What I Got WRONG About Jazz

Aimee, for me this is one of the very best videos you've ever done. True to yourself.

Welcome to the club. My mentor Joe Solomon was taught by Lennie Tristano. The main thing he taught and is now passed along to me is each student is required to learn and sing solos first. Embed it in your ear and only then try to play it on your instrument. Ive learned to sing every Charlie Parker solo, or Lester Young....and embed that in your ear as a daily practice. Hearing and playing happens almost instantaneously.

I love how very instructed people are always careful not to generalize.

I play jazz piano, and teach jazz, which I've been doing for the last 30 years. Learning to play jazz is akin to learning a new language - you have to study and practice many things - grammar, vocabulary, sentence structures, tenses, correct pronounciation, genders, etc. The same is true of learning to play jazz. Here are the 20 main factors which have to be learned and internalized in order to become a fluent jazz pianist: 1) HARMONY/FUNCTIONAL HARMONY - a massive subject all on its' own, and this can become very complex. 2) MODULATION from one key to another wihin a particular song or piece, including how this is achieved (II-V-I progressions, cycle of 4ths/5ths, etc). 3) THE DIFFERENT TYPES OF SCALES - one Major, four Minor, Wholetone, Chromatic, the 7 Modes of each Major and Minor scale, the Diminished Scale and the Jazz Altered Scale, the American Blues Scale, the Bebop Major Scale. 4) ARPEGGIOS BASED ON VARIOUS SCALES/MODES - typical 'be-bop' angular arpeggios especially. 5) THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN HARMONY AND MELODY/SCALES 6) THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN HARMONY AND BASS LINES - including diatonically rising and falling bass lines, use of inverted chords, chromatically rising and falling bass lines, bass lines following the cycle of 4ths/5ths, etc. 7) THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN MELODY AND BASS LINES 8) RHYTHM AND RHYTHMIC STYLES - Swing, Salsa, Rock, Shuffle, playing in different Time Signatures, playing rubato, using 'punchy' rhythmic phrases when soloing, etc. 9) CHORD VOICINGS (rootless chords) - especially for the left hand. Which scales can be used over which chord changes or individual chords, especialy whilst using rootless chord voicings in the left hand. 10) BASS LINES - including walking bass for swing, bass lines for various Latin rhythms, etc. 11) SOLOING - The use of arpeggios and scalar approaches, how to combined these, use of rhythmic devices, phrasing/length of phrases, building a solo. In this I use 'copycat' phrases and 'question and answer' (call and response) phrases to help students to get a good rhythmic and melodic 'feel' for jazz, espeically be-bop. 12) CHORD 'EXTENIONS' - where a left hand voicing is used with harmonies in the right hand based on the various scales (such as the Jazz Altered Scale, lydian, dorian and mixolydian modes, diminished scale, etc. 13) DEXTERITY, FINGERING, ETC. 14) When to use LEGATO PEDDLING, and when NOT to use the sustain pedal. 15) PLAYING WITH A BASS PLAYER (just piano and bass) 16) ACCOMPANIMENT OF SINGERS (just piano and voice) 17) ACCOMPANIMENT OF FRONT-LINE INSTRUMENTS, both with piano + one instrument (sax, or flute, etc.) 18) PLAYING IN TRIOS/QUARTETS etc. - including 'comping' using rootless chord voicings and using rootless (left hand) voicings with chord extensions (in the right hand). 19) HOW TO RE-HARMONIZE A MELODY. Like harmony itself, this is a huge subject demanding a great deal of time to become fluent. 20) READING FROM TOP LINE MELODY AND CHORD SYMBOLS (as per the 'Real Book,' 'Fake Book' etc. Learning to play Jazz is a huge task, but with immensely rewarding results.

When pianist Ran Blake taught improvising at the New England Conservatory, he told students that they had to be able to sing a line before they could play it. I doubt he carried that to the sixteenth note level, but he did want students to know what they were doing, and not just finger-noodle through scales.

The one thing I’d like to point out is that you have incredibly high music aptitude. Many of us do not. For some … just having “one or two” two voicings for each basic jazz chord is decades of work. Very little of what I play is actually singable by me. Melodies can take decades to learn… there are song which I have been playing almost every day for 40 years and cannot play .. have never played…… we are all different in our learning…. Many times people with high aptitudes do not quite grasp that. Love your channel!

