You’ve heard it time and time again…”Play what you hear!”

But how do you actually go about playing what you’re hearing? And how do you hear the stuff that you want to play? Playing what you hear sounds easy in theory, but it’s much more difficult in practice.

When you think about it, it’s kind of the whole point. If you could hear everything you want to play and play everything you hear, you could play anything you wanted to. That being said, the advice, “play what you hear,” is not an easy task.

There are however many ways to get closer to the goal of hearing what you play and playing what you hear. Here’s a simple process to get the ball rolling and make quick headway.

Step 1: connect your voice to your mind’s ear

The first step to playing what you hear has nothing to do with your instrument. It’s just you: connecting the voice that produces sound in your mind, with the your singing voice.

Anybody can develop this skill. We all have the ability to hear voices and sounds in our head, in fact, sometimes it’s difficult to turn them off! Yet not everyone learns to control this inner voice. It’s this inner voice where everything comes from.

For this first step, sit in silence and close your eyes. Turn all your attention to the voice in your mind. Instruct your inner-voice to “sing” a solid continuous pitch. Focus even more on this pitch and just keep it going. Then, imagine the sound visually growing in your mind and allow it to amplify.

Once you can easily achieve this pitch-generation in your mind, very very quietly, hum the pitch that you’re hearing. Now, at this point your initial response will be to turn your attention away from the inner-voice in your mind, and to instead focus on your real voice. This is where the most crucial point in the process takes place: return your focus to your inner-voice going on in your mind, while you continue to hum.

It’s actually really tricky. Your mind will want to switch instantly to your real voice the second you start humming and to completely ignore your inner-voice. Resist this urge, and work on staying focused on your mind’s voice.

As you begin to be able to achieve this, start to raise the volume of your real voice as you continue to pay more and more attention to your inner-voice. Unfortunately, this gets more difficult as you get louder with your real voice. Keep working on it and soon you’ll be able to focus on the voice in your mind even if you’re singing loud.

And the whole point of doing this with your voice is that it’s the same once you do it on your instrument; you’ll be able to play while listening intently to the voice in your head, which is extremely important if you’re trying to play what’s going on in your head.

Step 2: connect your fingers to your mind’s ear

After working on connecting your voice to your mind’s ear, it’s time to connect your fingers to your mind’s ear.

Pick a tune like Happy Birthday or any other very simple melody that you know by ear; something you can sing easily in your head. Next, what you did in the first step with a single pitch, do now with the entire melody of Happy Birthday. So, sit in silence, hear the melody in your head and hum it softly while you continue to pay attention to the voice in your head.

After hearing and singing it, play the melody on your instrument, but completely play it based upon listening to the voice in your head. Let your ear be your guide one-hundred percent. Don’t try to calculate where you’re going or to think about things in terms of theory. Only listen to the voice in your head and match each note on your instrument.

While you match each note, just as you had to remember to focus on the voice in your head instead of your real voice, do the same in this step; with each note of the melody played on your horn, make sure you’re continuing to focus on the sound that’s going on in your mind.

Essentially it should feel as though you’re listening to the radio in your mind and you’re simply copying everything you’re listening to.

Once you can do this with Happy Birthday, go up a half step and do it in this new key. Again, do it all by listening to the voice in your mind. Your analytical mind will want to think about intervallic relationships and key centers.

For the sake of this exercise, leave theory out of it. Use just your ears because that’s what you’re trying to develop. You’re aiming to develop this deep connection between your mind’s voice and your fingers. If you’re applying theory to figure out where you’re going, you’ll lose out on everything that you could gain from this exercise. Then take the melody through the rest of the keys in the same manner.

Step 3: connect jazz language with your fingers and your mind’s ear

Just connecting your ears to your fingers does not complete the puzzle, as you still need to fill your brain with the stuff you want to play. No, it doesn’t magically get there. It gets there through fueling it with a ton of language, transcribing, and listening.

But, this language acquisition, transcribing, and listening must all be done in an active manner, utilizing the method that was introduced in the first step: you clearly hear the stuff in your mind, you sing it accurately, and you continue to focus on the sound in your mind even while you sing.

So, take a line you’ve been working on or want to learn and start to hear it in your mind. Hear every note perfectly. Then hum it very softly while you continue to focus on the sound in your mind.

Gradually raise the volume of your voice until you can sing it full volume while still being able to hear the voice in your head clearly. Then, just as you did with Happy Birthday, do the same thing with your instrument. Play the line while hearing everything perfectly in your mind’s ear.

Doing this with language will fill your inner ear with the stuff you want to play. Over time, you’ll be hearing all sorts of new material derived from other things you learn. That’s just how our brains work. They’re always trying to find new ways to combine and transform old data. Keep feeding your brain music you love and it will respond creatively.

It’s all about that subtle attention

Where you focus your attention is the most important take-away from this article. Your mind wants to focus on one task at a time and it is constantly updating where it puts its attention based upon the new feedback it’s receiving. That’s why every time you sing or play your instrument, your attention wants to drift away from the voice in your mind and to the new source of sound.

It’s that subtle switch in attention that takes us away from playing what we hear because we’re no longer hearing anything, or more precisely, what’s going on musically in our mind is no longer receiving any attention and therefore, has no hope of being produced on our instrument.

Understanding this subtlety and understanding how to place your attention where you want it is the key to playing what you’re hearing. You can play what you hear, but it’s a process. A process that you’ll be working toward your entire life. Getting closer and closer is the name of the game, and as you do, you’re getting closer to playing anything you can dream of.

Everybody talks about learning tunes. I mean everybody. It’s the one common thread that you hear about at jam sessions, in music schools, and conversations with great players. So much emphasis is placed upon the need for more tunes it’s not surprising that most players have this burgeoning mental complex about knowing and learning tunes that hangs over their heads day after day like a black cloud.

With this ominous mindset, the simple act of learning a tune becomes a painful, long, drawn-out process that we try to avoid at all costs.

For years, I was stuck in this mental box and would force myself to try to learn tunes by pure memorization, from a piece of paper. Hours were spent in fruitless pursuit and it became easier to read tunes than to actually learn them. When it came time to perform these tunes, I was hanging onto these mental facts like a stranded swimmer holding on to a life preserver.

If I couldn’t think of those note names I memorized or that sequence of fingerings, I had nothing to play and worse, no aural skills to keep me afloat.

When you are learning in a situation like this, building a solid repertoire can seem like an impossible task. Even when you do manage to learn a tune, are you sure that you truly know it and will remember it?

If this sounds familiar, you’ve probably had the same thought I often had: There has to be a better way to learn tunes and make them last than this!

Getting to the root of the problem

The players that have trouble learning, memorizing, and retaining tunes are the same ones that go into the practice room with a page from the real book and try to commit those visual images to memory.

You might be able to get the notes and fingerings into your short-term memory and perform them once, but you’re not going to remember them for very long. What’s worse, is that you have no connection to the tune; it’s not a melody that you know by heart, it’s a string of memorized fingerings and hazy mental recollections.

When you’re put on the hot seat and have to play a solo, your short-term mental memory goes out the window. If it’s not ingrained in your ear or your muscle memory, it’s not going to come out of your horn.

So does it all come down to a problem with memorization that everyone seems to be having? No, not at all. Your memory is fine, it’s the way that you’re inputting the information that is causing the problem. The melodies we’re trying to learn never get completely ingrained in the first place, we don’t even give our memories a chance to grasp this musical information.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Take people with great memories that compete in memory contests for example. Most of them are self professed “regular everyday people,” in some way they’ve just learned how to learn and they’ve discovered the secret to retaining information. The majority of them use memorable images that trigger an emotional reaction to recall a series of numbers or names. In other words, to be a successful human database, you must make a multifaceted connection to the information that you’re trying to memorize.

This is the problem with the way a lot of musicians are learning tunes, they are treating the music as information, not an art form to connect with. When you memorize tunes from a page, there is no connection or emotional aspect to the process, it’s just information. It might as well be a tax form or the names and numbers in a phone book, just plain old, impersonal, dry information. Coming from this approach, where’s the personal motivation to learn these tunes?

