The 10 Minute Jazz Lesson Podcast

Welcome to our first ever interview episode! One of the things I love most about being a musician is getting to hang out with other great players and talk to them about what's going on in their lives and careers. From here on out, I would like to bring you one or two conversations a month from people in the jazz and music world that I think are doing great things. Jason Heath runs the Contrabass Conversations Podcast and is truly one of the nicest and most important people in the music world. He brings together so many people around his interview style show and this is something that you should all go and check out today. He has spoken with some of the most legendary jazz bassists on the planet and there is no substitute for hearing some of the wisdom that they have straight from the source. In this episode, I speak with Jason about what he's currently doing in the industry, some of his favorite tools for being a better musician, and some of the educational materials that he uses with all of his students. I hope you enjoy this episode, please send me the names of anyone you would love to hear interviewed on the show! In the future I would also love to have some of our listeners on the show to talk about where they are in their journey and what they are doing to get to the next level. Drop me a line if you're interested! Here are the links to many of the things we talk about in the show: Contrabass Conversations Podcast Jazz Episodes of Jason's Podcast Audition Episodes of Jason's Podcast Evernote  

This week we talk about one of my favorite apps that every musician needs to have.                              

Editing is one of the toughest things you can do in life. Whether editing your writing or editing what you say in certain situations, choosing what to include and what to leave out are crucial. The same holds true for improvising. Sometimes not playing something can be just as powerful, if note more, than playing it. The heroes we look up to were masters of editing and a well placed rest could bring you almost to tears. We are going to take the same Coltrane line we used in episode 64 and edit it in various ways. In the previous episode, we shifted the rhythm but didn't remove anything from the line. This episode will be all about restraint and playing less notes instead of more. Enjoy the episode! 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 features a quote and discussion from one of the greatest musicians that has ever lived!                      

Phil Woods was a true giant in jazz history. One of the preeminent saxophonists after Charlie Parker, Woods took the alto to new heights and has a legacy that will live on forever in jazz history. This week we are pulling two lines out of his solo on Blue Bossa and finding out what makes them tick. The first line demonstrates some fundamentals that will get us away from playing only 8th notes when it comes to a turnaround. Sometimes we can get in the habit of thinking that we need to fill every space and Woods shows us some masterful rhythmic playing that will ope our eyes to other possibilities. The second line shows us how to handle a minor ii-v in masterful fashion with some great chromatic material. Make sure you grab the PDF and memorize these two licks so you can get them into your own playing. Enjoy the episode! 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 weeks we give your practice plan some new life. Accomplish more by doing less!                        

Rhythmic awareness and flexibility is where it's at. Rhythm is by far the most important thing for an improviser and in this episode we talk about how you can supercharge your vocabulary work and become the most flexible musician in the room. Learning vocabulary is a fine line between sounding like yourself with influences and becoming a carbon copy of someone else. The first obviously being the better outcome. If we inject our vocabulary work with some of our own rhythms or just simply switch things up from the original piece of material that we took, we suddenly start to see our vocabulary becoming our own and we start to form our own conception of music. Have fun with the episode, I hope you enjoy! 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 Motivation Monday is all about time management and avoiding the distractions that haunt us in everyday modern life.                      

This week we are talking about pentatonic scales. The tough part about pentatonics are the fact that it's a five note scale and the majority of what we play is in 2 or 4 note patterns. Our job is to turn these five note groupings into something we can use in 4/4 or 2/4. Something that we can get into our playing almost immediately and see real results. The patterns in this episode range from extremely easy to much more complicated so make sure you really digest what a pentatonic scale is first, get it under your fingers and in your ears, then dive in to the pattern-istic playing that I'm laying out for you here. Have fun and enjoy the episode! Many people have been asking about the theme music for the podcast so here's the link to check out this awesome band that I'm involved with called SOJOY! 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 Motivation Monday is all about a jazz legend and what he taught me about hard work.

This week wraps up our series on upper structures. We have already covered major seventh chords and minor seventh chords. This week we'll focus on the dominant chord. It's important to realize that there are so many possibilities for dominant chords when it comes to altered notes and superimposing different chords over the top. We will cover some basics here but this is one chord quality where there is a lot more work to be done down the road. Have fun and enjoy the episode!   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 I talk about accountability and what that means to musicians when we are usually only accountable to ourselves.

This is the second in our 3 part series on upper structures. Last week we looked at the major seventh chord and this week we pivot to the minor seventh chord. The upper structure for this chord keeps everything diatonic and isn't very hard to understand. Again, we utilize the 9th, 11th, and 13th and learn how to play these notes as a substitute chord. Remember that you have to have the basic chord tones completely down and memorized before moving on to this material. These notes and structures are the key to unlocking the most interesting sounds over any chords. Have fun and let me know if you have any questions! WANT THE PDF THAT GOES ALONG WITH THIS EPISODE?? Head over to our Patreon page and when you donate $3 or more a month you get this PDF and every other. We will also be bringing you many extras exclusively to our patrons including transcriptions and a FREE gift  of our latest Ebook, The Diatonic Method. We hope that we bring you value every week here at the 10 Minute Jazz Lesson and we appreciate all of your support! SIGN UP TO BE A PATRON TODAY! #mc_embed_signup{background:#fff; clear:left; font:14px Helvetica,Arial,sans-serif; } /* Add your own MailChimp form style overrides in your site stylesheet or in this style block. We recommend moving this block and the preceding CSS link to the HEAD of your HTML file. */ Subscribe to our mailing list and get your FREE copy of 10 Essential Charlie Parker Lines! * indicates required Email Address * First Name (function($) {window.fnames = new Array(); window.ftypes = new Array();fnames[0]='EMAIL';ftypes[0]='email';fnames[1]='FNAME';ftypes[1]='text';}(jQuery));var $mcj = jQuery.noConflict(true);

I'm really excited for this week's episode as this is one of my favorite things to practice. Upper structures are the key to unlocking the most interesting sounds from any chord. This week, in part 1, we are focusing on the major seventh chord and what notes we can add to our playing to make things a little bit more interesting. I'll warn you that this material is a little bit more advanced than some of the other things I bring you on this podcast so get your basic chord tones down first before jumping into this material. But if your ready, this can be some of the most fruitful and fun work you can do when it comes to your practicing. Have fun and drop me any questions you may have! 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!

Joe Lovano is a living legend. One of the most flexible, skilled, and genuine musicians in the world brings us our lesson for the week. This episode is based around one of his licks from his solo on Donna Lee. We see him using a variety of intervals in the second and third bar of this line and we can take a lot from this. By coming up with our own exercises based around mixing and matching different intervals, we can develop some of the flexibility that Lovano has put on display here. Make sure you take the exercises I have provided for you to the next level by coming up with your own. I can't stress enough how important this part of the lesson is. Be creative and come up with your own material! Enjoy the episode! 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!