On this site we’ve frequently written about learning tunes. This is no coincidence – learning tunes goes hand in hand with improving as an improviser.

Whether you’re practicing, performing, or simply listening to a few records with some friends you’re dealing directly with tunes. Keeping this in mind, building a solid repertoire of tunes should be near the top of your practice list as a serious musician.

If you haven’t done so already, be sure to check out some of the these articles to help you get started with building your repertoire:

• A Blueprint for Building your Repertoire
• 10 Key Tunes
• 5 Tunes you should know and why
• Do you know that tune?
• How to learn a tune in 30 minutes
• Thoughts on learning tunes
• 5 Secrets to learning tunes

These articles are a good place to begin when you want to start building a solid base of tunes that you’ll feel confident performing, but what’s your next step?

If you’ve learned a handful of tunes and have a solid grasp of chord progressions, the answer is simple – you just need to learn more tunes.

However, this simple solution isn’t as easy as it sounds. As soon as you get into the practice room things begin to look a little different. The prospect of picking out one tune to learn from the hundreds upon hundreds of standards out there can be an overwhelming and even depressing process.

Where do I even begin? Why choose one tune and not another? How did I get so far behind? Before you know it the entire process quickly becomes a giant chore with no end in sight.

But it shouldn’t have be like this, music is supposed to be fun, right?

Putting everything into perspective

When you set out to expand your repertoire it’s very easy to get overwhelmed by the sheer amount of tunes out there.

To get past this initial obstacle you need to put a few things into perspective. The first thing to keep in mind is that learning tunes is a lifelong process. As long as you’re playing your instrument, whether it’s 5 years from now or 50 years from now, you’re going to be working on learning tunes. No matter how many hours you spend diligently practicing, there will always be a tune that you don’t know…and that’s OK.

As you tackle tunes in your daily practice remember that there’s no rush to the finish line or award for knowing the most tunes, you just want to steadily progress each day over the long haul – one brick at a time.

One simple change that you can make today is consciously altering your approach to learning tunes.

The big problem that many of us run into in expanding our repertoire is that we’ve made learning tunes a utilitarian process rather than an artistic process. Instead of focusing on the sound and unique character of each tune, we’ve turned those notes and melodies from the record into ink dots on the page of a fake book.

When a standard becomes a random set of chords or another group of notes to memorize all tunes become the same. Even worse, the entire learning process becomes tedious and boring. This is the downfall with learning a tune from a piece of paper, you’re not hearing the sound, inflection, or time of the melody and chord progression.

As a result you have no emotional connection to the tune in question, you might as well be memorizing your grocery shopping list or your bank statement.

However, the good news is that you can reverse this ineffective process. A slight change in your daily practice can make learning standards fun and inspiring again. Here are four ideas for adding tunes to your repertoire in a more productive and enjoyable way.

I) Learning tunes by musician

Take a moment and think of your favorite musicians that come to mind from the beginnings of this music up to today.

Louis Armstrong, Lester Young, Art Tatum, Bird, Miles, Freddie Hubbard, Stan Getz, Trane, Herbie Hancock, Sonny Rollins, Tommy Flanagan, McCoy Tyner, Michael Brecker and so on and so forth…

What exactly is it that makes these players great? Why do you keep listening to them?

We often think of our favorite players as masters of improvisation, however it’s their personal style and interpretation of melody that is just as notable as their mastery of improvisation. Over the years hundreds of players have recorded the same standards, but when you think about it we don’t listen to every player, we choose to listen to a certain few.

The truth is that it’s not just the tunes that matter when it comes to repertoire, it’s the interpretation – and this is the key to learning tunes effectively.

A unique sound, a personal sense of time, the way a melody is phrased. These are the details that stick in our minds and our ears after we listen to a tune, not a specific scale or harmonic alteration. Each of those great players listed above has left their own unique mark on the great American songbook. Once they played a tune it was changed forever, it became their tune.

The list of tunes that you learn shouldn’t be created from as an arbitrary list, it should be created from the players that you’re always listening to, the albums that get you excited and motivated to practice, and the melodies and progressions that grab your ear. The goal of transcribing an improviser’s style and the goal of learning tunes doesn’t have to be separated into different areas of your practice. In fact, learning a tune by ear is transcribing.

If you’re having trouble picking out tunes to learn or find it difficult to expand your repertoire try something different – learn these tunes through the perspective of your musical heroes. Before you write out a long to-do list of tunes that’s probably going to gather dust, pick out a player that you’ve been meaning to get into and learn their “songbook.” Here are a few players you might get started with:

Clifford Brown tunes

Click here to view the embedded video.

Cherokee
Sandu
Joy Spring
Stompin’ at the Savoy
Jordu

Charlie Parker tunes

Ornithology
Moose the Mooch
Yardbird Suite
Billie’s Bounce
Confirmation
Groovin’ High

Miles Davis tunes
Four
Oleo
In Your Own Sweet Way
If I Were a Bell
Stella by Starlight
Half Nelson
Walkin
John Coltrane tunes

I Love You
I Hear a Rhapsody
Like Someone in Love
My Shining Hour
Come Rain or Come Shine

Chet Baker tunes
All the things you are
There will never be another you
Darn that Dream
My Funny Valentine
But Not for Me

Click here to view the embedded video.

When you connect the tunes you’re trying to learn with the players that you love, you’re not just learning the melody and chord progression to a tune, you are studying a player’s style and learning their musical language.

II) Learning tunes by composer

When I was in school we periodically had days where every combo in the school would gather to play the music of a specific composer.  Each group would chose a tune from this composer and as a whole we would explore the songbook of this particular composer. This is a great idea to incorporate in to your personal practice routine. Find a composer that you’re interested in or a composer whose tunes grab your ear and learn each of their tunes. Here’s a few examples:

Tadd Dameron

Hot House
Move
Our Delight
On a Misty Night
Lady Bird

Benny Golson

Stablemates
I Remember Clifford
Along Came Betty
Whisper Not

Click here to view the embedded video.

Jerome Kern

All the Things You Are
Dearly Beloved
The Song Is You
Smoke Gets In Your Eyes
The Way You Look Tonight
Yesterdays

Pick any composer that you like or a composer that you’ve been meaning to get into: Thelonious Monk , Wayne Shorter, Charles Mingus, Ellington, Kenny Dorham… Spending time focusing on any of these composers is a great way to expand your repertoire.

III) Learning tunes by album

If you’ve ever read any interviews or biographies of the great improvisers this music has produced you’ve probably noticed a trend.

Each of these stories usually starts the same way: a precocious youngster is naturally drawn to the music, finds a record, wears it out through constant listening, learns every tune and solo on the record, and the rest is history. To these icons, a record of one of their heroes was like a treasure. Once they had it in their hands they learned every tune, every solo, and every arrangement. This one album became pivotal in their development and conception of improvising.

The advantage that we have today over the past generations of improvisers is that we have access to any recording we want at the tip of our fingers. However the irony is that this is also our disadvantage – we have too much information, but not enough knowledge. Another way you can improve the process of learning tunes is by following the example of your musical heroes and picking out one record and spending hours with it until you’ve ingrained every detail.

This task doesn’t require any research or extra searching on your part, simply find some records that you can’t stop listening to, the ones where you sing along with every solo, and get to work on learning those tunes. Here are a few albums to get started with:

Cookin’ with the Miles Davis Quintet

Study in Brown

The Jazz Messengers at the Cafe Bohemia

Once you find your record, pretend that you’re stranded on a desert island and this is the only record you have. Listen to every track on repeat until you can sing along with each melody and solo. Then take it into the practice room and start by transcribing the melodies on your instrument. Then move onto learning each of the solos.

After a short amount of time getting intimate with this record, you’ll gain much more musically than a few tunes tunes to add to your set list. You’ll learn about the history of this music, you’ll be able to sing and play the solos of the great improvisers, and most importantly you’ll have this information ingrained in your ear forever.

IV) Learning tunes that grab your ear

As musicians we’re listening to music all the time. In the space of a week the odds are pretty good that you’re going to hear a few tunes that you don’t know. It might be a melody that you’ve heard dozens of times before but never actually learned on your instrument or it might be a tune that you’ve never heard before, but for some reason it immediately grabs your ear.

There are dozens of places that you’ll encounter tunes like this: When you go to a show and hear a standard that blows you away, when you’re at a jam session and a tune is called that you don’t know, when you’re hanging out with a group of friends and they start talking about a tune or records, or even on the speakers when you walk into a restaurant.

As you encounter a tune that you don’t know make a mental note of it. Write it down, find a recording, and scour the internet for recordings and performances of that tune. Get this tune in your ears, listen to it on repeat to the point that you start singing the melody everywhere you go.

When I hear a tune that catches my ear or a tune that I want to learn I go to YouTube and download the best version of the tune I can find. Then later, when I’m in the practice room I’ll bring that file back up and learn the melody.

By following these steps, you’ll eventually have a list of tunes that you’ve gathered simply by paying attention to your day to day listening.  A list of tunes that you’ve created from your own experience, rather than a random list that you’ve compiled like an unwanted homework assignment.

Making tunes personal

Any method that you choose to learn tunes whether it’s picking the tunes of your favorite player, your favorite albums, or simply making a list of tunes that catch your ear will give you an important advantage over making a random list.

The standards that we learn should mean something. If you truly want to connect with your listeners you need to begin by connecting with yourself. Learning tunes shouldn’t be a process of “jazz homework” where you force melodies and chord progressions into your mind, it should originate from a feeling of excitement and inspiration.

Anyone can make a long list of tunes that you’re supposed to know, but how excited are you to memorize that information? We are much more motivated to do something when we have a personal connection or stake in it – when you do it your way.

With the four methods above, you’re learning a tune because it’s connected to something important to you.

Now you have a reason to learn the tunes on your list and in the long run you’ll find that you’ll learn many more tunes this way. The practice of learning tunes will suddenly become enjoyable and something you look forward to, rather than this anxiety and guilt ridden chore that you force yourself to do from time to time.