The process of learning a melody shouldn’t be hard or feel like a dreaded chore for that matter, the problem is that we’ve been going about this process in the completely wrong way. When you think about it, the act of learning a melody is actually very simple. Take away all the mental clutter, get rid of those external pressures and just focus on the music. Make a mental, aural, and physical connection to the tunes you’re learning and you’ll immediately see a huge difference.

If you approach it like this, you can learn a tune in a short amount of time.  Below I’ve outlined the process you should be using to learn melodies if you want to get them down for good, and even better it will take 30 minutes or less:

I. Pre-listening

5  focused minutes at the start of your practice – (and as much as possible outside of the practice room)

Pre-listening simply means some focused listening to the melody you’re trying to learn prior to your practice session. The overall goal is to make sure that the tune is in your ear before you start trying to figure out the notes and rhythms.

I recommend doing this process before you get into the practice room and the more that you pre-listen, the easier this whole process is going to be. However, if you’re limited for time, at least spend 5 minutes repeatedly listening to and focusing in on the melody at the start of your session to quickly ingrain it.

For example, let’s say you’ve picked Woody’n You as the tune you’re going to learn this week. First step, find a version of the tune that you can’t stop listening to.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Next, get this recording into your ears by listening to it as much as is humanly possible. Listen to this recording when you wake up in the morning, on your way to work, during your free time, and even before you go to bed.

Keep in mind that this is not mindless listening or throwing on the recording every now and then as background music. This is focused super-concentrated listening. Your goal is to have an intimate familiarity with the melody, that way when you go to learn the tune it will be infinitely easier than starting from scratch.

II. Singing then playing

15- 20 minutes alternating between listening, singing, and playing

Once you’ve pre-listened to the tune, it’s time to take it to the next level; forging a physical connection to these notes and rhythms that you’ve been hearing all week. This is where the bulk of your time should be spent as you learn a tune. Start by taking that melody apart one phrase at a time.

Listening

Let’s take that version of Woody’n You from above that we’ve pre-listened to all day. The first step I would take would be to put the file into Transcribe! software so I could slow down the melody and accurately hear each interval and phrase. Once you’ve done that, highlight the first phrase of the melody (first 5 notes), slow it down to a comfortable speed, and listen to it about ten times in a row:

Singing

As this melodic phrase slowly makes its way into your ears, start to sing along with the recording as it continuously repeats those 5 notes. Concentrate on locking in the pitch of each note as you sing and focus on the content of each interval. When you start to match the recording exactly, press stop.

Now sing that phrase by yourself with no accompaniment. This is the first test. If you can’t sing it without the help of the recording then you don’t have it ingrained yet. Pay close attention to this part. It’s easy to sing the right notes with the recording backing you up, but when you turn it off, you’ll know right away whether you have each pitch and interval or you’re guessing – you can’t fake it.

When you’re singing the phrase by yourself, sing it very slowly. Isolate each interval and lock into each pitch, close doesn’t count here. If you don’t quite have it yet, simply go back to the recording and get it right. When you try again, identify each interval as you slowly sing it: “Ok that first interval is up a whole step, then down a whole step, then another whole step down, then a minor 3rd down, etc.” Also try to identify with your ears which part of the chord the melody is on (7th, root, 7th/ #9, root).

It’s perfectly alright if you don’t get the chord tones right away or can’t hear some of the intervals at first. Make it your goal to improve this part of your musicianship. If you’ve done your ear training homework, you won’t have to think about the names of the intervals, simply by singing them slowly, they will become apparent.

Playing

After this you’re ready to play the phrase on your instrument (finally!). With that phrase in your ears, play those intervals that you’re hearing in your head. Focus intently on the sound and recreate this with your instrument. Remember, if you could sing it, you’re playing a phrase that’s already internalized, now it should just be a matter of instrumental technique and aural connection to get those notes to come out.

Continue to break the melody up into different sections of your own choosing. Depending on your experience and skill level it could be an entire phrase or even just two notes. The other nice thing about melodies is that the same stuff is repeated, the A sections comes back again, phrases repeat themselves, and the same intervallic material comes back again and again.

For each section, you’re going to alternate between these three areas of learning and be sure to repeat each section a few times once you’ve figured it out. This may seem like a ton to do, but I’ve just described it in a very detailed manner. In reality you might spend 30 seconds listening to a phrase, another 20 singing it with the recording and alone, and a minute playing those notes on your instrument.

After some practice you’ll be able to combine all three of these areas and constantly go back and forth between them. You’ll be able to hear a melody and be able to sing it right away, knowing the intervals and chord tones, then transferring this right to your instrument. This is the ultimate goal – to go from your ear to your instrument as if they were physically connected.

Learning vs. Guessing

Before we go any further, there is an important distinction that we must make, that between learning and guessing. When it comes to picking up melodies by ear, there is a subtle yet stark difference between hearing, singing, and learning each pitch and interval from the recording and the method of randomly guessing notes until you come up with the right one by chance.

This seems obvious  and simple to do when you read it, but when you sit down with a recording and get to work, it’s a completely different story. You’re going to want to start playing with the recording right away. You’re going to try to guess the notes rather than hear the actual pitches and intervals. You’re going to start improvising along with the recording and suddenly look up and realize that you just spent 30 minutes getting off track.

Believe me, this is the hard part that you have to contend with every time.

When you see this starting to happen, take a second, stop, and re-focus. Do your best to stay on track, you’ll have plenty of time for improvising later, this is time we’re devoting to learning. Force yourself to hear each note and interval and then sing it. Once you have the melody in your ear and you can sing it exactly note for note, then you can translate this to your instrument.

A lot of players get stuck in this cycle and think they’re learning a tune by ear when in reality, they are just hitting random notes until they make a lucky guess. This process will actually take you a lot longer 30 minutes, it’s even easy to waste hours this way! Not only are you going to forget the melody because it hasn’t been ingrained properly, but you’re not picking up any useful skills in the process.

When you can sing the melody and intervals perfectly by yourself, you’re starting with the melody already internalized. You have a mental map of the melody, an aural model, and you’re going to forge a physical connection between your ear and your instrument. With the guess method, you never get that melody inside of you, it’s just note names and memorized fingerings going in one ear and out the other.

III. Repeat and review

5 – 10 minutes at the end of your session

Repetition is one of the keys to memorization. The simple act of repeating a piece of information multiple times imbeds it into our memory. We use this process when we memorize facts for a test or to remember directions when we’re driving in an unfamiliar place. And, it’s the same with music.

The difference with music however, is that we have a physical and aural connection to the information as well as a mental one. Because of this simple fact, it is much easier to commit these musical lines to memory than those other random facts and figures that we encounter on a daily basis with our minds alone.

Let’s get back to the melody of Woody’n You, we’re almost there. After you’ve figured out that sequence of melodic fragments that comprise the melody, can easily sing them, and have translated each one to your instrument, you must now play these phrases over and over again to commit them to memory. This is the part of learning a tune that will permanently ingrain these lines and intervals into your ear and mind.

Take the A section to the melody that you just figured out. Play it three times in a row with the recording and three times without the recording. Now go to the bridge. Play that section three times in a row. Next, combine the first A sections with the bridge and play them together three times in a row. I know it seems like overkill, but this is what it takes if you want to have this tune down permanently. Finally, play the entire tune, a few times with the record and a few times without it.

OK, now after 30 focused minutes, you have completely learned a melody. Good work! This melody is yours, it’s been forged into your ears and your muscle memory. Sure, every now and then you mind need a quick review, but the core of the tune is in you for good.

Next steps…

Take note that the step by step process above is for completely learning a melody. Notice how I include the word “completely.” With this process you’re engaging your ears, your mind, your voice, and your physical musicianship to learn that musical information. You are not just skimming the surface of the melody, you’re diving in head first, absorbing the sound with every aspect of yourself, and coming out with this melody ingrained into your musical being.

But wait, you’re not done after you do this. You also need to get some pesky other things like the chord progression. Just like learning the melody can take varying amounts of time depending on your skill level, the time it takes to hear and figure out the chord progression is directly related to your ears and experience. Use the same process above to hear the chord changes to the melodies you’re learning.

