The 10 Minute Jazz Lesson Podcast

As promised, here is part 2 of our series on making your solos over the blues much more interesting. Last week we looked at some changes that we could put into the blues progression to make it sound more bebop-ish, thus giving us a little bit more direction and interesting harmonic movements to solo over. This week we are going to take everything more "outside" the chord changes by working with tension and release, as well as chord substitutions. A word of warning before jumping into this stuff. You should be sounding pretty darn good over the blues in order to start putting these devices into action. They require a secondary mode of thinking and if you don't have the original changes down pat, they can be very confusing. Ready to jump in? Enjoy this week's episode and good luck with the 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!

The blues is one of the most, if not THE most important progression that you have to learn to play over. The blues is the basis on which so much of jazz is built on that I consider it a right of passage for every player. One of the coolest things about the blues is we can play it with extremely simple changes or very complicated changes along with every combination in between. This week we are going to look at some chord changes that you can put into the blues to spice things up and make everything a bit more interesting. This changes will also give your solos a little more direction when it comes to playing over this all-important chord progression and allow you to do more than you thought possible over this deceptively easy form. Enjoy the episode and next week we will take this concept even further with more advanced material for you to dig in to! 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!

We all know that learning vocabulary is vitally important for becoming a competent improviser. But learning vocab is sometimes not very rewarding in the way that we can't be as creative as we would ultimately like to be. This week's episode is focused on taking our normal vocabulary building exercises and spicing it up with some of our own ideas. Things like changing direction, adding or subtracting from a line, or changing something the slightest bit can force us to get deeper into what we are practicing rather than just memorizing what someone else has played and plugging it into our solos. This also helps with the common problem of messing up when we attempt to play one of our licks and not being able to recover because we don't have any flexibility in our playing to take over and prevent us from that dreaded sound of being completely directionless. Our goal here is to take one ii-V-I lick and manipulate it in the theme and variation style, giving us many different ways to approach the same sound and resulting in a more complete feeling of knowing the vocab we have learned. 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!

Welcome to the Lick of The Month! This week we learn a line from one of the greatest jazz musicians that has ever lived, Michael Brecker. This lick is from his solo over the classic tune, Song For My Father. Brecker, in his classic style, doesn't stay inside the key of the chord he's playing over. This one short lick is like a masterclass on how to use tri-tone substitutions. If you aren't quite ready for substitutions yet, don't worry! File this episode under work to be done when you feel ready. I would guess that most of you will be able to grasp what Michael is doing even if you aren't quite ready to put it into your own solos yet. The PDF is very important on this one so make sure to download it and be looking at it while listening to the episode. I'm also including an exercise that can help you get into the tri-tone sound that is a little bit less complicated than what Brecker is playing. This will get the sound into your ears and give you a little facility before trying to do too much with it. I hope you enjoy this Lick Of The Month and find it useful! 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 completes our look at core exercises which every jazz musician worth their weight needs to know. We already studied major modes, chord tones and extensions, and this week we complete the series with a look at chromatic exercises. Chromaticism is important in every form of jazz but particularly in bebop. I like to think about bebop as the first form of "modern" jazz. Meaning that all music that came after it was very informed by the bebop style. These exercises will translate well to any tune you're playing over but work particularly well over the fast paced chord changes that characterize bebop compositions. 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 continuing our look at exercises I consider the building blocks of effective improvisation. Last week we studied some scale based exercises and this week we will take a look at chord based exercises. Learning all of the upper structure chord extensions is a way to break out of your regular chord tone based solos. These exercises will cover notes such as the 9th, sharp 11th, and 13th and work them seamlessly into regular chord tone exercises giving them a new flavor and giving you a new set of skills. Break out of your comfort zone with this week's episode and you will start to see results almost immediately! Enjoy the show and remember to get in touch with me if you have any questions or concerns. 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 are going to start a series on core concepts and exercises that I feel every jazz player should have in their toolbox. Our first stop is going to be a great exercise dealing with the modes of the major scale. This exercise is a simple one but it carries huge benefits when it comes to developing a general base of technique and facility when improvising. There is much talk of practicing your 'jazz scales' but the way I think of it is scales are scales no matter what type of music you play. After all, most jazz harmony was born out of the classical music that cam before it. Learning the modes and being knowledgeable and facile when it comes to these important building blocks of harmony will get you far. These are much of the  'jazz scales' that everyone talks about. You have probably practiced some form of this exercise without even realizing it. I play one version unaccompanied and then another over a static major chord to give you a taste of one of the many ways to approach this exercise. The only limit to what you can do with this exercise is your own creativity! Make sure, like always, that you take this exercise and put it in all 12 keys for maximum benefit. Enjoy the episode and I'll talk to you next week! 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 in our series on chromatic approaches and diatonic chords! This week we will work on approaches as they relate to diatonic 7th chords instead of triads. This adds a new dimension to the sound, and although similar to part 1, provides some new challenges and opportunities when it comes to this important concept. One of the particular challenges is coming up with the right rhythms to use with 5 note figures. A big part of this episode will be showing you how to group the notes without dealing with figures that are too difficult and don't allow you to internalize the concept. As with most material I show you here, make sure that you do the work and put these exercises in all 12 keys. You won't get much out of the examples if you skip this critical step. Have fun with these and remember to get in touch if you need more help! 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!  

