So how do you learn jazz solos by ear without sheet
music so you can start improving your jazz improv
exponentially well today i'm sharing with you my full step process for doing exactly that coming up
what's up brent here from learn jazz standards we help musicians just like you learn how to play
jazz all while shortening the learning curve no matter what instrument you play on this channel
we do a lot of jazz theory tips jazz standard tutorials as well as jazz improv tutorials like
in today's video so make sure you subscribe to the channel hit that bell notification button
to never miss out on anything going on here there are two things that you absolutely need to become
a better jazz improviser number one is you need amazing ears and number two is you need a vast
knowledge of jazz vocabulary therefore one of the best practices that you can do is to learn entire
or parts of jazz solos by ear without sheet music but for a lot of us the idea of learning
something by ear is incredibly daunting and we don't really have a step-by-step process for
doing that so in comes my list process for learning jazz solos by ear it's an acronym
l-i-s-t and it is going to dramatically help you do this and actually 75 of the process does not
even include you touching your instrument but do stick around to the very end of the
video where i'm going to share with you a very important bonus step that will help you take all
of this to the very next level now we're going to learn the first eight bars of an etude called
be boppin birdies which we recently studied in my inner circle membership it's a solo over top of
the jazz standard yardbird suite by charlie parker we're just gonna do eight bars for this video sake
so you can see how the list process plays out so step number one is to listen l stands for listen
so let's do exactly just that let's listen to the first eight bars of bebop and birdies
all right that's first eight bars obviously really nice tune really nice etude it really outlines the
chord changes beautifully it has some beautiful creativity some great rhythmic stuff so we want
to learn this and we want to learn this well so during the listening phase this is what i would
consider more of a long term process in other words this doesn't usually happen in one day it
actually happens over the course of several days or even a week or even longer if you would like
now the listen process is where you're basically doing what i call non-active listening you're
going around everywhere with your headphones in while you're watching the dishes while you're
commuting somewhere and you're listening to this solo over and over and over again and the idea
is that you're becoming so aware of the sounds of this solo that it's sinking into your subconscious
but you're still doing active other things it's just something that's going on in the background
but you're making a deliberate choice to focus in on this particular solo now i also teach this for
when you're learning melodies of jazz standards as well and usually in this phase i recommend
listening to as many different versions of the melody or a lot of different recordings of the
melody wherever you go rather than just leaving one version but since we're doing a solo there
is only one version of that solo so of course just only listen to that but everywhere you go
over a longer period of time now step number two is internalize i stands for internalize now this
is just an extension of the listening process but now we're switching from non-active listening to
active listening now active listening means it's very much so like what you do when you sit down
to watch a movie you sit down and you're giving it your full attention you're really paying attention
to all the details and you're really allowing the information to soak into your subconscious so
this is the time where you actually truly do sit down and you listen to it over and over again
giving it 100 of your attention just as if you are practicing down with your instrument so
in the spirit of doing that let's go ahead and listen to it again
and let's listen to it one more time
now this could also be a good time to use a slow downer and slow down the music a little bit if
you're having a hard time getting some of the subtleties of the notes but this is an opportunity
for as many times as you want play this over and over again doesn't even have to happen in
one practice session it could be again over the course of multiple days that you're spending 15
minutes or 20 minutes or even 30 minutes just listening to this solo by itself with active
listening moving on to step number three which is to sing s stands for sing now if you're not
a good singer you can definitely whistle and you can definitely hum as well but the singing process
is where you are proving that you have indeed internalized this solo so we can obviously hear
something and perhaps even sing it in our head but by vocalizing it in some fashion from our bodies
we're proving that we haven't eternalized this music by being able to reproduce it
now obviously we're not really getting the subtleties and the nuances of every single
note but we're basically getting a generalized form of what this solo is and reproducing it so
in the spirit of that let's go ahead and play back this first eight bars of this
etude but i'm gonna go ahead and sing along with it brace yourself this could get ugly
and you want to do that as many times as you possibly can to try to match as closely along with
the recording as possible and again it doesn't have to be perfect your pitches don't have to
be perfect either but it's the idea of starting to match the rhythms and starting to match the
general pitch locations through your voice before we even start touching our instrument at all now
before we move on to step number three you may be wondering well since learning jazz solos by
ear is such a great idea well what are some jazz solos that are worthwhile to learn well one that
i always recommend to beginners is miles davis is solo on freddy freeloader freddy freeloader's a
blues and this mile's solo it's not very difficult it's incredibly melodic and will really start
