The Secret to Getting Good Fast at Jazz Improvisation

By Forrest

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Trust the process. Keep going and youll get there. Anything worth doing takes time

We hear these things over and over when were learning and its all good advice

But what they dont tell you is thattheres one key thing that separates those who excel quickly, from those
who get mildly better at a much slower rate.

So what is it? How do you get good fast at jazz improvisation, something that seems nearly impossible when you
realize how much information there is to know?

In a hurry to go nowhere

Its late. I grab my horn and brave the cold to get to the practice rooms. Another solitary night in the practice
room. I need to get there. I need to get there fast. Theres so much to know. What am I going to work on
tonight? Ive got to learn that tune, I think I printed out a chart. And perhaps Ill work out of that transcription
book a bit or maybe that new Bergonzi book I just got. And maybe Ill spend some time on that new scale I
just heard about.

This was me when I was 18. Frantically racing from one topic to the next, approaching them all in the wrong
way.Printing out charts instead of learning tunes from records. Using transcription books instead ofusing my
earandtranscribing solos. Buyingliterallyevery new book on improvisation, desperately hoping that it revealed the
secrets I was missing. And doing endless work on scales and patterns.
Did any of this make me better? Sure. Practicing nearly anything you dont know will make you better. But not fast
and notsignificantlybetter.

And thats what we want.We want to significantly improve at a fast rate.

The secret to getting good fast

In this video ofMichael Brecker, he shares this secret but most people will overlook it and not think anything of it.
Watch it and listen closely. Did you catch it? It happens at 1:50

Throughout this master-class, Brecker constantly says how he had no system to practicing, how he wasted a lot of
time, how hed work on something and then be lucky if he picked it up the next day, or remembered what he
worked on because he has a terrible memory.

Despite all this wasted time and non-structured practice, how is it possible that he mastered the saxophone
beyond what seems humanly possible?

I try to practice things that are going to be

practical-Michael Brecker
There it is. Thats the secret:Practice things that are practical. Its amazing how simple this seems in theory,
yet how difficult it is in practice.

If everyone approached things this way, well wed see a lot of people getting a lot better at things very quickly, yet,
out of any group of people, only a handful of people seem to excel and the rest fall to the wayside. Why is it then
that this idea of sticking to things that are practical alludes so many?

The rejection of the simple

The secret to getting good at just about anything is working on whats practical, the things that youll actually
encounter in the real live activity. The thing is, a lot of the time, the things that are practical are also simple, and
for some reason, people often reject what is simple, brushing it off as incorrect or unimportant.
Its as if peoplewantthings to be difficult. Perhaps the more difficult or complex something seems, the more valid
and correct people believe it to be. Is there something psychological at play here? It reminds me of a story from
the psychology bookInfluence:

It was the peak of the tourist season, the (jewelry) store was unusually full of customers, the turquoise
pieces were of good quality for the prices she was asking; yet they had not sold. My friend had
attempted a couple of standard sales tricks to get them moving.

She tried calling attention to them by shifting their location to a more central display area; no luck. She
even told her sales staff to push the items hard, again without success.

Finally, the night before leaving on an out-of-town buying trip, she scribbled an exasperated note to her
head saleswoman, Everything in this display case, price hoping just to be rid of the offending
pieces, even if at a loss.

When she returned a few days later, she was not surprised to find that every article had been sold. She
was shocked, though, to discover that, because the employee had read the in her scrawled
message as a 2, the entire allotment had sold out at twice the original price!

In this case, people automatically assumed that a higher price, meant higher quality. While in some cases this is
true, its notalwaystrue. Its the same in learning. Yes, things that are complex or difficult may be of great value,
but not necessarilymorevalue than anything simple.

Actually, Ive found that in learning most things, its almost always in mastering the simple stuff, the fundamentals,
is where the real huge gains are, and where the practical stuff resides.

People want to believe things are more complex than they sound. They cant bethatsimple of course!

In jazz improvisation, people gravitate toward techniques that have fancy names: triadic pairs, hexatonics,
superimposition While there may be great value in these concepts, this is not necessarily practical stuff for most
people. These techniques are nice-to-haves, icing on the cakebut theyre not the bulk of what an improvisor
needs to know.

If you have very strong fundamentals, then you can add on bits and pieces here and there, so these things
become more practical at that stage, but theyre still not the bulk of what will help you play a great solo onAll the
Things You AreorRhythm changes.

