LEARNING TO IMPROVISE - ARTICLE LINKS

• Introduction
• Listening To Jazz
• Ear Training
• Rhythm & Phrasing
• Motifs & Cohesive Solos
• Vocal Improvisation
• Transcription
• Jazz Theory

JAZZ EDUCATION - THEN AND NOW

Formal jazz education was fairly limited until the 1960's. The first Aebersold play-a-long wasn't even released until 1967. By the time jazz education was in full swing (1970's-80's), jazz had already progressed through New Orleans jazz, 1930's swing, be-bop, cool jazz, hard bop, modal, free jazz, and soul/funk-jazz. In short, jazz had essentially run through its entire evolution BEFORE the advent of formal and detailed jazz education.

Before formal jazz education existed, jazz flourished as an aural tradition. While some things were written down (e.g. Downbeat transcriptions in the 1940's), the vast majority of what people learned and played was done by ear. You'd listen to a recording or live performance and you'd try to play what you heard on your instrument, with only your ears to guide you. This method of learning jazz ensured that all jazz musicians developed the ability to play by ear.

Today, if we want to learn jazz (or music in general), we learn mostly from written instruction. We have hundreds of books to teach us scales, chords, chord progressions, patterns, and jazz theory. Everything is structured and organized in straightforward pieces. And, of course, it's all written down.

While it's great that we now have so much information at our fingertips, the shift from aural to written instruction has unfortunately lead many students to have poorly developed aural skills. These students sound good when reading music, but if you take the music away they're lost. I'm quite familiar with this issue because I used to be just like that. I recall many times where I was playing a tune that I had played dozens of times before. I could sing the melody perfectly, yet I either had to consciously memorize the tune or I had to read it from a book in order to get the notes right on my horn. I couldn't even play simple songs like nursery rhymes and Christmas carols by ear. I was totally dependent upon written music. This is a serious problem if you're trying to play a creative jazz solo!

Looking back, it makes perfect sense that I couldn't play by ear. I couldn't play by ear because I never had to. Throughout my entire musical education, everything I had ever learned was written down...

OBSERVATION: FAILING TO PLAY BY EAR

I recently rented "Wynton Marsalis - Blues & Swing" from Netflix. In the video, there is a clip of Wynton talking with a group of high school students. While students play Ellington's "C Jam Blues", Wynton sings a simple 6-note melody and asks the saxophones to play the phrase by ear. He also gives them the starting note. Their first attempt is a mess. Some of the students didn't even get the starting note right. Wynton then sings the melody again and tells the students the notes to play. They try one more time and the results aren't any better. It appears as though Wynton just gives up on them (it's hard to tell due to editing), as it's clear that they are unable to play a simple phrase by ear. Unfortunately we can't chalk this up to a run-of-the-mill high school band program. This took place at the Duke Ellington School of the Arts.

A similar event occurred during the Heath Brothers master class that I attended during the 2004 Atlanta Jazz Festival. During the brief jam session, Jimmy Heath tried to teach the jam session participants (mostly high school and college students) a relatively simple tune by ear. He played the tune a few times on his horn, but it was clear that most of the dozen or so participants didn't get it. Fortunately, they had about 10-15 minutes to warm up and try to figure out the tune. With help from each other, I'd say enough people learned enough parts of the tune that there weren't gaping holes. There were a few people, however, that clearly weren't playing at all because they couldn't find the notes.

OBSERVATION: BUT, I CAN SING BY EAR

I was driving home from the store a few days ago, while listening to a bluesy jazz tune that I hadn't heard before. Before long, I was humming along to the tune and singing my own improvisational lines. As long as you've got some familiarity with what a blues or jazz solo sounds like, you should also be able to sing an improvised melody, or at least a few phrases, while listening to music. The next time you do this, ask yourself: Do I know what key this is in? Do I know the note names for every note I'm singing? Do I know the chord progression? Do I know the mode of the scale used for each of those chords? Do I know if the chords are altered? If so, which notes are altered? Hopefully you can see where I'm going with this.

Even if you're totally unaware of notes, key, chords, etc, you can still sing a decent solo. Depending upon your skill level, your vocal solo might even be better than anything you can play on your horn. If that's the case, it's easier to sing because you can effortlessly sing by ear. You simply think about a melody and you sing it. In fact, it's so easy you probably don't even have to think about it! Think about the last time you sang along to the radio. Did you have to think in order match the pitches you heard? Of course not. Could you pick up your instrument and play along with similar ease? Guess what... all great jazz musicians can.