You don’t have to feel obligated to use all of the above steps to see improvement, just pick one and the shift in your approach will happen immediately.

A common question that many improvisers often have is “How do I connect chords when I’m soloing?”

Improvising over one chord is simple enough, however when you begin to play tunes with actual chord progressions, creating and connecting lines becomes a bit more challenging. This musical obstacle goes to the heart of the skills you need as an improviser and the solution, like many obstacles we encounter in music, is simple in theory yet significantly more involved in implementation.

Imagine for a moment that you took away all the theory terminology, the voice leading rules, the maze of scales and the chord symbol jargon that you normally encounter as an improviser. What would you be left with? You’d be left with sound – that’s it! Despite everything that our brains get caught up in as we try to create a solo, the harmonic aspect of improvisation boils down to sound: Individual sounds (chords) and the relationships between these sounds.

As an improviser a theoretical understanding and technical proficiency are the first steps when approaching these harmonic relationships, but your ultimate goal is melody. Can you create a seamless melody over these sounds and subsequent chord progressions? Herein lies the creative challenge that improvisation poses to us every time we attempt to play a tune.

Your ability to play melodies over a chord progression is directly related to how well you can hear the individual chords of a progression and the relationships between them. If you want to play effortlessly over any chord progression you need to start by focusing intently on the movement between one chord and the next.

Approaching chord relationships

Think back to the first time that you where introduced to the idea of a chord progression. If you were like a lot of people most of your time was spent figuring out “stuff” to play over those individual chords, not on the relationship or melodic connection of the entire progression.

Around the same time you also likely encountered the ii-V7-I progression. With this harmonic relationship came ideas of connection like voice leading, guide tone lines, and 7-3 resolutions. This is a great place to start learning the basics of functional harmony and chord relationships.

Many musicians begin their journey into chord progressions with a study of ii-V’s, the only problem is that this is also where their study of harmonic relationships stops. If you think about it a ii-V-I only contains two chord relationships: a minor ii chord moving to the dominant V7 chord and a V7 chord resolving to the I chord.

However, take a quick listen to any tune and you’ll immediately see that you’re going to need to know more than just these two chord relationships.

While the progression of a sub-dominant to a dominant to the tonic is a progression that is central to much of Western music, there are definitely other key chord relationships that you should know to be fully prepared to play any standard. Below are six common chord relationships besides ii-V-I that you should start incorporating into your daily practice routine:

Parallel Minor

The direct movement from a major chord to its parallel minor is surprisingly common within the body of standards that are frequently played by musicians. There is something inherently logical about stating a melody in major and then moving it to minor. For instance take a listen to the opening four bars of Ornithology:

Click here to view the embedded video.

As an improviser this is an important relationship to have in your ear and under your fingers. Being able to modulate quickly from a major sound directly its parallel minor will serve you well in many situations. Here are a few other standards that utilize a direct modulation from major to minor:

• Just Friends
• On Green Dolphin St.
• How High the Moon
• I’ll Remember April

Click here to view the embedded video.

This parallel minor relationship also appears in some not so obvious places as well. Take a look at the bridge to Cherokee:

We often think of the bridge to Cherokee as four separate ii-V’s that descend in whole steps (play a ii-V in B – stop! – play a ii-V in A – stop!…etc.) Instead aim to create a seamless line where the resolution of one ii-V connects to beginning of the next ii-V a whole step lower. This means utilizing and mastering the above parallel minor relationship – B Major to B minor, A Major to A minor, G Major to G minor.

II7 to ii-7

The parallel minor relationship doesn’t have to be limited to only the movement from Major 7 to minor 7 chords, you also frequently find this chord relationship between Dominant 7 and minor 7 chords. For instance, take the last 8 bars of the A section of Cherokee:

Or the opening chords to If I Were a Bell:

Click here to view the embedded video.

In both cases the Dominant II chord modulates to ii-7 resulting in the progression: II7 – ii-7 – V7 – I. Other tunes utilizing this relationship:

• Take the A Train
• Just Friends
• Donna Lee

I7 to IV7 (movement by 4ths)

The progression from the I chord to the IV chord is so common that it is often overlooked, but this is an essential progression to have at your disposal. Here a two standard examples of I to IV7:

Blues (dominant I chord moving to a dominant IV chord):

Rhythm Changes (bridge in the key of C):

The movement of a I7 chord to a IV7 chord is essentially a V7 to I relationship. When you begin to think of this harmonic relationship in this way the progression becomes much more logical and intuitive. You aren’t just switching between random dominant chords, there is a V to I resolution implied.

In the above examples you can also imply a ii-V7 progression over the I7 chord (see this article for more on implied progressions). For example on the first 4 bars on the bridge to Rhythm Changes:

And if you turn every V7 chord on the bridge you’ll encounter the parallel minor relationship from above:

This fourth relationship can also be found in other standards between two minor chords or two major chords. For example check out the opening 8 bars of All the Things You Are:

Click here to view the embedded video.

I to VI7 (Sixth relationship)

To be able to improvise well over most standards you need to have the relationship of a I chord to the VI chord down. Not only a mental grasp of this movement, but a repertoire of language for this harmonic relationship in all 12 keys. The most prevalent example of this sixth relationship is the A section to Rhythm Changes.

Click here to view the embedded video.

The first few measures of Donna Lee is another good example:

I – #i°

A chord that provides the same function as the VI7 chord is a #i° chord. Instead of the chord sequence I – VI – ii – V you can also play have I – #i°7 – ii – V7, essentially implying a VI7 flat9 and utilizing a half-step root movement. Some tunes that use this chord relationship are:

• Easy Living
• Have You Met Miss Jones

Half-Steps (I to bII)

The relationship of a half step is also common among the standards you’ll encounter as an improviser. Take a listen to the first four bars of You Stepped Out of a Dream:

Click here to view the embedded video.

A descending half-step progression can also be found in Donna Lee:

A few other examples of standards that utilize half-step harmonic relationships:

• So What
• Well You Needn’t

Click here to view the embedded video.

Minor Third Relationships

Another chord relationship to get in your ears and under you fingers is a minor 3rd relationship. The most well known example of this chord relationship is John Coltrane’s tune Giant Steps:

Click here to view the embedded video.

Quickly changing key centers like the ones found in the progression to Giant Steps take some serious practice. Learning this sequence of chord relationships is also useful in reharmonizing standards or implying chord substitutions:

Click here to view the embedded video.

Tonic to Half-Diminished vii (I – viiø)

One other progression that is also very common is the movement from the I chord to the viiø chord. You’ll find this progression in:

• Bird Blues (Blues for Alice)
• Confirmation
• Come Rain or Come Shine:

Click here to view the embedded video.

Practicing these chord relationships

So now that we’ve identified these six chord relationships, how are you going to practice them?

Well, before you can get to work on any chord progression, you have to start by learning the sound of the individual chords. The logic is simple, if you can’t play over one chord, how are you going to connect multiple chords?

For example if you want to improvise effectively over the parallel minor relationship, you need to begin by understanding (aurally and mentally) each individual chord in that chord progression. This means developing technique, doing a few ear training exercises and learning language for both a Major chord and a minor chord.

Then once you have those sounds in your ear and under your fingers, you need to get some language for each of these chords. Think of these two steps as prerequisites before you can start connecting chords. If you’re wondering where to start check out some of these articles for information about hearing the basic chords and gathering language:

• How to acquire useful language
• The difference between jazz licks and jazz language
• Fundamental ear training: seventh chords
• Practicing all four directions
• How to practice scales for speed

This process is the same for any other chord progression, and the 6 harmonic relationships listed above are no exception. Once you have acquired some language and can hear these individual sounds, it’s time to focus on the relationship between these two sounds. Below are four steps for learning any chord relationship that you come across.

Step 1: Isolate the chord relationship

The first step in learning any of the above chord relationships is to isolate the two chords in question. As an example let’s take the parallel minor relationship from above:

Start by going to the piano and slowly playing the two chords over and over again. (Not sure about how to voice a chord on piano? See this article.)  The goal is to get the sound of this harmonic relationship in your ear. Hear the movement between the roots, thirds, fifths, sevenths, and upper structures of the chords as the harmony shifts. Listen for any common tones or half-step resolutions between the two chords.

Next find a recording of a tune that contains this progression (ex. the first 4 bars of Ornithology). Isolate that spot in Transcribe! and loop it. Again listen to the movement from one chord to the next.

Step 2: Transcribe language

Once you understand this chord relationship and have the harmonic movement in your ears it doesn’t automatically guarantee that you’ll be playing great lines over this chord progression. You need to start by learning and studying a musical model.

The way you learn the jazz language is by transcribing the lines and solos of great players. When you’re working on a specific harmonic relationship, find a specific line that you like over this spot in the progression, then slow it down and learn that line.

To continue with the example of the parallel minor chord relationship, you might want to check out how Clifford Brown or Sonny Rollins improvise over the parallel minor change in I’ll Remember April.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Find a line that grabs your ear, slow it down, sing it and learn it on your instrument. Once you have it down the next step is to learn this piece of language in all 12 keys. This is one piece of language that you have when you encounter a parallel minor relationship.

Step 3: Repetition and variation

Now that you have a piece of language to work with, you need to make this line your own. The final goal of transcribing solos is not to cut and paste these lines directly into your own solos, it’s to ingrain all of these lines and have them evolve over time into your own language.

After you’ve learned and internalized a piece of language from the record it’s time to personalize this line by altering it (harmonically, rhythmically, and melodically) and combining it with other language that you’ve already developed.

Check out these posts for some ideas on varying your transcribed language:

• Quadruple your jazz language
• How to apply the jazz language you’ve transcribed
• How to phrase like a pro
• Using Permutation to create unlimited musical ideas
• Exploring space

After you have some variations on the original line, take these new lines through every key.

Step 4: Create your own lines

Finally we’re back where we started – creating improvised lines that connect a chord progression. Only this time, instead of shooting unsuccessfully in the dark, we’ve gone through the steps of learning language and creating our own. You see, contrary to what a lot of people think about improvisation, you can’t create lines out of thin air. Improvising is a skill developed from hours of practice not a talent that you either have or don’t have.

