Pathway 4
"I want to raise my game"
"I want to sound more authentic"
Aimed at those who are fairly confident at improvising and performing in front of other people, but want to raise their game. Maybe you have a regular rehearsal band or attend jam sessions, but still find your head stuck in a Real book or iReal Pro. Maybe you wish you were faster and more accurate at playing by ear. Maybe you want to develop more authentic jazz language and phrasing, as transcribed from the original recordings, rather than learning tunes from generic lead sheet parts that miss a lot of the detail. This pathway will help you develop your accuracy and authenticity by focussing on the detail of not just what the masters played, but how they played it.
Musicianship Skills
These are the essential skills that jazz musicians spend much of their time working on that are not just about playing the instrument. This is about developing yourself as a musician, for example: improving your ear, improving your rhythmic skills, improving your ability to know where you are in the piece or even in the bar, recognising the sound of chords and notes by their quality, becoming fluent with key centres and chord tones. Generally having a better awareness of what is happening around you at any point in the music and being able to respond to it in real time. Your musical reactions need to be fast when playing jazz and developing your musicianship skills will help enormously. To help you, I have devised this series of coaching sessions that take about 20mins each and work around all 12 keys. If you completed one video every day for six days (then take a day off!) in four weeks you will have been twice around the cycle of fourths and should notice a great improvement. If you find these exercises too challenging then I would recommend working through some of the other individual musicianship courses first eg: Ear Training, Check Out Your Key Centres & Master Major Scales.
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Learn Jazz Language
I have put together this course, which covers a variety of licks that can be used for different chord types and sequences. Every lick is analysed, so you can understand why the note choices are so significant, and every lick is notated in all 12 keys to make it easier for you. Play along with me as we work around the cycle of fourths. Learning the chromatic embellishments and rhythmic phrasing of the masters is what will help give your soloing a more authentic sound.
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Rhythm Changes Soloing
Now I recommend working through my FREE video lesson "Rhythm Changes Soloing" which is based on some exercises from my Amazon best-seller series "Rhythm Changes Soloing". This will give you a good introduction to chord tone soloing and "rhythm changes" which is a cornerstone of modern jazz and bebop repertoire.
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Get my Rhythm Changes 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 to develop bebop and modern jazz language based on chord tone soloing, plus offers a thorough study of the many variations on this classic jazz tune. There are four 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 learn from the masters!
Having sharpened up your essential musicianship skills, learned some authentic jazz language, practiced the four classic bebop embellishment techniques and now have a thorough understanding of chord tone soloing, you are prepared to learn from the masters and by this I mean studying the recordings. Every single jazz repertoire class I teach is based on a particular recording of a particular tune, not a generic Real book lead sheet. I'm a passionate believer in this method because there is so much detail and so many more musical ingredients in the recordings that are missing from the Real books. If you have only learned jazz tunes from Real book lead sheets and practised soloing over generic midi backing tracks, then it is hard to sound authentic.
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Studying a recording puts us in a time and place, which means we have a particular style or sound to aim at. Transcribing the detail of the music and understanding the ingredients helps us not only learn what the masters played, but also why it sounds so good! And this will really help you to move forward.
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There is a huge library of jazz workshops in my "vault" covering a variety of jazz styles from classic recordings. 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. Here's a nice selection to give you a challenge and raise your game...
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