CONCLUSIONS

These observations along with other experiences tell me the following:

• Playing by ear is an expected skill amongst *real* jazz musicians. Jimmy Heath and Wynton Marsalis wouldn't have asked students to try and play by ear unless they believed the students should have been able to do so. Furthermore, the ability to play by ear is displayed in just about every jazz recording, particularly when you hear a solo beginning with a motif just played by the previous soloist (there are examples of this in my jazz listening guide). If the musicians couldn't play by ear, they'd have no way of instantly reproducing a spontaneous musical phrase.

• Many young players (those that learned from written notation) have either poorly developed aural skills, or none at all. This, no doubt, stems from the fact that everything they learned was written down. They never had to try and play by ear. The opposite, however, was the case for early jazz musicians, who had to learn most of what they played by ear. The skills that they developed playing by ear helped them to quickly learn from each other and develop jazz as an art form.

• Most of us can easily sing along to a tune without knowing any of the tune's theory. Yet, when we pick up our horn, we're unable to play the same ideas as we struggle to find the correct notes. It's not that we're unmusical or that we lack sufficient training to play music; we just can't play well enough by ear. To succeed as jazz improvisers we must endeavor to play by ear as easily as we can sing by ear. Only then can we truly play the ideas in our heads.

• John Murphy, a jazz educator at the University of North Texas, compares having strong aural skills to being fluent in a language. When you're fluent in a language, you can easily communicate with others as you express your thoughts without hesitation. Similarly, when you're able to play music by ear, you can effortlessly play the ideas in your head in real-time. The lack of fluency, whether it's in language or music, requires us to use written materials (translation books, written music) when we communicate our thoughts. And when we don't use written materials, we sound slow and awkward as we stumble through each phrase.

It should be clear by now that strong aural skills, especially the ability to play by ear, are REQUIRED to be a good jazz improviser. It should also be clear that the inability to play by ear prevents us from accurately playing the music we have in our heads... and isn't that what improvisation is all about anyway?

HOW DOES ONE IMPROVE THEIR AURAL SKILLS?

Let's face it, some people are born with great ears (or as Suzuki suggests, they develop the skill while they are children). They have perfect pitch or perfect relative pitch and music just comes naturally to them. If you're fortunate enough to be one of those people, then you have no trouble playing by ear. Heck, why are you even reading this?!

The rest of us will have to rely upon ear training to improve our skills. The good news is that through effort and dedication you can definitely improve your aural skills and your ability to play by ear. To this end, I've created a few ear training tools which I use to improve my own skills:

Ear Trainer

My interactive ear trainer is a program designed to help identify intervals, chords, and melodies by ear. The random melody feature allows you to work on call and response ear training. It even includes a rhythm section feature to help with jazz improvisation.

Song Randomizer

The ear training song randomizer has a library of hundreds of common songs. With the click of a button, you'll get a random song and starting note. Just pick up your instrument and try to play it by ear.

And that's not all... I also created an iPhone ear training app!

BUT I THOUGHT PLAYING BY EAR IS BAD

You may have heard that playing by ear is bad, or that it's a lazy approach to jazz improvisation. And most likely, you've also heard that you need to learn jazz theory in order to be a good jazz improviser. Both of these statements are wrong... but they might be true for you! It all depends on your aural skills.

If you can hear a chord progression and effortlessly play music that fits over that progression by ear, then you'll succeed with or without formally studying jazz theory. That's because you've internalized the sounds which jazz theory attempts to explain. On the other hand, if your attempts to play by ear are fraught with mistakes as you search to find the right notes, then you don't actually have the necessary skills to play by ear. You're just "winging it," and that is a bad and lazy approach to jazz improvisation! If you are in the "winging it" category, theory can help bridge the gap between what you can and cannot hear. Your primary goal, however, should be to improve your aural skills so theory serves as a bonus rather than as a crutch. For more information, be sure to read my article on jazz theory.

MY EXPERIENCES WITH EAR TRAINING

As I've written elsewhere on this site, ear training didn't come easily to me. When I first started ear training, I thought it was tedious and terribly frustrating (that was before I built my ear trainers). It was painful to realize that after years of playing an instrument, I still couldn't play a simple nursery rhyme by ear. That realization, however, was one of the most important discoveries that I've made along my musical journey. It inspired me, or should I say it shamed me, into taking ear training seriously. And boy am I glad that I did. Nothing, and I mean NOTHING, has singularly improved my ability to improvise as much as ear training.

