Have you been told any of these 10 mistruths about playing jazz if so you may have started
believing things that are ultimately not helping you improve as a jazz player so let's go over them
Miss Truth number one if you can hear it then you can play it false this one is really annoying
especially for those who are kind of newer into jazz when someone gets up and says hey don't worry
you'll hear it or hey if you just can hear the music if you study the music you'll eventually
be able to play it and that's really absolutely not true the actual reality of jazz and Jazz
improvisation is that it's a combination of yes being able to hear Jazz language being familiar
with it having an understanding of what it actually sounds like but then combining that with
muscle memory and actual understanding of your instrument basically translating what you hear
to your instrument so it's kind of a combination of both of those things so if those two aren't
in line and being worked on separately and then together you're probably not going to hear it
and then be able to play it mistruth number two you don't need to know theory in order to play
jazz false this is one that's really popular for people to say because Jazz is traditionally an
hourly learned music there's even some stories of say sand Getz to no Theory I'm not even entirely
sure if that's completely true but in reality if you don't know any music theory at all you're
definitely fighting a really uphill battle when it comes to learning how to play jazz essentially if
you don't actually understand what you're playing then if you're even able to hear ideas that jazz
musicians are playing and understand how to play melodies you're really missing out on some major
connections that are going to help you play better and help you understand the music and
improve quicker so for example if you don't know how to play a 2-5-1 chord progression and know
what a 2-5-1 even means then you're probably going to struggle understanding a lot of jazz that's
some basic music theory that you need to know additionally Jazz does require some knowledge of
how to play your instrument and a lot of times Theory can help guide you in order to help you
explore your instrument better so without music theory you are going to struggle a lot with jazz
and that is really important to understand however this brings us to Miss Truth number three which is
you need to know a lot of music theory in order to play jazz false contrary to popular belief
you really don't need to know that much theory in order to play jazz or to even get started playing
jazz in fact the basics that you really need to know is chord progressions and how they work so
for example understanding 251 chord progression or a 1625 chord progression chord progressions
you see a lot of times in jazz is super important understand like what chord tones are so how do you
spell a Major Seventh chord it's root third fifth seventh understanding the five main qualities of
seventh chords understanding minor Harmony right what's a two five one in a minor key it's a half
diminished chord followed by a dominant seventh chord and then a minor one chord and then even
having a basic knowledge of scales can help you just understand Theory more in general revolving
around round Jazz and how to start playing it so no you don't need to know a lot and definitely as
you go along you can learn little bits more that will help you in Aid as a tool in your journey
to playing jazz mistruth number four you need to have amazing technique in order to play jazz false
now this one might be a little controversial because you hear musicians like Charlie Parker
John Coltrane or pretty much any of the musicians that play what we call Bebop and they have amazing
chops they're able to navigate their instruments flawlessly just absolutely pour over top of chord
progressions and so when we hear that we can seem to think that it really is impossible to
play jazz unless you have a lot of chops can play very quickly and have strong technical proficiency
on your instrument now the true part about that is that yes you do need to have some technical
command on your instrument just like you would need technical command to play really any style of
music and the more technical command you do have yes it can be helpful however when we think about
musicians like Jim hall for example he's a guitar player that really doesn't have what I would call
a lot of chops but he's able to use his playing in such a way that he's able to play really fast
Tunes like for example on the title track of the bridge the bridge the really fast tempo song he
plays very simple melodic lines Miles Davis is another example of a musician who often chose
not to play with a lot of chops instead of very melodic lines even over top of fast tempos if
you listen to Trumpeter Conte kundoli in his later years when he was a little bit older and
not able to play in the higher register as well with his chops he really just played in a very
comfortable register and still sounded really really really good so you don't have to have
amazing technique in order to play jazz you just need to figure out how to use the technique you
have in order to play the music mistruth number five is learn jazz solos and you'll improvise
better now learning Jazz solos especially by ear is a really common suggestion That Jazz
as Educators give for learning how to improvise including myself and the reason that is is because
when you're trying to learn the language of jazz you need to be able to hear it and mimic it to
start to understand how the language actually works however the biggest complaint from many
of my students especially in my inner circle membership who come to me are I'm learning
the solos I'm learning all this stuff but it's not coming out in my improvisation and the reason that
is is because of learning Jazz Language by ear is really only part of the puzzle the other half of
the puzzle is actually creating it for yourself so for example one exercise I give to my inner circle
member is very commonly is to compose Jazz solos of your own using the language that you've already
learned so actually slowing the improvisation process down can be really helpful so yes there
are benefits of learning Jazz solos by ear to help you improvise better but ultimately it's only part
of the picture and there's a lot of other things that need to happen in order for it become a lot
more natural that leads me to mistruth number six which is great jazz musicians don't plan out their
solos so hear me out here great jazz musicians are in fact improvising right but if we really look at
the definition of improvising like improvising is essentially spontaneous performing without
preparation ahead of time and so a lot of times people from the outside looking in are thinking
that jazz musicians are just coming up with these amazing musical ideas responding to the moment and
it's all completely original however that couldn't be further from the truth because the reality is
is that jazz musicians have spent years and hours and hours and hours preparing for the moment that
they're about to improvise they've made so many mistakes they've made so many gains in
