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…
Not Your Ordinary Drones I want to talk about a jazz drone, but these are not your ordinary drones. Other sites and musicians have talked about the benefits of warming up with drones, exploring shapes and intervals. All of this is great and something I personally use now and then too. If you haven’t explored…
How Composing Can Keep You Out of Trouble That’s right – Jazz Composing can keep you out of trouble. How CAN composing keep you out of trouble? If you’ve followed this blog then you know this is mostly about improvisation tips. But, composing can help you with your improvisation too. I’ve heard it said (and repeated)…
Genius Jamtracks Review I am incredibly honored and excited to share a Genius Jamtracks Review. A relatively new app that I believe will absolutely help you with your improvisations. I was recently approached by the creators of this app, Dimitris Neonakis and Antonis Tsikandilakis to check out their new app which is the first polyrhythmic…
It’s interesting how you can get inspiration and ideas from the strangest/oddest places. The other day I was watching a re-run of an episode of Seinfeld called The Burning. One of the plots in this particular episode is of George Costanza finding the comedic power of leaving on a high note. He would be in…
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…
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