This is related to the idea that, again, theory comes after practice, not before. It’s worth going into detail on these topics here: 1) One problem with the traditional scale-chord approach I describe above is that it lets learners try to tackle jazz improvisation without listening to paradigmatic jazz performances first. Here’s what I learned from reevaluating my approach to learning jazz improvisation:įirst of all, and perhaps most importantly, the scale-chord theory approach I mentioned above doesn’t place enough emphasis on the importance of two critical learning tools that are essential for jazz: listening and ear training. I’ll introduce some (relatively) unconventional ideas that center around how we learn to construct jazz lines melodically. In this post, I want to focus on a few alternative approaches to learning and teaching jazz improvisation. I advocate different approaches to learning jazz improvisation. Too often jazz is taught in terms resembling this: “learn this mode, play it over this chord, and repeat this process whenever the chords change.” In my experience, this is terribly ineffective.
That being said, the iconic musicians who innovated the styles of music we now recognize as jazz and its sub-styles weren’t often (if ever) thinking about scale-chord theory as it is often taught nowadays. With a theoretical model in place, we can more easily frame, analyze, and communicate the musical practices and preferences that prevail in and are characteristic of a given style. Some strategic theorizing after the fact is extremely useful because it allows us to develop a common language to talk about the music.
In other words, music comes first, theories about it come later. Or at least, it wasn’t very effective, expressive, “authentic” sounding, exciting, or inspiring.įirst of all, I didn’t know yet that theory comes after practice, not the other way around. Literally, everything I was doing was wrong. I tried plunking my way through ii-V-I’s in a dull, uninspiring, mathematical way: I’d plug in the mode/scale that corresponded to the chord I was playing over, and I’d play up the scale. I was taught (or read somewhere) that the key to improvisation is to memorize scales/modes that corresponds to the chords in jazz harmonic progressions such as the ii-V-I. In my early years as a musician, I explored what I think is a pretty common approach to learning jazz improvisation.
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