When you’ve haven’t practiced these chord relationships and have no language to play of course it’s going to feel impossible – this is just a sign that you haven’t developed these skills yet. Whether you’re working on hearing chord progressions, trying to improve your technique, or striving to connect various chord relationships the answer is not going to come to you without any work.

By incorporating these six harmonic relationships into your practice routine, in addition to your usual ii-V-I practice, you’ll find yourself much more prepared to solo over the tunes in the standard repertoire.

Everyone knows they should learn tunes straight from recordings and not from a lead sheet, but it’s not that simple. Figuring out what’s happening melodically and harmonically is super challenging for most people, and it’s so convenient just to print out a lead sheet.

Forget the lead sheet. Anything you learn with your mind and not your ear will not stay with you unless you constantly review it. Anything you truly learn with your ear will stay with you for a lifetime. Here are some things that if put into practice, will make you wonder why you hadn’t been learning tunes from recordings all along.

First impressions matter

In terms of the way you relate to a tune, first impressions are everything. Many people today think All the Things You Are, Just Friends, and Stella By Starlight are lame boring songs. Even though these are some of my favorites, surprisingly, I can relate to this attitude because many tunes still sound far from exciting in my mind. But why? Why do certain tunes have no spark, no energy, no life? Why do some tunes feel impossible to solo over?

It’s all about first impressions: how you were first introduced to the tune. Was it an assignment? The first time you heard it, was it from a play-along track? Or had you never heard it, and just played it from a lead sheet?

As you first conceptualize a tune, it becomes an entity with a certain vibe to it in your mind. Those tunes you first heard from a play-along record begin to burn themselves into your brain and before you know it, that’s how you hear it. Sound familiar?

I still have several tunes that when I think of them, instead of a beautiful Miles, Parker, or Trane rendition, I get the lifeless sound and dull energy of a play-along track because when I first learned them, I went straight to the play-along, completely ignoring the wealth of knowledge available to me from my heroes. In recent years, I’m getting closer to reprogramming the way I hear on these tunes, but I’m still not there on many.

To be clear, I’m not talking about some new-age energy-field nonsense. I’m talking about a very simple concept: what you listen to affects you in a unique way. No matter how good the players are on some back-up-track, they’re not going to compare to one of your heroes playing the tune. It’s actually not even a comparison, they’re just two different entities entirely.

One is a genuine performance created for the purposes of artistry and music, while the other is a quick run through of a lead sheet for the purposes of a mass produced practice aid. Don’t get me wrong, there are plenty of ways to make great use of play-alongs, but for conceptualizing the feel and vibe of a tune, the essence of it that will permanently be stored in your consciousness, you may want to rethink how you introduce yourself to a tune.

Everyone can play two-note voicings

When I was seventeen, I sat in a masterclass with legendary saxophonist Phill Woods. When everyone was done asking him what mouthpiece he played, we could finally get to the things that mattered. When asked about how he learns tunes, he responded, “If you can’t play it on the piano, you don’t know it.”

People’s immediate responses erupted in, “But I don’t play piano,” or, “I don’t have a piano.” Phill Woods did not see these as valid excuses, and he’s right. You can grab a midi controller for dirt cheap today and for not playing piano…Phill exclaimed, “Anyone can sit down at the piano, and plunk out two-note voicings.”

Try it right now. Pick a tune you know, sit at the piano, and play two-note voicings. To play two-note voicings, play the root of the chord in the left hand, and the 3rd and 7th of the chord in the right hand. That’s it.

Once you do this, you can add notes that help clarify each particular chord, for instance, on a half-diminished chord, add the b5, or on a dominant b9 chord, add the b9. You don’t even have to do this in time, just plunk out the voicings as Phil said.

As you do this, you’ll actually hear the chords, which is an ear-opening experience for most horn players, and you’ll begin to understand how the chords fit together to create the overall harmony.

Use everything on the recording

A lot of people write in to JazzAdvice, explaining that they don’t have any problem learning the melody from a recording, but they can’t for the life  of them learn the chord changes from the record. In fact, many people find it damn near impossible.

You’re not alone. At first it seems like a daunting task. I have to listen to the piano player and hear every chord?

And here in lies the problem. It seems logical to learn the melody from the melodic instrument, like the horn player, and then learn the chords from the bass and piano player. In actuality, there are many more hints on a recording to learning the changes that make it much easier than you may have initially thought.

You need to use everything on the recording to figure out, well…everything. When you’re learning the melody, don’t just learn the melody. Try to hear how each note lays against what the piano player is playing. Try to hear where the bass movement is going.

If, for example, you learn the first part of a melody and it feels and sounds like it’s over a major chord, try to figure out what chord-tones you’re playing. Does it sound like you’re playing the 3rd of a major chord or the 5th? Or, did you just hear the bass line just shift suddenly when the melody took a slight turn? Again, use the notes in the melody to help determine what you might be playing over.

You can do the same thing with part of a solo. Transcribe an ‘A’ section of the tune and you’ll have a ton of hints to what the chord progression is. Always be thinking that there are multiple ways of figuring out your musical problems. When you can’t determine quite what the piano and bass player are playing, turn to the soloist. When you can’t get anywhere with any of them, go to the next chorus in the same spot. When you can’t get anywhere there, go to the next soloist…

There are so many chances to hear what’s going on. It is challenging, but it’s much easier if you use everything you’re hearing on the recording.

One tune, one project

Approach any tune you want to learn as a project. Today, figure out what’s going on in the first four measures. That’s it. Just the first four measures. You can listen to the whole tune, you can use the whole recording, but your goal is to just figure out what’s going on in the first four measures. With some focused time and attention to what you’re hearing, you can learn the melody and changes straight from the recording in those first four measures.

The next day, focus on the second four measures. Continue in this manner until you’ve learned the entire tune.

This is just a suggestion. You can break it up how ever you see fit. The point is, attempting to tackle the entire tune all at once is quite challenging. As you learn tunes in this manner, you’ll be able to pick up tunes from recordings much more quickly and easily.

Come full circle

As you first learn tunes from recordings, it’s natural to learn it in piecemeal: you learn the melody, then you learn the chords, then you learn the form. The eventual goal is to learn tunes more as a holistic unit as described in ‘Use everything on the recording’.

Whether you pieced it up or learned the chords as you learned the melody, you want to go back and hear how everything is functioning simultaneously. Start out by playing the melody and consciously knowing what every single note of the melody is in relation to the chord it’s played over; understand the bigger picture of how the melody functions with the harmony.

Supposing you transcribed a chorus or an ‘A’ section of a solo to assist you in figuring out the chord changes. Now, take this section you transcribed and play it slowly, knowing exactly how each line functions with the harmony.

In both of these exercises, you’re strengthening your knowledge of how the chords sound and how lines, whether it be the melody or a solo section, flow over them. Everything you learn about a tune, bring it back full circle into one conceptual unit.

5 not-so-secret-anymore secrets to learning tunes

Believe me, I call these secrets because they took me years to figure out. In retrospect, they seem like obvious and borderline no-brainers, and you’re probably thinking, how can these be secrets?

Well, honestly can you say you’ve ever given any thought to how you introduce yourself to a tune? When’s the last time you played two-note voicings or made sure you were using everything from a recording to aid in figuring it out? Have you ever thought about maybe it’s difficult for everyone to approach an entire tune from a recording, and that breaking it apart into super small chunks could make it manageable? And how about connecting the melody with the harmony…which tunes feel like one cohesive unit in your mind?

Perhaps they are (were) secrets. And now you know them. Learning tunes from recordings just went from ridiculously-super-challenging to just pretty-challenging.

Music is meant to be heard live.

There is no substitute for the visceral experience of sitting in an audience and soaking up a great live performance. Not only hearing the music, but feeling the physical vibrations of those melodies, chords and rhythms. Seeing the interaction between musicians as they collectively create music in the moment and experiencing the excitement of the audience.

This is what improvisation is all about.

As a performer, experiencing a great live performance is like a shot of adrenaline for your musical motivation. When you witness music at its highest level, you can’t help feeling like you need to rush into the practice room. Your inspiration is immediately renewed and you suddenly have a new focus for your musical direction.

Any way you look at it, there is no substitute for the atmosphere of an intimate live music venue. You can rub shoulders with the greats and be in an environment where people not only love jazz, but are often serious about pursuing it themselves.

All of this live music sounds great, but what if you don’t live in New York City, the jazz capital of the world? What if you don’t even have a venue for live jazz within a 100 mile radius of your home? Are you just out of luck when it comes to experiencing this music?

Of course not! It’s 2013 and the world is a much more connected place. Thanks to the web, there are some key resources to utilize that will bring the music to you, no matter where you are.

Archived Live Performance

If you can’t hear a live performance, the next best thing is to check out a recording of that live performance. While a recording may not give you the thrill of being in an audience you do gain a different advantage.

After attending a show you definitely get inspired, but when you get into the practice room the next day are you going to study the specifics of the music with inspiration alone? Good luck with that! You need to deal with actual melodies, chord progressions and rhythms. With a live recording you don’t have to rely on a hazy memory of those tunes and solos, you can listen to the set over and over again any time you want. You can study those exact melodies and chords, transcribe some language, and imitate the sound and articulation of your favorite players.

As a serious improviser, there are a few online listening resources that you should be taking advantage of in your daily study.

Smalls Jazz Club Audio Archive

One of the best places to hear live jazz in New York is Smalls in Greenwhich Village. Smalls has created an audio archive of every performance at the club and most of these are available for listening online (for free!). You can spend hours browsing through and listening to these live performances of the top names playing in New York. This archive is an invaluable resource for any aspiring improviser and if you treat these recordings seriously and study them intently, you’ll have a direct connection to the best improvisers in the world.

On a side note it looks like Smalls will also be presenting a weekly live broadcast for free as well, so stay tuned for more info.

