The 10 Minute Jazz Lesson Podcast

Figuring out what your favorite musicians are thinking when they play is an essential part of getting better. It allows us to get deeper into their playing and incorporate our favorite material into our own solos. It's like having a jazz legend giving us a private lesson in our own home! It is also an important ear and rhythmic training activity. We are figuring out hundreds of notes just using our ears and our instrument. You'll be amazed by how your ears open up and you can start doing so many things that you never thought were possible, all from transcribing solos! In this episode I will walk you through, step by step, the routine that has allowed me to transcribe close to 100 solos. This routine has worked very well for me and I think that you can benefit no matter what level you are at from transcribing with this method. This episode is more of a lecture and there are no PDF exercises. Are you ready to start transcribing your favorite players and improve your playing today? Tune in and learn more about this important topic! WANT THE PDF THAT GOES ALONG WITH THIS EPISODE?? Head over to our Patreon page and when you donate $3 or more a month you get this PDF and every other. We will also be bringing you many extras exclusively to our patrons including transcriptions and a FREE gift  of our latest Ebook, The Diatonic Method. We hope that we bring you value every week here at the 10 Minute Jazz Lesson and we appreciate all of your support! SIGN UP TO BE A PATRON TODAY!

This week we are going to learn how to do one of my favorite things. Learning vocabulary has paid off in a huge way for anyone who has ever practiced this important part of improvising. Just like when we speak a language, we have to have a good base vocabulary to be able to converse and make sense. When it comes to jazz, this means taking some of our favorite players' material and putting it into our own playing. In this episode, I will take you through an overview of the way I take a phrase, learn it, and put it in all 12 keys to be sure I can handle any chords that are thrown at me. This week's line comes from an awesome Joe Lovano solo. First we analyze how he put the line together and the notable devices he is using, then we put it in all 12 keys. I also provide you with a chord sheet that I use for practicing my ii-V-I lines and teach you how to use it. Enjoy the episode and getting your jazz vocabulary work started! WANT THE PDF THAT GOES ALONG WITH THIS EPISODE?? Head over to our Patreon page and when you donate $3 or more a month you get this PDF and every other. We will also be bringing you many extras exclusively to our patrons including transcriptions and a FREE gift  of our latest Ebook, The Diatonic Method. We hope that we bring you value every week here at the 10 Minute Jazz Lesson and we appreciate all of your support! SIGN UP TO BE A PATRON TODAY!

This week's episode brings you a lesson on the bebop scale. This device is a great way to quickly incorporate some chromaticism into your playing and get those snaky lines you always wanted. I have to warn you though, this might be the biggest amount of work I have given you in any episode so far. We start by learning the dominant and major bebop scales and then learn them starting on every chord tone available to us. This seems like a lot of work but isn't anything worth practicing a ton of work?? By completing all of the exercises I have given you in this episode, you will be flying around the bebop scale in no time and starting to gain that amazing bebop sound we have heard so much throughout the history of jazz. Buckle your seat belts and get ready for a barrage of information to be thrown at you. As always, you need to move at your own pace and take things slowly until you get everything under your fingers and in your mind. Have fun with this week's lesson! WANT THE PDF THAT GOES ALONG WITH THIS EPISODE?? Head over to our Patreon page and when you donate $3 or more a month you get this PDF and every other. We will also be bringing you many extras exclusively to our patrons including transcriptions and a FREE gift  of our latest Ebook, The Diatonic Method. We hope that we bring you value every week here at the 10 Minute Jazz Lesson and we appreciate all of your support! SIGN UP TO BE A PATRON TODAY!

In jazz, timing is everything. In this week's episode we will take a look at structuring our solos in such a way that the important notes fall in the right place. We want to make sure that we are putting chord tones on the strong beats of each measure. This gives our improvisation some direction and is the number one way to make you sound like you know what you're doing quickly! We come up with the skeleton of our solo and then build a complete melodic statement around that skeleton. With a template to build on, our solos take a brand new direction and become like building a puzzle. Eventually, we don't need the skeleton and can build an entire solo without thinking about it. This week's episode is guaranteed to make a difference in your playing. If you have always wanted to play a solo without those 'throwaway' notes that we all wish we could forget, this is the lesson for you! Dive right in and don't forget to download the PDF's for maximum effectiveness. WANT THE PDF THAT GOES ALONG WITH THIS EPISODE?? Head over to our Patreon page and when you donate $3 or more a month you get this PDF and every other. We will also be bringing you many extras exclusively to our patrons including transcriptions and a FREE gift  of our latest Ebook, The Diatonic Method. We hope that we bring you value every week here at the 10 Minute Jazz Lesson and we appreciate all of your support! SIGN UP TO BE A PATRON TODAY!

