts high school and in college. There was a brief mention of Freddie Green, Charlie Christian, and Django at the beginning, then apparently guitar music ceased to exist until Billy Bauer, and then ceased to exist again until Wes, Kenny, Burrell, and Jim Hall, and then usually a couple words about fusion at the end. Meanwhile weeks were spent on Duke Ellington, Charlie Parker, Miles Davis, and John Coltrane.

My point to the last thing is focus on the core of our music! Listen to Miles Davis, Charlie Parker, Sonny Rollins, John Coltrane, and then add in guitar music but listen through the ears of someone who is schooled in the language of jazz.

[jmstritt]

Originally Posted by Gramps

I like the fact that you took matters into your own hands when the music program you chose didn't pan out. That is a skill you can use for the rest of your life.

Keep up the good work and thanks for sharing.

+1

I have a lot of respect for someone that takes responsibility for what they want to achieve! Gramps is right, what you are doing isn't a good lesson for music, it is a good lesson for LIFE!

[fep]

Good post and you have a lot of good tips.

My top five areas are:

- Jamming with others

- Playing tunes in front of others... if it's not a gig then in front of friends, but make if feel like a performance to yourself. I find getting a bunch of tunes prepared for performance really focuses my energy and helps me improve.

- Developing Repertoire (shoot for 50 tunes, then 100, then 150, then 200)

- Building Vocabulary (licks).

- Sight Reading

- Composition... oops that's six.

We're together on two of them, building vocabulary and sight reading.

You make a great point about changing things up. Practicing scales or technical exercises never did much for my playing unless it's a scale I don't have down yet. I seldom practice scales or do technical exercises...

There are too many weaknesses in other areas of my playing to worry about practicing a major scale or the related modes (which I had completely down years ago). Granted I could always play faster, that's just not too important to me at least not compared to playing 'pretty' and knowing lots of tunes.

However I do chase scales/arpeggios thru changes as you mentioned.

[pingu]

Take an easy tune
slow it right down
try to play just whats in your head
really simple stuff
gets you away from stringing licks together
and improvising actual melody

rah

[jtizzle]

Originally Posted by jmstritt

I think that this is great advice for developing players. I have been playing jazz for years, and my practice routine is not much different from yours. People will always search for a shortcut or a magic teacher or book, but you have all the tools you need! Learn your scales, arpeggios, chords, digital patterns, and licks and then use those tools to learn tunes. I don't have a ton of practice time right now (Usually 30 mins to 1 hour a day), because I work a 40 hour job and usually have 2 or 3 gigs plus 1 or 2 rehearsals a week, but if you are focused you can accomplish a lot in even 30 minutes.

The thing that people don't realize is that how much you practice doesn't make you better, how well you practice makes you better. Endlessly running scales won't make you a good player, playing tunes makes you a better player.

The one thing I would add is that I think you need to listen to less guitar players. This is just my opinion so take it with a grain of salt, but most jazz guitar music isn't important to jazz music as a whole. Really it boils down to Smokin at the Half Note, The Increadible Jazz Guitar of Wes Montgomery, Sonny Rollins The Bridge, and the Kenny Burrell stuff with Jimmy Smith. Think about it, I have taken several jazz history courses both when I was in a performing arts high school and in college. There was a brief mention of Freddie Green, Charlie Christian, and Django at the beginning, then apparently guitar music ceased to exist until Billy Bauer, and then ceased to exist again until Wes, Kenny, Burrell, and Jim Hall, and then usually a couple words about fusion at the end. Meanwhile weeks were spent on Duke Ellington, Charlie Parker, Miles Davis, and John Coltrane.

My point to the last thing is focus on the core of our music! Listen to Miles Davis, Charlie Parker, Sonny Rollins, John Coltrane, and then add in guitar music but listen through the ears of someone who is schooled in the language of jazz.

Here's the thing, back in the days of bop/post bop, and all that, sure, that's true. But in today's age, guitar is as important in a group now as any other instrument. If you listen to all these newer albums coming out, starting from the late 80s to early 90s many groups have been adding guitar players as soloists or even replacing the piano for just guitar. The whole new "modern jazz" movement, I like to believe, is led by guitarists really. There's only a handful of players that are not guitarists playing this style that I can mention, but I can mention over two dozen guitarists.
Think about it. By modern jazz I mean in the veins of Kreisberg, Rosenwinkel, ect.

I don't mean to put down other instruments. Especially when listening to more old school stuff. As I mentioned, listening to other instruments solo helps you get great phrasing, and transcribing horn solos does so much good for you as an all around musician. But as a guitarist, you need to listen to your own instrument as much, maybe even more than you listen to other instruments. It's about listening to what your instrument can do and recognizing the sound and possibilities in it. It's almost like generalizing it to music genres, if you're a Jazz musician, you want to make Jazz your primary listening music, and whatever else make it secondary. Do you get what I mean?

[jmstritt]

Originally Posted by jtizzle

Here's the thing, back in the days of bop/post bop, and all that, sure, that's true. But in today's age, guitar is as important in a group now as any other instrument. If you listen to all these newer albums coming out, starting from the late 80s to early 90s many groups have been adding guitar players as soloists or even replacing the piano for just guitar. The whole new "modern jazz" movement, I like to believe, is led by guitarists really. There's only a handful of players that are not guitarists playing this style that I can mention, but I can mention over two dozen guitarists.
Think about it. By modern jazz I mean in the veins of Kreisberg, Rosenwinkel, ect.

I don't mean to put down other instruments. Especially when listening to more old school stuff. As I mentioned, listening to other instruments solo helps you get great phrasing, and transcribing horn solos does so much good for you as an all around musician. But as a guitarist, you need to listen to your own instrument as much, maybe even more than you listen to other instruments. It's about listening to what your instrument can do and recognizing the sound and possibilities in it. It's almost like generalizing it to music genres, if you're a Jazz musician, you want to make Jazz your primary listening music, and whatever else make it secondary. Do you get what I mean?

I will say that is valid, however we must all aknowledge that without Sonny Rollins, John Coltrane, etc there would be no Kriessberg, Rosenwinkle, Ben Monder, etc.

I do like some of those newer guys though, Ben Monder in particular.

[pauln]

I use a simple three step process I call learning by EAR:

Earnestly listening to music that sounds like the way I want to play

Assiduously figuring out on the guitar how to play and sound like what I heard

Regularly performing what I figured out and making up stuff that sounds like that as well