their knowledge and understanding of the language that by the time they actually get up to improvise
they're actually playing a lot of isms of their own playing that has become completely natural
to them so when they see a 251 chord progression they may not be thinking about what they're going
to be playing all the time but there are certain things that are just going to be natural to them
because of what they can hear and the muscle memory they've developed on their instrument
and the more they're able to do that in different contexts and situations the better they're able to
respond naturally in an improvisation scenario but they certainly have planned out a lot of
things not necessarily verbatim to play but over time that preparation is creating things that are
repeating themselves over and over and over again that's why Sunny Rollins sounds like Sunny Rollins
there's certain things about the way he plays that you recognize when he plays it mistruth
number seven in order to get good at playing jazz you need to practice a lot again this is another
really misunderstood thing is this idea that jazz is so technically difficult to play you need a lot
of technical proficiency like we already talked about before and therefore you have to practice
a lot and there's even evidence to see suggest that would be true like for example we hear
stories about how Charlie Parker used to practice for 13 hours a day now the truth about practicing
a lot is that it gives you more opportunities to actually learn but it sort of ends right there
because oftentimes you can practice a lot and actually not gain anything simply just noodling
and messing around on your instrument the truth is over time you can become a good jazz musician
simply by making small gains not burning yourself out by practicing too much therefore staying
continuously motivated and actually having goals that you're accomplishing such as what we do in
my inner circle membership learning one Jazz standard a month that is a lot more beneficial
than learning a ton of things every single month practicing for hours on end getting confused
getting frustrated and then actually making no progress at all so yes you can become a good jazz
musician even with just an hour of practice for example a week mistruth number eight you should
never learn jazz for from sheet music false now again this could be confusing for a lot of people
to hear because most often the advice that you're given is learn everything you can by ear learn
Melodies learn the chord changes to standards learn solos by ear and that is great advice and
in fact that is advice I've given myself however I think that it is bad advice to say to never learn
a jazz from sheet music at all for example I've had students that learn better by being able to
see the notation and therefore understand what's actually being played and made more advances in
their Jazz playing naturally away from the sheet music because they were able to look at that in
the first place another thing is for example when you get to something very challenging to learn
by ear such as core changes that automatically will discourage literally 75 percent of people
that haven't done that before or are coming to play jazz right so looking at a chord chart that
has the chords on it and then simply memorizing it could be a better way to to get started and
eventually weaning your way into starting to hear chord changes better the more Jazz standards you
learn sometimes sheet music can absolutely be a good tool to check your work for what you're
hearing but again it can be just a great tool in general if you're trying to understand something
better or if you would prefer to go the route of learning it by reading it memorizing it so that
you actually retain it which is the most important thing and then moving on from there so sheet music
does have its place in learning Jazz for sure mistruth number nine Master something that you're
practicing before moving on to the next thing now this isn't just a jazz thing this is probably
some advice that's been given in music in general however this is really absolutely not a good idea
that could seem confusing because wouldn't we want to be able to master how to play a certain song
or an exercise perfectly before moving on to the next thing otherwise aren't we just leaving things
on the table and perhaps doing things the wrong way going forward but the truth lies somewhere
actually in the middle because while we do want to have some form of competence over what we're
learning we can actually get really stuck and spend literally months on one small thing and
not gain much more from it where there are plenty of other lessons to be learned on the other side
of that for example we learned one Jazz standard a month in our Inner Circle membership and the
reason we do that is we want to give one month to really focus on one standard and we're not going
to master that standard because I haven't actually mastered one standard yet there's always something
more to do with it we move on to the next Jazz standard because there are more chord progressions
that are similar to that jazz standard before more musical scenarios that are going to come
up so in general you're going to keep learning and improving and getting better by switching
things up and it's also important to mention that motivation is a big factor if you're stuck in one
place for too long trying to make things perfect then you're probably going to get demotivated and
upset over the long term Perfection is the enemy of progress as I like to say mistruth number 10
you need to know a lot of jazz standards in order to play with other musicians now we may want to
Define what a lot means but I think when a lot of people think about going out and playing at
a jam session or hopefully one day getting a gig of their own they think that they need to know 50
plus or 100 Jazz standards and while those are great things to Aspire to and you'll become a
better jazz musician the more you learn really it just kind of starts with five or so Jazz standards
to get you started for example you may go to your public jam session and notice that there's these
five songs that are always being called you learn those five songs you go up and if you don't know
one you just don't play it or you recommend one of the five that you do learn and that way you're
actually getting started I think a really good healthy number of jazz standards to Aspire to
get to is 25 Jazz standards and once you get to those 25 Jazz standards hopefully a lot of
commonly called ones then you can expand your repertoire from there but once you get to the
25 Jazz standard realm you're gonna find that a lot of those songs keep getting called over
and over and over again and also have a lot of fun things to explore within them speaking of
jazz standards you may wonder which Jazz standards should I learn or what are some good ones to know
well I have a video on the screen right now that gives you 10 Jazz standards that are great for
a jam session so go ahead and click on that video next to start learning what those are and how many
you do actually know hope you found this video helpful if you did please like this video really
helps out the channel and of course subscribe and we'll see you in the next video cheers