This month we celebrate our 100th online jazz workshop!

What started as a desperate attempt to move my teaching online, after losing all my income in lockdown, Learn 2 Play Jazz has become a global online jazz school, nominated as a finalist for this year’s national Music & Drama Education Award for “Outstanding Music Education Resource”.

The 100th jazz workshop celebrates some of our past sessions by inviting you to complete the 100 bar challenge! Three choruses of Rhythm Changes, plus a 4 bar unison tag, with each 8 bar section based on an improvisation technique or concept covered in previous workshops.

The first chorus covers the foundations and includes…
Approach Notes & Enclosures (JW 82)
Bebop Scales (JW 91)
Voice Leadings (JW 84)
Mining the Melody (JW 99)

The second chorus injects some harmonic colour and includes…
Tritone Substitutions (JW 92)
Diminished Scales (JW 81)
Adding ii to the V (JW 98)
Slash Chords (JW 87)

The third chorus includes some more modern developments and expressive freedom with…
Motivic Development (JW 93)
Rythmic Displacement (JW 97)
Using Modes to Add Colour (JW 96)
Connecting Your Ear (JW 85)

There’s a lot packed in there! And of course, you wouldn’t usually do all that in one solo. It’s an exercise. Like circuit training at the gym. But it should be fun and hopefully you’ll find a couple of things that you like the sound of and can explore further by going back to the relevant jazz workshop in the lesson vault.

This will be practical class, so please make sure you have your instrument ready to play. Downloads are available in advance in Concert Pitch, Bb Pitch, Eb Pitch and Bass Clef.

Everyone is muted in the class, so you are welcome to play along as much as you like, or just tune in and observe. Either is fine. There is also a Q&A session at the end of the class.

The workshop lasts approx 1hr and starts at 10:30am

If you are not already a VIP member, you can get a free invitation to the class by signing up for a no-commitment 14-day FREE trial, which gives you access to everything on the site, including over 100 hours of lessons and courses.