to give you some great ideas of some melodic information you can start playing over a blues
and it's super beginner friendly but i would love to hear from you in the comments or the show notes
below what do you think are some great jazz solos to learn that can really help you with your jazz
improv feel free to let me know now the fourth step before we get to our very special bonus step
is a very important one and this is where we bring our instrument whatever it happens to be
into the picture and that is transfer it stands for t t is for transfer now transfer simply means
we're taking what we learned up here through the listening internalization and the singing process
and now we're going to bring it down to our instrument now this is our opportunity of course
to really get inside the nuances of what the notes are we have to get them perfectly what exactly are
the notes that the soloist is playing we need to be able to match it with the recording both
rhythmically and melodically so that we're truly getting inside of their original intent and focus
in their musical ideas now i usually don't recommend doing this process all in one go
but it obviously really depends on how much of a solo you're learning at once and also depends on
how good at learning stuff by ear you are already in our particular example i'm going to do what we
call batching meaning that our goal is to learn eight bars of this etude onto our instrument what
i'm gonna do is split this up into two practice sessions meaning we're gonna do one practice
session of four bars and another practice session of four bars so that we reach our target goal
of eight bars and i highly recommend doing this because it's better for us to get little bits of
information really well under our fingers rather than learn a bunch of stuff and not truly have
it very well so even just learning four bars at a time is a good day's work and rinsing
and repeating and reviewing it's all better than learning a ton of musical information to really
know it really well even just a little bit so let's go ahead and play along with the recording
the first four bars of this etude and that's it that's the first four bars now obviously i went
through that rather quickly but for you it'll look very much so like doing this you're going
to listen to the first little bit okay just two notes and i'm gonna go and figure out what those
notes are very slowly if i only have to figure out one note at a time and just go back and keep
repeating the recording that's exactly what i'm going to do until i figure out what those notes
are so first i'd like to kind of figure out what the pitches are and then i go back later
and figure out what the rhythms are so let's keep listening okay and then remember you can already
sing this so that's a helpful tool and you've internalized it so really it's just a matter of
finding it on your instrument
until you're able to play it then go back and make sure you can match the rhythms
with the actual musician that's playing the solo but let's go ahead and fast forward to our second
session of course i wouldn't do this all in one sitting but again let's pretend this is a brand
new practice session and we're gonna now learn the last four bars of this solo but i'm gonna start by
actually reviewing the first four and then seeing if i can continue going along to the second floor
okay so i was able to play the first four and the last four but of course really for this practice
session we're focusing on that last four and again i'm doing the same process of really listening to
each note and slowly figuring out how to play it on my actual instrument and then going back and
reviewing the first four and the last four until i'm able to play all eight bars fluently along
with the recording now as for that all important bonus step i was talking about the bonus step is
s which stands for study now it's great thing to do is after you've actually learned this on your
instrument is going through what you have learned and trying to figure out how it actually works
and how you can replicate this for yourself so for example i'd go through and perhaps notate
or even just figure this out on your instrument but in this particular case in our inner circle
membership we have a transcription of this solo and i can kind of see what the first notes are we
have the third which is e natural and we have the fifth which is g natural over the c6 so
already this gives me some ideas of targeting the third and the fifth those chord tones to kind of
start off my line that perhaps could be something i could replicate later another thing i could look
at is actual form of the solo so as we see we have kind of these motific lines that build up here and
i may want to use something like that in my solo or perhaps i like this triplet pattern that goes
in from the b flat to the c major seven or perhaps even this b flat right here i may be interested to
realize that this is actually the 11th of the f minor but it's also of course the root of the b
flat seven so we're actually anticipating that b flat seven by using a common extension over the f
minor going into the b flat i may also point out that over here on the a7 we have this b flat note
and when we look at the b flat note as it pertains to an a7 it's actually the flat nine so that's
another great idea of altered extension that i can use to target when i'm composing or improvising
my own solos now by the way if you'd like a free download that outlines this list process
steps you can get that in my free guide called learn jazz standards the smart way
go to learnjazzstandardsthesmartway.com or i'll also leave that up on the screen right now you
can click on it and download it for absolutely free and by the way in this particular etude
there's a lot of what we call bebop language so i also have a video up here on the screen
that will help you learn how to start playing bebop for very simple way to start doing it and
give you some great ideas for your jazz solos as well so you can click that on the screen
make sure you subscribe to the channel hit that bell notification button so you never miss out
on anything like this video if you got value today and we'll see you in the next video cheers