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I think he's playing four note voicings there
Originally Posted by AllanAllen
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07-23-2025 08:36 AM
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The local guy recently broke it down as:
scales
chords
tunesLast edited by Bach5G; 07-23-2025 at 03:06 PM.
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Im not sure how that could really be a useful breakdown. Originally Posted by Bach5G
What should I practice to get better at baseball?
Hitting.
throwing.
catching.
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Exactly Originally Posted by pamosmusic
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"What do I need to practice?" — it's a legit and obvious question.
But there are a few problems with it.
First, the skills you need usually come as a bundle. And that bundle needs to work in sync. So instead of practicing a few "most important" skills in isolation, maybe you should be practicing how they work together.
Second, when you obsess over one specific thing — whatever it is — it’s often just a small nuance you're blowing out of proportion.
Third, what’s essential depends on your goals. What’s "fundamental" in one context might be irrelevant in another.
Fourth, you become good at what you practice — but was that really the thing you were aiming for? If you practice X, you'll become good at X — but maybe Y was your real goal. This kind of mismatch can be a trap, and it happens all the time.
My advice: When you feel like you want to practice one specific thing, try focusing on something else for a while — but keep that original thing in your peripheral vision. Often, the thing you’re eager to practice is automatic, essential, independent — a nuance. And by shifting your focus slightly, you might give it space to develop naturally, without forcing it.
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well then thanks for sharing, I guess? Originally Posted by Bach5G
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What do YOU need practice?
No idea, get a lesson with someone.
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Today, when I think about this topic, I focus on two things that are needed before answering the question.
What do you want to sound like?
What are your strengths and weaknesses? Possibly most important, How good is your ear?
Another might be, What is your remaining life expectancy?
Thinking back over the years, I didn't have a clear goal for sound. I'd get distracted by every great thing I heard. My weak point was my harmonic ear (I'm okay with melody but much less ok on chords); I knew it, but I didn't work on it enough. That was what I should have been practicing, in hindsight. Well, many other things, but looking back, that's the main one.
As for advice, if you can't pass the Happy Birthday test, if you can play All of Me in C, but struggle to play it in a different key, if you can't identify the changes on a recording of a simple tune without touching an instrument -- then, by all means, work on your ear. Best way is probably the old fashioned way. Figure stuff out from recordings.Last edited by rpjazzguitar; 07-23-2025 at 08:34 PM.
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So how was the show, was it everything you expected? Originally Posted by Christian Miller
Last edited by AdroitMage; 07-26-2025 at 11:24 PM.
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I managed to not book tickets somehow which was weird because I remember clicking the button. To be honest I was relieved. Knackering day.
I’ve seen Kurt a couple of times. First in 2007. He’s great. Hopefully I will catch him again soon.
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Imagine that for all the years you practiced the guitar
you never played anything that wouldn't be musically
useful in the performance of tunes, so developing the
deep habit of only sounding like music every time you
picked it up and began making some sounds out of it.
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You should be practising technique a LOT.
Freeing yourself up to be able to follow musical ideas/thoughts with no impediment from your technique.
This is never really mentioned much, people love going on about practising tunes/stuff that is "musical".
Technique should be the major part.
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Sure, we who hold striving to sound "musical" as the ultimate technique. Originally Posted by jazzyfan
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This philosophical approach is all well and good for forum discussions, but if you want to actually play the guitar, you have to do some technical non-musical exercises at some point. Whether or not you remember doing them, or if you even are aware you did them, is another thing. For example, playing the major scale, in thirds or any other "melodic cell" can be a technical exercise. Originally Posted by pauln
Sure, we who hold striving to sound "musical" as the ultimate technique.
I suspect you did a lot of technical practice, but didn't label it as such.
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You're imagining how I learned to play?
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I did plenty of technical exercises when I was starting out. It works. You can play more stuff. The rub is that whatever you practice is probably going to get into your playing.
So, if, for example, you practice scales in order from the root, you're probably going to find yourself doing that in a solo. Don't ask me how I know this. This may be an argument for really thinking through what and how you practice to maximize its musical value.
That said, in recent years I have focused on tunes, including plenty of stuff I had to work on to get up to speed and sounding good. I'd count that work as "technical exercise". If I had to pick one (and you don't), I'd pick working on tunes.
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Because despite all the high falutin talk of improvisation and playing by ear what you will default to most of the time when under pressure is what is programmed into your ears and muscle memory. Especially under pressure Originally Posted by rpjazzguitar
That’s true of many pros by the way. Even some of the ones who claim not to be playing licks. Part of being a pro for most is having a ‘good sounding’ automatic bag to fall back on.
So you might as well program good stuff in there and not just scales from the root. So practice lines and phrases over tunes, things you like the sound of. Work on this stuff till it’s natural and swings. A lot of learning to be a fluent jazz player is that. Repertoire, as Ethan Iverson put it.
Your options as to what do about that when you get to that point and inevitably want to progress beyond this stage vary depending on the school you follow. That’s a whole rich subject.
But some players are fine with it and just do that haha. Some get scolded for doing it by the elders (but it’s a mistake to think that this isn’t an important stage in its own right.)
Sonny Rollins was allowing himself to be unusually vulnerable by refusing to fall back on this bag, but he’d already completely demonstrated his ability to do the professional thing, and wanted to go beyond it.
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There's that. Originally Posted by Christian Miller
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Just adding emphasis on the important thing Sonny Rollins did, that everyone who claims him as an influence wants to skip. Originally Posted by Christian Miller
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Yeah I mean tbf it’s also a different scene now. Back in the 50s every horn player had to reckon with bop.
These days there’s a million different directions one could go in. You don’t have to be playing GASB standards seven nights a week to be a jazz player. You might choose to just do free/non idiomatic stuff. But even then I feel there’s a language, or at least a vocabulary.
The community sets that bar as to what is ‘sounding good’ but I think it’s a both a little unfashionable but also valid to say that’s the thing that gets you on the bandstand so you have the luxury of getting bored by your own licks.
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When a topic comes with a question mark, the thread gets flooded with answers.
Responders offer what they know — but rarely what they don’t know, and almost never what they’re unaware of not knowing. That’s true for every response.
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My past jazz guitar teacher recommended me 4 hours of practice. 1 hour of scales (applied to tunes)
1 hour of arpeggios (applied to tunes)
1 hour of ________ (I forgot)
1 hour of ________ (I forgot)
):
If I were to fill in the blanks my best guess would be to do 1 hour of making a song performance ready (being able to play the melody and chords).
Other blank transcribe solos. Play 'language'
There were other stuff we went through in depth like using certain rhythms while improvising. For fretboard navigation 5 positions (do more with less).
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An hour of scales applied to tunes - how many tunes would that be? Personally I like to pick one tune a day and spend at least an hour on it as follows -20 minutes of arpeggio exercises over it, 20 minutes of scale type of exercises over it and the last 20 minutes of applying 'language' or composed licks and improvising. And of course comping, which I begin with. So it's over an hour. Originally Posted by jazznylon
All of this very much being FWIW (not much probably).
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One tune. I'm also thinking of spending one tune throughout 12 days (for 12 keys)
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That’s too much time on scales and arpeggios. Least of all because arpeggios are inside scales, this is just 2 hours on scales.
Get a new teacher, especially if it’s chatGPT.
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