RANGE: OK

Trumpeters have a tendency to fixate on their range. They're either proud because they can play higher than anyone they know, or they are frustrated because they can't play as high as they want. During my comeback, I've been rather guilty of the latter case.

For the first few months of my comeback, I could barely play anything at or above an E at the top of the staff. It has been a frustrating journey, but I've now got a (somewhat) solid range that extends up to a Bb above the staff. I can play higher than that occasionally, but I can't play those notes with enough power or consistency for them to be truly useable.

A Bb above the staff gives me about two and a half octaves to work with. That's enough notes to play most of the solos by Miles Davis, Kenny Dorham, Art Farmer, Blue Mitchell, Chet Baker, and many other great jazz trumpeters. I think it's safe to say I should stop worry about my range.

ENDURANCE: BAD

While my range is fine, my *real* problem lies with endurance. On a typical day, I've only got 15-20 minutes of solid playing in me, before I need to rest. Once fatigued, I can barely play an E at the top of the staff, and I have to use excessive pressure just to do that. Playing beyond 40 minutes in a single session (even with short breaks) is out of the question. At best, I can manage three or four 20-30 minute sessions throughout the day --usually two in the morning and one or two at night.

Since I'm still in the process of strengthening my chops, I have to devote a couple of these short sessions to fundamentals (slurs, articulation, etc). That leaves just one or two (at the most) short sessions for improvisation. This limitation is especially discouraging when you think about the great jazzers who honed their skills in marathon jam sessions and constant woodshedding. I'm already at a disadvantage talent-wise; I'd love to try and make up for that with extended weekend practice sessions, but my lack of endurance just won't let me.

SEARCHING FOR SOLUTIONS

I've been working on the Balanced Embouchure exercises for a couple of years now. The author claims that his method works for everyone. Well, either I'm doing it wrong, or I've got a good "truth in advertising" case against him! --just kidding. The author is a nice guy, and had graciously tried to help me when I was beginning BE. Regardless, I just don't think the Balanced Embouchure method is working out for me.

I've been working on Caruso and Flexus exercises for nearly a year now, and while I do think they have helped my overall playing and strengthened my range, I've yet to notice major improvements in endurance. The way I see it, I can continue with what I'm doing and hope that my endurance improves over time, and/or I can try something new. 2021 Update: As I'd learn in my lessons Nadje Noordhuis, I wasn't doing the Caruso and Flexus "6-note" exercises correctly... so no wonder they didn't help as much as I had hoped.

A visitor to this site (thanks, Peter!) recently suggested that I try superchops. I've also read quite a few posts about it at the Trumpet Herald. I do have some reservations; mostly revolving around the fact that I can't roll my tongue and therefore might not have the necessary flexibility to pull it off, but I must admit that I'm tempted to give it a try.

LEARNING TO IMPROVISE - ARTICLE LINKS

• Introduction
• Listening To Jazz
• Ear Training
• Rhythm & Phrasing
• Motifs & Cohesive Solos
• Vocal Improvisation
• Transcription
• Jazz Theory

WHAT IS A COHESIVE SOLO?

A cohesive solo flows together and has a sense of logic to it. Each part builds upon the last, whether rhythmically or melodically, as it guides you to the end of the solo. The sense of cohesion makes you feel like the solo is a deliberate and well-constructed piece of music.

The opposite of a cohesive solo is one that meanders without any sense of direction or purpose. When listening to such a solo you'll probably wonder if the player is lost (i.e. doesn't know where they are in the song form), or maybe you'll keep wondering when they're going to stop playing. By the way, there is a syndrome amongst beginners (which I've been guilty of) that typically occurs when playing a meandering solo. You're unhappy with your ideas, but you keep playing chorus after chorus with the thought that maybe the next chorus will be "the one". If you've ever done this, or if you've listened to others doing it, you know how things typically turn out...

NOTE: When I described a meandering solo in the previous paragraph, I wasn't talking about free or avant-garde jazz. I realize some people have a hard time making sense of that genre and might think of it as aimless meandering, but when examined closely you will likely discover that even the most bizarre-sounding solos have elements of cohesion.

MOTIF DEVELOPMENT

There are several ways to build a cohesive solo, but I think the easiest method is through the use of motif development. A motif is a musical phrase that is repeated through the course of a solo. To avoid sounding like we're just playing the same phrase over and over again, we gradually alter that phrase rhythmically and/or melodically. This gradual development creates a cohesive solo because each phrase logically moves to the next; creating a sense that everything is connected.