NPR Jazz

Public radio has been a long time supporter of the arts, especially jazz. There are two notable programs on NPR for checking out some live performances online:

Live at the Village Vanguard

Probably the most famous jazz club in Manhattan, the Village Vanguard stage has seen the likes of John Coltrane, Bill Evans, Sonny Rollins and countless other masters of the music. NPR produces a monthly live broadcast from the club and archives these shows on its website. If you can’t make it to the Vanguard every month, this is the next best thing.

Piano Jazz

Marian McPartland started her radio show Piano Jazz in 1978. The show ran for thirty three years under her direction and many of these shows are archived on NPR’s website. Each show is part performance, part musical discussion, and part history lesson. Take a listen to a few of these shows and you’ll feel like you’re sitting in the room with these jazz masters.

Interviews

Aside from hearing a great performance, another benefit of checking out a show in an intimate setting is being able to interact with your musical heroes. The period of time after the show ends is a great opportunity to start up a conversation, ask for a lesson, or even to inquire about a musical question that you’ve been struggling with.

Oftentimes your perception of a great improviser is completely different from the way they actually are in person. You might be surprised to find out that the big name player that you meet in a club turns out to be a musician just like you, working everyday to be the best improviser they can be.

If you don’t have any musical heavyweights coming to your area anytime soon, one way you can get inside a musician’s head is to find some interviews online, preferably videos or recordings where you can hear their voice.

To start check out this article, 50 Jazz Interviews to Get You Inspired, where we’ve compiled some of the best interviews we’ve found online. Also, take another listen to Piano Jazz – besides the great playing, the interview portion will give you some great insight into the artistic process of these musical masters.

The Jazz Session

From 2007 – 2012 Jason Crane produced a weekly podcast called The Jazz Session. During this time he interviewed over a hundred of the best improvisers out there today and in doing so produced a wonderful resource for anyone trying to learn this music. If you’re searching for interviews, this would be a good place to stop to hear some intelligent and insightful conversation with musicians that are practicing their art at the highest level.

The Checkout

Based in Newark, NJ, the radio station WBGO produces some great original content including live performances and interviews with a number of amazing musicians that perform in the New York area. Take a listen to the live shows recorded at Berklee and the 92nd St. Y or the in-studio performances and interviews.

Finally, take a look at these 50 Jazz Education clips. If you have a question that you want to ask a musical master, it’s probably answered in one of these videos.

Stay connected

Whether you check out a live broadcast, a recorded show, or listen to an interview you are connecting with the music in an important way. As the saying goes, genius may be 99% perspiration and 1% inspiration, but that 1% of inspiration and motivation is so important. In terms of musical improvement, it can mean the difference between another boring day in the practice room and a day where breakthroughs are made.

There is no substitute for the thrill of seeing a great live performance, however with some of the resources we’ve highlighted above you can create a connection to the music that will inspire your practice and fuel your musical motivation. Take some time each day to checkout some of these recordings and interviews before you head into your practice room. Thanks the resources of the web, in this day and age your location doesn’t have to stop you from experiencing some of the best music in the world.

“You have to know the rules before you can break them.”

You’ve probably heard this well-intentioned phrase before. It’s as common and overused as “Practice makes perfect” or any of the countless other sayings that we encounter when it comes to learning a musical instrument.

As students of the music we get bombarded by these catch phrases on a daily basis. Teachers show us their personal philosophy for musical improvement, we take away quotes from masterclasses, books and videos, and even our friends give us helpful pointers.

Despite our best efforts, most of this information flies by us unnoticed without any tangible impact on our playing. But you don’t have to stop there, just dig a little deeper and you’ll discover that there’s some valuable truth behind those words:

“You have to know the rules before you can break them.”

If you find yourself stuck with improvising, this phrase can be a game changer. However to create growth, you have to begin by reading between the lines. What exactly are the “rules” and what does it mean to “know” them?

Anyone can hear this statement and think, “yeah, that makes sense,” but to take that message to heart and then apply it to your own playing takes a completely different kind of person.

What does it mean to Know?

Before I started high school I attended a week long jazz camp with about 30 other aspiring improvisers. Five days of big band and combo rehearsals as well as theory, improvisation and jazz history classes. On the very first morning of the camp all of the students were required to attend an introductory improvisation class.

As soon as everyone had walked in and sat down the instructor immediately jumped out of his seat and posed a question to the entire class: “How many of you know your major scales?”

It was a simple question and nearly everyone raised their hands right away. Know them or not, no one wanted to look left behind.

“Alright, pretty good, but how many of you really know your scales?”

A few of us continued to timidly raise our hands. I quietly thought to myself, “Well, I have all my scales memorized, I just have to think a little more on the hard ones, but I still know them.”

“No, no, how many of you know your scales?”

This time no one moved. It seemed like we were getting into trick question territory. Why does he keep asking the same question about knowing your scales?

Instead of waiting for any of us to answer, he picked up his trumpet and ran through every major scale up and down the horn at lightning speed. Then he started playing them in 3rds and 4ths, and in triads and arpeggios.

Point taken. In most of our young minds a scale was 8 notes in order and “knowing” that scale meant playing it slowly with some mistakes. However, without any words exchanged, we witnessed what it truly meant to know your scales. From that moment on the definition of “knowing your scales” was forever changed in our minds – the bar was raised.

That experience years ago was eye opening. Something as simple as a mental definition can make a world of difference. Once you think you’ve learned something you discover another level of understanding and proficiency. With improvisation, the sky is the limit. There is always another door that can be opened and new possibilities to be explored.

“The only source of knowledge is experience.”~Albert Einstein

When we learn something, especially in an academic setting, to “know” it means to memorize a fact and pass a test. However in music it’s a little different, the test of “knowing” comes in performance. You can either play it or you can’t. It’s no use if this information is stuck in your mind, it has to come out through your instrument.

Think about your own playing. Right now you have a definition in your mind of knowing a musical scale, knowing a ii-V progression, or knowing a jazz standard. But take a second and ask yourself: Do I truly know that scale, or progression, or tune?

Your definition of “knowing” becomes the pivotal point for your musical improvement. Most of the time we think we know a concept or have a skill when we haven’t even scratched the surface and this will hold us back.

“Knowing” the rules goes beyond retaining a simple definition, it means creating an internal knowledge from experience and practice, trial and error. The single reason that improvisation poses a great challenge for a lot of players is that they never get past the definition stage. They never get to the point that they “know” the actual sound of the fundamentals and can perform them.

What it means to break the rules

When it comes to the rules of conventional harmony, composers like Schoenberg, Webern, Berg, Ligeti and Stravinsky and numerous others have definitely broken the rules. But go back even further. Debussy broke free of conventional harmony,  Beethoven started his first symphony on a secondary dominant chord, and countless others before them have paved the way for innovation with their music.

The same is true of Louis Armstrong, Art Tatum, Bird, Miles, Wayne, Coltrane, Ornette … or artists like Kandinsky, Monet, Matisse, and Picasso.

Breaking the accepted rules is an inherent part of all evolving art forms. A vital ingredient in discovering new possibilities and innovating on tradition. However in all of this innovation and rule breaking there has to be a deep understanding of the fundamentals. A study of what it means to pursue your art form, whether it’s the tradition of working with sound or the visual aspects of the space on a blank canvas.

I think a lot of people forget where the force of this music comes from. Eric Dolphy knew what he was doing. Ornette Coleman knows what he’s doing. John Coltrane wrote “Giant Steps,” which is a harmonic masterpiece. It’s like classical music. Can you imagine Arnold Schoenberg not knowing about Mozart and Bach? I ask a young musician, “Okay, play the changes,” and bam, he can’t play the changes. But on a free thing he can play his ass off. I can’t accept that. I had to go through it.~Woody Shaw

Musicians have been dealing with melody, harmony and rhythm for hundreds of years. There is an established technique for your instrument, a standard for producing a great sound. There are methods for understanding and manipulating time and rhythmic patterns. The relationship of melody and harmony has been rigorously explored and studied.

This adds up to a lot of musical traditions, so what exactly do we mean when we talk about the “rules” in music?

For the majority of us we immediately think of the rules of music theory: chord tones, scales, modes, ii-V’s and 7-3 resolutions. But as improvisers we need to look at the bigger picture – remember music is not just music theory.

As an improviser, there are also “rules” for time, swinging, rhythm, using language, and technique. A tradition of swinging and articulating improvised melodies. An unspoken lineage of learning and presenting this music. Being oblivious to the time is just as bad as not making the harmony and being unaware of the history…well there’s no excuse for that.

These are the “rules” we need to consider as improvisers. This doesn’t mean that we have to content ourselves with the past, rather that we should study the road that was paved before us. To familiarize ourselves with the possibilities that have been explored before by other like-minded musicians.

Understanding that the “rules” of improvising encompass much more than simple scales and chords will help you greatly in your quest to improve. However, as we’ve demonstrated, your definition of “knowing” makes all the difference. Take the music of John Coltrane for instance. It’s widely accepted that he broke the rules, innovating the music harmonically and rhythmically, but before he did that he spent years mastering ii-V’s and standards.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Rules really aren’t broken, because there are no rules, only perceived limitations and time honored conventions. There are however, skills and traditions that need to be learned and to improvise, these are essential.

Playing without rules

If rules are made to be broken, why even learn them in the first place?

The most innovative musicians should be the players that know no rules, right? Players that aren’t burdened by that box-like thinking that results from years of tradition and strict harmonic do’s and don’ts.

However this ironically is not the case. Take a look at young musicians that are trying to improvise for the first time. No listening, no language, little sense of time, articulation, technique or harmonic depth.

The pianis Brad Mehldau writes about this phenomenon in his article Jazz’s High Stakes and Tragic Failures:

True originality, and thus true creativity, never takes place in a historical vacuum; it is always rooted to something that has gone before. I remember observing the phenomenon of rootless “creativity” in my high school jazz band growing up. There were those of us who were listening to jazz and would go on to try to be musicians. Our fledgling attempts at soloing reflected whatever we had absorbed at that point – a little Bird, McCoy Tyner, Michael Brecker, what have you. Then there were kids in the band who were not going to pursue jazz for their life, had only a passing interest in playing music, and had hardly listened to jazz at all. They would also get a solo feature now and then.

