Pathway 2
"I'm new to jazz, but not new to my instrument"
Aimed at those who are competent on their instrument and at reading music, but have little or no experience at improvising. Maybe you are "classically trained" and have never improvised or played much jazz, but you like it and would like to learn more about it. Maybe you play in a jazz big band and are happy playing the written parts, but struggle with soloing. This pathway will help you develop some essential improvisation techniques and simple concepts that give you the confidence to take the leap.
The Minor Pentatonic Scale
Make sure you are very familiar with the concert pitch F minor pentatonic scale (1, b3, 4, 5, b7) which is the scale you are going to use for a lot of your improvising. If you haven't already, download my FREE Guide to Minor Pentatonics and learn the F minor pentatonic scale (or the relevant transposition if you play a transposing instrument. ie: D minor pentatonic for alto sax)
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Ear Training
If you have spent ​​most of your musical life playing from notation then it can feel a bit disconcerting to play without it. This is when a good ear can help. Some people naturally have a good ear, some don't. But either way, as jazz musicians, we all need to improve our ear. Ours is an aural tradition, mostly learned by listening to recordings and trying to copy the masters. Start with the concert F video (or the relevant transposition if you play a transposing instrument).
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Check Out Your Key Centres
One of the fundamental differences between jazz harmony and classical harmony is the concept of key centres (as opposed to key signatures). Particularly when playing traditional jazz standard repertoire (aka The Great American Song Book) the music will jump quickly in and out of different key centres, rather like modulating to another key for one bar, then back again, or going somewhere else. It makes much more sense to refer to those chords (and melody) as being in a new key centre, rather than trying to find a rather tenuous link to describe them in relation to the original key signature. Therefore we have to get used to thinking quickly in different keys and switching between them. It's very important to be fluent with every note (and its alteration) in any key centre as there is not time to think about it when you are trying to improvise. I have developed some practical exercises that you can do on your instrument to help you speed up this thought process. Start with concert pitch F (or the relevant transposition if you play a transposing instrument).
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Get my Beginner Jazz Soloing method book
Next, I recommend getting the book most suitable for your instrument and working through the rest of the chapters, which shows you how you can use the same 5 notes to improvise in different styles and over different chord progressions. There are four simple original compositions at the back of the book to work on and practice soloing over, with accompanying play-along tracks.
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Now you are ready to take on some jazz standards
By now you should be confident at improvising with the F Minor Pentatonic scale over a blues and major ii-V-I sequences, which means you are ready to take on some jazz standard repertoire and feel comfortable in my "level = simple" jazz workshops. Start with a couple of blues like "Centerpiece" and "Bags' Groove" and something funky like "Cold Duck Time" and "The Sticks". Each workshop includes a 1hr video lesson, full band parts, all of the class downloads, custom-made play-along tracks and links to the original recordings.
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