Tag Archives: jazz practice routine

Jazz Practice – Why You Need To Keep It Practical

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What if the way that you practice makes sure that you don’t feel like you are practicing something that you never get to use? Jazz Practice is difficult to get right and there are some mistakes that I see people make again and again.

What if you could work in a way that you could feel that your playing was improving? Maybe it is often better to take a more practical approach and practice in a way that is really focused on fixing a problem in the music that you are playing.

If you start with the music and choose goals to fix problems you encounter while making music you are much more likely to improve and also able to feel yourself improve.

In this video, I am going to talk about how to learn jazz guitar and how to choose the right strategies for some of the problems we encounter. It is easy to get lost in empty exercises and not work on something that is directly related to the music you play, but that can quickly leave you drowning in exercises.

Content:

0:00 Intro
0:12 Solve problems in your playing?
0:38 Strategies and how to Improve specific things in your playing.
1:23 Two Types of Solutions
1:54 The Two Examples in this video: Soloing and Comping.
2:13 #1 Soloing: How to Learn New Vocabulary
2:45 Long-term Goal and solution
3:51 Short-term Approach – Specific and Fixing the problem in the song
4:49 Less information more focus on using it while making music
5:42 #2 Comping: Learning New Voicings
6:18 Long-term for Learning All Voicings and Inversions
7:22  Short-term Approach – Think about what you already play and Add to That!
8:54 Be Practical if you want to improve your playing fast.
10:33 Teachers does this as well!
10:56 Like the video? Check out My Patreon Page!

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Jazz Practice Routine How To Find The Perfect Balance

If you have to make a 30 minute Jazz Practice Routine, what should you include?

We are all different so there is no one solution that fits everybody, but you don’t want to waste time or leave out important things to practice.

In this video, I am going to go over what I think a 30-minute practice session should include. I am of course a guitarist so it will be aimed at jazz guitar practice, but I am sure the philosphy and topics will fit all instruments. Some of the topics that I think are important for a jazz practice routine would be:

Technique, Repertoire, Exercises, Vocabulary, Theory, Ear-Training,
Transcriptions

I am really curious about how your practice routine is, so if you have a routine then please leave a comment with a list of stuff you work on. This is useful for people looking for inspiration and certainly also for you to evaluate how you work. I will do the same 🙂

Content:

0:00 Intro – A 30-minute Practice Routine

1:24 Technique and Warm-up

1:32 Warm-up and Synchronization – 10 minutes

2:05 Arpeggios – Right hand warm-up

2:31 Working out with Spread Triads (Steve Morse)

3:00 Technique – Musical Practice

3:19 My Basic Fretboard Visualization

3:41 Practice in all 12 Keys! (are there only 12 keys?)

4:08 Diatonic Harmony

4:40 Stay Flexible and Practice open-ended

5:43 Playing Music – 10 min

6:13 Play Songs and Put it all Together

6:47 What You Focus on and Learn

7:41 Ear Training – 5 min.

7:52 Moving Melodies through the scale

8:26 Using Apps or Computer Programs

8:50 Advantages to a schedule working with Apps

9:04 Transcriptions

9:28 Figuring Songs out from Memory

9:49 Vocabulary – 5 minutes

10:00 Use Composition and Create YOUR vocabulary

10:28 Share your Practice Routine! Give us some ideas!

10:50 Like the video? Check out my Patreon Page!

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Get the PDF!

The PDF with examples for this video is available through Patreon. You can check out my Patreon Page here: https://www.patreon.com/jenslarsen

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If you have any questions, comments or suggestions for topics then please let me know. Leave a comment on the video or send me an e-mail. That is the best way for me to improve my lessons and make them fit what you are searching for.

Please subscribe to my YouTube channel and feel free to connect with me via Instagram, Twitter, or Facebook to keep up to date with new lessons, concerts, and releases.

How To Practice In All 12 Keys – This Is What You Learn!

How to practice in all 12 keys and what will it teach you! In this video I am going to show you some of the things that you will learn if you start practicing in all 12 keys and talk about some easy ways to get started practicing different things in all 12 keys from your scales to complete songs.

