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March 20th, 2012

Where to Start Learning Jazz Improvisation

By Forrest

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One of the questions weve been getting a lot lately is where to start learning jazz improvisation. Theres
so much information out there, that knowing where to start is a complete nightmare.
If I could start again today, Id ignore nearly all the information out there in terms of method books and
do my best to learn this music the same way that the greats learned. They didnt have books filled with
transcriptions of their favorite players. They didnt have real-books or fake-books packed with sheet
music of tunes. And they certainly didnt have play-along records that they could pop in and jam with.
They learned from the recordings of their heroes, coupled with playing with others.
Now dont get me wrong. Its up to you whether you use any of these materials and even play-alongs can
be used effectively, however, why fix it if its not broken?
In other words, people were learning how to play jazz long before any of this material existed and they
certainly sounded just fine
Sure, the convenience of playing with a play-along record when you have
no one to jam with can be fun and beneficial, but in my experience, as well as observing countless other
musicians experiences, nearly all these resources distract you from the pathway that will get you where
you want to go.

Where to start
Heres a checklist to get you started learning jazz improvisation. If you simply go through the checklist,
youll be well on your way to becoming a fluent jazz musician.

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There are two groups of topics that you want to start focusing on today. The first group is stuff you can do
away from your instrument and the second group is stuff youll do with your instrument.
Things to do without your instrument
Listen
The number one thing you can do to get started learning and constantly improve at jazz is to listen.
Sounds simple right? But how much have you really listened? With the advent of phones that carry
gigabytes of music, theres no excuse not to be listening all the time. Invest in a music player that you
carry with you all the time and carry a small set of ear-buds. Whenever you can, listen.
Fill your head with the stuff you like the most. When you wake up in the morning, on your way to
work, at work if youre able to, while you work out, when youre cooking dinner, when youre
cleaning up your house or doing laundry. Listen, listen, listen, and then listen some more!
Understand the culture of jazz
There are many myths about how jazz came to be, and even more mysterious than the music are the
players themselves. With so much intellectualizing of jazz, we often forget how deep this music
really is. Pick up some autobiographies of some great jazz musicians and youll begin to understand
what life was like for these people.
Checkout:
Miles Daviss Autobiography
Art Peppers Autobiography
Count Basies Autobiography
Jimmy Heaths Autobiography
Many more autobiographies exist, as well as many biographies of the greats. Pick one and read it to
absorb the culture that these people lived in. Believe me, youll enjoy it. Reading about jazz
musicians is always fun and entertaining.
Understand chords, chord progressions, and chord-tones from a theoretical and aural basis

Thats why it bugs me when people try to analyze jazz as an intellectual theorem. Its not. Its
feeling.-Bill Evans
I could have said Learn music theory or Jazz theory but this would over-emphasize the point, not
to mention that it would make it seem like a bigger task than it really is.

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You hear so much about how complicated jazz theory is that when people start to learn jazz, they
think they have to learn a ton of theory.
In actuality, theres only a minimum amount of music theory required to understand jazz lines and
progressions and the bulk of it has to do simply with chords. What do you need to know about
chords?
You need to understand how chords are built. This is actually quite easy. A simple Wikipedia search
around a chord will present you with more than enough information than you need to know about
each chord quality.
The chord qualities youll want to study are: major, minor, dominant, half-diminished, and
diminished. A firm understanding of how to build these chords will allow you to branch out to
modifications of these chords, including dominants with altered 5s and 9s.
While youre learning how chords are built, make sure to think of each chord tone as a number in
relation to the chord. This is very important. 1-3-5-7-9-11-13. You want to be able to quickly
(immediately and intuitively) know what any chord tone of any chord is, so for example, if I said,
whats the third of an Ab major chord? You quickly respondC.
A great way to start ingraining the structures of chords into your mind is visualizing them in your
spare time. Again, this is all stuff you can start doing today even without your instrument!
Study these posts to start to acquire the needed chordal knowledge:
Visualization for Jazz Improvisation
How to Put Chord Tones At Your Fingertips
10 Visualization Exercises
Visualization for Jazz Improvisation Ebook
Now when you go from one chord to the next as you do in a tune, it makes a chord progression; one
chord progresses to the next. Once you gain a firm grasp on chords and chord tones, the next step is
to understand how and why one chord progresses to the next. This is also quite straightforward when
it comes to most jazz standards. As you begin to study your first several tunes, youll notice the same
chord progressions used over and overthings like ii V I.
Equally if not more important to understanding chords, is to learn to actually hear chords and chord
tones. Weve written at length about how to hear chords:
Fundamental Ear Training Exercises
Hearing Seventh Chords
Hearing Chord Tones
Learning Your Four Triads
You should always understand why each chord is there. It should never be a mystery. Many people
who learn tunes from sheet music are still in the dark. They wonder why a particular chord is there in
a tune, and why theyre having such a difficult time playing over it. Most of the time, its because
they picked up the wrong chord from the sheet music. As Ill discuss later, learning tunes from

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recordings will ultimately save you years of frustration.