If you’re still not satisfied after this, learn the melody in all 12 keys. Once you have it learned and ingrained in one key, moving those lines to other keys will be easier than you think. After you get a few tunes under your belt in this fashion, the entire process gets much easier and much faster.

Learning tunes like this is a skill, if you don’t do it for a while, you’re going to get rusty. Ideally you want to learn something by ear everyday. It doesn’t have to be an entire solo or even an entire tune, it can just be a short line that caught your ear or a melodic fragment that you heard on the radio that day. Whatever it may be, absorb it aurally and try to reproduce both vocally and instrumentally.

When you first start out, this process might take you longer than 30 minutes. There are a lot of factors to contend with: the length of the tune, the complexity of the melody, the level of your ears, your experience with learning melodies by ear, your focus that day in the practice room, and so on.

However, the more you follow this process to learn tunes, the faster it will take to ingrain them. After a while, you might even find yourself hearing a melody on a recording, singing along with it, and knowing exactly what it is, without even having to get your instrument out.

This is the goal, to understand and connect with music on an organic emotional level. After all, those pianos, guitars, basses, drums, and horns that we play are really just tools – metal, wooden, and plastic tools that we’ve constructed to amplify the true instrument inside all of us.

We spend a lot of time thinking about what we want to play, but how often do we think about what we don’t want to play?

I’m sure if you spent some time recording yourself or simply observing what you play, you’d find you’re playing some things that you actually do not want to play. Rather than continue to ingrain these things you don’t want to play, why not consciously decide that you’re not going to play them anymore?

Unfortunately it’s not that easy. Just like a golfer who picks up a bad habit early on spends the rest of his career fixing it, any poor playing habits that we pick up, whether they be crappy lines or undesirable stylistic nuances, getting rid of them is difficult. But even before you start ditching stuff, some self-reflection is in order to figure out what you don’t want to play.

Determine what you don’t want to play

To clarify, what you don’t want to play doesn’t have to be something that you already play; it could actually just be something that you don’t want to ever play in the future. For instance, there’s a famous line called “Indiana Bebop” as illustrated below:

It’s not a terrible line and you do hear people play it, but perhaps you think it’s very generic and boring, or because many people play it, you consciously decide that you’re not going to play it.

Or, perhaps what you don’t want to play is not a line, but a way of playing. This way of playing could be a particular sound, or it could be a specific way of stylizing notes. The point is, you don’t like it and it doesn’t reflect who you are and what you want to say.

Fine. Put it on your I-don’t-want-to-play-list and call it a day.

Take out the trash

Go through your playing with a fine-tooth comb and really examine what you don’t like. In my personal experience, years ago I came to a  point where I didn’t like 90 percent of what I was playing.

Yes, 90 percent. Nearly everything I was playing I really didn’t like. So why did I continue to play all that crap? Well, two reasons. One, at the time, I didn’t know how to rid myself of the garbage, and two, I was clueless of what I’d play instead.

What I found by observing and learning from musicians like Rich Perry is that you can constantly be evolving and if you don’t like what you’re playing, you owe it to yourself to change it.

To start, you have to take out the trash. A great way to do this is to take a break for a few days or even weeks. Taking a break forces you to rethink your concept and makes you reevaluate why you even play music.

During that break, consciously determine what you don’t like about your playing: specific lines, tonal qualities, stylistic nuances…and anything you especially don’t like listening to in other people’s playing.

When you come back from your break, it’s time to get focused. Anytime you play or are about to play one of the things you don’t want to play, stop. Just stop playing. Don’t criticize yourself or get frustrated, just stop playing for a minute.

Remember, the goal is to no longer ingrain this garbage in your fingers and ears.

Be uber-concious of everything you play. Gradually, you’ll become more and more aware of when you’re about to go down your old path and you’ll be able to catch yourself well in advance before the notes come out.

And at the same time you take out the trash, it’s time to fill up your playing with the stuff you actually want to play…

Be Deliberate and rebuild

Being deliberate is the most important take-away from this article. I remember sitting in a master class at William Paterson with pianist Orrin Evans. One thing that he said really hit me. He said, “Play with intent.”

Play each and every note with intent, as if you actually mean to play them. This attitude of being deliberate is what it takes to rebuild your concept from the ground up. Be deliberate in what you choose to play, what you choose not to play, and how you go about practicing.

Often when you walk by the practice rooms of a music college, you hear musicians meandering aimlessly up and down the horn. How deliberate can you be when you’re wandering every which way?

When you’re practicing, it’s so easy to get caught up in “just playing,” and letting whatever comes out, come out. This way of practicing will re-ingrain the crap that you’re working so hard to rid yourself of.

Only practice exactly what you want to. Yes, there’s a time during practice when you play and let anything that comes out, come out: when you’re practicing performance. But when you’re learning language, working on tunes, transcribing solos, or incorporating any kind of new concept, be deliberate and precise.

Play exactly what you intend to play. this is how you train your ears, your mind, and your fingers to work in harmony to play whatever you desire.

What you don’t play truly does matter. As saxophonist Seamus Blake says in the interview below (at time-mark 3:25), “Sometimes it’s what you don’t play [that] determines what you are.”

Click here to view the embedded video.

It’s often difficult to know what you want to sound like. It’s like asking someone who they want to be. But almost anyone can tell you who they don’t want to be. Figure out who you don’t want to be, and then go make it happen.

1. Nobody’s checking for your music degree

Just because you graduated with a degree in jazz studies and minored in Coltrane licks doesn’t mean that you know how to play. Music school has its benefits, but it’s not the end of the road for your musical education – in fact, if you picked up the right skills, it’s just the beginning.

On the flip side, if you’ve never went to music school it doesn’t mean that you can’t play. Becoming a great player takes the same type of work, whether you’re enrolled in a music school or learning on your own with the records. In the end, here’s what matters: Can you play?

2. Keep going back to the fundamentals

When it comes to improvisation, your improvement stems from the basic building blocks of musicianship. Still can’t hear a ii-V progression and rusty on your major scales, but continually trying to improvise over difficult tunes? That’s like trying to be a world-class olympic swimmer and not knowing how to do the back-stroke. Stop setting yourself up for frustration of failure. Start by building a solid foundation of technique, ear training, and language and go from there.

3. Talent is great, but skill and perseverance win every time

Not every person has the same kinds of talents, so you discover what yours are and work with them.~Frank Gehry

A natural affinity or ability for something is great, but to succeed at improvisation you need to tirelessly develop your skills day in and day out. You’ve probably met a musician that seemed to be able to play everything that they encountered. However, when you take a close look, this “talent” turns out to be a deep passion for the music and a willingness to spend hours each day pursuing their craft. This is what it takes to succeed as an improviser, you truly have to want it.

4. You are one of many

There are a ton of musicians out there to compete with that are very good. When you think about it you are just one of many, competing to have your voice heard. Now before you jump off of that bridge, let’s take a second to think about things here. This is actually a good thing. We don’t have to struggle at this pursuit in isolation, there is a community out there if you take the time to look for it. We all struggle at certain things and follow a similar path to improving. If something is giving you a problem, chances are that a fellow musician has the exact answers that you are searching for.

5. Becoming a great improviser takes time

In fact, a lot of time. Remember that this is not a mindless hobby that you can conquer in a few weekends, it is something that will take years of dedicated practice. Ultimately, you get out of the music what you put into it. Don’t give up after a few weeks of difficult practice. Trust the process and know that the work you’re doing now will come out in your playing soon enough.

6. There is no set formula to becoming a jazz musician

No path leads from a knowledge of that which is to that which should be.~Albert Einstein

Everyone takes their own path to success and develops their own voice along the way. Trying to copy someone’s method or biography to the tee just doesn’t work. Follow the groups you like and study the musicians that move you. You have your own life and it’s shaping the way you sound. You can’t help it, you’re already on the path to sounding like yourself.