What did they play? It was sort of like playing scales up and down the horn. What was striking was that they all sounded the same: One would think that with all the freedom that an improvised context could have, they might all play something different. But collectively, the kids who weren’t really listening to jazz actually encompassed a style of sorts, and that style was dictated by their limitation. The limitation was due to the fact that they hadn’t absorbed anything; they hadn’t begun to even mimic like we were. ~Brad Mehldau

To excel at and personalize a skill, you first have to learn the rudimentary elements of that skill. You can’t reasonably expect to create innovative improvised solos, without spending hours listening to records, learning solos, working out chord progressions, learning melodies and building your instrumental technique.

All of these aspects of playing are the “rules,” not just the right and wrong notes according to music theory. Every music has it own tradition and rules, but at the root of any music is the basic fact of a human interacting with sound.

Scientifically speaking, sound is defined for humans – it has been for thousands of years. With small variation, we all detect sound within the range of human hearing. However, how we define these pitches and group them into harmonies creates the different musical traditions we find around the world today.

Think of all this tradition and study, not as rule book of dos and don’ts, but as a toolbox of skills that you use to navigate harmony and melody and the sounds that we hear everyday. A trusted guide that helps to enable your musical awareness and creativity.

Studying these aspects of musicianship enable you to create the melodies, harmonies, and rhythms that you’re hearing inside of yourself. Knowing the rules really just means becoming proficient, acquiring enough knowledge and skills so that you can begin learning. We all have an internal creativity that can be unlocked, we just have to first learn how to use it.

Pay your dues

If you want to move forward as an improviser, if you want to get unstuck from the musical rut that you’ve found yourself in, and if you want to start learning you need to “know” the rules of improvising – not just the definitions.

The “rules” for improvisation aren’t the right or wrong notes to play, it’s understanding theory, acquiring technique, working on ear training, feeling time, listening to the history through records and knowing the jazz language. The rules of improvisation are the skills that you need to acquire.

To start, forget breaking the rules, start by knowing the rules. Maybe the the phrase should be: You have to know the rules before you can start playing. To successfully improvise you need a solid musical skill set and only after years of practice and performance can you start to think about breaking rules.

Getting to the point that you can break the rules in improvisation requires mastery. Take a look at the living masters of the music that we can hear today like Herbie Hancock or Wayne Shorter or Chick Corea. They’ve not only broken the rules, they’ve rewritten them. But, they’ve also paid their dues. If you hope to reach for similar heights with your music don’t just start by following the rules, make sure you actually know them.

Learning language is vital to your success as an improvisor. Without it you’re truly lost. You may know a scale, a chord, a concept…but without the fundamental ideas of what to do with these tools, you’ll aimlessly wander through the harmony. These fundamental ideas are gleaned from learning and studying language.

A reader recently wrote in, “I’ve been transcribing and learning language from my favorite players, but now I feel like I’m just repeating the same stuff over and over. How do I get beyond this?”

For starters, make sure you’re learning language not licks, and that you’ve spent ample time making lines your own. If you’re doing those two things, you should already feel like you’re not playing the same stuff all the time.

But, how do you set yourself up from the get-go feeling like when you learn a piece language, you’re going to open many doors, not just one door to one line, in one particular situation? The answer lies in how you understand the line, and what you do with that information once you know it.

The inner workings of jazz language

Whenever you study a piece of jazz language, whether it’s a line you just transcribed, or it’s something you learned months ago, always ask yourself, “What makes this specific line special?” Really dwell on it and ponder the answer. In some cases it’s immediately obvious and in others, it may taking some more thinking.

The point is, you need to realize early on what makes the particular line you’re working on unique. What makes it work? What is the essence of the line?

Some examples of what makes a line special:

• The way a chord tone is enclosed
• The way a structure, like a triad or a four-note grouping is used
• The way a chord tone is gotten to

Let’s look at some examples. Here’s a line from Dexter Gordon:

What makes this line special? Now, keep in mind, this is completely objective. What you think is special about a line, may be totally different than what I think. That does not matter. It’s these personal tastes that mold us into the player we wish to become. There are no right or wrong answers, just what you think based on what you hear.

(example 1)

The first thing that jumps out as special to me, is the quick drop to Ab on beat four (example #1). The b5 on a downbeat over a minor chord? Wait wait wait!! That goes against our jazz theory rules. Chord tones should be on downbeats, not a b5 on a minor chord. This must be wrong!

Does it sound wrong? No, not in the least. That’s why transcribing and learning language is so important. Music theory can be used to support what you’re hearing and observing through your study of the music. It helps you conceptualize your findings and gives you a way to think and talk about them.

Back to the line. So, that quick detour to the b5 is definitely something special and unique to this line. There are many ways to understand what Dexter is doing here. A simple way to think about it would be as a type of enclosure of the 5th. It barely matters what you call it, as your main goal is to just “get” what he’s doing.

(example 2)

Looking at this next part (example #2), this is a slightly special way players descend the minor chord (D- in this case), or we could say he’s using an F triad with an approach note. Again, don’t get too caught up in the theory, you just need a quick way to understand what you’re hearing. Hearing being the most important part of that sentence.

(example 3)

In this example (#3), I’ve highlighted the same notes as before, but left the third note out. Okay, here’s where it gets extremely objective. To me, these three notes make this line special. Why? Well, I’m glad you asked. How often do you hear people getting to the 5th of a chord (on beat 2) like this? In my personal study, I haven’t seen (heard) it too much, therefore, to me it’s pretty unique.

(example 4)

And in our last example (#4), above, we have a unique type of enclosure of the third. Definitely something that makes this line special.

That’s the first part of what you should always be thinking when learning language. What makes this line special? Hammer it home to yourself like I’m doing with you. The next time you’re learning a line, think in these terms.

Once you begin to think like this, the next part is where all the fun comes in.

Extracting the specialness

Once you clarify what the specialness of the line is, doors start to open. You’re next task is to take that essence of the line, and transfer it to other situations.

Here are some examples of how I might do this with the examples explored above.

Our first element of special was that quick drop to the b5 in example #1. The easiest way to create new lines with a concept like this, is to simply use the concept with other material. In this line, that would mean keeping the drop to the b5 on your line, but changing the rest of it. The beginning of the line could look something like this:

or perhaps this:

or we could leave out some notes:

Any of these options would work. All we’re doing is keeping the uniqueness and changing everything else. A point to emphasize here. You need not write down a bunch of different options. You want to practice improvising with these concepts in mind.

After you try doing this, move on to taking the underlying concept behind the special points, and applying it in a new way. A simple tactic is to use the concept taken from the special part of the line, and transfer it to a different chord tone. An example will make this clear.

Taking our last example, #4…

What if we used the concept behind this line and transferred it to other chord tones? Ok, so the concept is some sort of an enclosure. Let’s take that enclosure type device and transfer it to the root instead of the 3rd (of C):

Here’s the original piece of the line:

Here’s the extracted concept transferred to the fifth of C

Here’s the extracted concept transferred to the root of C

And here’s what the whole line might look like with that part transferred to the 5th

I adjusted the line so it flows a little better to the transferred up section.

All of these are viable options. Same concept, same uniqueness from the original line…different chord tones. And what do different chord tones mean? Different sounds.

As you do this, you’ll realize that playing these concepts on different chord tones will completely open up your ears and cause you to play things you would not normally play. You’ll end up combining things in ways you have never done before.

And to clarify again, these concepts are meant to be practiced via improvisation. Of course you can write lines down, but the main way to explore the different avenues you can take is through improvising with the concepts in mind.

And before we wrap up, let’s talk quickly about examples #2 and #3. In example #2 we saw this:

We called it special for two reasons. One, it seems as though you could think of it as the top part of D- and secondly, it contains an F triad. Hmmm…seems like we have two important concepts that we could then start applying. One, that you can play D- material over a G7 chord and two, an F triad can be used in certain ways over a G7 chord.

In example #3, we saw the same snippet as example #2, but we thought of the uniqueness as the first three notes: Arriving to the 5th via the first two notes is fairly unique. And so we have yet another concept that could generate more material.

Gaining four times the language

It really is that easy. You first have to do your own homework and transcribe some language . From the very start, begin to think to yourself, “What makes this language special?” Don’t get drowned by the theory, just figure out a way that you can solidify your understanding of what you’re hearing. Everything else will follow.

When you grasp what makes a line special from your own perspective, extract the concept and start to apply it. Be creative! What can you combine it with? What other situations can you use it in? Explore and figure out what sounds good to you.

Then start to transfer the concept to different parts of the chord. If an idea originated around the 3rd of a chord, how does it fit around the  5th? or perhaps the 7th? It might work, or it might not. Adjust things so they do work, so they sound right.

Ten minutes of extracting the essence of a line and learning how to apply it creatively in new ways while improvising, will more than quadruple your language. And it only does take ten minutes to take one line you already know, figure out what makes it special, and start implementing the concept behind it. In time, you’ll feel as though every line you study gives you ten-fold the amount of language to improvise with.

Recently I’ve been studying and transcribing a lot of Miles from around 1956-1957. Albums like Cookin’, Relaxin’, and Workin’.

More than the notes or the harmonic devices in his solos, the one thing that sticks out about Miles is his sense of phrasing. This is what sets him apart and why so many listeners connect with his sound. Miles could play anything he wanted, but he always plays musically.

It takes an advanced and honest musician to improvise a melody that they are hearing in their heads amid the wash of constantly moving chords and time. And it takes an even more mature musician to not play all the scales, and patterns and language that they’ve practiced for hours.

Most people don’t realize how much it work and focus it takes to get to the point that you can free yourself from the theory and play something that you’re hearing and feeling.

This idea of phrasing and creating meaningful musical statements is one aspect of improvising that is missing from a lot of players’ solos. Improvising is not just using scales or inserting a pattern into a chord progression, in the end it’s all about creating music and performing personal melodies.