You can use motif development in a variety of ways when creating a solo. For instance, you could use one motif that you develop over the duration of your solo, or you could develop one motif for a while and then start another, or you can start with a motif and then play some random ideas, then come back to your motif. The possibilities are endless, and are ultimately determined by your own style and musical tastes.

Motifs are also a great way to start a solo. I don't know about you, but I don't always know what I want to play when I put the horn to my mouth and start my solo (my best ideas come to me while I'm soloing). When this happens, I find it's best to just play a simple 3-5-note motif and develop that for a while. If I have a better idea during the development of the motif, then I (try to) smoothly transition to the new idea and go with it. If I don't come up with anything better, then I just stick to the motif.

EXAMPLES & EXERCISES

In the clip below, I start out with a 5-note motif that contains the notes of the blues scale in descending order. Initially, I vary the motif's melody by starting on different notes. In the last four bars, I also vary the motif's rhythm by playing a 4-note pattern.

iwasdoingallright - audio clip - Simple solo with a single motif. Melody and rhythms are varied.

EXERCISE 1: MELODIC VARIATIONS

Create a relatively short motif with 3-5 notes from the blues scale. Play a few choruses, modifying only the melody (the pitches). Experiment with various melodies, while keeping the rhythm the same throughout the solo.

EXERCISE 2: RHYTHMIC VARIATIONS

Follow the steps in Exercise 1, but this time change just the rhythm, while keeping the melody the same.

EXERCISE 3: MELODIC & RHYTHMIC VARIATIONS

You guessed it, practice changing the rhythm and the melody for a single motif (similar to my example).

EXERCISE 4: MULTIPLE MOTIFS

Once you've gotten good at the exercises above, try a solo with more than one motif. In the clip below, you'll notice that I develop one motif in the first chorus of my solo and then work on a new motif in the second chorus.

iwasdoingallright - audio clip - Simple solo with two motifs. Melody and rhythms are varied.

EXERCISE 5: TUNE-BASED MOTIFS

Play a motif based on the tune you're playing. For instance, if you're soloing on "Footprints" your motif might consist of a phrase that mimics the first 5-notes of the tune. Listen to the following clip for an example:

iwasdoingallright - audio clip - Tune-based motif on Footprints

EXERCISE 6: LISTEN FOR MOTIFS

Now that you've learned how to play and develop motifs in your solos, try to identify motifs in the solos of great players. Listening to, and identifying elements in great solos is the best way to learn how to create your own great solos.

EXERCISE 7: COMPOSE A TUNE BASED ON A MOTIF

The spontaneous nature of a jazz solo doesn't give us a lot of time to really think about what we're trying to do. On the other hand, written composition allows us to play as we go, refining our ideas in a more relaxed setting. The lessons learned from the act of composition (how to connect phrases, how to create excitement, how to develop a simple idea into a tune, etc.) can then be applied to improvised solos. So, give it a try. Use a simple motif as the basis for a 12-bar composition.

ABOUT THE PLAY-A-LONG TRACK

Each exercise above use the Bb concert blues track from Volume 1 - "How To Play Jazz & Improvise" of Jamey Aebersold's play-a-long series. I highly recommend this play-a-long, not only for it's audio tracks, but also for the accompanying book. The book has a lot of useful information on a variety of topics. It's also a good resource for learning jazz theory.

If you don't have the Aebersold play-a-long, you might try one of the tracks at jazzpracticeloops.com.

You may have noticed that there weren't a lot of jazz tunes in the list of tunes for my simple song ear trainer. This was because I wanted everything to be fairly easy and recognizable by anyone coming to the site. That explains the large number of x-mas carols, nursery rhymes, and traditional songs.

Well, guess what? I've gotten tired of playing "Twinkle Twinkle Little Star" and "Rudolph". To make things more interesting, I just added a new feature that allows you to select tunes by genre!

LEARNING TO IMPROVISE - ARTICLE LINKS

• Introduction
• Listening To Jazz
• Ear Training
• Rhythm & Phrasing
• Motifs & Cohesive Solos
• Vocal Improvisation
• Transcription
• Jazz Theory

RHYTHM AND PHRASING

"It's not what you play; it's how you play it." I don't know who first spoke those words, nor do I even know if they were initially spoken in the context of jazz improvisation (a Google search returns all sorts of things), but I do know that the quotation aptly describes the importance of rhythm and phrasing in jazz improvisation. You can take any series of notes and depending upon your choice of rhythm and phrasing you can play them with a ferocity that tells the world: look out, here comes one bad mother (shut yo' mouth!), or you can play those notes as ballad, with so much emotion that audiences hang on every note with tears in their eyes. It all comes down to rhythm and phrasing.