Where do scales fit in?
Today, scales are overemphasized as they present a pool of notes that work over a particular chord.
Lets look at an example:
The chord D minor arrpegiated to the 13th will include all of its chord tones: D-F-A-C-E-G-B
If you rearrange these notes in stepwise ascending order you get: D-E-F-G-A-B-C
A whole paradigm around thinking this way has been created. It focuses on a particular mode of a
scale which works over a particular chord.
These scale association techniques do help you understand what notes are contained in a chord as a
whole and that is why they are not bad to know.
However, what happens, is people use modes as the basis of their soloing concept and end up flailing
endlessly within that mode and think that thats improvising. Its not. Jazz is a language. Chords and
scales are not the language of jazz; thats like saying the alphabet is the language of English. Its not.
The language of English has words, phrases, and inflections that make it a very specific thing.
To read more about scales, checkout why they are not the secret shortcut to jazz.
Know the chords, know the chord-tones, know the scales, but at the end of the day, the language you
learn from recordings, the concepts you emulate from recordings, and the concepts and language you
create yourself, are the things that formulate the basis of your musical concept.
Understand ii Vs and how important they truly are
ii V progressions make up the bulk of any chord progression youll ever encounter within the jazz
standard repertoire. They are extremely important to study. Read two five progressions made easy to
get started with them.
Things to do with your instrument
Pick one tune to study
Now that youve got the non-playing aspects of improvisation marinating in your mind, its time to
apply what youre thinking about to the music.
In all your listening that youre now doing, youre bound to come across a jazz standard that
resonates with you. Find a recording of any standard that you love where the instrument playing the
melody is the same as your instrument. Heres some suggestions of what tune you might pick:
Autumn Leaves
On Green Dolphin Street
A blues (any tune with a blues form)
A rhythm changes tune (Any tune with the chord progression from Gershwins I Got Rhythm)
To clarify, if I play trumpet, perhaps Id choose Freddie Freeloader from Kind of Blue. Its not too
fast, its a blues, and its some of the best music on the face of the planet to ever exist. Understand
how to make your selection?

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First learn the melody note-for-note by ear.

If you dont have Transcribing software, I highly recommend you get it. It makes navigating any
track much simpler and saves you hours of time by being more efficient.
Its quite simple in theory. You put the tune into your transcribing software, you loop the first phrase
of the melody and copy it note-for-note until you can play it perfectly. Then onto the second phrase.
Then connect the first two phrases. Next, add the third and so on and so forth until youve learned the
melody completely by ear from the recording.
Once youve got the melody down, its time to turn to the harmony. I can hear you whining already.
But thats too hard! Its really not, and the sooner you get into learning melodies, harmonies, and
rhythms straight of the recording, the faster youll get to playing how you want, not to mention
having a ton of fun because while everybody else is flailing over what scale choice to make, youll be
hearing and playing the language of jazz.
Use this site and your teachers to guide you through learning your first tune from a recording. Its all
hear. Pun intended.
Learn your first piece of jazz language

As youre learning your first tune from the recording, start to pay attention to what the soloists are
doing. In your hours of listening, just as you found a tune you love, youre bound to hear a line on
that particular recording that makes your jaw drop.
You guessed it. Your next step is to rip that jazz language right off the recording. Again, match it
note-for-note, writing nothing down as you go. It may be quite difficult at first, but if you stick with
it, you will get it.
Absorb the feeling of jazz
This is one of the most important things to do, yet very difficult to describe to another person. Play
along with that same tune that youve been working on and really try to emulate the feeling, the vibe
of what you hear.
Pretend that you actually are the soloist. So, as in the earlier example, Id try to feel as if I were Miles
Davis. How would he stand? How would he hold the horn? It may sound dumb, but the idea is to get
into his head as much as possible. Only then will you truly absorb the feeling of whats going on and
this is where the magic lies.

Your goals as you start

As you start to learn jazz improvisation, you should have a clear vision of what your goals are. It may not
sound glamorous but your goals as you start out (assuming you want become proficient) should be to
develop solid fundamentals through building the right practice habits:
Listen to jazz everyday. Enjoying it and feeling a true passion for the music.
Learn and study tunes straight recordings rather than reading them from sheet music.
Transcribe and learn language from recordings
Understand how chords are built and why each chord exists in a tune, and how and why each
chord progresses to to the next in a progression. Make sure to use your ear and learn to hear and
recognize these chords aurally.

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long term goal: transcribing your first solo, with the aim of emulating language and concepts from
the soloist and integrating them into your own playing
It may sound like a lot of work to start out this way, but I promise you, not only will you excel at lightning
speed if you begin this way, but youll build the strong practice habits that will keep you improving and
having fun playing your entire life. Use this article as a jumping off point to get started; of course not
everything is covered here, but dont let that be your excuse. Search for answers on this site, from your
teachers, from your friends, and most importantly on recordings.
You have the knowledge to get started in jazz improvisation, so make it so!
Print This Post

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