What is a musical phrase?

When you improvise a musical phrase, you essentially become a composer, creating new melodies on the spot over an established chord progression. Therefore, studying or at the very least becoming familiar with the elements of composition is essential for creating a successful musical phrase.

Let’s consult a few passages from Arnold Schoenberg’s work The Fundamentals of Musical Composition. He opens his discussion about composition by focusing on the musical phrase, and the same applies to improvisation:

• “The smallest structural unit is the phrase, a kind of musical molecule consisting of a number of integrated musical events, possessing a certain completeness, and well adapted to combination with other similar units.”

• “The term phrase means, structurally, a unit approximating to what one could sing in a single breath. Its ending suggests a form of punctuation such as a comma.”

• “The mutual accommodation of melody and harmony is difficult at first. But the composer should never invent a melody without being conscious of its harmony.”

• “Rhythm is particularly important in moulding the phrase. It contributes to interest and variety; it establishes character; and it is often the determining factor in establishing the unity of the phrase.”

From this we can gather that the effectiveness of a phrase comes down to three main elements:

1) Thinking in terms of a complete musical statement
2) An awareness of the harmonic background
3) Playing with rhythmic definition

The idea of phrasing is especially important in Schoenberg’s music. In abandoning conventional harmony, chordal construction, and ignoring the pull of V7 to I with his compositional system, the melody and phrase of each piece are critical to the listener. And this was something that Schoenberg was very aware of.

Hearing a musical phrase that is stated and then developed is innate in every listener, whether it’s conscious and studied by the performing musician or unconsciously felt by the casual listener.

To the non-musician, listening to bebop may be as bewildering as a music student’s first encounter with 12 tone music, but in both cases the ear’s natural inclination toward melody and repetition is the life raft that saves us as we get swept away by unfamiliar harmony.

No phrasing, no listeners

I’ve seen hundreds of live performances and sitting in those audiences, I’ve also observed thousands of listeners. Seeing the audience reaction to a performer can reveal some interesting clues about performing.

On some nights you can walk into a jazz club and you’ll see the audience hanging on the soloist’s every note, and on other nights, the audience is strangely uninterested, shifting in their seats, looking at their watches, and whispering to each other. What does one player have that the other does not?

When a performer is not getting the listener’s full attention, it’s usually because one of those three elements of musical phrasing is missing:

• The soloist is not making musical statements or playing musical ideas.

• The soloist is not able to navigate the harmony, is not making the changes, or is getting lost in the form.

• The soloist is not playing with any rhythmic character, stringing together 8th notes or playing with no regard to the time or rhythmic content of the solo.

If the above three descriptions sound like your improvised solos, then it’s going to be tough finding someone to listen to you for an entire solo.

The same phenomenon happens with audiences listening to a public speaker. If the speaker is not prepared, doesn’t know the subject, and rambles on and on the audience subconsciously starts to turn off. It makes sense: Why invest time into listening when the performer has clearly not invested time into presenting his ideas?

We’ve all seen these types of performances and most likely have been in them ourselves. All of these factors destroy the connection to the listener. We easily get lost in the tangled web of notes and chords, when we should be communicating with the audience.

Scales and chords are important, but they are meant for the practice room, not the stage. If you want to get to the next level playing and if you want to communicate your music and your message effectively with the listener you need to get beyond the notes.

You need to speak in musical phrases.

Phrasing prerequisites

Understanding what a phrase sounds like is important, but there are a few things you have to develop musically before you can start improvising your own phrases.

Phrasing can’t happen if you’re still thinking about scales and chord tones. It won’t happen if you have to stop and remember the next chord in the progression or the key that the bridge goes to. If you’re thinking about every single note that you play, it’s really hard to think in phrases that connect over the larger form of the entire progression and tune.

If you want to craft musical phrases in your solos you need to begin by being able to hear the difference of chord qualities (Major, minor, V7, etc.), you need to know your chord tones, you need to internalize the time and feel of a tune and you have to know a tune to the point where you can sing the melody and chord progression.

Musical phrases don’t come from an intellectual point of origin, they come from your ear and your inner musicality.

Start by thinking in bigger chunks of time and aim understand the chord progression aurally. Looking beyond those individual chords. Visualize, mentally and aurally, what the whole chorus looks like and envision what your first statement might be and how you are going to develop it.

Craft your musical message for the listener, not with individual notes, but with a complete musical sentence.

Developing your phrasing

The blues is the perfect vehicle to work on phrasing, a 12 bar form with little harmonic motion, I – IV – I – V7 – I.

The movement from the I chord to the IV chord and back to the I chord is perfect for developing a simple musical phrase. Play an idea on the I chord, then develop it on the IV chord and complete it on the ii-V going back to the I chord. A statement and then an answer to that statement.

For example, listen to Miles solo on “Blues by Five”:

Click here to view the embedded video.

Let’s take a look at just the first chorus:

Now let’s look at those 12 bars, not from the standard chordal analysis point of view, but from the idea of phrasing. Instead of thinking about each and every chord, hear those 12 bars as one piece. Hear what that form sounds like as a whole and listen to how Miles navigates this form.

In the first chorus of his solo Miles plays three distinct phrases:

One idea seamlessly and logically leads into the next. There is room to breathe after each phrase and the listener can easily follow the development of the line.

When we analyze solos on a piece of paper we get stuck in a note to note approach, but this is not the way we hear. Turn on a record and you’ll quickly realize that you don’t hear one note at a time, you hear phrases and musical ideas. This is how you should start to think of the solos that you’re transcribing and eventually how you should envision your own improvised solos.

Play what you’d sing

Another important part of phrasing is aiming for a vocal quality in your lines, as if those note you’re playing would be something you would naturally sing. Chet Baker is a great example of a player that always played what he was hearing or feeling. It didn’t matter if he was playing his ideas on trumpet or singing them, the same musical phrasing and feeling was there.

Check out Chet’s solo on “It Could Happen to You”:

Click here to view the embedded video.

Great musical phrasing is like a conversation. Make a statement and then follow that up with an answer. It’s logical and makes sense and you can follow the development of the story. Your statement could have a rhythmic motif, or a set of intervals, or even a small piece of language that you’ve transcribed. Whatever it is, the phrase should begin with something you’re hearing.

Musical phrasing is the natural result of listening to hundreds of records, transcribing solos and the melodies to tunes. However it is also the result of developing your ears, studying theory and ingraining chord progressions and melodies to the point that you don’t have to consciously think about them.

After some time the idea of making a musical statement that you’re hearing in your head will feel natural to you. The same way that you learned to speak sentences, you’ll start to play improvised musical phrases that make sense and develop throughout your solo.

Keep in mind that thinking in phrases is just the beginning. Once you get used playing phrases, you can use some ideas in this article or this article to develop this idea even further. You can take this idea as far as you’d like, but if you only do one thing, make sure it’s getting in the mindset of phrasing every time you take a solo.

It’s a new year.

I guess that means we should be making some resolutions right about now.

New beginnings, a fresh start and all that other good stuff. For most people making “resolutions” translates into sitting down and writing out a list of goals. It’s not a bad exercise to do every now and then and anyways, it feels good seeing those big goals on paper that you’ve always hoped to achieve.

But honestly, how often are resolutions actually followed through?

You’ve probably made dozens of resolutions over the past few years. Most of the time these hopeful goals just fall to the wayside and wither away, but every now and then we actually stick with one and complete it.

Have you ever wondered why those goals are the ones that we stick with? When you make those resolutions and set out to pursue these goals do you actually have a choice in the matter or is it a game of chance where you just roll the dice and wait for the results?

To get the answer just take a look in the rear view mirror. Every skill that you posses today is the result of a goal that was successfully accomplished in the past. Whether it’s a sport, a musical instrument or some specialized knowledge that you’ve acquired, these goals weren’t accomplished in one sitting, you worked on them consistently for years.

From your perspective today it can seem like you’ve always had these skills, but they started out with an inspiration and an idea and turned into a defined goal and a disciplined approach to your daily routine.

“I made no resolutions for the New Year. The habit of making plans, of criticizing, sanctioning and molding my life, is too much of a daily event for me.”~Anais Nin

Jazz improvisation is no exception to this process. As improvisers, we make goals all the time. Some are conscious goals that we write down on a piece of paper and others are unconscious, formed in our minds as we listen to our favorite records or go to see inspiring live shows. Some goals will take an entire lifetime to achieve and others are made for the next 30 minutes in the practice room.

You’re probably reading this right now because you’re interested in improvement and you’re ready to start pursuing your goal of moving forward as an improviser. But before you rush into the practice room with your new year’s resolutions, there is something that you should consider.

One of the main reasons that our big goals always seem to fall to the wayside is connected directly to our mindset as we get into the practice room. Setting the goal is not the problem – we have the enthusiasm, we have the drive, and we can envision what we want to sound like. It’s the methods that we are using in the practice room that are not producing results.

Changing your practice mindset

If you want to see a difference in the results of the goals you make you’ll have to start by changing your mindset. It’s time to break free of the conquer everything at once mentality. “I need to learn 20 tunes by Friday, I need to transcribe this entire solo today, I have to get through this entire book of patterns…”

Instead, think of your playing like a wall that you are going to spend your entire lifetime building. You’re not going to finish it today, or tomorrow, or even a year from now. However, what you can do on a daily basis is to focus on one piece of that huge goal. Every time you walk into that practice room you’re goal is to add one brick to your “great wall” of improvisation.

Click here to view the embedded video.

When you start out you envision what you want to build, you can imagine the finished product – these are your big goals. However, to start making headway with these goals you need a plan and you need to build it piece by piece.

To do this, focus on one brick at a time. One small piece of your goal, one day at a time.

So what is a brick?

If building a solid wall of musical skills is our goal for improvisation, then what would an individual brick of that wall be? What would that one piece look like that is going to contribute to the whole in a solid way?