Another popular quotation, which I'm paraphrasing, says "If you play wrong notes with good rhythm and phrasing, most people won't hear them as wrong notes. On the other hand, if your rhythm is off, it doesn't matter what you're playing; it will immediately sound bad to just about everyone." As listeners, we have a pretty good tolerance for "wrong" notes as long as they're played with good rhythm and phrasing. One example of acceptable "wrong" notes are the passing tones that we hear in just about every good jazz solo. These are the notes that are not part of the chord being played, but the way they're placed and accented in the overall phrase makes them sound perfectly fine. In fact, they're often what make the solo sound hip in the first place. Another example of acceptable "wrong" notes occurs when somebody plays outside a given harmony. Players like Woody Shaw, Kenny Garrett, and Joe Farrell are masters of outside playing. When they play outside, it doesn't sound like they're playing wrong notes at all. That's because their rhythm and phrasing gives the outside lines the support they need to sound right! They also do other things to tie those lines in, such as chromatic modulation of motifs, but it's really the rhythm and phrasing that anchors everything together. Believe me, if you gave those same "wrong" notes to a person with poor rhythm and phrasing, all you'd hear are wrong notes.

HOW I LEARNED RHYTHM AND PHRASING

My first experience with jazz improvisation was in middle school band. Our band teacher began by teaching us how to play notes in a swing style. As a group, we all played the familiar dotted-eighth/sixteenth note rhythm that you read about in every book on jazz improvisation. Actually, most books nowadays describe it as a triplet rhythm, where the first two notes are tied... In any case, I'm sure you know what I'm talking about.

After learning the basic swing rhythm, we were shown the notes to the C blues scale (C, Eb, F, F#, G, Bb). Once we played that through a few times, the teacher put on a play-a-long recording and soloed for a couple of choruses so we'd have some idea of what a jazz solo sounds like. Finally, we went around the class, each of us getting a chorus or two to try our hand at jazz improvisation. Naturally, after a five-minute introduction to jazz improvisation, none of us sounded good at all. But, the thing that really sticks out to me now is the fact that we forgot all about rhythm once it came time to solo. Instead, we simply ran up and down the blues scale, trying to get the notes right. Rhythm fell by the wayside and notes took over!

This approach to teaching jazz is echoed in quite a few jazz improvisation books. You start out with the basic swing rhythm. If you're lucky, you'll learn about basic the basic phrasing of eighth-note lines (offbeat accenting). But, inevitably you're deluged with chapter after chapter about scales, modes, and complex theory. Don't get me wrong, I don't have a problem with the study of theory or it's place in jazz education. But I do have a problem with the fact that many beginning players focus too much attention on learning theory without building a solid rhythmic foundation first. Without a solid basis of rhythm and phrasing, any note you play is doomed to sound lifeless and uninteresting.

RHYTHM AND PHRASING FIRST

When somebody asks me for advice on learning jazz improvisation, I suggest the following starting point:

Pick a jazz recording that you really like and listen to it over and over again. As your familiarity with the tune (or solo) increases, start singing along, using simple doo-ba-da-bop syllables. The goal is to mimic the rhythm and phrasing on the recording as you sing. This includes each accent, each inflection, and everything else that's happening in the realm of rhythm and phrasing. If possible, record yourself as you sing along, so you can compare your rhythm and phrasing to that of the recording. Don't worry about getting the pitches right, you can worry about notes later.

Continue the above process until you develop a basic rhythmic vocabulary (i.e. you know what jazz rhythms sound like and you can sing them on your own). Once you reach that point, try playing the same rhythms on your instrument with single-note solos. Isolating your solo to just one pitch/note gives you the freedom to focus entirely on rhythm and phrasing. If you can make one note sound good, just imagine how good you'll sound when you add in more notes! Or, another way of looking at it might be: if you can't play a decent one-note solo, what makes you think you'll sound good with more notes? I'm such a glass is half-empty sorta guy, aren't I?

Ok, now that I've got the introduction out of the way, let's get down to business!