7. The process of improvisation seems like magic

It looks like divine inspiration when people are on stage creating these amazing improvised solos out of thin air. The fact is this is all just an illusion to the untrained eye (and ear). All of this took hard work, fundamentals. When you hear a great solo, you’re really hearing the result of hours upon hours in the practice room. Don’t get trapped into the belief that the masters of this music didn’t have to work to achieve their abilities. Anyone that sounds great has definitely put in the time in the shed.

8. Improvisation can be as serious or fun as you want it to be

Take a look at your musical goals. If you want to be a great improviser, practicing, transcribing, and listening to the music should be at the top of your daily priorities. If you just want to get enjoyment out of being creative now and then, practicing on weekends may satisfy you. It can be whatever you want it to be, just make sure that your practice reflects the goals you set and more importantly, that your goals can be accomplished with the time-frame you’re willing to devote to practice.

9. You can only blame yourself for the way you sound

This might sound harsh, but at the end of the day it’s the one thing you can count on. It’s easy to look outside of yourself for excuses. “That other trumpet player has been playing a lot longer than me,” “I didn’t sound good because I got stuck playing over a tune I didn’t know,” …the excuses can go on forever. If you’re not happy with the way you sound, you can only look to one person to fix that: yourself.  Whether you like it or not, you are your own worst enemy.

10. Practicing is about notes and rhythms, improvising is about life

The things you do in the practice room are important for your playing. Everyone tells you to listen and to transcribe and this is definitely the path to getting better. These practice habits will give you technique and knowledge, but you still need to have something personal to say when you improvise. To do this, get out of the practice room and live. Experience everything that you can and then bring this into your playing, communicate this with your audience.

11. Stick with your goals until you complete them

If you want to stand out from the majority of aspiring improvisers out there, finish the projects that you start. Get through an entire transcription. Learn the entire chord progression and melody to that tune you’re working on. Take that line through all 12 keys. Stop abandoning things half-way! The sooner you do this, the sooner you’ll see major improvements in your playing.

12. Too much ambition?

We always want to play at a better level then we’re currently at. However, we all have a sneaky tendency to think we’re better than we are. Strive to be honest with yourself in the practice room. Should you really be trying to play that bebop head at 400? Is playing over that tune in 7 benefiting you? Or, should you be working on something that will actually allow you to improve?

13. There’s always room for improvement

I’m only in competition with my last level.~Erykah Badu

The musicians that we love to listen to were always looking for ways to improve and evolve. It’s as if they were never quite satisfied with themselves musically. Try to emulate this mindset in your own practice and find a way to improve each aspect of your playing on a daily basis. This becomes hard once you’ve made some progress and begin to feel confident in your abilities; you become complacent and lose your drive, but don’t stop there. Everyday, strive to get to that next level.

14. Start by learning one thing

The path to knowing 100 tunes starts with learning one tune. The road to mastering the jazz language starts with one transcription. It’s easy to get discouraged about the number of tunes you know and the prospect of trying to learn hundreds of solos by ear. Believe me, it feels like an impossible task when you’re first getting started and it’s all to easy to give up. Remember, get through one and the rest become easier.

15. Quality over quantity is the name of the game

Everything hinges on the quality of one’s working.~Siddhartha Gautama

Don’t rush through the elements of your practice routine. When it comes to tunes and the jazz language, everything is related. There are only so many chord qualities and progressions. That line or progression that you’re working on now will be useful in the next tune you learn, so give it time and really master it. Rushing through your practice will only leave you in the same place when you began.

16. Focus on the hard stuff

One thing that will continually hold you back is skipping over the difficult areas of your playing and taking the easy route. It may seem easy in the short run, but eventually you are going to have a closet full of skeletons that are going to come back to haunt you at the worst possible moment. Skills like ear training, learning tunes by ear, and transcription are hard at first and take a lot of time. Sure it’s hard to confront these areas of your playing at first, but if you continue to ignore them, they’ll eventually catch up with you and hold you back from becoming the player you truly want to be.

17. Take some advice

There are some people that if they don’t know, you can’t tell them.~Louis Armstrong

Learn to listen to the words of the great musicians that you encounter. It’s easy to get trapped in our own little world, trying to find our own solutions to our own problems, but eventually you’re going to get stuck. Not every word may be applicable to your current situation or ability, but keep them in mind. Someday it may be the key to unlocking a difficult problem you are struggling to overcome.

18. Keep an open mind

Your perspective can change in an instant, your ears are continually evolving, and your goals in music will inevitably shift. That player that you couldn’t make sense of may become your new favorite improviser after a little study. You never know what can happen so be open to new experiences and keep the door open to new musical possibilities.

19. Seek out musical opportunities

Counting on luck won’t get you very far in improvisation, but there’s something to be said for being at the right place at the right time. Special things happen when great musicians are gathered in one place. Go to every concert with the best musicians in your area. If a jazz master is coming to town, go see if you can hang out after the show and ask a few questions. Who knows, you may get a chance to sit in, you might get an impromptu lesson, or you might even get some words of wisdom that will alter your musical approach. Simply by being in these situations, you’re upping the odds that lightning will strike.

20. You gotta love it

Improvising is hard. Making a living as a jazz musician is even harder. If you’re in this because someone else is pushing you or you’re going through the motions, you’re in for an unpleasant surprise. If you don’t love this music, you’re not going to be successful – plain and simple. Every time you hear your favorite records you should be reminded of why you do this. The sound should excite you, the swing should give you hope, and it all should give you determination to continue pursuing the music you love.

The extreme ranges of any instrument express extreme emotion, but they’re not easy to tackle. The high register is notoriously difficult on most instruments and the low register is often under-developed and under-utilized.

The standard approach towards these registers is to extend your scales and arpeggio exercises as high and as low as you can. Yes, this is a great start, and there’s no reason you shouldn’t do that, however, if you think by simply playing scales and arpeggios in these registers that you’re going to suddenly be using them creatively while you improvise, you better guess again.

And furthermore, the idea of “extending your range” does not simply mean you can play one note really high. That’s useless.How interesting is it really to hear some trumpet player squeaking out the highest note he can in the most un-musical and look-at-me manner?

Get over it. Nobody cares how high you can play. Well, not true; the same crowd that loves Kenny G, probably would love to hear you play high too. But seriously…the high and low registers can be used musically and with purpose.

Once you learn the fingerings and proper relaxed technique to achieve the sound you desire in these registers, there are some obvious but rarely used tactics to explore, which will help you become fluid in using the extreme ranges while improvising.

Apply language to extreme ranges

This is the most obvious concept, yet the most overlooked. We probably sound like a broken record. Language, language, language. You get it.

Now, just take that same piece of language you’re working on and extend it the full range of your horn. For example, on saxophone, take the idea all the way down to low Bb, and take it slowly and carefully up through the altissimo range as high as you’re comfortable. When you get so high, to the point that you’re having difficulty, go slower.

Make sure you’re using the correct fingerings and keeping your air moving through the horn. Use the piece of language as a tool to master those tricky high notes. You’ll be amazed at how well this simple exercise works. Not only will you start to become fluid over those previously difficult notes, but you’ll actually be able to use them when you improvise.

Transcribe solos out of your range

Transcribing solos that are not your instrument is super fun and educational. Each instrument has a totally different perspective and studying these other points of view will open your ears and your mind.

The first solo that I worked on, if I remember correctly, that was not my instrument was a trumpet solo. I recall it being fairly tricky to hear. It wasn’t like transcribing a tenor player. When you’re transcribing your own instrument, you can hear a lot of the idiosyncrasies of the instrument, which helps you figure out what’s being played. When it’s not your instrument, you have a lot less help.

And as I continued to match note-for-note what the trumpet player was playing, I had to take some notes down an octave, as they were quite high. Once I got the solo under my fingers and in my ear, I decided I’d go back and try to play the entire solo in the range that the trumpet player played it in. This would require me to extend my range well into the altissimo register. No worries. I just slowed down the solo a ton in Transcribe and worked it out gradually.

After this work on the trumpet solo, I became much more fluid in the altissmo range.

Now you don’t have to go higher all the time either. The extreme low register can be used in all sorts of cool ways. You could use the same tactic as I did but in reverse. If you play tenor, try a bari solo, or if you play alto, try a tenor solo.

