Wes Montgomery transcribed every solo note for note by his idol Charlie Christian – and even performed those solos note-for-note on stage in the early part of his career instead of improvising his own. It’s the time-tested way of quickly building your jazz skills. There is however, a better way to directly use listing to improve your jazz improvisation skills:īy intently listening, transcribing, learning and analyzing a solo, you develop your ear skills greater heights, and come away with a whole heap of vocabulary as well. In and of itself, passive listening is not going to make you a better jazz player. It’s a particularly good way to get attuned to a good rhythm feel.It’s a a way to attune yourself in general to phrasing and shaping solos.It’s a great way to get inspired by new players.It’s very familiar for us to emulate sounds and speech with our voice.īut few people (unless they are a genius level), could memorize, deconstruct and draw concepts from simply listening to a recording passively.ĭon’t get me wrong, listening is very important: Think about the human voice for a minute:įrom the day we were born we have used our voice in some way, experimenting with it in a myriad of ways. In reality, it doesn’t quite work that way for jazz. The idea is to expose yourself in daily life to as much of the language as possible, and then by absorption you begin to pick up the language naturally. This kind of ‘osmosis’ method is emphasized often in language learning. It didn’t directly move my playing forward. “Listen to as much jazz as you possibly can.”īut there’s a difference between having an album on in the background and listening for pleasure…įor a long time, I spent every waking available moment listening to jazz recordings by the greats of guitar – Wes Montgomery, Joe Pass, Barney Kessell.Īnd then ventured into Coltrane, Charlie Parker, Chet Baker and many others.Īlthough I got a great deal of inspiration from these great players… I’m sure you’ve heard this said by many great jazz players:
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