What were the good tips / lesson / teacher that

[Ronen]

Hi Jazzers

I wonder what was for each of you the tips / lessons / teacher / action / book that made the change to improve . . .

I bought many books, tried several teachers, read articals and . . .

These were mine to do some improvment
1. Work by chords tones and less by modes, scales
2. Leran new chords shapes, mainly drop2
3. Charlie Parker Omni book
4. Record myself
5. ...

The most impact came from #2, Improv by chord tones, but this only help me to build solo note by note
and...
im still looking for the big improv to be able to improv on the fly

What were your trigger for the big improvment?

Ronen

[Timbell]

Chord tones come first on my list. Recording myself is second, especially since I have been using prerecorded swing beats to keep tempo in my recordings. Patterns that really compliment the scale approach, like going up in 3rds or up and down in 3rds help a lot when I get lost and cannot find chord tones but know what the scale is. Those can be very helpful. One other things that helped me get out of a really long funk in my improvising was when I asked my teacher what the most important scale to know for jazz was, and he responded with chromatic. It made me realize how my only scalar approach to playing was making my solos uninspiring and predictable.

[cosmic gumbo]

#1 for a serious jazzer is to not be afraid to sound like yourself.

[Nuff Said]

My improvement came as soon as I realized that good players have all put in a huge amount of good daily practice time. 8+ hours per day with an organised system of practice.

Only by putting in the hours on your instrument, will you be any good at playing, no matter what natural talent you have.

Nuff

[augusjazz]

In my opinion helped me a lot of people experience (yet still helping me), because it's not the point of having many resources, how to use them correctly.
This is fundamental to the opinion of those who know.

[fep]

Here's some intro excerpts from my teacher that I thought was pretty dang good:

[eddy b.]

Transcribing or at the very least learning tunes by ear by guitarists, it's the steep path but also the short cut all at the same time.

[Ronen]

Great points to learn from, Thank you!

So

Cosmic says never be afraid to sound like yourself, im adding not afriad from mistakes...all do so.

Nuff says that good daily practice of 8+ hours will do and Fep is adding to collect and play songs as part of practice, QUANTITY, and do some practicing inbetween. I liked this teacher!

Eddy added the transcripting which all talk about but saying it is a short cut

It seems we need to collect as much as possible from others as well as from our own, and most of all memorize...but i found that i forget allot of what I have learnt and the memorization is one of my challenges.

Ronen

[zigzag]

When I realized that the best way to beat stagnation and to improve was by taking lessons. I learned how to learn, how to practice, and what to learn, plus it required dedication and discipline. I also discovered that it is necessary, periodically, to discontinue lessons and play what I've learned purely for fun. Over the last ten years. I've taken lessons for two or three years and quit for six to nine months, then repeat.

[Unburst]

The biggest breakthrough for me was to never practice anything in the abstract, I used to be a chronic scale/arpeggio runner, up and down chromatically etc. these days I only practice something as it applies to a specific tune, if I want to work on melodic minor I'll pick a tune and apply melodic minor to every chord in every which way.

Also practicing top down scales and arpeggios, one of the side effects of being a "scale runner" is that you know the shapes a lot better from the lowest note than the highest.

[jster]

My first two rules are:
1) Keep the guitar out on the stand in the middle of the room
2) Sing what you play

I'll leave the more advanced matters to you pros.

[jayx123]

+1 on the sing what you play

[nion]

I would say: play what you sing.

[nion]

and play with as many people as you can, specially people that are better than you.