Transcribing solos out of your range like this will give you a whole new perspective on sound and timbre.

Improvise with range restrictions

Something I’ve heard countless professionals say is they improvise over tunes while imposing range restrictions. It’s a pretty straight-forward concept but not easy to implement in a musical way, in fact, that’s the difficult part about it. Anyone can say, “I’m only going to play notes between Bb and F this chorus,” but can they do it in a musical way?

Sonny Rollins is a master of this. He’ll take just a few notes and hang out in a particular range for a while, developing a theme and turning it on it’s head. Listen to Sonny play St. Thomas. Even if you’ve heard it a thousand times, listen to it again and pay close attention to how he develops an idea in a particular range.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Imposing range restrictions is fun and can get you out of playing the same stuff all the time, while helping you focus on the high and low registers. Take one of the lowest notes on your instrument and the note a fifth above. Then, use only the notes contained within that interval as you improvise for a chorus or two.

So, if you play saxophone, perhaps you’d take the lowest note, Bb, and a fifth above, F, and try to create melodies that you can develop and build upon. Then, try the same thing up high.

Extending your range

Extending your range does not need to be an up-hill-battle and it doesn’t need to be something you desire for the purpose of impressing people. The extreme ranges can be used in a lyrical and musical way as an extension of your voice.

Start taking language that you know well and move up into the stratosphere and down as low as your instrument is capable of. Then, for your next solo, choose an instrument that’s either in a higher or lower register than yours, forcing you to accommodate to their range.

First learn the solo, but then try to match the original notes as best as you can. And the next tune you work on, practice improvising while imposing some range restrictions. With these 3 exercises, you’ll soon be able to to wield the extremes ranges of your instrument with ease.

Let’s face it, improvisation is hard enough as it is, even when we do spend the time in the practice room. But however much we study or practice, there are some key factors that can destroy our creativity and ability to improvise in seconds.

We’ve all experienced this feeling before in performance. You hear an idea or a line in your head and for some reason or another it doesn’t come out of your instrument. It seems that something is preventing you from playing over those chord changes with ease. Sometimes it’s even hard just to find a good idea to play!

All too often we think the excuse lies in some area that we have no control over or we look for some hidden problem that is keeping us from playing the way we envision.

We get questions all the time from people encountering these issues with improvising. Most of the time people are looking for some hidden problem that is holding them back. I totally relate with this experience and remember looking to advanced harmonic concepts and special techniques to solve my problems.

Nine times out of ten however, the issue lies with one of 5 key areas of musicianship that I’ve listed below. Think of this list as the 5 pre-requisites that you need to have down before you graduate to improvising on the stage.

Without them, improvising is like trying to take the final exam after you’ve skipped all the classes – you’re going to be completely lost, frustrated, and utterly confused. However, once you’ve studied these pre-reqs and overcome their initial challenges, you’ll be much more successful in all the areas of your playing.

I. Instrumental technique

If you’re having trouble getting sound out of your instrument or something in your technique is making it difficult to play, this can create big problems when you attempt improvisation. When your first thought as you go to solo is “How do I play that note?” or “What is the fingering for that chord?” you’re going to have a hell of a time trying to be creative.

To fix this, just take a look at the way you practice. Yes, it’s fun to get into the practice room and play along with your favorite records for hours, but if you ignore your technique altogether it is going to hinder your ability to improvise. Etudes, long tones, finger exercises, articulation patterns – this is what it takes. Sure, it’s not as fun as mindlessly messing around with your favorite records, but at the end of the day you’re going to see improvement.

When your goal is to improvise with ease, sound production and technique on your instrument must be effortless. If your articulation is getting in the way of your flowing eighth note lines it will be hard to improvise. If your fingers are fumbling when you play in less familiar keys keys, it’s going to be difficult to improvise. If you are working too hard to produce sound on your instrument, you’re going to tire yourself out before you even start your solo.

Honestly, it will be hard to just play your instrument, let alone improvise at all, if technical issues are continually getting in your way. Do yourself a favor – master the technical aspects of your instrument: articulation, fingerings, proficiency in all 12 keys, sound production, range, and so on. You have enough to think about when you’re improvising and the basic mechanics of your instrument shouldn’t be something you have to worry about.

II. Theory

In theory there is no difference between theory and practice. In practice there is.~Yogi Berra

There is a basic amount of music theory that you need to know to get by as an improviser. It may surprise you, but some people have completely ignored this aspect of improvising. Trying to play a ii-V line in E when you don’t know what the ii chord or the V chord is in the key of E is like trying to read without knowing the alphabet. Of course it’s going to be hard to improvise!

You don’t need to know a ton of music theory to get by and the good news is you can get most of it down through simple memorization and repetition. Start with the basics:

• Know all of your Major scales, inside and out
• Arpeggiate every diatonic chord in all 12 keys, (1, 3, 5, 7, 9 from every scale degree)
• Understand all 12 keys and how they are related
• Study the harmonic functions and qualities of each diatonic chord: I chord, ii chord, iii chord, IV chord, V7 chord, etc.
• Know the basic chord progressions and harmonic relationships in every key: V-I , ii-V-I , iii-VI-ii-V, I-IV7-V7, etc.

You can go as far or get as advanced as you like, but this is a good place to start. Instead of skimming over each with a surface level understanding, aim to master each of these areas of theory – this is what you’ll need as an improviser. If you come across something in your practice that you don’t know, try to figure out why it works and if you’re still stuck, ask someone who knows.

If those theory basics listed above give you trouble, it just means that you need to do your homework. Use some visualization exercises or download this ebook for your practice room to study. Spend some time each day visualizing the diatonic arpeggios and the simple progressions in each key and burn them into your memory.

This might be the “easy part” for some of you and a challenging step for others, it all depends on how you were introduced to the music. If you began by studying music theory, this will be natural, however your ears are probably lacking (the section below is for you!). And if you learned predominantly by ear, you might need to brush up on your theory.

Either way, be honest with yourself and see where you stand. There are always areas in our playing that need improvement.

III. Ear training

We are all initially drawn to music with our ears, however for most us, we begin learning music with our minds. Scales, theory, chords, triads, time signatures, modes… these are the things we encounter in our very first music lessons. Almost instantaneously, that magical thing that we loved to listen to is turned into this jumble of confusing abstract information. We still avidly listen, but as we continue down this educational path, our understanding of music moves further and further away from the sound itself.

After awhile, we forget how to use our ears to analyze sound. We can still hear those melodies and chord progressions, we’re just stuck inside our heads trying to figure everything out. Sadly we don’t even give our ears a chance to get better.

Ear training is the number one thing holding most aspiring improvisers back. Not that they have bad ears, they just have ears that have gone undeveloped for years. Their ears have been ignored while allowing their minds to do the work for them.

If you continue to ignore your ears, improvisation will always be this difficult mystery that you’re fall short of solving time and time again. Transcribing will be this long, painstaking task. Identifying chord progressions and melodic fragments will remain an elusive pursuit. Learning melodies from the records will take hours instead of minutes.

Wherever we are, what we hear is mostly noise. When we ignore it, it disturbs us. When we listen to it, we find it fascinating.~John Cage

The solution is easy. Start by incorporating some ear training exercises into your daily routine. We’ve written numerous article about ear training on this site: Fundamental Ear Training, Seventh Chord Exercises, Hearing Chord Tones in Context. Pick one and put your ears to the test. Remember to start simple, though. You may mentally understand concepts like tri-tone substitutions and altered dominants, but our ears are often lagging behind our brains, stuck where we left them years ago.

You don’t want to be this emotionless robot or giant brain that is analyzing chords and computing scales in real time. Improvisation should be that moment in time where everything comes together to create – the mind, the body, and the spirit. Even though you may not realize it, there are melodies inside of you that are unique to you – turn on your ears and give them a chance to come out.

IV. Language

Have you ever transcribed a solo? Do you know any ii-V lines? Have you studied any common ways to play over a Major 7th sound or a V7 sound?

If you don’t have any language, improvising can be frustrating and painstakingly difficult. After awhile you’re going to hit a wall running those same scales and patterns up and down. Along with ear training, language is the other important factor that is missing in many people’s playing.