The video focuses on 3 main areas:

  • Technique – knowing scales and arpeggios all over the instrument and in all keys.
  • Theory – You can play everything in all keys but can you think in all keys – connecting the theory to what you practice
  • Songs – Taking Technique and the theory and use it to learn, understand and transpose songs and help us learn faster and improvise better.

Content of the video:

0:00 Intro

0:13 Overview of the Topics

1:04 #1 Technique And Scale Practice

1:39 Making a Routine That uses all 12 keys

2:08 How I do this

2:33 Example of Eb Major with 1st inversion diatonic triads

3:08 Scale Practice as Ear Training and Theory Workout

3:44 #2 Music Theory

4:11 Understanding harmony to see how songs are similar

4:29 All The Things You Are & Fly Me To The Moon

5:02 Understanding the Form – There Will Never Be Another You/Mellow Tone

5:45 #3 Learning Songs in All 12 Keys – Myths and Anecdotes

6:08 How to Start Practicing songs in all 12 Keys

6:36 How NOT to start

6:51 The Way I use it in playing

7:25 How to Transpose All The Things You Are To Another Key

7:45 The Melody

8:05 Transposing the Chords

9:00 Soloing in the other key

9:38 The places where you need to take care

10:33 What you need to do this on guitar?

10:45 Like The Video? Check out my Patreon Page

Get a free E-book

If you want to download a Free E-book of 15 II Valt I licks then subscribe to my newsletter:

Sign up for my newsletter – Get the II V I Ebook

Get the PDF!

The PDF with examples for this video is available through Patreon. You can check out my Patreon Page here: https://www.patreon.com/jenslarsen

Jazz Guitar Insiders Facebook Group

Join 1500+ Other Jazz Guitarists 🎸Join us in the Facebook Jazz Guitar Group Community: http://bit.ly/InsidersFBGroup

If you have any questions, comments or suggestions for topics then please let me know. Leave a comment on the video or send me an e-mail. That is the best way for me to improve my lessons and make them fit what you are searching for.

Please subscribe to my YouTube channel and feel free to connect with me via Instagram, Twitter, or Facebook to keep up to date with new lessons, concerts, and releases.

10 Commandments of Learning Jazz

Setting up an efficient Jazz Practice is both important and difficult. You have to take care to spend your time efficiently and not have unrealistic goals or expectations. This video goes over some things that you want to think about and consider when you are learning jazz or any other style of music like jazz (though it probably applies to studying other styles as well). It is coming out of my own experiences with a few suggestions from people like Allan Holdsworth and Peter Bernstein.

Having the right mindset when studying and learning music is extremely important and I am curious what you think about this 10 topics, so please chip in with thoughts and suggestions!

If you want to download a Free E-book of 15 II Valt I licks then subscribe to my newsletter:

Sign up for my newsletter – Get the II V I Ebook

Are You Wasting Valuable Time Practicing Jazz Licks Like This?

We all study jazz licks to add new ideas and techniques to our improvisations and our vocabulary. But I often get told by students how they choose a very in effective way of studying licks and are in fact really just wasting their time. In this video I will outline what is not useful when studying licks and also what is a better approach if you want to add material to your repertoire.

I will also use a part of a Grant Green solo as an example of how he gets it right and uses it in his solo.

Practicing Jazz Licks – Contents

0:00 Intro – Learn licks and increase our vocabulary

0:53 The bad way to practice licks even though they are good examples

1:25 Playing some licks (from paper with a metronome?)

1:51 Play the licks over a song

2:22 What is wrong with this approach

2:27 Too Much Information

2:49 A more focused approach to learn from licks

3:10 A II V I lick is about the same as learning a Jazz Standard by heart.

3:35 Why Complete Licks don’t work well in solos

4:03 Converting licks to useful and flexible building blocks

4:33 A lick from the Grant Green Solo on I’ll Remember April and how he uses it

5:21 Finding a better Chunk size

5:39 Making lines with the Grant Green Phrase

6:01 Using the same idea on other chords

6:27 Other examples of how great players use licks.

7:18 How do you work with licks? Do you avoid them? Leave a comment!

7:35 Barry Harris story on learning from Charlie Parker

8:11 Like the video? Check out my Patreon Page!