12 Things that make a great jazz musician

1). Listen
The great jazz musicians listened to everybody before them. They
listened to records and they went to listen live. This is how they
discovered and learned from each other. This does not mean you
have to like everything you hear. Jazz should not be reduced to an
intellectual exercise. The music has to touch you or you should not
be attempting to play it. If you want to play great blues you have to
listen to blues. If you want to play great rock you have to listen to
rock. If you want to play great jazz you have to listen to jazz.
2). Knowledge of harmony
Jazz is by no means simple to play. It takes a lot of dedication and
you have to have some knowledge of jazz harmony. If you want to
improvise you must understand the functions of chords and chord
substitutes available to you within a harmonic structure. You also
need to develop an understanding of the tonal organization and
rhythmic structure of jazz.
3.) Knowledge of Jazz Standards and Jazz tunes
While studying with Oliver Gannon in Canada, he once told me, If
you want to be able to play with other jazz musicians you are going
to have to know the vocabulary, you are going to have to know the
standards. In addition, the more standards you learn the greater
your knowledge of harmonic structure that these tunes are built
from.
4.) Familiar with melody
Many players use the real book on gigs to improvise over the chord
structures of the standards. However, many of them dont actually
know the tune. They dont know the melody, which is the most
important part. Jazz soloists from the 1920s almost exclusively
would build their solos up around the melody of the tune. When
improvisers started developing their solos a bit more they would
often quote other melodies. Listen to the great saxophonist Dexter
Gordon and you will hear he is constantly quoting melodies from
different standards in his solos. Horace Silver was also a master at
that. He built the quotes right into many of his compositions.
5.) Knowledge of rhythm
Over the years jazz has influenced and been influenced by various
cultures around the world. Sonny Rollins composed his famous
calypso tune St. Thomas infusing jazz with the calypso rhythm from

the Caribbean. Bossa Nova was made famous by Antonio Carlos

Jobim with his infusion of Brazilian rhythms the harmonic structure
of jazz. Horace Silver wrote a number of tunes such as the
Eastern-flavored theme of "Calcutta Cutie," or the tropical-sounding
rhythms of "Que Pasa?" To know the chord structure or melody in
this case would not be enough. You have to have knowledge of the
underlying rhythm that the tune is built on.
6.) Tempos
The tempo of a tune can have a large impact on the quality of a
tune. Neal Hefti composed the standard Li'l Darlin' as a mediumtempo, sort of bounce tune. Count Basie listened to it and insisted
that they slow it down and make it a ballad, a very slow ballad. It
got to be one of the band's most popular songs. That was the genius
of Basie, to listen to something and decide what had to be done with
it. It is important to at least be aware of the tempo that various
standards were conceived. You begin to get a feel of how the right
tempo of a tune can improve or impair its quality.
7.) Steal and emulate from other jazz musicians
Pablo Picasso famously said, Good artists copy, great artists steal.
Nothing comes from nothing. Every great musician has copied and
stolen from all those that influenced them. It is a natural
progression in music and art. You can learn so much from other jazz
musicians. The way they approach a tune, the ways in which they
apply substitutes to the chord structures, or the way they phrase.
Every musician also has their pet motifs that they apply often to
their solos. These form their individual identities.
8.) Find your own sound / innovate
Pat Metheny spoke of how he was influenced by Wes Montgomery,
The first thing I did was throw away my picks. I did everything I
could to sound like Wes Montgomery. But when I started using my
Wes stuff around Kansas City, I caught a major draft from the older
guys for trying to sound like him. It forced me to realize that trying
to imitate him wasn't musically good for me. The goal of copying
and stealing from everyone is not to imitate someone else. There is
only one Wes Montgomery, Joe Pass or Pat Metheny. That is what
makes them special. The greats take all that knowledge they have
accumulated from others then add their own special approach and
develop their own voice.
9.) Practice routine
Like anything leaning to play jazz takes discipline. The great players
played everyday but more importantly they were highly disciplined

about what they learned and how they learned it. Charlie Parker
famously disappeared out of site after the drummer Jo Jones
famously threw his cymbal at him when Parker got lost in a tune.
This affected Charlie Parker so much that he went off and practiced
the I Got Rhythm changes and the changes to Cherokee in every
key and got them up to impressive tempos. He mastered those two
things before he appeared again with a bang.
In the book Outliers, author Malcolm Gladwell says that it takes
roughly ten thousand hours of practice to achieve mastery in a field.
However, Daniel Goleman, in his book Focus, debunked this
statement by adding that without a certain level of focus the
number of hours is meaningless. Extreme focus towards one
exercise for 10 minutes is much more productive than a lack of
focus over one hour of practice.
10.) Play with others
One of the great pleasures of playing an instrument is to share that
pleasure by playing with others and it is one of the best ways to
learn. Nothing can replace the experience of playing live, in the
moment. There are so many things that can happen while playing
that cant be learned from a book and that you cant be prepared
for. You have to experience it. In the early days of jazz the only real
way to learn was by listening, watching and playing with others.
Many jazz musicians speak of their invaluable educations from being
on the bandstand.
11.) Respect your audience
Russell Malone was a sideman on a gig and decided to play hip,
which meant going outside the harmonic confines of the tunes. He
noticed that a table of young guys in the front row would cheer him
on every time he played out so he continued to play it up. Also
sitting in the audience was Kenny Burrell. After the set, the group in
the front row commented to Russell how much they really dug his
playing and that he was really pushing the envelope. This made
Russell feel good and he walked over to where Kenny was sitting
and sat down beside him all puffed out like. He asked Kenny Burrell
what he thought, expecting to get a thumbs up from Mr. Burrell.
Instead, Kenny moved in close to Russell, put his arm around his
shoulders and started chastising him Look at the room, the
audience, the context will dictate the playing style. Be respectful of
the music and with those you are playing with. Dont forget that
not everyone you are playing for is another musician. The audience
is there to hear music. If you dont respect that and play a bunch of
far out long-winded solos you probably wont be getting hired back
to do that gig.

12.) Dont stop growing

You never stop learning and to stop growing is to die. The great jazz
musicians dont stop developing their craft. If you listen to a
recording by John Coltrane or Miles Davis from the early 50s you will
hear a completely different player in their recordings from the 60s.