Language gives you a solid place to start, instead of stumbling around in the dark alleys of chord progressions and hoping that you’ll eventually find your way out. With a musical phrase or idea ingrained into your ears and fingers, you have something concrete to work with and build upon.

The solos and lines that you transcribe are the models that teach you to speak the jazz language. Without them you’re helplessly left alone to piece together scales and chords.

Imagine giving a precocious infant, bursting at the seems to speak their first words an English language phrasebook. “Ok kid, here you go, give it your best shot!” With no aural or spoken model to copy, this poor child is left to its own devices to figure out how to speak. The result is going to be incomprehensible gibberish that no one can understand.

And this is what you hear from a lot of well-intentioned, but unprepared improvisers – gibberish. They haven’t listened to the records, they haven’t studied the language, and they’re doing their best with the music theory they’ve learned. This is where we are all headed if we don’t stop and take the time to get out the records and transcribe some language.

Start by learning one line over a Major 7th chord or a simple ii-V7 line. Then, apply this line to the tunes and chord progressions that you’re working on. With a solid idea to start with, you’ll quickly see that creative ideas will start to emerge. You can alter that language rhythmically, you can change the starting note, you can combine it with other ideas you have, you can omit or add notes as you please. It all depends on what you’re hearing and feeling in the moment, not on a predetermined scale or pattern.

V. Mindset

Taking a new step, uttering a new word is what people fear most.~Fyodor Dostoevsky

Fear is the number one killer of creativity in anything that you do. It’s not easy to get put on the spot in front of an audience and improvise. To pull off a successful performance we must overcome fear, self-doubt, and a myriad of distractions. Even though it may seem like an after-thought, your mindset has a lot to do with your creativity and ability to improvise on the band stand.

One way to overcome this situation is experience: the more you do it, the easier it gets. Get comfortable with getting in front of people and improvising. It’s a lot harder than it looks. Fear, distraction, lack of preparation, mistakes, and a judgmental audience are just a few of the things that can get in the way of a creative performance. However, each time you perform and improvise in front of an audience, you’ll become more comfortable and confident; in turn, focusing on the things that matter like the music itself.

The other way is to prepare yourself in the practice room. If you have those tunes and progressions down, if your technique is like a well-oiled machine, if your ears are on, and if you’re focused and in the moment, when you go onstage, you’ll have the confidence to play with ease and be creative.

Learn to let go when you get on stage and focus on being in the moment. There are going to be distractions in any performance and occasionally we must deal with nerves and fear. Trust yourself and the preparation you’ve done in the practice room and you’ll succeed every time.

Separate but equal

All five of these categories are important, and each one is interconnected to the next. You need to effortlessly produce sound on your instrument, you need to understand some basic chord progressions and theory, you need hear these progressions, you need to have some language over these progressions, you need to have your technique worked out in all 12 keys, and finally, you need to acquire a creative mindset.

Without any one of these, the process of improvisation falls apart or becomes increasingly difficult. No language? You’re stuck trying to somehow make melodies out of chords and scales. Can’t hear chords or melodies? Soloing becomes this unfulfilling mental exercise. Careless technique? You can’t execute the ideas you’re hearing in your head or effortlessly produce lines on your instrument. Don’t understand the basics of music theory?…I think you get the idea.

When you’re beginning to learn improvisation it can seem like there are secret techniques or information that you’re missing. This is easy to do and I can remember searching for answers in this way as well.

The answers, though,  are much simpler than we think, they just require some work. The problem lies with the fact that we’re continually just skimming the surface of understanding with these five key areas. We’ve barely explored what it means to have “good technique”, we get by with a loose mental understanding of theory, we’ve hardly trained our ears, in some cases we don’t have any language that we’ve transcribed, and we improvise with a hectic fear-based mindset.

However, we turn a blind eye to these issues and look to other things that must be causing the problem. “I just need to study more tri-tone subs…maybe if I study this new chromatic approach…I should practice more arpeggios.”

It takes some honesty and courage to admit that these “basic” areas are lacking in your playing, especially the older you get. It wasn’t until I went back and worked on ear training, transcribed some language, and renovated my technique that I truly began to improve at improvisation.

So, take a good look at your own practice and performance. Are you just skimming the surface in your practice or are you actually solving the problems in your playing? A truthful answer to this simple question can make a big difference in your practice and turn your playing around today.

Half-diminished chords are difficult, but they don’t have to be. In How to Not Suck At Half-diminished Chords, I presented a simple way to start to improve at these often neglected chords and if you practiced the exercise in that article, you will without a doubt have made progress.

But even with some concentrated effort on those exercises, half-diminished chords are probably still giving you a tough time.

Why does this particular chord cause us so much trouble and what can we do about it?

Incomplete information

The only reason half-diminished chords are difficult is because we’re given incomplete information about how to approach them. Jazz theory instructs us to play the locrian mode. So, what do we do with this information? We make a short cut so we can remember in real-time how to play over a half-diminished chord.

The line of thought goes something like this: Oh, B half diminished is just the locrian mode (7th mode) of C major. Great…that means whenever I see a half-diminished chord I’ll simply go up a half-step and play the major scale.

If that sounds like you, that’s why you suck at half-diminished chords. As How To Not Suck At Half-diminished Chords notes, the locrian mode is a starting place. That’s it.

And that being said, it’s actually a quite confusing starting place. Take for instance the half-diminished chord in this iii Vi ii V:

What does the B half-diminished chord have to do with C major? The answer: Nothing! That’s right. It has nothing to do with C major in this progression, so why would you think of it as a part of something completely unrelated?

Thinking of the B half-diminished chord as the locrian mode of C major will slow you down and confuse you time and time again.

The locrian mode trick is just a starting put to know what notes are contained within the chord. The problem, as we’re all to familiar with, is that this little trick turns out to be how we approach half-diminished chords time and time again. It’s time to get beyond this line of thinking and develop a clear picture of half-diminished chords in your mind.

Creating a half-diminished model in your mind

To create a clear model of a half-diminished chord in your mind, you have to get to the point where it becomes its own entity in your mind. Just like you think “Ok, it’s a C major chord,” you need to get to the point where you think to yourself, “Ok, it’s a G half-diminished chord,” not…”G half-diminished…go up a half step and play Ab major.”

To get to this point, start with the following chord-tone exercise and on each chord-tone say mentally to yourself the chord-tone number you’re playing as yo play it:

So say mentally to yourself, “1357531, 3575313, 5753135, 7531357″

The purpose of this exercise is to start to think of a half-diminished chord as its own entity and to be able to quickly access the chord-tones as they relate to the chord you’re playing over, not some other related chord.

After you do this in A half-diminished, take this exercise slowly through every key making sure to mentally recite each chord-tone number to yourself.

Putting half-diminished in context

Now, that chord-tone exercise is not something you’d go play in your solo. Of course you’re more than welcome to, but I’m guessing it’s not really what you’re after. What you’re after is playing half-diminished chords in context.

There are three common scenarios you’ll encounter half-diminished chords:

• A minor ii V
• A iii Vi ii V
• A vamp of four measures or so

In general, those are the only times that half-diminished chords come up. Here they are written out:

Minor ii Vs

iii Vi ii Vs

Vamp

Look at these examples and realize that if these are the only times you’ll encounter half-diminished, it really can’t be that difficult. Once you go through the chord-tone exercise presented earlier and begin to formulate a clear mental image of half-diminished chords in all keys, transcribe language that fits these basic scenarios. There’s many ways you could approach this:

• half-diminished language that lasts for two beats and connects to a dominant chord
• half-diminished language that lasts for one full measure
• Connecting multiple pieces of half-diminished language to play over a vamp

The important thing is to learn something from one of your heroes and make it your own. One idea learned in this way over each instance and you’ll be light years ahead of where you are now.

There’s no reason to keep sucking at half-diminished chords. Understand you’ve been playing based upon incomplete information, etch a crystal clear model of each half-diminished chord (in all keys) in your mind, and learn language for the several occasions that you’ll encounter them. In several weeks or so you’ll wonder why these chords were ever difficult for you in the first place.