The practical stuff tends to be simple. But, its simpletheoreticallyandconceptually. In practice, its quite difficult.
Take a major chord for example. To really play over a major chord,you need a lot more than a major scale. Many
people think that if they know theyre G major scale that they they can play over a G major chord. Um, no. Not
even close.

Most people do not sound great over major sounds, primarily because people brush them off as easy and rely on
knowing the major scale as theyreonlyconcept to approaching them. This is a perfect example of skipping over
something thats practical because you believe it to be too simple.

Playing well over major chords is extremely practical because we encounter them in nearly every tune we play.
So, it would make great sense to learn how to approach them in a multitude of ways. Sounds simple, right? Its
not.

Developing language on a major chordand understanding the underlying logic of this language so you can create
new language and ideas on major chords takes time, effort, and creativity. But, all this work will pay off. Why?
Because its practical knowledge with practical applications that youll be able to use all the time.
Not knowing whats practical

Now there is the case that you dont know whats practical or have never thought about it. This is very common as
its fairly accepted that someone will tell you what to practice or what to think, and thats that.

Unfortunately, the people youre getting your information from could be leading you astray and youd never know
it. Or, they could be telling you exactly what you actually need, but without stopping and thinking about it,
evaluating things for yourself, you really wont know.

I remember searching non-stop, trying to figure out exactly what I should practice. I always thought there was
some technique or exercise that I was missing that the professionals had, and if I only knew this exercise I could
get to their level.

Even if I had an idea of something I should practice, I sought to validate this idea by finding a professional that
supported it. I trusted exercises I found in books over my own intuition.I mean, its published in a book this must
be the right way!

Heres the problem with most books on jazz improvisation: they are the result of one persons study, hence, they
interpret, understand, conceptualize, and codify the ideas the way the author did, not the way you may have if you
looked at the raw material yourself.

Because youre learning information through someone elses lens, it doesnt truly mesh with you and it doesnt end
up helping you in the long run.

Thats the reason at Jazzadvice we focus more onprocessthan techniques and material. Of course we still do
share effective playing techniques and lines that were learning, but every time we do, and we say Look how this
line shows this awesome use of this concept, well, its coming through our filter about how we interpret the
material.

When youre trying to discover whats practical, dont only look to the concepts people are sharing with you or
teaching you, but look at how they got there, and then do that! If theytranscribeda major line fromClifford
Brownand thenfigured out how to build upon itin their own unique way, go find your own Clifford Brown line and
build upon it using your own mind.

Now, thats a great start, getting a level above the details people are passing along to you and seeing really
hearing things through your own lens, but there are some super straight-forward ways to figure out whats
practical in terms of anything you want to learn.

How to figure out whats practical

To figure out whats practical in anything you want to learn, the first step is to define the situations that
you find yourself in time-and-time again during the real activity.These are the keys to determining whats
practical and these are what you must simulate and study because any concept youre learning needs to be able
to be applied to these situations to make it useful.

If youre just starting out, this might be a bit of a challenge, but as you attempt the activity more and more, it will
become obvious what situations you tend to encounter. The important thing is to be aware of these and to take
note of them. Are they actually situations that are common or are they one-offs? Are you conceptualizing the
situation correctly or are there multiple ways to interpret it?

Ok, so say that youve been working on a blues for a while. What could you say about the situations you
encounter?
 Playing over a dominant chord for 1-4 measures is common as in measure 1-4

A dominant chord resolving down a fifth, G7 to C7 as in measure 4 to 5, is common

You can approach a ii chord with a minor ii V as in measure 8 to 9

These are just a few, and if you dont understand any of them, well, theyre through my lens and if you study the
blues you may or may not view a blues like me. It reminds me of a time I was talking with tenor saxophonistEric
Alexander. I remember him telling me, Anything I choose to tell you or not to tell you, I learned from transcribing.

And the thing to remember, is that anything he chooses to share, comes through his lens. He always has a strong
concept of whats happening with the lines he transcribed. But, is this concept exactly what the performer he
transcribed was thinking when they played it, or is his concept exactly the way that Id view it if I would have
transcribed the line myself? Maybe, maybe not. The point is,we extrapolate our own ideas of whats
happening when we study information for ourselves.

Even something like the chord changes to a blues are up to interpretation. Yes, I can think of at least a dozen
ways to think about the chords of a blues, but each one would bring up most of the same situations that we find
ourselves in over and over when playing jazz.

