Are you making any of these three critical mistakes when learning jazz well today i'm
going to show you exactly what they are how to avoid them and what to do instead coming up
what's up brent here from learn.js standards real musicians just like you learn how to play jazz all
while shortening the learning curve no matter what instrument you play on this channel we do
tutorials on jazz theory on jazz improv deep dives into jazz standards as well as general
best practices like in today's video so make sure you subscribe hit that bell notification button
to never miss out on anything going on here now having taught thousands and thousands of musicians
in my inner circle membership and in my courses over the years i've seen some of the same mistakes
happen over and over and over again to beginner jazz musicians i want to help you avoid those
and give you the right path forward so that you don't make those same mistakes now keep in mind
i'm being a little bit overly dramatic when i call these jazz crimes there's really no such thing
however it's all just in good fun to say if you avoid making these mistakes then you're gonna save
tons of practice time there's tons of frustration and ultimately you're gonna improve in your jazz
skills much much faster than if you were otherwise mistake number one is they use scales as the very
first place to go when learning how to improvise now that's obviously very standard knowledge is
that hey you can learn scales to improvise like for example take a look at this scale map over
the jazz standard in a mellow tone if you look at just those first several chords you see that
over top of the b flat seven you could play a b flat mixolydian scale right so you go out
and learn the b flat mixolydian scale you can play the e flat mixolydian scale over
the e5 dominant chord and then of course over the a flat major or the k56 chord you can play the
a flat major scale right so those are of just a few scale options and you can keep going with like
tons of different options dorian and altered over different dominant seventh chords now
that's all well and good and technically there's nothing wrong with learning how to play scales to
improvise we call this chord scale theory and for some it could actually be a really good
tool however i do not believe this is the very first place that you should go when learning to
improvise the very first place you go is learning to play chord tones so take a look at this
chord tone map over top of in a mellow tone and what we're looking at here is the core structure
of each one of these chords and that would be the root the third the fifth and the seventh right
these are seventh chords so the reason that we want to really first go to chord tones is because
ultimately when we hear our favorite jazz musicians play they are playing chord changes
and you could take away the band from them and they could just be soloing by themselves
and you can totally hear the chord changes in their solos the reason is they have mastered chord
tones they know exactly how to resolve to them in their lines they know them forwards and backwards
and therefore these are the root cornerstone starting blocks that you should be focusing on
when trying to figure out what notes to play over top of a jazz standard so for
example on this chord tone map and in a mellow tone you can go ahead and walk up
that dominant seventh chord and then go ahead and connect it to the nearest chord tone there
over top of the e flat seven and then resolve to the a flat
right and connecting the chord tones that way and if you can connect the chord tones that
way throughout an entire piece even do this in different octaves that's where you really start
understanding the flow of the tune and identifying where those chord tones are on your instrument so
every single time i would recommend first going to chord tones if you want to start filling in
the blanks with scales later that's totally fine but i would personally spend most of my practice
time becoming an absolute expert at mapping out and identifying chord tones of the chords within
jazz standards mistake number two is they try to copy and paste licks that they learn into their
solos now you've probably heard from plenty of jazz educators that you should be learning licks
and even solos from the jazz greats the musicians that you love listening to and that's really good
advice in fact it's some of the top advice i usually give but it's also advice you've heard
before right you want to learn jazz vocabulary you get that vocabulary from them and hopefully
you'll start to understand how jazz improv and the language works better so that's important
work that you should do but the disconnect comes when we try to just take those ideas
and copy and paste them into our solos i mean i'm sure that you've experienced this before where you
get up to go play your solo and you're thinking about this particular lick that you want to play
and you just try to go for it on a certain chord progression and it sort of doesn't
work out it falls flat it doesn't really sound very musical and that's because
that's really not your organic idea that's someone else's organic idea that you're trying to force
into a certain scenario so for example let's take a look at this jim hall lick this is a great lick
that i learned from jim hall over top of a two five one chord progression sounds like this
all right two five one it perfectly outlines the chord changes in fact it goes down and up
a minor arpeggio for the two chords so right fits perfectly in with playing the chord tones
and outline some altered tones over the five chords i mean it's just a great lick
it's awesome and yes i would love to play that lick when i'm improvising but the better thing
to do is start to practice figuring out how you can take those ideas and make them their
own so what i would recommend you do instead is start composing as many different musical ideas
based off of that lick as possible so for instance just off the top of my head
i want to use the first part as a basis and then i'll fill in the blanks with something else
all right just an idea a totally different ending to that lick or let's do something like this
right i mean i just kind of took some of the themes and elements of that jim holick
and add it to my own and i would just spend lots and lots of time trying to come up with
as many ideas as possible finding the ones i like actually memorizing those and those are
much more likely to come out in your jazz playing than that jim hall lick that i just learned so
learn language but then compose as many ideas as possible that are your own and those will come
out in your jazz solos much more organically now mistake number three is they learn jazz standards
by reading and i know that as i say this many people are getting a little bit offended here
because lots of people learn jazz standards by reading they take out a piece of sheet music
from the real book and they just read through the melody and they stick to the chords and
they're improvising that way and 100 you can get by that way for sure however the common mistake is
that you stay stuck in that page you can't get out of it this is ultimately not what we want
as jazz improvisers as jazz players we want to be as far away from the music as possible so there's
a few things you can do so number one i would recommend you memorize it if you don't memorize
it there's going to be a big problem you're always going to be stuck to the page it's always going
to be a crutch for you if i took that page away from you you wouldn't be able to improvise you
wouldn't be able to play the melody you wouldn't even remember what the chord changes are the other
thing that you can do and even if you start doing it just small increments is to actually start
learning jazz standards by ear in my inner circle membership that is the one thing that i say to all
of my students is at the very very least learn the melody by ear that is the best stepping stone into
learning material by ear and it's ultimately going to help you a lot more and you're going to learn
that jazz standard remember it for much longer totally okay if you don't have the skills to learn
chord changes by ear to use some sheet music to use a chord map or a chord chart to help you with
that and memorize it that way but also you can slowly learn how to recognize chord progressions
yourself so that when you listen to recording you start recognizing those so unless you start taking
those steps now you're probably never going to get there so what i'd love to hear from you in the
comments down below is which one of these mistakes are you currently making and what's one simple
step that you can take to start correcting this and by the way if you just heard the last part
where i'm talking about learning jazz standards by ear and that sounds completely crazy to you
way overwhelming and you're really not sure where to start well you're in luck i have a completely
free guide for you called learn jazz standards the smart way you can get that at learn jazz standards
the smartway.com totally free and it will give you a five-step process of how to do this
is pretty much foolproof so check that out i'll have that on the screen right now as well i also
have on the screen right now a video that could be helpful for you for learning uh some great jazz
standards that are great for jam sessions and gigs so if you're looking for jazz standards to learn
go check that out right now over here make sure you like this video if you found it
valuable make sure you subscribe to the channel and look forward to seeing you in the next video