A magical thing happens when you listen to a recording of your favorite player and begin to play along with the record. It’s almost as if an unconscious transformation takes place, an instant instruction through aural osmosis. Simply by sitting by the speakers with your instrument and taking in those sound waves, you can instantly imitate that player’s unique musical style.

Ironically though, many of us miss this connection because we have tunnel vision on the music theory. Somewhere along the way, we’ve picked up this mentality that you learn the notes in one place and get the style from another.

Chances are you’ve even heard someone describe musical style with words while teaching improvisation: “bend that note, lay back on the time there, ghost those notes, play with a brighter sound, tongue those notes shorter, put some edge on it!”

These phrases give you a general target to aim at, but when compared with the actual sound, these verbal descriptions continually fall short of the intended target. To truly grasp style, it must be experienced and understood on a deep emotional level. This is where the benefits of transcription and serious listening come into play.

The majority of improvisers have a set definition and goal when it comes to transcribing, which usually begins and ends with figuring out the specific notes of line or solo. But think about it, once you’ve learned those notes, do you sound like that player from the record when you’re by yourself? Is that music theory translating into actual listenable music?

It’s more than just the notes

Notes, notes, and more notes. We’re obsessed with those printed little black dots and stems and the theory behind them when it comes to learning improvisation. “What chord tone does that ii-V resolve to? How is the soloist altering those V7 chords? Which scale do you use on half-diminished chords? Is the 7th resolving to the 3rd in that line?”

It’s as if every other aspect of the music pales in comparison to figuring out the hidden notes that make up a line. Forget about sound, articulation, and those other pesky musical extras that get in the way! We just want those notes, like right now, so we can steal them and recycle them into our own solos.

You’ve probably felt like this yourself at one time or another. The truth is that we all have. You put in the time in the practice room, you transcribed a line, and intellectually understood how the theory worked. However, once we got those notes and put them to use in our own solos, things didn’t work out like we planned. A key ingredient was missing. Something vital was left out of the mix altogether.

“The creation of something new is not accomplished by the intellect, but by the play instinct acting from inner necessity. The creative mind plays with the objects it loves.”~Carl Gustav Jung

Still not convinced about the importance of style? Try it out for yourself. Pick out any book of transcribed solos, turn to a random page, and start playing. Do you sound like Cannonball, Miles, or whoever’s solos were in the book? Didn’t think so.

Remember, those ink marks on the page are just a cheap approximation of the real thing. Without the phrasing, sound, articulation, and expression, those printed lines are meaningless.

Improvisers aren’t the only ones guilty of this theory-obsessed mentality. If you play classical music you’ve probably felt the pressure to play the notes on the page perfectly. It’s easy to fall into a mindset of reproducing perfect notes and rhythms, but the final result, while technically “correct” is lacking musically.

Keep in mind that the goal in any genre is musical expression, not mechanical or intellectual reproduction.

The greatest players, whether they are improvising over Have You Met Miss Jones or playing Mahler’s Third Symphony are playing music, not just reproducing notes printed on a page. They are expressing themselves with musical style, an act where the notes and the style ultimately go hand in hand.

Play a musical role

Learning to improvise is like becoming an actor that is preparing for an upcoming role. Somehow, you must study this musician, imitate their style, and finally create your own performance. Sure at first you’ve got lines to memorize and different scenes to navigate, but it’s ultimately the subtleties of style and personality that make a performance convincing.

Just like a skillful actor, you must get inside of a your subject’s head to make your performance believable. You can pull someone off of the street and put them in the right wardrobe and make-up to look the part, but if they don’t believe the character at their core, it’s all for naught.

Try to transcend yourself and become that person you are studying, even for a moment. How did this person think? How did it feel to live their life? Ingrain their style of their speaking, their facial tics and expressions, their posture in every range of emotion. It’s the actor that has internalized their character that deftly executes the role.

“Obviously there are times with acting when exactly what is required is just going through the motions, and when doing nothing is the best thing. But at other times, you have to make that leap beyond the immediate environment of people putting up lights on the set.”~Christian Bale

For improvisers, we do the same type of preparation when we transcribe a solo. At first, we study the notes, phrases, and theory of the solo we are listening to; after all there’s no way around this – if you don’t know your lines, you can’t play the part. However, the notes, like the lines an actor must read, are just one small piece of the puzzle. Anyone can read lines or musical notes from a page, but not everyone can play with style.

Go beyond the notes. Become Coltrane or Lee Morgan or Tommy Flanagan for an hour. Copy their articulation, their sound, their feel, their musical personality, and their spirit at the same time that you’re figuring out their ii-V’s. Remember that this music is a language and an inherent part of any language is it’s style.

The elements of style

So if notes aren’t the final goal, what exactly are you supposed to be looking for when you transcribe style?

If you insist, you can break down musical style into concepts like tone, articulation, time, technique, and phrasing – after all, these elements are all present in some form when you describe a player’s style. But I suggest something a little different.

First, turn off that frenzied, analytical, music theory obsessed part of your brain for a few moments (you’ll survive, I swear). Find a recording of a solo or melody that you are trying to learn. Pop it in, turn up the volume, and close your eyes. Now simply listen.

Don’t worry about the key or the chord progression. Don’t think about scales or ii-V lines. Just clear your mind and focus intently on the sound of the instrument that you’re trying to imitate.

After a few minutes of repeated and focused listening, stop the recording and get out your instrument. With that sound still fresh in your mind, try play the first phrase of that tune or solo. Already you should start to feel some of that style starting to rub off. Now start the recording again and do your best to internalize the sound coming from the speakers.

Continue this process of listening and imitating at short intervals until you can copy the recording exactly. Without even realizing it, you’ll be imitating sounds, articulations, and the subtle characteristics of each player that you transcribe. This is the way to learn style, and what’s more, you can do this at exactly the same time that you’re figuring out the notes.

Change your mindset

When you set out to learn a solo, this simple shift in your mindset can make a world of difference. Now is a good time to put a stop to your obsession with just getting the notes off of the record and moving on to the next solo.

Instead, aim for the whole package with anything that you transcribe, be it a melody, a simple ii-V line, or even an entire solo. Get the style along with the notes – they’re both equally important.

The next time that you turn on a recording and set to work transcribing, set a goal for yourself with two sides. On one hand get the notes exactly right. Study the theory and understand why those lines work over those chord progressions. At the same time, in another part of yourself, ingrain the style and personality of the player.

One without the other is not going to cut and for most players, it’s the style that gets left out. Don’t let this be you anymore. Aim to make transcribing an enjoyable and effective daily habit, the place where your intellectual and intuitive and emotional sides meet to create an original personal sound.

In a recent question from a reader, I was asked why in many examples on this site do I denote the iii chord in a iii Vi ii V as half-diminished?

This is an excellent question. In many lead sheets you see the iii chord denoted as minor and many theory books claim that the iii chord should always be minor because that’s how you would derive it from the tonic key.

So, what’s correct? We’ll get there later…

The thing you have to remember for now is that chords are sounds. It almost seems dumb saying that, but we often forget that simple fact. Chords are not just symbols on paper. They are living, breathing, aural entities that work together to create a progression.

A progression “works” because one chord pushes to the next. That’s why it’s called a progression…it progresses. It’s this sense of forward motion within progressions that allow you to make many different decisions on what chords you specifically play at any given time.

Lead sheets are leading you astray

I remember years ago learning tunes from play-along recordings with the written music in front of me and no matter what, I couldn’t seem to sound “right.”

I finally took it upon myself to learn one of the tunes I was working on straight from the recording. At first, it took a lot longer and I was terribly frustrated, but it got much easier. And then, I realized, wait a minute, the piano is not playing the chords on the lead sheet, and the soloist is definitely not playing the chords on the lead sheet. What’s going on?!

It turned out that what was holding me back was using the lead sheet as my road-map. The lead sheet had a few spots in it where the chords didn’t necessarily make sense to me. You know those spots where you question how one chord is getting to the next?

