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1). Listen
The great jazz musicians listened to everybody before them. They
listened to records and they went to listen live. This is how they
discovered and learned from each other. This does not mean you
have to like everything you hear. Jazz should not be reduced to an
intellectual exercise. The music has to touch you or you should not
be attempting to play it. If you want to play great blues you have to
listen to blues. If you want to play great rock you have to listen to
rock. If you want to play great jazz you have to listen to jazz.
2). Knowledge of harmony
Jazz is by no means simple to play. It takes a lot of dedication and
you have to have some knowledge of jazz harmony. If you want to
improvise you must understand the functions of chords and chord
substitutes available to you within a harmonic structure. You also
need to develop an understanding of the tonal organization and
rhythmic structure of jazz.
3.) Knowledge of Jazz Standards and Jazz tunes
While studying with Oliver Gannon in Canada, he once told me, If
you want to be able to play with other jazz musicians you are going
to have to know the vocabulary, you are going to have to know the
standards. In addition, the more standards you learn the greater
your knowledge of harmonic structure that these tunes are built
from.
4.) Familiar with melody
Many players use the real book on gigs to improvise over the chord
structures of the standards. However, many of them dont actually
know the tune. They dont know the melody, which is the most
important part. Jazz soloists from the 1920s almost exclusively
would build their solos up around the melody of the tune. When
improvisers started developing their solos a bit more they would
often quote other melodies. Listen to the great saxophonist Dexter
Gordon and you will hear he is constantly quoting melodies from
different standards in his solos. Horace Silver was also a master at
that. He built the quotes right into many of his compositions.
5.) Knowledge of rhythm
Over the years jazz has influenced and been influenced by various
cultures around the world. Sonny Rollins composed his famous
calypso tune St. Thomas infusing jazz with the calypso rhythm from
about what they learned and how they learned it. Charlie Parker
famously disappeared out of site after the drummer Jo Jones
famously threw his cymbal at him when Parker got lost in a tune.
This affected Charlie Parker so much that he went off and practiced
the I Got Rhythm changes and the changes to Cherokee in every
key and got them up to impressive tempos. He mastered those two
things before he appeared again with a bang.
In the book Outliers, author Malcolm Gladwell says that it takes
roughly ten thousand hours of practice to achieve mastery in a field.
However, Daniel Goleman, in his book Focus, debunked this
statement by adding that without a certain level of focus the
number of hours is meaningless. Extreme focus towards one
exercise for 10 minutes is much more productive than a lack of
focus over one hour of practice.
10.) Play with others
One of the great pleasures of playing an instrument is to share that
pleasure by playing with others and it is one of the best ways to
learn. Nothing can replace the experience of playing live, in the
moment. There are so many things that can happen while playing
that cant be learned from a book and that you cant be prepared
for. You have to experience it. In the early days of jazz the only real
way to learn was by listening, watching and playing with others.
Many jazz musicians speak of their invaluable educations from being
on the bandstand.
11.) Respect your audience
Russell Malone was a sideman on a gig and decided to play hip,
which meant going outside the harmonic confines of the tunes. He
noticed that a table of young guys in the front row would cheer him
on every time he played out so he continued to play it up. Also
sitting in the audience was Kenny Burrell. After the set, the group in
the front row commented to Russell how much they really dug his
playing and that he was really pushing the envelope. This made
Russell feel good and he walked over to where Kenny was sitting
and sat down beside him all puffed out like. He asked Kenny Burrell
what he thought, expecting to get a thumbs up from Mr. Burrell.
Instead, Kenny moved in close to Russell, put his arm around his
shoulders and started chastising him Look at the room, the
audience, the context will dictate the playing style. Be respectful of
the music and with those you are playing with. Dont forget that
not everyone you are playing for is another musician. The audience
is there to hear music. If you dont respect that and play a bunch of
far out long-winded solos you probably wont be getting hired back
to do that gig.