This week we discuss one of the most important concepts in building a good solo. Motivic development is the principle of taking a short idea and learning to manipulate it in many different ways. This gives our listeners something to grab onto in our solo and provides us with a launching point that can go in any direction we would like it to. We are going to start by taking a simple idea and base the rest of the episode off of it. In a way, the episode is an example of motivic development! We will explore how to work the same idea into many different chord changes, then start manipulating the rhythm, then manipulate the notes and the rhythm all at once to give our improvisation many dimensions. We close out this week's episode by demonstrating how to work a motif into a real life solo situation. Always returning to some form of the original idea while incorporating many other ideas and devices around it. Enjoy this week's show and don't forget to download and study the PDF to get the most out of this concept! WANT THE PDF THAT GOES ALONG WITH THIS EPISODE?? Head over to our Patreon page and when you donate $3 or more a month you get this PDF and every other. We will also be bringing you many extras exclusively to our patrons including transcriptions and a FREE gift  of our latest Ebook, The Diatonic Method. We hope that we bring you value every week here at the 10 Minute Jazz Lesson and we appreciate all of your support! SIGN UP TO BE A PATRON TODAY!

Caravan is a tune that everyone who plays jazz must know. It also happens to be a really fun tune to improvise over if you know what you are doing. The 'A' sections of this tune only contain two chords so one must be able to stretch their ideas over a long period of time and not run out of things to say. This tune also happens to extensively use the diminished dominant scale which we have explored in previous episodes of the podcast. In this episode we learn to use this scale and particular sound in a different way. We will be taking a look at scale patterns, triad pairs, and finally, how to resolve our ideas to the I chord when it appears at the end of the A sections. You will notice that we don't get into the bridge in this episode because it is so similar to the rhythm changes bridge which we covered in the last episode of the show. If you feel you need some ideas for improvising over the bridge, please check out episode 7! Are you ready to sound better than you ever have playing over Caravan?? Jump into this episode and have fun! WANT THE PDF THAT GOES ALONG WITH THIS EPISODE?? Head over to our Patreon page and when you donate $3 or more a month you get this PDF and every other. We will also be bringing you many extras exclusively to our patrons including transcriptions and a FREE gift  of our latest Ebook, The Diatonic Method. We hope that we bring you value every week here at the 10 Minute Jazz Lesson and we appreciate all of your support! SIGN UP TO BE A PATRON TODAY!

This is our third installment of our series on Rhythm Changes. Last week we took a look at the 'A' sections of the form and learned some exercises to get us through these rapid fire chords. This week we will focus on the bridge, where the chords spread out considerably. Because the chords come at us a little bit slower, we have to approach this section in a different way than we did on the 'A' sections. In this episode we look at a couple of different approaches. The first, is using our thirds and sevenths to develop good voice leading between the chords. Then we move into using chromaticism to make our lines a little bit more interesting and unexpected. By the time you get to the end of these three episodes, you should have a pretty good handle on improvising over these changes. Of course, this is just an introduction into playing over Rhythm Changes and is not meant to be the only work you do to master this form. There is a lifetime of different concepts and ideas you could come up with over Rhythm Changes. These episodes will at least get you started and give you something to play over this progression. Important: Take this material further and come up with your own ideas using mine as a springboard! Good luck and have fun! WANT THE PDF THAT GOES ALONG WITH THIS EPISODE?? Head over to our Patreon page and when you donate $3 or more a month you get this PDF and every other. We will also be bringing you many extras exclusively to our patrons including transcriptions and a FREE gift  of our latest Ebook, The Diatonic Method. We hope that we bring you value every week here at the 10 Minute Jazz Lesson and we appreciate all of your support! SIGN UP TO BE A PATRON TODAY!

In today's episode we get deeper into rhythm changes and start working on a couple of concepts that will start you into the world of improvising over this important form. In this episode we will be concentrating on the "A" sections of the rhythm changes progression. We'll save the bridge for the next episode. We will start with an exercise that explores a simple linear concept over the chord changes that will start you on getting familiar with each and every chord. We then move into a more vertical exercise that will point out the important chord tones in each bar. These first two exercises will start to familiarize you with the sound of this progression and get your fingers and brain working in the right direction to eventually master these chords. We finish up the episode by learning three different turnarounds over the iii-VI-ii-V progression. This is not only important to rhythm changes, but in many chord progressions you will see on a regular basis in the jazz tradition. We move from easy to more difficult in these exercises. By the end of this episode, you should be aware of the work you have to do to sound good over the A sections on rhythm changes. Remember to go slowly and carefully to get the full benefit out of these exercises! Have fun! WANT THE PDF THAT GOES ALONG WITH THIS EPISODE?? Head over to our Patreon page and when you donate $3 or more a month you get this PDF and every other. We will also be bringing you many extras exclusively to our patrons including transcriptions and a FREE gift  of our latest Ebook, The Diatonic Method. We hope that we bring you value every week here at the 10 Minute Jazz Lesson and we appreciate all of your support! SIGN UP TO BE A PATRON TODAY!

