The Best Way To Learn Jazz Vocabulary - Guaranteed 

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Love this

@@nickmainella I am also a Patreon subscriber of yours. At 67, I have learned a lot in life and one of those is that you cannot rush things; be it becoming proficient playing an instrument or making a fine wine. And yes, I am a homewinemaker. For Xmas I am opening up a recently bottled Zinfandel Port that was NOT rushed!

Glad it was helpful!

Just keep coming back to your instrument and jazz consistently and you will make massive progress. If you don’t stop, you’ll get better by accident!

Glad it was helpful!

You bet!

🙌

You are most welcome!

No apologies necessary! To me, it sounds like you are overwhelming yourself. The first line will take as long as it takes. I would argue taking that 6 months to really learn something will benefit you far more than skimming the surface on many things. There are LEGENDS of this music that have based their entire musical identities on a handful of harmonic devices and sounds. They didn't feel the pressure to learn everything (or did but ignored it). Maybe a though to chew on??

Absolutely!

This is such an interesting perspective. I would love to hear more! Do you have any desire to be an improvising musician?

@@nickmainella as you well know, Bach, Beethoven, Mozart and Liszt were well known improvisors. They say Chopin never played a piece the same way twice. There were always embellishments to the melodic lines. That aspect of classical music making has largely disappeared. I had a keyboard class in college where we were required to improvise. I was hopeless at it. As I said, the closest analogy is what actors do. When they interpret a Shakespeare play, they don’t generally change the words, but each actor brings something completely different to it, and makes it their own. A classical composer is equivalent to a playwright. They don’t expect the performer to improvise around their notes, but to play exactly what they wrote. Rossini nearly shoved a soprano out the window for using too many embellishments in his music. It’s just a different world from what you do. I’ve had the discussion with jazz players who don’t understand how we get gratification from playing the exact notes as written in the score. Since that’s my field, I don’t understand the opposing approach of improvising “around” what they wrote. I went to Juilliard and they didn’t have a jazz program then. One of my classmates, Wynton Marsalis was the first to try to integrate it into the curriculum. He’s done a good job of bringing a level of respectability that was formerly lacking. We were highly trained in theory, and I would imagine your level of knowledge is equivalent. But you work more with extended harmonies. We went as far as ninth chords and maybe eleventh chords. It wasn’t for the purpose of composition, but to analyze classical pieces.

Wow, thanks for the great reply. I wonder if trying to improvise and not being good at it right away turned you off from the whole process? I know when I started improvising it was terrible! Just like when I played a piece for the first time studying classical saxophone in college. I think often people think about improvisation as being divine inspiration, but really it’s just hard work and practice to get to a basic level of being able to translate what you hear into notes from your instrument. Once you get a taste of it working, it’s hard to go back!

@@nickmainella I’m sure if I had been better at it, I would have liked it better. We pianists are totally spoiled. We have a massive repertoire of masterpieces which are inexhaustible. No pianist has ever played the entire repertoire. There is one pianist who has recorded the complete works of Liszt. It takes up 90 CDs, and that’s just one composer. This has been his life’s work. He does play other composers, but imagine how much work it would be to record 90 CDs of different repertoire, and demanding, at that. I think this is why being a pianist took me away from my first instrument, the trumpet. There’s no comparison in terms of repertoire. I have played a couple of contemporary pieces which call for improvised sections. In every case I virtually composed it in advance and didn’t deviate from it. I guess that would be a start towards learning to improvise. As you say, it’s all about practice and putting in the work. I appreciate your response. Thank you! The composer Frederic Rzewski is one composer who often asks for improv within his compositions. One of them says the improv can be as long as five minutes.

Great question. If I find some examples in solos or other places, sometimes what I'll do is try to write my own lines using the one I found as an example. This builds my own abilities in line writing as well. Does that help?

Haha yeah I have a tendency to really try to hammer points home. Guess that’s just me 🤷‍♂️

Exactly what I'm saying. Do the work and really learn the licks you like, but then forget about them and think about the underlying SOUND of the lick. Allows for greater creativity and less memorizing!