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Getting a teacher that actually cares whether I practice or not worked wonders for me when I started out in music college. He was furious about my constant unwillingness to practice. After the ultimatum he gave me I was never the same and started logging in some serious practice hours afterwards. I wouldn't have made it without him, I was very fortunate
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11-06-2024 10:52 AM
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Don't apply modal concepts on tonal tunes, you'll never learn to be fluent when you improvise but learn chord progressions as if you were a bass player, it's not so important to know where you are if you don't know where you go.
Act like a musician not only like a guitarist, music is not only made of shapes, diagrams and licks.
See your neck like a keyboard.
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Practicing at slow tempos, listening and recording - this greatly affects the development of a jazz musician.
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Just recent.
Disconnect from social media. No Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, or TikTok. Turn off your main stream media. No Fox, OAN, CNN, MSNBC etc. Read a bit of your local newspaper over a coffee occasionally, but cancel your online subscriptions to the WaPo, NYT.
it frees up hours that you can put to better use, including practice.
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If your music emerges as being more important, exciting and satisfying than what you get from the media machine, you're on the road that the greats have walked.
Originally Posted by Bach5G
Good advice.
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Spend most of your practice time on tunes (e.g. 80%). You don’t get called to perform lydian dominant scales in 3 octaves (even though you might use it in a performance). We are mostly entertainers as jazz musicians although of course a small, small number will become artists in their own right.
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Reminds me of a curb-side portable sign that I saw, while driving through a small town in western Wisconsin, this past summer. It said..."Stop watching and listening to the news and start living".
Advice for a different reason than #54 above. But the same result. Use your time to do something for yourself (including practicing your instrument), rather than watching someone else doing something or giving you their opinion and free advice. Could probably also apply to watching sporting events on TV.
FWIW
Tom
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Oh, the best practice advice that I've not heard often would be, "eventually, it'll all come together".
Meaning, people are impatient by nature, in every whay. Giving advice, receiving it.
I think I have quit something important twice just because it seemed either impossible or would take eternity.
But later turned out it just needed some more... hours or.. months or years.
And life actually is long enough to make them happen.
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There are no teachers in my part of the world. Would be nice.
So I would suggest that the single best way to improve practice is to play in public. It's hard for me at times to push onward and upward if there is no point other than getting better. A nebulous task with demarcations that can feel artificial. Having real end points like going to volunteer a few hours of wallpaper jazz at the library on Sunday afternoon or busking or coffee shop.. it forces you to focus because you will be performing the results.
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You can't always get what you want, but if you try sometimes, you might find you get what you need.
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Usually it feels like I'm performing my shortcomings, but at least I know what to work on the next day. Originally Posted by Spook410
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Play tunes.
(There's quite a simple one over on the Practical Standards thread at the moment but I bet no one does it).
(Edit - I was right, no one did it :-))Last edited by ragman1; 12-24-2024 at 08:53 AM.
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Is anyone here familiar with this book? -- The Practice Notebooks of Michael Brecker
Another one that looks appetizing but intense [365 Days of Practice by Rick Margitza] - https://www.shermusic.com/9780991077342.php
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Nooooo but it’s been on my list for a long time. A saxophone friend got it and loved it but I haven’t talked to him much about it. Originally Posted by Mick-7
i was thinking I might get it after Christmas but I might bump it for the Jimmy Raney Book
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Sher has digital copies (pdfs) of these books on sale now! (50% off) - https://www.shermusic.com/sale.php Originally Posted by pamosmusic
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Practice. Just practice.
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I got the Brecker book recently (pdf version), it’s certainly fascinating to see his practice materials over the years (they are grouped chronologically, it starts when he was at university in 1967). Originally Posted by Mick-7
A lot of it is short ideas/patterns he transcribed, interesting that there are a few by guitarists (John Abercrombie, Barry Finnerty, Mike Stern for example). The appendix explains how he would practise with these ideas. Basically he would play them in all keys, moving chromatically, at different intervals etc. and just let them ‘soak in’. I guess this is one way he would get ideas for those four-note cells he would often play, which he tended to shift chromatically. So you could certainly do this on the guitar too, just pick any patterns that appeal.
There is also some chordal stuff which I haven’t looked at yet, I guess he played this on the piano, or maybe as arpeggios on sax.
I was intrigued to see that he wrote down a special saxophone fingering which he says he got from Ronnie Scott. Nice to know that our Ronnie was able to teach him something!
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Herodotus (c.484–c.425 BC)
Quoted Ahmose (569-529 B.C.)
Egyptian king (Greek name Amasis)...
Those who have bows bend them when they want to use them. If they were kept bent all the time, they would spoil and be useless when they were wanted. The condition of man is the same: if he were always striving and did not take enough time for recreation, he would become mad or stupid before he knew it. This I know, and I divide my time accordingly.
Herodutus noted that Ahmose divided his time around breakfast; he did all his work and decisions before breakfast, then after spent the rest of the day drinking and horsing around. Apparently this worked well, he was an effective and popular king.
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