If your goal is to Skyrocket your Jazz playing and improve more than you ever have this year then I
want to help you with that let's go over three things that will take your Jazz playing to the
next level now these three things I'm going to share with you are things that I've seen
my inner circle members who have been with me for a while see tremendous success doing
these practicing habits and so if you're someone who's looking to really get the most out of your
practice time this year to really improve and start playing jazz solos that feel effortless
and fun and exciting then you're really going to want to pay attention to these strategies so
strategy number one is to make a goal to learn one Jazz standard a month make a goal to learn
one Jazz standard a month so first of all why Jazz standards so when I think of jazz standards
and practicing Jazz standards it's really what we would call the 20 of the 80 20 rule of learning
Jazz if you're not familiar with that it's also called the Pareto principle which basically says
that eighty percent of the results that we're getting in our playing in our musicianship are
coming from 20 of the actual efforts we're making so Jazz standards are the 20 if you're constantly
learning new Jazz standards you're learning new harmonic lessons you're learning how to
navigate chord changes better you're learning how to comp better how to play better bass lines or
becoming more familiar with what we actually do in jazz and if you're applying learning solos
and exercises and everything to a jazz standard you're learning you are benefiting the maximum
amount from your practice sessions so why do I say to make a goal to learn one each
month which by the way is 12 Jazz standards by the end of the year well one month is a doable
goal for most people right like learning one new tune in a month even if you don't have that much
practice time at the bare minimum learning the melody and the chords is doable for most people
and then hopefully you have a little extra time to learn part of a jazz solo part of an Etude part of
some core tone exercises or something over top of that as well to improve on an area of your playing
so when we're being actual realistic with how much time we have to really deep dive on something it
really manages expectations and helps us not to get demotivated or burned out on top of that I
think it's a great idea to spend lots of time working on a jazz standard at least a month
before moving on to the next thing that way you're not learning 5 or 10 Jazz standards in one month
which I did one year of my life where you don't really know the Jazz standard that well if you're
learning too many of them at once additionally though you also have to have a time frame to
know when to move on to the next one because you're never going to master a jazz standard
you're going to keep improving as you go along but you need to move on eventually to learn more of
those lessons so moving on to another one after a month is a good time period for most people
and by the way if you need help doing this this is actually what we do every single month in my inner
circle membership so I'll leave a link to that in the description down below if this year you
want to learn one new Jazz standard a month and really improve alongside thousands of other Jazz
musicians doing the exact same thing so straight strategy number two is to improvise and record so
throughout the year and when you're learning these Jazz standards it's really important that you
improvise as much as possible Right to really just get out there and play from where you're at now
you may not be a good improviser right now but you will never get better if you don't just actually
improvise so you want to improvise as much as you possibly can consider it the more you're actually
improvising the better you're ultimately going to get because essentially you're allowing yourself
to learn from your mistakes trial and error which by the way comes in with the second part of what
I just said I said to record yourself recording is a really big thing that we do actually in my
inner circle membership and the reason that we do a lot of recording is because it's not only
documenting your playing so that you can kind of see where you were at at a given moment of time it
gives yourself the opportunity to actually listen back and see what was going well and what wasn't
going well on top of that when you record you're kind of simulating a performance in environment
you may have noticed if you've ever recorded yourself before that you might feel a little
bit anxious you know sweaty Palms just in general a little bit of a heightened sense of awareness
going on there so the more that you're recording yourself the more you're gonna get used to that
and not feel those Jitters when you're actually going out to start performing and playing so
improvise as much as possible and record yourself as much as possible so that you're just going to
get better all around at those things now strategy number three is to continuously audit your playing
continuously audit your playing my most successful students are doing this constantly so after you've
recorded your improvisation or a tune that you're working on or some comping or some bass lines or
whatever have you listen back to that recording and ask yourself two questions question number
one what do I really like about what I played this is the most important question to ask because when
you hear something that you like you want to double down triple down quadruple down on it
and improve upon it so even if it's just like a hint of a way you played a melody or a hint of
the way you played a chord or a certain concept that you really like that you did perhaps it
just really needs to be refined and matured a little bit more so really identify what those
are so that in the practice room you can practice more of that and by the way it's actually a great
idea to transcribe yourself not necessarily write it down but learn by ear something that
you like I've done that before is listen back to recording of myself really liked a line that
I played and figured out what it was because if I learn that stuff it's more likely to actually
come out in my improvisations organically and naturally now the second question to ask is
what did I not like which is usually the first question people start asking themselves when
they listen back to recordings but it is also important because naturally we have to think of
it kind of like a torpedo so when a torpedo shoots out it's heading towards a Target and when it's
heading towards that Target it's going to go off course for a little bit until it's shoots off a
signal finds that it's slightly off Target and corrects itself then it does it again corrects
itself again shoots off another signal corrects itself again until it finally hits its Target and
really that's what our practicing should be like as well constantly refining the things that we
need to work on so that we can get closer to the end result that we're hoping for which is playing
jazz solos and playing jazz at a really high level so after you've asked these questions come up with
an actual plan to address them so for example if you're learning a new Jazz standard every single
month and you notice that you're really not very good at playing two five one chord progressions
well maybe you're going to want to really start learning a lot of two five one language or mapping
out chord tones to two five ones composing as many ideas as possible so that as you continue
to learn more Jazz standards which inevitably will have more 2-5 ones you're going to improve
on that area as well as some melodic ideas that you've already identified that you really like
or some comping ideas that you really like you can refine those you can get better at that you
can expand your ability to do that you can dig deeper into what is so great about what you're
doing and continue to apply that stuff to your improvisations what's most important is that
this year you're having a lot of fun playing and practicing so always be focusing on that
first and foremost if we're not having fun then you're probably going to quit get burned out and
demotivated but if you're practicing sustainably doing things manageably always seeing that you're
improving even if it's just a little bit at a time you're going to continue to feel motivated improve
more than you ever have this year so now after hearing all that if you'd like some more deeper
strategies for how to get from a beginner to an intermediate to an advanced level jazz musician
I'm going to leave a video on the screen right here that will help you do that and go over some
more specifics of what you actually should be practicing do check out my inner circle
membership if you think that that would be a helpful thing for you this year I'll leave a link
in the description down below as well as a link here on the screen make sure you like this video
if you found it helpful please subscribe to the channel and we'll see you in the next one cheers