Structuring Your Practice

This is a preview of the educational program A Jazz Improvisation Almanac which is under development for the Outside Shore Music Online School. Feel free to browse this preview and learn what you can from it. For a more completed product, though, check out the original freely browsable jazz textbook, A Jazz Improvisation Primer.

Most people seem to agree that it is important to practice every day. A famous musician used to say that if he went a day without practicing, he could tell by his playing the next day; if he went two days without practicing, the critics could tell; and if he went three days, the general public could tell. I have a feeling this is more true for horn players than for anyone else, as the embouchre requires constant reinforcement. I think it is also more important when mastering the technique of your instrument than when learning to improvise. Creativity does not necessarily benefit from daily repetition, although I am sure it cannot hurt, either.

Then there is the matter of length of practice session. I remember my teachers used to insist on a half hour per session minimum, and preferably an hour. This seemed a long time to a six-year-old with a short attention span. I think there can be value in any time you spend with your instrument.

When learning to improvise, the most important thing to practice is improvisation itself. If you are going to practice only a short time in a given session, I recommend you spend it actually improvising, not running through scales. I do not believe anyone needs to know more theory than they can comfortably apply. For this reason, I recommend learning scales and chords just a few at a time and spending as much time as possible actually improvising with these scales.

One way to develop your phrasing is to practice with someone else. Simlpy take turns playing phrases. Do not try to imitate the phrases your partner plays, but instead try to respond to them as you would in ordinary conversation:

[EXAMPLE]

This forces you to expand your ideas beyond what you would have played on your own, and it also helps keep your ideas focused. I find that this approach yields astonishingly positive results in a relatively short amount of time.

Whether practicing alone or with a friend, you should probably start with just the major scale. Just pick a key and a tempo and start improvising. When choosing a key, concetrate at first on the common keys such as Bb. Pretend you are playing a modal arrangement that calls for you to play a solo over that one scale. Try playing at different tempos, with different underlying rhythmic feels. Play choruses of Bbmaj7 in a medium swing:

[EXAMPLE]

Play it as a ballad:

[EXAMPLE]

Feel free to try other feels as well, such as uptempo waltz, samba, or whatever else comes to mind.

When you are sick of playing one chord, try simple chord progressions in that key. Try a ii-V-I vamp, with each chord lasting four measures at least:

[EXAMPLE]

Try shortening the vamp to two measures per chord:

[EXAMPLE]

Then try one measure per chord:

[EXAMPLE]

Make up other chord progressions in that key, but do not worry about fitting them into a 32 bar form or being able to repeat the progression:

[EXAMPLE]

When practicing improvising a given scale, you should not be concerned only with playing the right notes. You should pay attention to your melodic ideas, the rhythms you use, your dynamics, and all the other elements discussed in the unit on Improvisation. You should also listen to the sound of the scale you are playing. Ear training is an extremely important part of learning to improvise. The ultimate goal is to be able to hear an idea in your head and instantly be able to play it. By playing long enough with each scale and chord you learn, you will hopefully come to internalize the sound. Then, when you later wish to recreate that sound, you will remember how you created it before.

The important thing, then, is not to practice a scale, it is to practice making music with the scale. This is much more important than being able to play the scale itself for three octaves up and down your instrument. You can easily spend an entire half hour or more on one key, if you have the patience. It takes time to become comfortable with the notes in the scale and how they feel under your fingers while improvising.

I recommend spending the first portion of any practice session simply exploring a scale in this manner. Sooner or later, though, you will want to play actual tunes. If you do not feel like spending the time to learn a new piece, then pick one you already know, and start playing. Preferably, choose a tune in they key you were just practicing, so you can try out the ideas you worked on. If you do not know any tunes in that key, then just play a blues progression. Or, you can transpose a tune you already know in another key into the new key.

You may wish to tackle a different scale in each practice session. Start by improvising lines using the scale, then start creating chord progressions, and then work on a tune. It will take some time to become comfortable with all twelve major scales, but the facility you gain will be worth it.

During the course of this time, you will hopefully learn a few new tunes as well. Every few sessions, you should spend some time transcribing a tune from recordings. This is a great ear training device, and you if you do a good job, you end up with a lead sheet you can then use in performance. Some compositions will prove easier than others to transcribe. In general, standards will be easier than tunes by jazz musicians, and older tunes will be easier than modern ones. It may be helpful to find more than one recording of the composition for comparison purposes. Once you have picked a tune and one or more recordings, you should transcribe the melody. Some like to do this by trying to play along with it, learning it on their instrument before writing it down. Others prefer the opposite approach. You can try it both ways and see for yourself which works better for you. You should also try to figure out the chords to the composition.

The fact that transcribing a tune gives you a lead sheet you can use in the future is one reason I recommend transcribing heads over transcribing solos. Another reason is that improvised solos tend to be difficult to replay from a technical perspective, and this can be frustrating. For example, consider the following improvisation:

[EXAMPLE]

I can guarantee that it took very little effort for me to create it, but I doubt I would be able to play it again even if someone were to transcribe it and I were to practice it for weeks. There is a balance of technical and nontechnical issues that go into improvisation, and learning a transcribed solo requires you to concentrate on the technical issues out of proportion to how important they actually are. However, do not let me stop you from transcribing solos if you feel you benefit from this exercise.

Once you are comfortable with the idea of improvising in all keys, and have a set of tunes you can play, then you can start to practice different theoretical concepts. You might decide you want to learn pentatonic scales, or tritone substitutions. You can use the same approach with these that you did when practice major scales. Pick a key and spend time actually improvising using the device you are trying to learn. For example, if you are working on tritone substitutions, then you might play a ii-V-I vamp and use a tritone substitution for some of the V chords:

[EXAMPLE]

Then try using the substitution in the context of a tune:

[EXAMPLE]

You probably will not require twelve sessions to become comfortable with tritone substitutions; you can do several keys in one session. The same may be true when learning a given scale. On the other hand, some techniques, such as upper structure chord voicings, may take longer to master.

As you start adding to your knowledge, continue to practice simply playing in all twelve keys. Instead of sticking to the major scale, however, you will be able to try various alterations and substitutions in the context of playing in that key:

[EXAMPLE]

Also, be sure to consider the chromatic scale as well. That is, practice playing lines that are not attached to any particular chord:

[EXAMPLE]

When you are first learning a new concept, you should try to apply it everywhere you can. Once you have become comfortable with it, however, you need to start getting a feel for when it is really appropriate to use. After you have added a few new tricks to your bag, you should stop and just work on tunes. Do not try to use every device you know at every possible opportunity. Just improvise. If you have truly learned a concept, it will become obvious when to apply it.

The bottom line is, do not practice theory. Practice music.

Copyright 2000 Outside Shore Music
Authored by Marc Sabatella

Structuring Your Practice