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My sightreading was bad (and how I fixed it) |
Topic: How to... Tips for All Musicians |
| Reading music is not easy and takes regular effort to keep up to scratch. Here are a few practical tips on how to make great music from the dots. |
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1. Listen to Jazz Recordings |
Topic: Improviser's Roadmap |
| Spend as much time as you can listening repeatedly to classic solos, absorbing sound, feel, rhythms, articulation and memorising song forms. Remember, the answers to all your questions are in the recordings! |
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2. Train your Ear |
Topic: Improviser's Roadmap |
| Eartraining is an important skill to develop for all musicians who want to play jazz and improvise. |
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3. Start with the Blues |
Topic: Improviser's Roadmap |
| The Blues is an excellent place to start improvising. The music is generally easier than typical jazz standards, and there is a rich heritage of vocal and guitar blues music to enjoy online and on CD. For those new to learning tunes, this is the place to start. |
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4. Imitate Your Heroes |
Topic: Improviser's Roadmap |
| You can learn alot about music by copying your musical heroes, their ideas, inflections and performance style. To better study your heroes, there are a number of tools that you can use to improve your chance of successfully getting the music down. |
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5. Memorise 10 Tunes |
Topic: Improviser's Roadmap |
| Memorising tunes is a key step in performing music well. This includes learning the melody, the chords, the rhythms and if possible the lyrics. You gain a lot of confidence from successfully memorising tunes, which makes it welll worth doing. |
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6. Top 10 Practice Tips |
Topic: Improviser's Roadmap |
| Practice without a plan is like cycling up on blocks. A lot of peddling without any scenery changes, and no real progress. Here are some tips to get ‘the rubber back on the road.’ |
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7. Learn the Music Theory |
Topic: Improviser's Roadmap |
| Music theory helps you make generalisations about what you're hearing (and seeing on the page). It's useful to have some knowledge of music theory as it will allow you to practice more effectively and get more out of music. |
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8. Build Your Vocabulary |
Topic: Improviser's Roadmap |
| To improvise fluently, you need to spend time assimilating stock phrases and real world language into your musical vocabulary. Practise each phrase through the cycle of fourths and then play over your favourite chord progressions. |
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9. The Most Useful Skill You Can Have in Music |
Topic: Improviser's Roadmap |
| All jazz players and vocalists benefit from learning basic keyboard skills. The piano keyboard is an essential visual aid for understanding scales, intervals and chords. Practising chords and voice leading on piano will also help you to internalise the sound of chord progressions as you learn songs.... |
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10. All The Things You Can Do |
Topic: Improviser's Roadmap |
| Musicians looking for new challenges can focus on applying their practice routines to intermediate and advanced song forms such as I Got Rhythm; All The Things You Are; Giant Steps; Stella By Starlight; Out Of Nowehere, and many more. |
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Body and Soul |
Topic: Song Studies |
| Body and Soul is one of the most well-known jazz standards and made famous by vocalists such as Billie Holiday and tenor saxophonist Coleman Hawkins. |
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Confirmation |
Topic: Song Studies |
| Some ideas for soloing over 'Confirmation' - strategies for when you're guns are jammed; a collection of strategies gleaned from numerous jam sessions, assessments and playalong gigs. |
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Fakebook & Songbook Index |
Topic: Find that tune |
| Fakebooks, Real Books, song books and various other large collections of sheet music can take alot of time to search for that one tune. |
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Functional Ear Training (FET) |
Topic: Ear Training |
| Ear Training is an important part of developing musicianship and appreciation of music in general. |
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Get some bebop into your playing #1 |
Topic: How to... Tips for All Musicians |
| Bebop (jazz) lines feature certain 'devices' that help to make the sound. Here the Major bebop scale and 'enclosures' are presented. |
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Harmony with Lego Bricks FAQs, Play alongs |
Topic: Product FAQs |
| Harmony with Lego Bricks is like a kind of 'aural road map', pointing out common blocks of chords (cadences) and in particular, focussing on how these cadences join together to make the music flow in interesting, enjoyable ways. |
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How do I play better solos? |
Topic: How to... Tips for All Musicians |
| Saxophonist Lester Young used to talk about soloists "telling their stories" and in many ways musical improvisation has a lot in common with the art of public speaking. |
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