How to Use Jazz Improvisation to Improve Communication Skills In Teenagers As a high school student or even a band director, you might be looking for ways to improve your improvisation and communication skills for yourself or your students. You might think that jazz improvisation isn’t the right place to start, but it’s one of…
A Modern Jazz Practice Routine & Play – Along You need to work on technique, but are bored with the same routine? One of the benefits I have found while working on my undergraduate degree was being able to play a Bill Adam styled trumpet routine with another trumpet player. This allowed us to rest…
Harmonic Targeting My previous blog posts about targeting concepts (aiming at a goal note with purpose) have dealt with the various ways we can get to the targeted note. We’ve also discussed what makes a good target. But, in today’s post I wanted to touch on something that I think might help a number of…
Pacing Exercises It has probably happened to you once or twice unless you are just starting out on your improvisation journey. That moment on the bandstand or in rehearsal and you know that you are over playing. I think it happens to a lot of people (if not all) at some point or another. This…
For some of you this may not be an issue, but for others it is something you run into often enough to be frustrating. Have you ever taken a step back and looked at your abilities in improvisation and think, “what should I work on next?” I am not talking about the egotistical thought…
I hope this series on Improv for Beginners has been helpful to you and your students. The 3 parts in this series is obviously not the only steps necessary in introducing and teaching improvisation to a beginner. There are a number of good sources and educators that specialize in beginners. If you or your…
Welcome to part 2 of starting beginner’s on their improvisation journey. Last week we started off with what I believe is a great foundation to getting a beginner going. There are a number of different opinions, theories and options. However, this is how I like to introduce those just starting. I have seen it…
Welcome to part 2 of Using Drop 2 in Improv. In this post we are going to talk about another we can use the Drop 2 concept to help your improvisations. This tip is one that you would use in your practice room. If you go back and check out the series called Map…
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