After practicing for thousands of hours playing hundreds of gigs and teaching thousands of
students online I've discovered the best way to improve as a jazz musician and the best thing
about that is it only requires you to do one thing a month so let's talk about it so having
had thousands of students go through my online courses and within my inner circle membership I'm
in this unique position where I'm able to analyze data of what's worked best for the students that
have worked with me the things that are working for them and the things that are not and while
of course this can differ from person to person depending on their musical needs and deficiencies
there's one thing that really ties everything together and really has helped everybody improve
the most now it's important to mention that a lot of people come to me for help because they
feel lost with how to improve as a jazz musician oftentimes they've been surfing YouTube for years
and making little bits of progress here and there But ultimately not making really deep progress and
constantly feeling frustrated with their Jazz solos and playing abilities they bought all
the music books they may have even had private lessons before but again everything just seems
too overwhelming and they're not really feeling like they're making the progress they want and
also most people that come to me for help have very little time to practice this is something
I hear all the time is that they have a family they have a job they have all these things going
on their life this is really their Hobby and so they're not really quite sure how they can
improve especially when everybody has told them that they need to practice for incredible hours
in order to prove at all and over the last decade of working with people just like this I've really
come down to what I firmly believe is the best way to go forward about learning Jazz for the
long term now the last part I said the long term is really important because what I've also learned
over the years is that if you're practicing in such a way that you're going to burn out and
lose your motivation and end up just stopping then it really doesn't matter matter at all and
so really the way I like to think about things is how can you make good results quicker over
time in your Jazz playing so that you're proud of the solos you're creating now really for me
what it all comes down to is What's called the 80 20 rule or also known as the Pareto
Principle and this principle states that 80 of the results that you're getting are caused by 20
of the actions you're actually taking so to bring this into jazz terms eighty percent of the great
jazz solos are now taking the better comping the better bass lines all that stuff is coming from
20 of the things that you're practicing to flip this around on its head it's also saying that
eighty percent of the things you're practicing probably aren't getting you the best results and
you'd be better off spending more time on the 20 of things that actually do so for me there's this
sweet spot of practicing the right things the 20 but then also practicing sustainably so that
you're actually going to make progress over time so let's quickly talk about what that 20 is and
remember I'm basing all this off of thousands of students that I've taught and thousands of
hours of practice I've put in myself what it all boils down to if you want to become a better jazz
musician is learning Jazz standards within the Jazz standards all the information that you need
is there all the lessons that you need to learn are there you've got the chords that you need
to know you've got the chord progressions that you need to know you've got the Jazz language
that the Jazz musicians you love listening to are playing over top of those chord changes basically
everything that you can do in practice can and should be applied to a jazz standard and even
when I go to great jazz clubs like here in New York City The Village Vanguard Smalls where a
lot of the musicians are playing original music one thing is absolutely certain is that all of
these musicians have 100 percent mastered the art of improvising over Jazz standards and the chord
progressions within them so this is why the main thing that we do in my inner circle membership is
we learn one Jazz standard a month which brings us over to the sustainability portion of it
our brains need goals in order to feel like we're progressing moving forward and to get
that dopamine hit that we're all looking for however if we have way too many goals going at
once then it can easily get derailed and we fail and we don't actually meet those expectations
and therefore we get frustrated and usually leave out and start quitting but we're just focusing on
one thing a month the one goal being learning a jazz standard by the end of the month then
we can really start focusing in on that one Jazz standard going deep into it not worrying about a
bunch of other things we could be doing and making it more of a singularity of focus that can really
help us now when I'm talking about learning a new Jazz standard in one month obviously I'm
talking about learning the melody and learning the chords but there are certainly other things that
we need to be doing in order to focus on that jazz standard and in comes my three pillars of
jazz improvisation these are the things that all Jazz musicians need to be working on the first
pillar is called technique and when I'm talking about technique it could yes be be instrument
specific technique like trumpets doing long tones like guitar players working on fretboard Mastery
like bass players working on their walking bass lines or piano players working on their chords
but when it comes to Jazz improvisation there's certain technique that everybody needs to work
on like connecting chord tones over the chord progressions to a jazz standard like playing
guide tones like working on approach tones all these sorts of things that help you unlock your
instrument and facility that is required of jazz improvisation so what I like to really focus on
is focus on chord tones and mapping those out connecting them together as well as approach
tones figuring out how we can approach those actual chord tones and that's what I consider
a main focus for jazz technique and of course applying that over top of a jazz standard the
Jazz standard that you're working on during one month now the second pillar is jazz language in
order to start actually sounding like a great jazz improviser over that jazz standard you
need to learn some actual Jazz language and Jazz language is simply like a lick or a solo or an
Etude an Etude is simply just a composed solo and that's what I do with my students so essentially
what you're doing is you're learning different phrases that you could play over top of that
song form and you're understanding the techniques that the Jazz musicians are using to achieve that
result now the third pillar is learning Jazz standards which we've already talked about and
so again the beautiful thing is everything that we need to work on whether it be instrument specific
technique Jazz technique or learning Jazz language all of that can be applied to a jazz standard in
fact there's really nothing that can't be applied to a jazz standard when it comes to Jazz and Jazz
improvisation even just imagine if you're a guitar player learning different voicings that
you could use or chord Melody if you're trying to work on that over top of that jazz standard
everything can be applied so the way I like to think about it is like what would happen if you
did this for one year what if you learned one new Jazz standard every single month knew the melody
words we're able to apply some form of jazz improvisation or instrument specific technique
and we're learning Jazz solos and etudes every single month and you didn't have to worry about
everything else it was just one Jazz standard that you had to focus on after 12 Jazz standards you
can see how you start getting a compounding effect each Jazz standard makes every other Jazz standard
easier the more Jazz language you learn over just one Jazz standard the more you start realizing
it applies over the 251 chord progressions in the next Jazz standard the more technique that you do
the more the muscle memory and the things you're hearing your head start to come together and start
becoming more organic when you start improvising so yes my friends in my opinion the best way
to improve as a jazz musician is to learn jazz standards but more specifically learn one Jazz
standard a month so that you're really focusing in on one at a time so you may be wondering well
what's the first step okay so if you want to learn a new Jazz standard one thing you're gonna have to
learn is the chords so on the screen I have right now how to memorize the chords to a jazz standard
this is going to help give you the knowledge to get started right away so you can start tackling
this goal of learning one Jazz standard a month so go ahead and click that video on the screen right
now if you like this video make sure you hit the thumbs up and of course make sure you subscribe if
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