I'm going to teach you a secret strategy for improving your Jazz solos that no one has
ever taught before and it's currently revolutionizing the playing of hundreds of my students let's
jump to it it's important for you to understand that learning Jazz licks Jazz solos scales
and even Jazz standards are not going to improve your Jazz soloing that is unless you have
a sound practice strategy to back them up and unfortunately I've seen many musicians
fail to do this and remain stagnant for years even though they're practicing the right things
so before I reveal exactly what you need to do you need to understand first that the machine
that is going to drive all the results in your Jazz playing is in fact your practice
strategy if the machine the engine that isn't allowing you to improve musically is broken
or not working properly you will definitely get poor results but if it's working smoothly
and efficiently you are guaranteed to improve your Jazz solos quickly so this is the exact
strategy that members of my inner circle are implementing and you can as well this strategy
is called bad Jazz solos in just a second you'll get to hear what one of Mines sound
like and of course bad is an acronym and I'll explain exactly what each of those letters
means but first you have to start with learning a jazz standard so just for example let's
say we're learning the song Softly As in a morning sunrise [Music]
and so the bare minimum to learn a jazz standard is of course to learn the melody and to learn
the chords and by the way if you need help learning Melodies of jazz standards by ear
check out my free guide called learn jazz standards the smart way I'll leave that down
in the description below but after you've learned the Jazz standard it's the bad Jazz
solo that you're going to take over top of it that really makes the difference so now
we need to do is record a bad Jazz solo now an ideal recording environment for one of
our bad Jazz solos is that you're only going to do it in one take we're not trying to play
a perfect solo here we're really just trying to get an honest assessment of our improvisation
capabilities over top of this Jazz standard and the second thing to keep in mind is you
want to play and improvise as if no one is looking meaning you're not trying to impress
anyone you're not trying to impress yourself you're just playing for the sake of documenting
your progress so for example here's a jazz solo that I recorded for some b-roll footage
for this exact video here I wasn't really caring about what anyone would think about
it because the volume is so far in the background you probably couldn't hear any mistakes and
I only took one take of this solo so here's a clip [Music]
[Music] foreign [Music] foreign
to my solo here's what a bad Jazz solo actually is so b stands for brave a bad Jazz solo is
brave and what exactly does that mean so it means that you don't really care about how
you sound and this is super important because the best jazz musicians in the world have
learned to let go of their ego and simply just play from where they're at they're not
worried about impressing anyone they're not worried about playing all the right notes
they're just allowing the music to come out of their instrument naturally and this has
to be practiced so when you're taking your bad Jazz solo you want to practice this ability
to just let go and let the music come out when you're actually practicing and trying
to improve that's the time to actually do the thinking but when you're actually taking
a solo you really should let go of that all together now the second element of a brave
Jazz solo is one that takes risks it's important that you're not doing the same things over
and over and over again and expect different results falling back to the same patterns
falling back to the same licks and trying to do the same things you've always been doing
you have to take risks on your instrument play in different parts of it than you normally
would different registers reach for notes reach for things that you've actually been
working on while you are improvising and again this comes back to just not being afraid of
sounding bad and so even though bad is an acronym sometimes when you take a bad Jazz
solo you may indeed actually sound bad but it can be a really freeing experience and
a weight off your shoulders to just realize that that's totally okay especially for the
sake of this exercise the next one in a bad Jazz solo is a a means audited so what does
audited mean it means that after you've recorded your bad Jazz solo you are actually going
to listen back to it and analyze it analyze what went really well and analyze what you
perceive to have not gone very well this particular process so many people fail to do and therefore
never improve they stay on a plateau for ever and years go by without them making any meaningful
progress so please do pay attention when doing a jazz audit you're listening back to your
recording and you're writing down the answer to two questions and the first question is
what did I love about this Jazz solo now please notice that this is an emotional question
you're really looking for the parts that made you feel good when you were playing and when
you write these down you want to get very specific even down if you want to the time
stamp on the recording you are listening back to because once you identify the things that
you actually love about your jazzo about your playing already it's now time to double down
on those things because the things that you're already good at are like aging fine wine you
may be at the beginning of the process it's in the barrel but now it just needs time and
pressure to improve over time and so if we're consciously aware of what those things are
we can double down on those go all in and start improving on those things the things
that you're already good at and that are naturally coming out of you are of course more natural
actually to come out in your Jazz solos later so it's important that you pay very close
attention to what these things are so for example up here on the screen are a list of
things that I really liked about my jazz solo that I had just taken I really like the risks
I took I really like the way I play eighth notes and many other things that I got really
detailed about and now I can be conscious of what these are to double down on the second
question to answer is what did I not like about my jazz solo and once again notice that
this is an emotional question you're looking for the parts that make you feel bad while
you're listening to it and no that's not to say that I am promoting you feel bad about
your playing I don't think that's a healthy response in general but when you do feel bad
you must figure out exactly what those are down to the very detail so for example here's
a list of things that I did not like about this particular Jazz solo for example I felt
like I was playing way too many eighth notes there wasn't enough space and simply being
aware of that will help me play a better bad Jazz solo next next is D which stands for
directional a bad Jazz solo is directional now this means that there's actually something
you're implementing in your solo it has Direction you're not just not acting on what you've
learned so what does this mean this means that you implemented a strategy that you learned
from your audit so for example you may have learned that you don't play enough longer
flowing eighth note lines everything's too chopped up and broken up so then you go to
the practice room where you actually think and you implement a strategy such as exaggerating
the process like playing continuous eighth note lines over top of the form of a jazz
standard to help you further Implement playing more eighth notes in your Jazz solos or you'll
go to a recording and you'll learn some longer eighth note lines from Jazz musicians you
admire to see how they're actually going about doing it so when you're taking a bad Jazz
solo you will be implementing something that you have learned now after you've gone through
the entire bad Jazz solo process you're going to learn another Jazz standard and then of
course you going to repeat this again you're going to take another bad Jazz solo and make
an adjustment in other words we're always constantly making small pivot Points where
learning something new making a pivot in a New Direction and then a new Direction and
then a new Direction until we finally hit our Target at the end and perhaps you listen
to all this and you're wondering well I'm new to improvisation and I'm not really quite
sure how to even start taking a solo at all well on the screen right now I have a video
called a jazz improv explained it'll go over the very basics of improvisation and give
you a good starting point so feel free to click that video on the screen right now by
the way in our Inner Circle membership we learn a new Jazz standard every single month
and apply strategies like bad Jazz solos to them so I'll leave a link to that in the description
down below or up here on the screen make sure you subscribe to the channel like this video
if you found it helpful and we'll see you in the next video cheers