An improvisational “brick” in your wall would be a singular device, concept or technique that you add to your playing or musical skill set one piece at a time.

A brick is not a list of twenty tunes. It’s not transcribing an entire solo. It’s not turning on a play-a-long for an hour or quickly running up and down your major scales.

A brick is identifying one specific piece of your goal and spending the time to master it. Focusing intently on that one aspect of your playing until you’ve ingrained it.

Achieving the large goals that you make as an improviser and making noticeable progress boils down to mastering that small step one day at a time.

Every day lay that one brick as perfectly as you can.

Examples in improvisation practice

The things in our practice routine that make the most difference in our playing are often very small. At times they can even seem inconsequential. This is why most players rush past the details and are left wondering why they are at the same musical level they were a year ago.

Spending 30 minutes to learn one melody by ear? Spending 20 minutes working on an articulation?? Spending an hour transcribing and memorizing 8 bars of a solo??? Are you crazy?

Devoting an entire practice session to one small piece of your improvisation can seem ridiculous and it can feel like you’re wasting time. However it’s important to keep in mind that a small skill mastered will be much more beneficial in the long run than skimming over huge amounts of material.

If you focus on and ingrain that one “brick” of information you will have it forever, on the other hand, those big goals hastily approached start to fade as soon as you leave the practice room.

Apply this brick mentality to each aspect of your playing and you’ll start accomplishing more goals than you ever have before. If you take one of these bricks and learn it perfectly, it will become a permanent part of your wall. It will be there tomorrow in the practice room, a week from now at a jam session, or even a year from now as you are performing.

Let’s take one example of applying this “one brick” mindset in your daily practice. It is important to make the distinction between effective practice vs. ineffective practice, between practice that will slowly move you towards your goal vs. pseudo practice that is wasting your time.

Learning Tunes

The first goal that many of us make when we want to become better improvisers or when we want to become more versatile performers is learning tunes. To do this we usually make a list of 10 – 20 tunes. This is a good start to defining your goals and making a plan of action, but the next step is critical to whether you’re going to succeed or not.

Pseudo Practice:

Most players take that list into the practice room and try to tackle all of the tunes as fast as they can. This usually means grabbing a fake book or finding the lead sheets to every tune and playing through each tune in the space of one practice session.

By playing with these tunes over and over again with a play-a-long, they try to visually memorize the melody and chord progression and somehow to improve at improvising over these tunes the next time around. But, that “next time” never comes.

vs.

Productive Practice:

The problem with the method above is that you’re never really learning the tune in the first place, just skimming the surface of dozens of tunes.

Instead approach your goal one brick at a time. Start by picking out just one tune and learn the melody by ear. One tune, one melody – that’s it. Spend the time to ingrain that one melody and then figure out the chord progression. Once you’ve done that, then you can move on to the next tune.

When you learn a tune with your ears you also pick up some benefits: ear training, memorization, time and articulation. You can’t get any of these from a piece of paper.

This method also can expose some holes in your musicianship or technique that need to be improved if you want to move forward. If you’re having trouble picking out a phrase of the melody it means that you need to work on some ear training. Start by mastering your intervals.

So you want to learn Rhythm Changes?

Let’s say your resolution for this year is to learn Rhythm changes. A month from now you want to be able to hold your own if someone calls a rhythm changes tune at a jam session. OK, this is definitely an achievable goal, but it is not going to be achieved by grabbing a fake book and a play-a-long and spending a few minutes in the practice room.

Start by breaking up that big goal into individual bricks and then build your wall piece by piece.

Here’s a step by step approach to mastering your goal:

1) Learn the melody by ear

Step one is to learn a melody from a recording that you’ve picked out.

If you’re wondering the best way to learn a melody, check out this article.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Don’t just grab a lead sheet and try to memorize, take the time to actually get the melody in your ear. Sure it may take longer to get that melody down, but this way it will be ingrained in your ear. This step alone will make the difference between the player that always forgets tunes and the player that has the tune memorized right from the beginning.

2) Learn the chord progression

Now take that same recording and this time you’re going to focus on the chord progression. You might even have to break this step up to make a little easier. First focus on the A section or the first 8 bars. Put this recording in to Trascribe! so you can slow down the tempo and hear each chord individually.

Next move on to the bridge and figure out the progression within these 8 bars. If this step gives you some trouble, take a look at this article on how to hear chord changes.

3) Take a solo you like and transcribe one piece of language over the “A” section

Keep in mind that each of these steps is not supposed to be done in one sitting. It may take a few weeks or even a month or more to get all of this together. Remember the goal is to master each step, not to rush through to the next tune on your list as fast as you can.

After you’ve learned the melody and chord progression by ear, it’s time to start gathering some language over rhythm changes. You can take some of Dexter’s lines or maybe something else catches your ear.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Acquiring language is an ongoing process, you always can learn more or develop the language that you have. So start simple and go from there.

4) Transcribe language over the bridge

Now that you’ve got some language together over the A section, it’s time to focus on the bridge. Pick a recording of one of your favorite players and figure out what they are doing over the bridge.

Click here to view the embedded video.

These four steps are a good way to approach any tune that you are trying to learn. What most people try to conquer in one practice session, we’ve taken one tune and spread it out over a week or more. Yes, it takes longer, but this way you are actually retaining information and learning skills that you need.

Trying to tackle the melody, the chord progression, and transcribing language in one practice session can be a goal for down the road. all of these steps will get easier, but only if you start the right way.

Eventually you’ll be able to figure out the melody, chord progression, and even transcribe some language in one practice session.

Change your approach, change your results

Improvement comes down to the way you’re thinking about your goals. Mastering small pieces every day will propel you forward faster than tackling big goals every once in a blue moon. If you’re determined to transcribe that favorite solo, or learn a list of 20 standards, or whatever your goal may be, take it apart and work on it one brick at a time.

As an improviser you want to be able to retain and use the information that you’re learning in the practice room. If you’re totally focused and master each skill one at a time, you’ll carry this information with you wherever you go. That technique you’ve practiced or that language you’ve transcribed or those chord progressions you’ve figured out by ear will be there the next time you find yourself taking a solo, whether it’s a month from now or a year from now.

Walls are built very slowly. We barely notice it when the construction is happening. One brick is slowly added and then another. In the short term it looks like no progress is being made. Then suddenly there it is – a solid wall.

You might’ve already made some musical resolutions this year, or if you haven’t take a quick look here for a few ideas. Before you get into the practice room and before you let another resolution fade away, remember that the quickest way to build a wall is one brick at a time.

There is one important part of practicing and learning any musical instrument or musical style that many players are unintentionally missing. A necessary skill that’s so obvious it often remains hidden in plain sight. It seems to be the same across the board from absolute beginners to college music majors. It doesn’t matter if you are studying classical music or are working on improvisation.

This essential piece of practice often gets overlooked, taken for granted, and sometimes even skipped altogether, yet it’s an activity that can be one of the most beneficial and enjoyable things you can do for your playing. If done the right way, it can entirely change your conception of music and even speed up the learning process.

So what could this “thing” be? You practice your technique, you play some etudes, you do a few ear training exercises, you’ve studied your theory, you run through some tricky chord progressions, you review a few tunes you’ve learned, but you’re still missing it.

Any guesses? It’s listening.

Now you may be thinking I listen all the time. I listen when I’m walking to class, I listen to music at the gym, and I turn on a record when I’m reading or studying. However, are you just hearing music in the background or are you actually listening to it? (…and yes, there is a difference.)

Furthermore, is listening a part of your daily practice routine? Do you set aside time each day to listen to a tune that you are learning or a solo that you want to transcribe? If not, you should consider making some changes.

Why listen?

Many people trying to learn how to improvise aren’t listening enough, plain and simple. Much of the confusion in learning the fundamentals of improvisation can be traced back to a simple lack of listening. An average day of practice for most players includes etude books and technical exercises and scales and tunes and play-a-long tracks, but the one thing that’s missing is serious listening.

Listening somehow doesn’t even fit into the picture of practicing. It’s more of a secondary background activity done as an afterthought outside of the practice room rather than an essential piece of learning this music. Sure you put on a few recordings throughout the course of your day, but what about listening during the time you are actually trying to learn this music?

Listening should be an integral part of your practice routine, no matter what level you may be at in your musical development. You may be learning to hear a 12 bar blues for the first time, working on your articulation and time, or studying V7 chord substitutions. Rather than shooting blindly in the dark trying to learn these concepts, follow a guide. Instead of learning from definitions and vague descriptions, put on a record and you’ll hear the sound these devices in action.

“I like to listen. I have learned a great deal from listening carefully. Most people never listen.”~Ernest Hemingway

When you listen, you define the fundamental concepts of musicianship and improvisation in your mind and your ear. What does it mean to “swing”? How do you articulate? What is a good trumpet or saxophone sound? What does a ii-V7 sound like? How do you play over a blues? As you listen, the answers to these questions will begin to form in your mind.

Ultimately improvisation must come from an internal source of understanding and if you’re only relying on a tenuous mental grasp, you’re going to continuously run into difficulties. Your understanding of these fundamental concepts starts with listening to great recordings or live performances: ingraining solid time, a good sound, phrasing, feel, articulation, harmonic tension and release. This is the main reason that you should be listening.

Think about your own practice habits for a moment. Have you ever tried to play a standard from a lead sheet without listening to it first? Have you ever worked on your sound or articulation without listening to the masters? Have you ever tried to memorize a chord progression or study a harmonic device without even listening to it?

Sure you can try to describe these concepts with words: “Swing with a triplet feel, tongue on the up-beats, play a melodic minor scale from the seventh scale degree, aim for the #11…” and you can memorize the names of chord progressions or the notes to a melody. But all this vague terminology is just describing the real sound and the truth is, we can only understand sound one way: listening.

Do yourself a favor, don’t learn the fundamental concepts of improvisation away from the music itself. What takes many words to produce a vague description can be understood in seconds with a little focused listening.