Practicing practical concepts in jazz

When playing jazz, there are a few situations that come to mind that we encounter over and over. While some of
what we encounter is subjective, allowing the individual to interpret these situations how they see them, many of
the situations are pretty standard:

major 7 chords, often two beats, 1, 2 or 4measures

minor 7 chords, often two beats, 1, 2, 4, or 8measures

dominant 7 chords,often two beats, 1, 2 or 4measures

minor 7b5 chords (half diminished), often two beats or one measure

diminshed chords, often two beats or one measure

major ii Vs both one measure and two measures (|A- D7| and | A- | D7 |)

minor ii Vs both one measure and two measures (|B-7b5 E7| and |B-7b5 | E7 |)

Of course there are more common scenarios the jazz musician will find themselves in, but these are some of the
basic ones that make up probably 95% of what jazz standards are made of.

So, whats practical?Figuring out ways to effectively play over these chords and progressions for the
specific durations they tend to occur, then finding them in the tunes youre working on and applying the
knowledge youre learning to them.

You figure out ways to play over these scenarios through transcribing your heroes, studying composition, learning
language, studying harmony,training your earand paying attention to the voice inside your mind. And then you
utilize your own creativity to morph, change, and build upon what youre discovering; you can even create brand
new concepts and lines. There are no rules.

And, you can work from the other direction, too: take the tunes youre working on, find the common situations in
the tunes or situations that are giving you trouble and figure out ways to deal with them.
For example, perhaps Im working on the bridge toRhythm Changes. I could start by finding some language for
dominant chords that are two measures long. Once I figure out how to apply that information, I could then work on
each dominant chord resolving to the next dominant chord, so perhaps I rest for the first bar, figure out some
language or concept to use in the second bar moving through to the third bar, rest for the fourth bar, then play
over the fifth and sixth bars as before, rest for the 7th bar, and play over the eighth bar moving into the first
measure of the last A section.

Practicing the bridge toRhythm Changesis practical because Im going to have to play over similar progressions
over and over, dominant chords for two measures moving around the cycle. Dominant chords for two measure are
super common and so is cycle movement.If I can master this one situation, Ive inadvertently mastered
hundreds, maybe even thousands.

Define practical concepts for your style and goals

The more you play, the more youll think about chords, tunes, and chord progressions in your own unique way.
Thats what I was talking about earlier; as in life, everyone has their own lens and its beneficial to you to define
situations as you go, the way you see them.

For instance, maybe one person thinks they need ii V language like I mentioned in the list, but another likes to
think of each chord separately as language for a minor chord and language for a dominant chord. Both are
correct. And actually, I switch off between how I view chord progressions because thinking differently promotes
different material to come out. So its advantageous to build up an arsenal of ideas for many situations.

Depending on your personal improvisational style and what you want to sound like, youll define some of the
situations you encounter and whats practical differently than other people.

There will still be a ton of overlap; you have to play over major chords, minor chords, dominant chords etc. Theres
no way around it! These are the common scenarios that everyone playing this music needs to deal with. But, as
you begin defining everything you encounter, youll see what I mean as in the multiple ways to think about a ii V
example.

Everything you practice should be practical, it shouldnt be some isolated exercise that somehow magically should
affect some part of your improvisation. Thats not how things work.

Jazz improvisation is in the moment. With no time to think,the stuff that you practice for the situations you
encounter is what comes out.If you didnt define the situation correctly or didnt practice specific ways to
approach a particular situation that you encounter, then its going to show at performance time.

Not to worry. If this happens, take note of what situation you didnt define correctly, failed to define at all, or didnt
have a specific approach for, and begin to study and build upon how your heroes dealt with something similar.

Every time you go to practice something, ask yourself, Is this practical? Can I really use this in a situation that I
encounter all the time? Will it help me over the things Im not currently good at? Can I combine it with things I
already know? On a scale from 1 to 10, how useful is it? Is it easy to conceptualize and apply to the tunes Im
performing all the time?

Want to improve at jazz improvisation fast? The secret is simple: practice stuff that you can directly apply to the
situations that you find yourself in time-and-time again. Build up an arsenal of approaches for each one of these
unique situations and drill them until youre blue in the face.

If you practice things that are going to be practical, just as Michael Brecker did, knowing exactly when, where, and
how to use them creatively, you will get good at jazz improvisation fast.