Lesson

Hey Everyone!

New series on comping. In the first few of these lessons, I'm just going to be talking about rhythm while comping and techniques to get a good feel. Obviously, metronome work, recording yourself and listening back, playing along to records, etc. will all help you get a good feel in the minutia of things, so make sure to practice all that, but here are some interesting, tangible techniques to add into your comping to give it some more swing on the macro-level.

Let me know if anyone has any thoughts!

Hey everyone,

Here's another Bud Powell lick from his tune, "Bouncin' with Bud." I like this one because it's simple! I think it's super important when playing bebop to still construct melodies to ground the music, and Bud does that great.

Here's a Wynton Kelly lick off of Hank Mobely's tune "Dig Dis." I explain how it works and how you can practice it, but the main idea is that Wynton Kelly is able to mix blues with upper structure triads and it still just sounds like blues!

Learning the vocabulary of jazz is one of my favorite -- and, I would argue, most rewarding -- things to do in the practice room. Just like human language, jazz vocabulary allows us to musically understand one another, know how to react to one another, and keep ourselves from saying something stupid. From Monk-ish quirks to the pentatonic idiosyncrasies of Coltrane, jazz history is, in many ways, synonymous with jazz language -- you can see the evolution of the music, the cultural influences, the “family tree” of players, etc.

I think of things like you guys do. I think of them all day long and I'm sure you guys do as well. I am preparing for the Team Omega workshop and I'm writing down all these notes and ideas.

So this is something I thoroughly believe and I'm thinking of having guys keep a journal during the workshop and write there thoughts and my thoughts in them as well as any one's thoughts and then think about them BUT MOST IMPORTANTLY act on them.

So you guys are my test subjects.
What does this mean?
How do you do it?
What is the outcome?