If you want to be a good musician of any kind then you know you need to practice
especially if you want to play jazz so i'm gonna give you the very best practice advice i can give
you to help you get set up for success coming right up now there's a lot of things out there
for you to practice i mean there are numerous things for you to practice and you're probably
never going to quite feel satisfied with your jazz playing or your musicianship in general which is
constantly going to put you down this path of continual practice and so it's really important
that you take this advice here because it could make a huge difference with the way you perceive
practicing music and achieving and getting better so tip number one is to stop trying to find more
time to practice i repeat stop trying to find more time to practice this is a huge problem that a lot
of students who come to me have they are obsessed with the idea that in order to play jazz they have
to practice for tons and tons of hours and this simply is absolutely not true in fact i tell all
of my inner circle members when they first join our membership that i do not want them
to try to find any more time to practice than they already have now the reason for this is if you
keep trying to find more time to practice it means you're going to be constantly discouraged by the
fact that you aren't finding that time to practice because you have a busy life so what's better to
do is just to find the time that you already have to practice and just dedicate to that it's going
to make you feel comfortable it's going to feel like you're taking a big load off your back you're
lowering expectations so that you don't feel like it's such a really heavy thing to practice
and it's really going to set you up for long-term success which is the single most important thing
you want to be doing to improve as a jazz musician long term tip number two is to stop practicing too
many things i'm going to repeat this one again as well stop practicing too many things this is a
huge problem that i see with musicians especially those trying to play jazz is they're practicing so
many different things that they're not actually getting good at any one of them so i also like
to say to my students only practice one thing at a time and if you have a ton of time to practice and
only if you do then you can practice two things at a time and separate into what i call a primary
thing and a secondary thing to practice what we don't want to be doing is overloading ourselves
with things that we're trying to work on and stretching ourselves out too thin and it's very
important that you pick one thing and see it to completion or at least some sort of definition of
completion so get rid of all the different things you're practicing try to figure out what that one
thing is that you know if you really focus on that today is going to reap tons of benefits
in your jazz playing later on so focus on that thing that's going to give you the most results
and get rid of everything else tip number three is stop practicing things that you don't want to
practice okay now big disclaimer here on this one sometimes you're going to have to practice some
things that you don't want to practice because ultimately you're probably not wanting to practice
things that you're not very good at that's just basic human nature however if we're spending an
abundance of time working on jazz standards we don't really like working on a jazz solo we don't
like just someone told us to learn it we're trying to work on something too much to a great degree of
frustration then we're probably not gonna stay motivated long term we're gonna stop having as
much fun which completely defeats the purpose and then you'll end up not practicing at all so focus
a lot of your time practicing on things you are genuinely interested in getting better at
and actually enjoy and you're probably gonna see better long-term motivation and results from doing
that number four is to stop practicing things that you are already good at stop practicing
things you're already good at again big disclaimer here is that if you're only practicing things that
you aren't good at then you're probably going to get a little bit frustrated so you want to
definitely put into your practice sessions just playing and having fun or even considering that
outside of an actual practice session however if you're constantly practicing things you're already
good at and an expert at then you're gonna just really not improve on the things that are just
sitting there and are actual problems that you need to solve so make sure you really do focus
on those things you aren't good at at least to some degree of your practice time and then you'll
start seeing meaningful results tip number five is to stop practicing when you feel frustrated
or overwhelmed when you get to the boiling point where you keep messing up on the same line over
and over again you keep messing up the melody to a jazz standard you're feeling very anxious then you
should really just stop right there because the likelihood that you're really going to have any
productive practice or of course achieve the core motivation for actually playing at all which is
having fun is very unlikely so at the point where you're frustrated go ahead and stop practicing all
together you're not going to improve more by pushing through it by trying to bust through give
it some space and you'll find that the next time you come back to practice it'll be so much easier
to accomplish the thing that you're struggling with tip number six is to stop practicing without
setting up projects now i can't overstate how important projects are when it comes to
improving your jazz playing you always want to have a project going such as learning one jazz
standard in a month which is something we do in our inner circle membership and the reason
why you want to have a project is because it gives you a measurable result that you can go to
achieve so for example if i say i want to learn one jazz standard in one month we can then work
backwards to figure out what we're actually going to be practicing every single time we get to the
practice room we may learn the first four bars of the melody by ear with the first practice session
and then build on after that but it also gives you a sense of accomplishment when you finally
finished that project and then you move on to the next one you're able to measure your
progress and when we don't set up projects for ourself or goals for lack of better terms
to actually accomplish we're going to lose motivation very quickly because we won't
be getting that satisfaction of knowing that we're actually moving the needle so now armed
with this practicing advice you may wonder if i don't have a lot of time to practice
what does an actual practice session look like so on the screen right now i have a video to check
out it's a 30 minute practice routine where i really break down what exactly you should
do if you only have 30 minutes to practice so go ahead and click into that one if you want to see
something next thanks for watching this video if you liked it please hit that like button
subscribe to the channel and we'll see you in the next video cheers