As a house bassist at Rusty’s Jazz Cafe for many years in Toledo, a variety of incredibly talented musicians would come and sit in and play alongside Eddie Abrahms, the pianist that was the core member for the club. Sometimes cats would come in and try to cut Eddie, in a typical Bb blues, playing the most advanced lines, the altered scales, arpeggios et al you’re referring to here, occasionally tossing notes directly behind Eddie’s ears, as if to say, “what you got man?”, “can you play that?”, etc. Headcutting being a thing, these guys would overplay glad to be sitting in taking too many Many choruses, 12, more 23 perhaps, end with flourish as if to say, now whaddaya got to say after all that?! We would bring that whole swinging Bb blues down dynamically, and Eddie would start his solo with one single Bb note, right in the middle, and play that single note starting to repeat the same note with a rhythm and build from there into the next chorus, adding an octave above, starting to groove a pulse, adding an octave below, pushing the momentum, double octaves in both hands, shifting the range of the B flats up and down now as well cruising forward, bringing the volume up, chorus leading to the next, the rhythm becoming frenetic and powerful, literally an exclamation of this is how to make this music truly exhilarating and his hands would become a blur thrashing out an incredible wall of B Flats and we’re swinging hard as hell now, driving a freight trains worth of flying down the tracks and we would come to that inevitable top of this mountain of energy, and as we’d come to the top of that next 12bar, BANG! Eddie would play every incredible fast line he ever knew in the world, and the audience was on their feet, clapping shouting smiling overcome with the power of this Jazz-Blues Beautiful Moment! Man, he’d cut those cats with ONE Note!!

Yes, part of what is killing jazz is the idea that solos have to have many notes and show how technically proficient they are. The average listener just does not understand or like listening to this. Making music is not about how many notes you can play, it is about expressing ideas, and how you are personally feeling. Melodic knowledge is the most important, how to make a melody. So many jazz schools do not teach this. To keep a listener listening and understanding your Improvised Solos they have to have melodic ideas, have contrasts, have tension and release, have humor, have emotion! Keith Jarrett as an example!

Gosh darn it I just love you and what/how you share and teach and inspire so openly.

Hands down the best video I’ve seen here on youtube….maybe ever. As someone that went to music school too and didn’t always get what everyone else was doing, I always followed my own path. And yet now I understand what I didn’t as a teen. Listening is sooo important….for vernacular, but also running the “exercises” helps develop the ear by exposing new sounds that may be outside what makes sense for a young ear. This was amazing. Thank you!

...playing with the ear, from the heart...versus...playing with the hand, from the head...ongoing self-improvement path...such wisdom and truth...encouragement to remain true to yourself rather than trying to impress...thank you...

Girl, what you're doing is totally amazing

Thank you for talking about this. Music in it’s very nature is difficult to explain and you do it beautifully. 2 comment. 1 Keith “the singer” Jarrett. He seems to do what you explained. 2. I’m a very poor guitarist who literally falls asleep playing things over and over and over. Because I’m trying to play tempos I physically & mentally can’t do. It turned playing from joy to hatred. So, I learned at 66 that playing at whatever speed is really ok. Sure, theres a reason to play fast, but playing slower is okay by my lights. Thank you for saying this and letting me know others question themselves, mostly just overburdening ourselves to meet other standards. Well done.

I love how you talk about music. So cool to hear about your process.

This video and the insights revealed are as , if not more, important than any technique or theory video, although those are super important too. Thank you for sharing this!

Lyrical improvisation is definitely a great approach but I find that there’s a bit more to it. I used to focus mostly on change-running or creating melodic lines out of scales and modes that fit the harmony and I got good at it. But I had a feeling that this may have been competent jazz but not particularly good jazz because I wasn't really saying anything worthwhile. Then one day something dawned on me. I went to my piano and started improvising on All the Things You Are, only I placed more focus on rhythms than on pitches. My solos immediately came to life. It’s amazing how interesting and appealing even a simple, one-pitch phrase can sound when played with a tasty, irresistible rhythm. It instantly changed my whole approach. Then I realized that there is a value in change-running but it should be used as connecting tissue to the rhythmic-lyrical creations. And at that point I really saw the importance of space in that it gives the listener a chance to process what you’re expressing and it creates suspense, which is huge and really brings a solo to life. So I recommend being lyrical but with rhythmic creativity as the main emphasis. And leave plenty of space. Just try it.

People gravitate to their strength. You have a great ear and the way you can scat and play notes is incredible. It’s your strength. If you started by practicing scales and scales and arpeggios after arpeggios you might not be as good as you are. Lots of people sound like scales. You have a lyrical style that is really unique. Your best advice for me has been to listen, listen really closely to tunes.

The best music lesson I ever had was being told "if you can sing it, you can play it". But you really take it to the next level!

Your voice is magical. Subscription added

Hey Aimee—Love your schtick! A thought: You discuss how you can’t always play as fast as your colleagues. And I’m thinking: So what? I think of jazz as “talking” music”—and nobody wants to hear somebody bloviate!! I’m a retired guitarist from the small-group-swing and NOLA jazz idioms. I have found that it is easier to swing at medium tempos. The greats—Parker, Dolphy—et al—can kick up the tempo, but that takes practice as you point out. I go with Ellington: “It don’t mean a thing….” Or: If it don’t groove, you don’t move. Notes in a line need to breathe! There’s a great line from the iconic NOLA trumpeter Bunk Johnson: “Never play nothin’ too fast to walk to.” The foundational jazz beat comes from early brass bands and their march time. I’ll take a steady heartbeat over atrial fibulation any day of the week! Amen to listening to yourself! P.S. A guitar teacher of mine could rip off fast solos and sing them at the same time—like George Benson. I asked how he did it. He said, “It’s a little trick I picked up in the Orient.”