So how do we stay motivated to practice jazz so that we don't get frustrated burned out or
even quit all together today i'm giving you eight tips that will help you stay amped up to practice
coming right up now it can be a really strange dichotomy to ponder but it's funny how we
really want to become great musicians and great jazz players however sometimes we're just not
motivated to practice and put in the work and honestly it's really natural and everybody goes
through it what we want to try to do is figure out how can we stay motivated for the long run so
that we can improve and start reaching our musical ideals which will further give us fuel to continue
our journey as jazz musicians so tip number one is to regularly listen to jazz it goes without saying
that the more we're listening to jazz and simply enjoying ourselves listening to jazz the more it
kind of creates this imagination within ourselves of what if i could play that or what if i
tried this that my favorite jazz musician is playing so be continuously listening to jazz music
to essentially give you the food that you need to stay hungry to stay motivated to stay activated
to be in the practice room now tip number two is the level up from that and a really
important one which is go and see live jazz at least occasionally if not often because when
we go in to see live jazz performances from our favorite musicians we really get this sense of
excitement about what's going on i can't tell you how many times i've been completely unmotivated
gone through a practicing slump but then when i go out to you know smalls in new york city
or mesrow and go see some of my favorite jazz musicians how inspired i am and how much better
i even play when i get back home and start practicing so it's really like you're super
powering yourself when you go out and see live jazz music and if you don't have a lot of live
music like i do in new york city then of course you can just go to local jazz musicians that are
playing around your town or even figure out a way to create your own situation where at
least you can be around other musicians who are playing live now tip number three is to create
projects it's really important if you want to stay motivated to practice that you create projects for
yourself that you are continuously working on now the important thing when we create projects is we
don't want them to be so big and so massive that we start losing sight of the vision and get tired
of doing them or don't feel like we're making meaningful progress when you're creating projects
you want to create bite-size projects that help you feel like you're accomplishing you're sort of
hacking your psychology when you do this so a good example would be i want to learn how to play two
choruses of this wynton kelly solo that i really like okay and you can even set a time frame to it
or if that's stressful for you don't do that at all however you can break that down into smaller
pieces so that you can accomplish that goal so now you're always having something that you're aiming
towards and then once you're done that project you can go ahead and do more projects it's even a good
idea to schedule projects like say i'm going to finish this one project then i'm going to learn
this jazz standard then i'm going to work on this particular exercise and so on and so forth so that
you have something to continuously look forward to gauge your progress to make you feel like you
are improving and progressing now tip number four is to play with other musicians now this
is so important and it really is the heart of what jazz really is anyways it's all about playing with
other musicians feeding off of them improvising together it's very much so a communal music and i
find those who really don't get out and play with others whether it just be one friend whether it
just be a few friends you get together with on a regular basis or a public jam session or even if
you have the opportunity to play out and play gigs like having that available to you to have
that goal that you're reaching towards constantly is huge for motivation right if you have a weekly
jam session that you go to then you're always motivated to work on that jazz standard that
you didn't play as well last time or learn that new one that you heard got called or improve upon
your blues because you want to play better blues at the jam session so if you always have people
that you can play with and learn from and grow with that's huge for staying motivated in the
long run now tip number five kind of goes along with that and that is to join a jazz community so
whether this is at your local jam session whether this is with a group of other friends or an online
music education or community like we have one in our inner circle membership this can be super
inspiring and i will say just from experience our members in our inner circle they're posting in the
work that they're doing the practice sessions that they're doing the assignments that they're doing
and they're getting feedback on their playing and they're seeing that a lot of other people
are doing the same thing and again this comes down to psychology when you feel like you're
a part of something bigger than yourself that there's other people doing something with you
that's really motivating and inspiring in and of itself and will keep you going for the longer term
because you know that you're not alone so find a community whether it's online
or in person to continually fuel that fire for you so tip number six is to regularly point out
the things that you like in your jazz playing regularly point out the things that you think
you're doing well this is an opposite thing of what most of us do we tend to like to point out
the things that we're not doing so well or the flaws i did it to myself even just today
rather than looking at the things that are actually going well i would always say to consider
first pointing out the things that you're doing well before you criticize yourself when listening
back to a recording or even just while you're playing this is really important because you
want to be saying positive things to yourself and showing yourself the potential you truly do have
and if you develop that mindset it's gonna help you stay motivated long term now tip number seven
is to practice things that you actually have fun working on having fun is a really important thing
and it's really a studied thing in psychology that when we're having fun doing something we're
more likely to get results doing it and we're more likely to obviously continue doing it when we're
doing something that feels really hard or toilsome then we tend to lose motivation so what i would
say is to find a healthy balance like work a lot on things that are fun for you or at least do them
in a way that is fun for you like for example maybe working with a backing track could be
fun for you versus only working with the metronome that could be a fun situation doing something that
you may not like doing but we do want to balance it because at the same time we're not going to
become better musicians and better players if we're not challenging ourselves if we're not
doing the things that may be a little bit more difficult for us for example learning a piece
of music by ear a solo by ear might be harder for someone who's really good at reading but by doing
that it's going to benefit your jazz playing so much more so find the balance between doing things
that you really love to do and have fun doing and things that you find are challenging or find
ways to marry those two together now tip number eight is to take occasional breaks now breaks
is something that i've talked a lot about on my podcast before and here on my youtube channel
it is okay to stop playing your instrument for a while and refresh and recharge in fact i find
personally that when i do take a break and take some time away from my instrument that
when i come back i feel more refreshed when i'm constantly practicing and hearing myself play all
the time this is when i can start getting a little tired of what i'm doing or not seeing the progress
because i'm so close to it so sometimes taking a step back is actually a healthy thing to do from
time to time now speaking of what to practice do check out this video that i have on the
screen right now which talks about how to go from beginner to intermediate to advanced level of jazz
playing and i really walk you through different things that you should be practicing in those
different phases no matter where you are that could really help you out so check out that video
right now thanks for checking out this video today make sure you like this video if you
found it helpful make sure you subscribe and we'll look forward to seeing you in the next one cheers