This week we start looking at another concept that is a must for any improviser to master. Rhythm changes are a staple in the jazz language and happen to be a little more complicated than the blues. We use part 1 to tach you some quintessential rhythm changes melodies. If we hope to master rhythm changes we need to have some heads to play over these changes. This will also serve the purpose of getting used to the sound of rhythm changes if you have never played them before or have limited experience. The three tunes we are going to be learning today are, Oleo, The Flinstones, and Anthropology. We scale our melodies in difficulty, learning the easiest first right up to learning a fairly intense bebop melody. Enjoy Part 1 of our series on rhythm changes! WANT THE PDF THAT GOES ALONG WITH THIS EPISODE?? Head over to our Patreon page and when you donate $3 or more a month you get this PDF and every other. We will also be bringing you many extras exclusively to our patrons including transcriptions and a FREE gift  of our latest Ebook, The Diatonic Method. We hope that we bring you value every week here at the 10 Minute Jazz Lesson and we appreciate all of your support! SIGN UP TO BE A PATRON TODAY!  

In Part 2 of our series on diminished dominants, we get a little deeper into this concept and create some vocabulary we can use in real life improvising situations. Our vehicle is going to be ii-V-i progressions, which are the most common progression in almost any tune you will see. By learning this vocabulary and plugging it into our solos, you will start to hear this concept reflected in your playing. Once you have incorporated the scales from part 1 of the series, start working on these great vocabulary lines and making them a real part of your solos. Remember, this will take time and is not something that will happen overnight! Go slowly and methodically through these exercises and concentrate on them deeply. The sooner you learn to practice with 100% concentration and effort, the sooner you will see the results. WANT THE PDF THAT GOES ALONG WITH THIS EPISODE?? Head over to our Patreon page and when you donate $3 or more a month you get this PDF and every other. We will also be bringing you many extras exclusively to our patrons including transcriptions and a FREE gift  of our latest Ebook, The Diatonic Method. We hope that we bring you value every week here at the 10 Minute Jazz Lesson and we appreciate all of your support! SIGN UP TO BE A PATRON TODAY!

In Episode 3 we start our journey into the concept of diminished dominants. This episode, again, is the start of a two part series. This concept is a must for any improviser to have in the arsenal and we are going to introduce you to it step by step. This episode focuses on exactly what a diminished dominant is and takes you through the basic knowledge and scales that you will need when we start to look at how to employ this device in our solos and improvisations. We will show you how to form a diminished dominant scale and how it relates to another, often misunderstood scale, the diminished scale. Jump into this episode to learn about diminished dominants and how to make them a part of your playing! WANT THE PDF THAT GOES ALONG WITH THIS EPISODE?? Head over to our Patreon page and when you donate $3 or more a month you get this PDF and every other. We will also be bringing you many extras exclusively to our patrons including transcriptions and a FREE gift  of our latest Ebook, The Diatonic Method. We hope that we bring you value every week here at the 10 Minute Jazz Lesson and we appreciate all of your support! SIGN UP TO BE A PATRON TODAY!  

Welcome to Part 2 of our series on using thirds and sevenths over the blues. Using part 1 as our foundation, it's time to kick these ideas into high gear! We are going to take what we have learned from the previous exercises and actually start forming solos that use great voice leading and center around our thirds and sevenths. I am also going to have you use some of that pent up creative energy to form your own solo with a couple of road markers along the way. If you are new to the concepts presented in this episode, make sure you check out Episode 1 before you attempt these more advanced exercises that appear in Episode 2. Good luck, have fun, and take your time with this material! WANT THE PDF THAT GOES ALONG WITH THIS EPISODE?? Head over to our Patreon page and when you donate $3 or more a month you get this PDF and every other. We will also be bringing you many extras exclusively to our patrons including transcriptions and a FREE gift  of our latest Ebook, The Diatonic Method. We hope that we bring you value every week here at the 10 Minute Jazz Lesson and we appreciate all of your support! SIGN UP TO BE A PATRON TODAY!

Welcome to Episode 1 of the 10 Minute Jazz Lesson Podcast! In this episode we are going to take you through important exercises related to the 3rd and 7th over the 12 bar blues progression. In the episode, I explain to you why the 3rd and 7th are such important notes and why I want you to have a complete and thorough understanding of this important concept. If you ever wondered why your favorite jazz musicians sound so good over the blues, this is the place to start down the path of sounding just like them. There are so many ways to approach the blues and this one get's you sounding like you know the changes inside and out right from the start. If you feel like you just gloss over the changes without ever nailing them, learn these exercises and hear your playing start to change for the better! WANT THE PDF THAT GOES ALONG WITH THIS EPISODE?? Head over to our Patreon page and when you donate $3 or more a month you get this PDF and every other. We will also be bringing you many extras exclusively to our patrons including transcriptions and a FREE gift  of our latest Ebook, The Diatonic Method. We hope that we bring you value every week here at the 10 Minute Jazz Lesson and we appreciate all of your support! SIGN UP TO BE A PATRON TODAY!