Our second installment of the Lick Of The Month series brings you an awesome bebop iii-vi-ii-v-I line. Also known as a turnaround, this progression is widely used in tunes, bebop tunes in particular. One place that you can immediately start to apply this material is over rhythm changes. You'll notice that this line contains a lot of chromaticism and this will be tough to figure out at first but give it some time and effort and you will be hearing and playing this in all 12 keys. This part is essential, make sure that you memorize the line in all keys as soon as you can so you can start actually using this material in your solos. Enjoy the line and don't forget to reach out if you're having any trouble or if you have questions about the material! Talk to you all next week where we will cover chromatic approaches part 2. 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!

One of the toughest things to do in jazz is incorporate chromaticism. It's so easy to just stay inside of the diatonic scale, after all we have been working on scales since we first picked up our instruments, right? Starting to incorporate chromaticism sometimes feels like jumping off a cliff with no safety rope. It sounds and feels foreign to us. In this episode I  give you some exercises that utilize chromatic approaches in relation to diatonic triads. Diatonic triads are built off of each step of the major scale and adding an approach tone to these can turn our vanilla lines and arpeggios into something special. When starting this process you will notice that there are many non-harmonic tones involved in these exercises. As long as these notes resolve to a diatonic note, they will sound great! The key, however, is learning to use them properly and this episode is all about the exercises that will start to get this into your playing. In Part 2, we'll take this concept one step further by using diatonic 7th chords instead of just the triads. Until then, get this material under your belt and you'll be in good shape for the next one. Have fun and go slow! 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!  

I got a questions from one of our listeners, Andrew about how he could improve his skills of learning tunes by ear. I thought that this was a great topic to do an episode on as it concerns one of the most important parts of playing jazz: ear training. This is a particularly hard part of ear training because it requires us to figure out harmony as well as melody and rhythm. This skill can also come in very handy when we want to play a tune or piece that has not been charted out anywhere. This week's episode doesn't contain any PDF's and is just a short run through of my process for figuring out tunes using nothing but my ears. This was a tough episode for me because I could have talked about this for an hour. I wanted to keep with the 10 minute theme so I had to stop myself and just give you an overview of the process. If any listeners out there have any further questions about this process, don't hesitate to drop me a line, I would be happy to clarify anything or dig a little deeper into the process with you. Enjoy this week's 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 episode is all about triad pairs. This is going to be the first in a series of shows on this topic but fair warning, they won't be in order week after week. I'm going to pepper them in every few weeks to give you a chance to work on them. The first episode in the series will be about major triads a whole step apart. The first thing you need to do is get familiar with the pattern of these triads played back to back. You're also going to want to get used to the sound so that when you actually put these patterns over a tune you know what your in for. The exercises feature ascending and descending triads both in triplets and in duplets. The point of the exercises is to internalize the patterns so that they can come out of your instrument naturally and not sound forced. The danger of using this device is that it tends to sound forced and predictable. In order to use these triad pairs in a convincing way, much of your practice time will involve figuring out creative and convincing ways to work these into your solos. 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!

We are starting a new monthly thing here at the 10 Minute Jazz Lesson Podcast. Every month, on the third episode of the month, we will learn a new piece of vocabulary over a commonly used chord progression. This is meant for us to learn great material over chord changes that we will see everyday as an improvising jazz musician. If you aren't dedicating at least a part of your practice routine to learning new vocabulary, you should be! This week we take a look at what is perhaps the most common chord progression in jazz: the ii-V7-I. I'm taking a line that I believe I originally got from one of David Baker's bebop books and committing it to memory and learning it in all 12 keys. I'll show you the system I use in order to put lines in 12 keys fairly easily as well. The final step is inserting the line into a tune with many ii-V7-I progressions and that tune is Cherokee. Tune in to hear about all of these concepts in more detail and learn how to make learning vocabulary a serious part of your routine! 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!

Are you ready for part 2 of our whole tone series? If you haven't checked out part one, make sure that you go back and check that out. It's required listening if you want to get the most out of this week's episode. Part 1 was geared towards getting the whole tone scale into your brain and under your fingers. This week we get to the fun stuff! We are going to start plugging the whole tone scale into chord progressions that we will see on a regular basis. We start with augmented ii-V7-I patterns, then we move to a nifty trick over the classic jazz standard, 'Take The A-Train.' The final part of this episode will be a little bit more advanced and might not be for everyone. We are going to use whole tone scales and triad pairs over a minor blues giving us that classic 'out' sound that everyone strives to get into their playing. Enjoy this week's episode and make sure you download the worksheets to get maximum value out of this episode. 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 are going to take a look at an important scale in jazz: The Whole Tone Scale. there are many different uses for this scale in all kinds of situations and we will get to that in part 2. This week we are going to cover the basics and get this scale under our fingers. I'm presenting you with some select exercises to get the whole tone scale into your ears and under your fingers. We are going to start developing some flexibility with the scale so next week we have the technique down to actually be able to use it in our solos. While the whole tone scale is not a hard concept to grasp, it does provide many technical challenges on all instruments so it is vital that you work on the PDF exercises before next week. Have fun and remember to email me with any questions about 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!