Here’s a huge tip: the progression should make sense. In general, the solos I’ve transcribed illustrate the soloist playing strong, logical progressions. If the chords on the lead sheet are not logical, that’s your first clue that you need to study the recording and that the lead sheet is steering you in the wrong direction.

Where you’re going matters the most

To answer the readers question, in a iii Vi ii V, you could play the iii chord as half-diminished or minor. Both are acceptable and plenty examples exist of the greats doing both.

Why do both work?

Both work because what matters more than each individual chord is the sum of it’s parts: the progression as a whole and where it’s headed towards.

In a iii Vi ii V I, each chord logically pushes toward the next, however, there’s many ways to look at this progression.

• You could hear the iii Vi as a unit resolving to ii and the V resolving to I.
• You could hear each chord resolving to the next chord.
• Or you could hear the entire iii Vi ii V resolving to I.

They may all seem like the same thing, but they imply different approaches. You ask why i call the iii a half-diminished chord much of the time. It’s because I hear the iii Vi pushing strongly towards the ii chord, hence, I often make it a minor ii V instead of a major ii V.

Transcribe a blues by one of your heroes and pay special attention to what they do in the eighth bar and the eleventh bar. Half diminished here we come. Or check out a rhythm change’s solo, specifically in measures three and measure seven. You’ll hear different soloists play the iii in the iii Vi sometimes as a minor chord and sometimes as a half-diminished chord. Listen to when they play each and try to figure out why they make that particular choice at that particular time.

What matters most is where you’re going. Of course you can’t just play anything to arrive at that point, although many people do .

Understand where these big cadences are. For instance, in a blues, the fifth measure is a huge cadence to IV. Everything you play up to that point is about getting you to the IV chord.

Once you know where these big points are, it becomes easy to hear various ways of reaching them.

You can take many routes to the same place

Depending on what you want to express based upon what you’re hearing at the time, you may choose to play one chord instead of another

Yes, the lead sheet says a particular measure belongs to a particular chord, but is that really the case? The piano player plays a chord, but do they hold it the entire measure? Of course not. That would be boring and trite. They play one chord for a beat, then another, then anticipate another chord for a beat and so on.

The harmony is not a drone. It’s not static. It’s dynamic and exciting. It’s about movement and forward motion.

Because the harmony is played in this fashion, it leaves a lot of room for exploration. This doesn’t mean that you should play what ever you want and ignore the chords. It does mean that you shouldn’t feel boxed in to always playing the same chord progressions to get from one part of a tune to another.

By listening to the harmony of  a tune from a recording instead of looking at lead sheets, you’ll hear that the harmony is not exactly what you conceptualized from the written chart. You’ll hear this dynamic nature of the sound and understand how each sound moves to the next.

Get away from lead sheets that are leading you astray, figure out the big cadence points in a tune and know that those are central to the framework of the tune, and listen to how your heroes take alternate routes to the same place chorus after chorus. With these key steps, your knowledge of chord progressions will extend your harmonic and melodic freedom instead of taming your creativity and causing you a great deal of confusion.

It’s a question that we get asked all the time on gigs, at jam sessions, and even in our weekly lessons.

As you probably know, it’s not a lot of fun when you are put on the spot and don’t know a tune. In fact, it seems like a lot of the motivation for our practice comes from our efforts to avoid this very experience of getting caught off guard or looking like an unprepared moron.

We try to memorize as many tunes as we can, we make longs lists of standards to learn, we listen to and transcribe various recordings of the greats playing, and in our free time we try to review these melodies and progressions in our heads.

However, even after all the lists, listening sessions, and memorization practice, have you done enough to “know” that tune? Take a second and honestly ask yourself: “How well do I really know these tunes?”

Do you know them well enough to shape interesting original solos? Have you spent enough time in the practice room to be free in performance or do the form and progression feel like shackles weighing you down? Are you doing just enough to fumble through yet another melody and chord progression?

I hear musicians all the time talk about all the tunes they know, but when it comes down to it, the definition of “knowing” a tune ends up being pretty wide. For some, knowing a tune means hearing it once and faking their way through it in performance. For others, it means memorizing the melody and progression after an afternoon of practice. And for a rare few, knowing means hours of practice until that tune is to the point where you could play it in all keys and at any tempo.

Everybody has a different definition of what it means to know a tune, but the real test comes on the bandstand. What do you sound like when you perform these tunes? To see where you stand, here is a quick checklist to see if those tunes you’ve got on your set list are ones that you actually know:

I. Can you sing the melody?

If you can’t sing the melody of a tune, you don’t know it – plain and simple.

You may know the fingering pattern or you may even have a clear picture of the lead sheet burned into your mind, but if it’s not ingrained aurally, you’re barely half-way there. Using a written lead sheet to think of a tune is like trying describe a color with words.

You can get a vague approximated idea of the concept of “red” from someone’s description, but If you truly want to understand it, you need to go straight to the source and experience it first hand.

Sing the melody to a tune that you know. It seems like a straight forward concept that should be simple, right? However, this process is very revealing. Go through your tune list one by one and sing the melody to each tune. Can you sing through all of these melodies perfectly without any missed notes? Are some stronger than others?

In no time, you’ll get a very clear idea of the tunes that you know and the tunes that you need to revisit in the practice room.

You’d be surprised at how many people claim to “know” a melody and then think of fingerings, memorized intervals, and lead sheets to play the tune. Let your ear be your guide and use your technique to support what you’re hearing, not the other way around.

II. Can you visualize the chord progression?

What is the chord in the 4th bar of Stella by Starlight? What chord does the bridge to Cherokee start on and how does that relate to the key of the tune? What are the first four bars to Moment’s Notice?

After having a tune or progression memorized by ear, the next important step is the ability to visualize the chord progression.

The goal is to hear chord progressions and most great players aren’t thinking about the names of chords as they are improvising, but if you happened to stop them during a performance and ask them to name a particular chord they would definitely know it. The reason behind this contradiction, is that in-order to improvise well you must repeat a progression or line so many times that it becomes ingrained indefinitely.

If you’re truly practicing these lines and tunes like you should be, you can’t help but to learn the name and relationship of each chord in the progression – it just happens. Without thinking about it you can visualize the melody and progression in your mind and ear.

Visualization is like a mental map of the tune that you follow and one of the most useful exercises in internalizing tunes. However, it’s tempting to turn this process into a useless memorization exercise where you’re reciting chord names in order. Don’t fall into this trap!

You must hear the melody and chords in your mind, feel your embouchure, air, and the fingerings you would press on your instrument, and recreate the overall experience of the tune as if you were performing it. This is visualization. When you get a tune to the point that you can play through it in your mind, you’ll know the tune on a whole new level.

III. Could you play the melody and progression to the tune in another key?

Another great indicator to test your knowledge and control of a tune is to play it in a different key. Simply pick a tune that you know, pick an unrelated key, and see what happens. In a matter of seconds, you’ll be able to tell if you “know” this tune or if you’ve memorized the note names and chord names on a lead sheet.

Before you begin, take a second to visualize it. Hear the melody and see the relationships between the different chords in your mind. This can be a tricky exercise at first, so remember that it doesn’t have to be perfect on your first attempt.

Start with the melody and work it out by ear. It might be tempting to think of note names and to mentally work out the lines as you go, but force yourself to hear the shape of the melody. Next workout the chord progression in the new key. In the original key you might have been thinking of note names (“G7 to C-7 then F7…”), this works in one key, but in a new one, you’re out of luck.

Learn to see the progression in terms of numbers and intervallic relationships (“Start on the I chord, then move to a ii-V7 of the flat III chord…”). With this mindset, you can transpose the progression easily to any other key, whereas before, each new key felt like learning a new tune.

As jazz musicians, we’re learning new tunes all the time in the practice room. Our overall goal is to create a lasting repertoire of tunes we “know” that we can always rely on in performance. Our definition of learning a tune and “knowing” a tune determines the strength of this repertoire and can make or break us on the bandstand.

The next time you learn a tune, use these three quick tests to see if you’re headed in the right direction. If you can’t sing the melody, visualize the progression, or work it out in another key, it’s time to head back to the practice room.