A musical history lesson

So is the only benefit of listening to gain a mental conception and aural understanding of the fundamental concepts of musicianship and improvisation? Not at all. One of the greatest benefits we get from serious listening is an in-depth knowledge of the history of this music.

There are hundreds of essential records out there that you need to know to be an informed, aware and relevant improviser. You’re not going to learn this musical history through a Wikipedia page or by watching a DVD series on the history of jazz. The only way you’re going to get familiar with the stylistic history and lineage of this music is through listening – hours upon hours spent with hundreds of recordings.

And with the thousands of records out there, this means a lot of listening.

Have you ever been around great improvisers while a record comes on? They all seem to have an in-depth knowledge of all the great recording and can usually sing along with the solos. You can easily tell how much listening a musician has done through how much they know about the music, so make sure you’re not left behind.

Today we have access to nearly any recording we can think of practically anywhere we may be. Learning the history of this music through the many great recordings available isn’t a dull chore or a dry history lecture, it’s a truly enjoyable activity that you should be doing every day.

Learning to listen

Take a listen to the tune below:

Click here to view the embedded video.

Now let’s take a quick test:

Do you know the time signature of the tune?
Do you know the form of the tune?
Is there a bridge?
How may bars is the tune?
What is the chord progression?
What is the name of the tune?
Who is the tenor player?

If the answers to these questions flew by you unnoticed as the recording played, you probably weren’t focused enough in your listening.

Now, these questions might seem like overkill for the first time you’ve ever listened to a tune, but look at it from a different perspective. Imagine that you met a few friends for an informal jam session and it so happens that you have never heard of the first tune that is called.

If you wanted to improvise successfully over this tune you need to have great ears and you need to get the answers to the above questions very quickly. Focused and informed listening skills are necessary for any serious improviser.

Lucky for us listening isn’t a static activity that stays the same for the rest of your life, it’s a skill that can be developed and improved on a daily basis. If you’re a musician, listening is how you take in information whether you’re in the practice room or on stage performing, and the more adept you are at collecting this information, the easier you’ll be able to navigate any musical situation.

Hearing music is a passive reaction to sound, while listening requires action on your part. Everybody can hear music that is being played, but not everybody can listen to it.

6 steps for better listening

Listening is an enjoyable activity, but as a musician you also must listen to get information. You can easily sharpen your listening skills today with a few simple steps. Here are a few tips for getting more out of your next listening session:

• Ensure that 100% of your concentration should be on the music. The number one reason we’re not getting enough out of listening or find ourselves lost in the form when improvising is that we’re not entirely focused on the music. When you turn on a recording, make sure to turn on your mind as well.

• Pick a quiet place with no distractions like a practice room to do your listening. If you only listen when you’re driving to work, cooking your dinner, or walking to the store then you’re not truly listening.

• Clear your mind for a few minutes before beginning your session. With a fresh and uncluttered mind you’ll be much more productive.

• Turn off the lights to heighten your sense of hearing. You’ve probably heard that if you take away one sense, your other senses are heightened. This absolutely true when it comes to listening. Close your eyes or find a dark room to double your concentration.

• Stay on task and don’t let your mind wander or daydream. Our concentration is constantly trying to get away from us and the hard part comes in sustaining this focus for long stretches of time.

• Repetition. Listen more than once or twice to ingrain all the subtleties of that musical information.

It is often said that the answers are on the records, but they are not just going to come to you without any effort. You have to seek them out and slowly get these answers one by one. You may be searching for the melody to a tune, an unconventional chord progression, or even a ii-V line.

To get these answers you must listen to a very specific part of the music. You must use selective listening. When you are totally focused as you listen you hear subtleties and details that are passed over by the untrained ear. A few measures or a single line can give you the answers that you’ve been searching for.

Focused listening should be an everyday part of your practice routine. If you are trying to learn a tune listen to it at least 3x’s. If you want to transcribe a solo or line take a few measures and listen to them 10x’s in a row until you can sing the line. If you are trying to learn how to articulate, pick out a great recorded example and ingrain that sound.

Hearing or listening?

Music is all around us in our everyday lives. It’s streams from the TV, it’s pumped out as we go grocery shopping, and lingers in the air as we sit in the waiting room at the dentist’s office. We get accustomed day after day to hearing this background noise, but not actually listening to it. This isn’t totally our fault however, the majority of this music isn’t produced to be listened to, but rather to affect our emotional state.

Technology has also had a role in our declining listening habits. iPhones and iPods and other portable music players are great for taking your record collection with you wherever you go, however they inadvertently turn the important recordings in your collection into the background music for your life.

We’ve got a soundtrack for our commute to work, for our study breaks, and even for our daily workout routine.  We’re not exactly listening, rather taking in this music as a pleasant accompaniment to our daily activities.

Gone too are the days when you had to be in a room with a record player and speakers to play a recording, where you came with a singular purpose – to listen. As a result a lot of important musical information is passing us by unnoticed on a daily basis.

If you’re serious about learning to improvise then you must make the extra effort to ensure you are listening the right way. The next time you put on a recording don’t just let the sound go by subconsciously. Take a moment and ask yourself: “Am I simply hearing or am I truly listening?”

We’ve presented tons of exercises on how to practice ear training, but many require that you have someone to train with. So what do you do when you don’t have a partner?

When you have no one to practice ear training with there’s just as many exercises you can do and better yet, you can really take the time to iron out your personal weak spots. Here’s a few of my go to exercises that are super simple and super effective.

Exercise #1: Interval pre-hearing

I love this exercise, in fact, I think it’s even more valuable for learning your intervals than if you had a partner! With a partner, we get into such a guess-and-check mindset, feeling rushed and oft forgetting that the point is to absorb the sounds we’re hearing on a deeper and deeper level.

By ourselves we can take our time, relax, and let the sounds echo endlessly.

To do the interval pre-hearing exercise, first choose any interval and direction to focus on, for example, let’s choose a major third going up. Next, play any note on a piano, or if you don’t have one, any tone will do, even if it’s hitting a spoon against a glass (yes, you can practice ear training anywhere even with very minimal equipment). Once you play the note, hear it in your mind and then, pre-hear in your mind a major third (our selected interval) above the note you’re playing on the piano, before singing it. Got it?

To recap, pick an interval, play any note, hear the note in your mind, pre-hear the note a major third above the note you’re playing, and finally sing that note that lies a major third above the note you’re playing. That’s the core of this exercise.

But you’re not done. Oh no. You’re nowhere near done! That’s how most things go. They start simple, and very quickly bubble up to something complex. So once you get comfortable with the simple steps described, the next step is to play another note and do the same thing. Aim to hit your entire range. Go up and down the piano, play a note, hear it, pre-hear the note you’re going to sing which lies at the interval you’ve selected, and sing it. Continue this until you feel like you can play any note, immediately pre-hear the note you want to sing, and sing it accurately.

But wait, you’re still not done. That’s just one interval in one direction. You have all your intervals in both directions. Now you needn’t practice all in one session. What I usually do is just pick a few that I feel I’m weak on and spend a few minutes on each. If you did this exercise everyday for ten or fifteen minutes, the intervals that give you trouble could be easy in a week.

 Exercise #2: Chord tone colors

Time alone is an excellent opportunity to burn the colors of chord tones in your mind. What does this “color” mean? Every chord tone sounds a particular way. The major third of a major seventh chord has a particular sound, as do the root, fifth, and seventh. Every chord tone on each chord has a certain color to it. This color can only be heard. It’s like describing the color red. I could try all I want, but at the end of the day, you need to see it to know what red is.

For the chord tone color exercise, start by selecting a chord and a chord tone. For example, let’s take a C major seventh chord, and the major seventh chord tone (B). At the piano, play the notes of a C major chord in root position (C-E-G-B). Try to isolate the sound of the seventh n your mind. Play the chord again, but this time after playing the chord once, immediately continue to hold the C-E-G while you play the B a second time.

Essentially what you’re doing is playing the chord, but playing the chord tone you’re trying to hear another time after you play the chord, so you can better isolate that sound in your mind. Keep pounding out the chord and independently playing the seventh as much as you need to until you can really hear that seventh as it’s one entity. Hear how it lays against the rest of the chord. Hear how it fits in. This is the color of the seventh. Burn this sound in your mind, and you’ll know what a major seventh chord tone sounds like on a major seventh chord.

You know where this exercise is going. Just as the first exercise had a tone for you to do, so does this one. You can work with any chord and any chord tone. For example, what does the fifth of a half-diminished chord sound like? It’s time for you to go find out! Or what’s a sharp-elven sound like on a major chord?

Pick a sound that you want to learn and just go for it. You’ll find that some of the more esoteric sounds are actually easier to hear because they sound so unique. If you’re like me, you may need to work harder at hearing some of the basic sounds like, thirds and fifths. You’ll see very quickly how much this exercise can open your ears.

 Exercise #3: One  chord, inside-out

This is a final wrap-up exercise that you can do anytime you don’t know what to do. The idea: play one chord and milk it for all it’s worth. For instance, play a C major seventh chord. Now, as you hear the chord ring in your mind, sing the root. Once you’re successful, sing the third, then the fifth, followed by the seventh. then go back to the fifth, the third, the root. Then jump around. Sing the root, sing the seventh, sing the fifth, sing the third.

Then work on hearing the colors of each chord tone as you did in the previous exercise. Hear the color of the third. How is the sound of the third different than the fifth? Then the seventh. How is the sound of the seventh different than the fifth? Do this with all the chord tones.

Then try singing chord tones that you’re not playing. For instance, sing the sharp eleven or the ninth. If you need to, you can always add theses tones to your chord so you can better hear them.

Next try hearing the intervals between chord tones. Hear the major third between the root and the third. Sing it. Then hear the minor third between the third and the fifth. Sing it. Then hear the major third between the fifth and the seventh. Sing it.

What else can you practice? You can see how easy it is and beneficial it is to practice ear training alone. Not having a partner is no excuse. The three exercises presented are more than enough material for a long time, so pick a small amount of material that you’re currently not good at, and start improving. Remember, it’s just organized sound. The key is being able to hear how it’s organized.