1. Learn the melody and chord progression first. 2. Licks are good. 3. Stop playing so many notes. 4. Rhythm is more important than note choices. 5. Learn from recordings not real books. 6. Copy what you like. 7. Don’t try to impress anyone. 8. The process is more important than the results. 9. Don’t be in a rush. yw✌️
The person who uses the real book is just going to be reading. That was Golden! I nearly fell out of my chair. I do use books to improve my reading but I can’t play from the books. I use the recordings 99% of the time.
An alternative to the Real Book for learning tunes I picked up in grad school is to track down the original sheet music for the composition, especially for those Great American Songbook standards. You can see the harmony, melody and lyrics(!) the songwriters originally put on the page, and then listen to jazz recordings to see how it got adapted from Broadway to a blowing session. Not always possible or easy to do that, but it can be really rewarding.
First is especially important! I just played Wynton Marsalis' Swing Symphony, and it was my first ensemble jazz experience, and step 1 for all the solos, #1 I had to learn the melody and chords, so I could have a skeleton of the solo (chords) and something to come back to (melody). I'll update this comment as I watch the whole thing!
Thanks Jay. Always informative and relevant. If I may be so bold, I'll add my 10th lesson that I'm still working on: 'Play what you hear' and likewise 'hear what you play.'
Great tips! When I first started listening to jazz with the intention of learning how to play I thought, "I just need to know what scales they are playing, then it should be easy." Then I tried to learn by "osmosis." Over time I learned that it is a lot more complex than that and I need to go through the step-by-step process (and enjoy the process) to be able to play jazz.
Chris Potter had to get better also! It takes approximately ten albums in to his discography, before the Potter we know today has emerged from the kiln. The melodic playing of Dexter Gordon is a treat and highly valuable. The real books are a tool and it's possible to use tools incorrectly.
Excellent advice, sir. It's all about melody and tone. Fall in love with what you're playing. Record your practice sessions and listen. Great video, bro.
Sonny Rollins Said in a Interview (in the Spiegel Magazin Germany) a long time ago: "It helps wenn you know the melody" well if sonny say's so … Thanks Jay.
Much wisdom here. Spot on. Except I do spend quite a bit of time getting charts (including standards) together. All band members need to be in agreement with the basics.
Certainly all words of wisdom that come from years of experience. Having said that, even with all the great advice that is given, people stray away from these easy to follow bits of information, and they end up doing the opposite. If you can figure out why that is, you got a million dollar proposal. I guess, in the end, education is the answer.
This is GOLD!!!!!!! Thanks, Jay. Sometimes it helps to hear it spelled out. I think I will play this about 50 times to get it burned into my brain. 😵💫
All excellent stuff and really useful. Take issue with one point though, I am an experienced intermediate adult player and I use recordings all the time; however, I have never been able to 'hear' what chords are playing so I need to see what the chords are initially at least. I can transcribe melody but not chords. I think that is a very advanced stage?
#4 is the most important thing. I regularly do an exercise where I sit at piano, an instrument I don’t really play,and basically playing random notes. It sounds good, because every note is something in a key, did I just play a random Ab that doesn’t fit the chord? Yeah, but nobody can tell, because the rhythm is tight and it’s very jazzy
Great advice, I'm always reminded of the old saying "practice makes perfect" and I believe that is kind of incorrect. If you just practice something but you're doing it wrong, then you're just perfecting mistakes right? Maybe it should be "perfect practice makes perfect"?
You started at 18 and were in a rush. I'm not in a rush, but I started last year when I was 73. I also have the rest of my life to improve, but in all fairness, I'll not achieve your mastery even if I were to live another 30 years to 104. I do regret not knowing how fun it would be when I was 18.
Only thing I'm going to disagree with (and only slightly) is number 5. I've learned an awful LOT from Real books, including melody structure, chord changes, phrasing, rhythm. I think it would be better to say "Learn from recordings AND real books" or "Learn from recordings FIRST." Learning to sight read is an important skill, one that I'm very glad to have picked up. If I were to go back to my younger self and do anything over, I would say: learn different instruments. Learn piano, bass, drums. You don't have to dive into any of these terribly deeply, and you can learn them on the cheap. But knowing the language of what everything else is doing is essential for learning the melody-forward instruments such as horns.
A book by Russell Haight is excellent for points 1-9. "Odd-meter Etudes for Tenor Sax" is one of the most pedagogically sound books I've come across, combining a large number of melodic rhythms and the important chords (through the 9th) with the changes. It offers the opportunity to copy, learn from recordings (CD), and diverge (and the bonus is learning 5/4 and 7/4). I think it appropriate for anyone with more than 1200 hours playing time. (I tried to paste in p. 13 from his book, but couldn't manage it. If Jay is interested to post it, he can ask me for the image, and I will send it him.)
Great advice, but learning chords by ear sounds really intimidating. I try to learn all melodies by ear and it takes some time, but learning to hear the different chord qualities sounds immensely difficult. Would you suggest trying to arpeggiate them up to the 9th to get their qualities?
I took lessons for like a year but they were HS students about 11 years ago; did not learn anything; but I kept at it pretty much every day for over 10 years; from 4 hours to 3 hours and than 2 hours a day for years; what I did was memorize song melodies from sheet music and I practiced my scales, tone exercises, timing (which I still dont understand that with sheet music; its hard to explain) I have hit a wall cause I recorded a song on my smartphone (several) and I really don't like what I hear; I have not played for over a week longest I think I gone without practicing in the last 11 years; you said that we should be doing it by listening; would it be cheating to take a song and slow it down and have an app to tell me what notes its playing? I have two professional Yana Altos BTW; I just hate what I sound like!
Got any tips on keeping a clear sound? Sometimes when I practice I get a sound that sounds like water between my reed and mouth piece. If I wait like a minute it goes away and I’ve never been able to figure it out
Great video, Jay! I have a question for anyone who reads this. How, as a busy student, do I balance learning the classical part of the saxophone as well as the jazz part? I enjoy both, but find getting better at both difficult.
I addressed this in the video. Just do the work and don’t measure results day to day. Over time you will get a lot better if you are consistent. You could also just choose one of those disciplines to focus on.
WWMD? What would Miles Davis do? Yeah I know he didn't play sax, I try to play sometimes in a Miles Davis style. Cool, meaningful, deep. Just how I think sometimes.
