Learn how to improvise, study classic jazz recordings & develop essential musicianship skills with Buster Birch
2 x national awards for jazz education, 1 x national award for performance as member of "best UK jazz ensemble", seven years as jazz professor at leading UK music conservatoire, over thirty years as a freelance professional musician (London UK) and Amazon best-selling author.
Included with your monthly VIP membership at Learn 2 Play Jazz...
The Lesson Vault
0ver 70 hours of video lessons covering classic recordings of jazz standards
Musicianship Courses
Over 10 hours of play-along videos covering essential jazz musicianship skills
Live Zoom Classes
A new 1 hour class every month live on Zoom with Q&A session
"He somehow makes what is seemingly complicated, understandable and simple and more to the point, as a saxophone player, his teaching gets the music coming out of my horn - no mean feat! His knowledge of jazz is encyclopedic and gives us students great understanding of how the music we are working on is constructed and developed by whichever jazz master we are studying. Every workshop or lesson he gives is underpinned by clear, straightforward teaching materials. Can’t recommend him highly enough!"
Lorrie Benwell - tenor sax
Suitable for virtually any instrument including...
Learn from the masters!
All workshops include transcriptions from the original recordings with custom-made play-along tracks to match the parts, slowed down to more manageable tempos.
No Real Books!
No generic midi backing tracks!
No Aebersolds
No Hal Leonards!
Learn jazz standards from the classic recordings... Just like they did!
Musicianship Courses to level up your skills
Click HERE to start your 14 day FREE trial and unlock every course now!
The Lesson Vault
Click HERE to start your 14 day FREE trial and unlock every lesson now!
The Lesson Vault contains the entire back catalogue of all my online lessons (over 70hrs). Each lesson is approximately 1hr long and includes downloads of all the class materials. I walk you through each tune, section by section, and provide clear explanations of how the music works. I teach you simple strategies and techniques and show you how to construct a solo based on the ingredients of the music. We will practice improvising on each section separately using the custom play-along tracks at a manageable tempo and gradually piece the tune together, culminating in a full performance with you soloing over the whole piece by the end of the class.
Every lesson includes all of the downloads and class resources including, warm up routines, full band parts, custom-made play-along tracks, transcriptions, links to the original recordings, session details including recording dates, personnel and Wiki links to full bios of musicians, plus synopsis of album info.
The repertoire is listed alphabetically or you can filter by style to find just what you are looking for.
Click HERE to see what is in the vault!
Live Zoom Classes
Click HERE to start your 14 day FREE trial and get your invitation to my next live Zoom class.
Once per month I do a live Zoom class for about 1.25hrs. Each class is recorded and added to my lesson vault, which you can check out above. Every class comes with all of the handouts, resources, transcriptions, full band parts and custom made play-along tracks, which you can download in advance and prepare for the lesson. Everyone is muted in the class, so you are free to play along without feeling intimidated by anyone listening to you, or you are welcome just to observe the class and then do the practice afterward with the video recording, which you can pause, rewind and rewatch as often as you like. There is a Q&A session at the end of every live Zoom class, so you can ask any questions about anything we've been working on.
Click HERE to see my next live Zoom class!
Books
I have written two series of books on jazz improvisation, which include editions for different instruments. They are published by one of the largest UK music publishers (www.fundamental-changes.com) and are available in print worldwide from Amazon and other good stockists. Plus you can get them as immediate downloads on Kindle or as PDFs from the publisher's website.
My Beginner Jazz Soloing series is perfect for anyone starting out with improvising and takes you from scratch to improvising with confidence over a blues, a ii-V-I sequence, and other common chord progressions. There are four original compositions included and every single exercise includes audio play-along tracks (153 free audio downloads). These books have received hundreds of 5-star reviews and two books from this series have become Amazon best-sellers! For more information please click HERE
Rhythm Changes Soloing is my latest series and is perfect for anyone wanting to level up their jazz playing with an introduction to chord tone soloing, bebop embellishments and techniques, and a thorough study of the cornerstone of modern jazz, rhythm changes. There are four original compositions included and every single exercise includes audio play-along tracks (128 free audio downloads). These books have already received dozens of 5-star reviews. For more information please click HERE
Pathways
Short-term to medium-term goals
We always have too many things to work on and there's never enough time, so it's easy to end up wasting precious practice time wondering what to practice instead of actually practising! Also, there's an enormous amount of content on here, so it's easy to feel overwhelmed and not know where to start. To solve these two problems I have curated some of the content and put together these four pathways. Just pick which pathway you feel is right for you, jump in and get practising!
Set Lists
Medium-term to long-term goals
It's easy to feel overwhelmed by the amount of repertoire available and procrastinate or ping-pong from one tune to another without really getting to know any of them. To combat this I have curated some set lists for you to work on. The idea is to create a well-balanced program of six tunes that would work for one set at a jazz gig.
Each set list contains a mix of styles, such as latin, swing, blues, ballad, funky or modal, which is something you should always consider when putting a set list together. I have also picked tunes that are of a similar difficulty level, so you should find everything in the set manageable. Of course, you are welcome to mix and match, but do bear in mind the above two principles when building your own set list.
Some of you may have your own regular practice sessions, rehearsal groups or workshops and you are welcome to use my charts. There are full band parts included for every tune so do feel free to print them out and take them along.
Just click on a title to jump to that set list.