EXERCISE 1: ONE-NOTE CALL AND RESPONSE

In both of the following tracks, I'm playing nothing but a concert Bb over a Bb concert blues track. For the trumpet players out there, this means I'm playing a C over C blues..

iwasdoingallright - audio clip - ONE NOTE, TRACK 1 - I play a one-measure phrase followed by a measure of rest. During the rest, play back the same rhythm, matching the phrasing and attacks as closely as possible. Here's an example of me playing along to this recording: iwasdoingallright - audio clip. The muted part is what you should play.

iwasdoingallright - audio clip - ONE NOTE, TRACK 2- This clip lasts for two choruses. The rhythms also have a bit more variation.

Once you are able to mimic my rhythm and phrasing, try to improvise your own rhythms in response to mine.

EXERCISE 2: TWO NOTE CALL AND RESPONSE

In the following track, I'm also playing over the same concert Bb blues track, however I'm now playing both concert Bb and F (C and G for the trumpets).

iwasdoingallright - audio clip - TWO NOTE, TRACK 1 - As with the examples above, try to mimic my rhythms and phrasing. Use your ear to play the same notes that I play.

EXERCISE 3: I'VE GOT THE SINGLE-NOTE BLUES

Once you get good at mimicking my rhythms and once you are able to improvise some of your own, you should try to improvise an entire solo with just a single note.

iwasdoingallright - audio clip - SINGLE-NOTE BLUES - Here's an example of what a single-note solo might sound like.

If possible, record yourself playing these exercises. When you listen back, compare your rhythm and phrasing to mine. Hopefully yours will sound similar. Ideally, yours will sound even better!

ABOUT THE PLAY-A-LONG TRACK

Each exercise above use the Bb concert blues track from Volume 1 - "How To Play Jazz & Improvise" of Jamey Aebersold's play-a-long series. I recommend this play-a-long, not only for it's audio tracks, but also for the accompanying book. The book has a lot of useful information on a variety of topics. It's also a good resource for learning jazz theory.

If you don't have the Aebersold play-a-long, you might try one of the tracks at jazzpracticeloops.com.

UPDATE 10/06/2006: My newest ear trainer, currently in BETA, has blues and other sequences that you can use a play-a-long. Give that a try if you have nothing else.

In the study of jazz improvisation (both in books and schools), there are two major components that rarely get the recognition they deserve: ear training and rhythm. Instead, the bulk of jazz education focuses mostly on theory -- learning what notes to play over which chords. While knowing jazz theory will help you to become a better player, I think (much) greater advances are possible through strengthening ones ear and rhythmic skills.

I've built a couple of tools (main tool , simple songs) and written a few blog entries that focus on ear training. While I certainly haven't covered all aspects, I've at least covered some of them. Now it's time to focus on rhythm! Or more specifically, let's focus on the development of rhythmic interest and phrasing.

FIRST, WHY AM I DOING THIS?

I've mentioned before that I was inspired to build this site after visiting some other player blogs. That's really only part of the inspiration. It wasn't until I attended a jazz combo recital at a nearby university, that I was finally motivated to put this site together.

As the student combos performed, I kept thinking of things that they could do to improve. One of the biggest issues, in my opinion, was the lack of rhythmic interest in many of their solos. The lack of interest might manifest itself as a solo with nothing but eighth notes strewn together, with no breaks. Or perhaps they did vary their rhythms, but they played everything with legato attacks and no dynamic interest (i.e. poor phrasing). In short, they didn't sound as good as they could have.

Generally speaking, the poor performances had nothing to do with note choices but everything to do with how they were playing those notes. I kept thinking: if I was their teacher, the first thing I'd do is focus on rhythm and phrasing. Since I'm not their teacher, and since I know there are many more players like them, I figured I could possibly reach them via the Web. As soon as I came to that realization, I started putting this site together.

I don't claim to be an expert (I certainly don't sound like one, just listen to my clips!), however I do believe the tools and exercises on this site are of value to anyone learning how to improvise. So take what you will, and leave what you won't ;-)

SO, NOW WHAT?

This post is really just an introduction to an upcoming series of exercises focusing on phrasing and rhythm. I hope to start putting together some exercises in the next week or two. Until then, keep working on theory ;-)

I just finished a major update to my ear trainer software. This is the version I've been thinking about for some time. Finally, after many late nights and early mornings, it's ready!

I also updated the accompanying text with new exercises and instructions.

Try It!

UPDATE 10/11/06 - I recently finished a version 2.0 (BETA) of my ear trainer! There are several new features, including a new rhythm section that you can use for play-along purposes. Click here for more information.