Most Popular Lessons

🚨 Play a Great Blues in 3 Months – Week 5

So far in this series, we’ve focused on building a strong comping foundation:

• Guide tones in the left hand
• Smooth voicing movement
• Consistent time and rhythm

This week, we shift the focus toward line development.

👉 Using 3rds and 7ths, we begin outlining the blues with single-note lines, helping you connect harmony in a clear and musical way.

Here it a simple solo on Cherokee. I like making simple solos and trying to get the essential notes, guide tones, color tones, etc. Your job is to transcribe it. Then try to play it faster and faster. 

I talk a bit about studying chords and voicings. We all have to do it, how are you going to do it? 

Check out the attached PDF!

🚨 Play a Great Blues in 3 Months – Week 8

Over the past few weeks, we’ve been building lines using real jazz vocabulary—starting with guide tones, then expanding into phrases drawn from players like Milt Jackson.

This week, we focus on one of the most important elements of that language:

👉 Chromaticism

These lines are built using phrases from Milt Jackson transcriptions and other bebop sources, but the main idea is how chromatic notes connect and shape the line.

You’ll hear:

Hello all,

Here's another lesson on dampening, and specifically how it can be used to achieve a certain stride-like feel on vibes. I use this technique when playing solo and with a trio and love its possibilities for different articulations and textures. Watch my lessons on staccato and partial dampening first if you haven't already seen them.

Here is a lesson with an etude. I use the tune Green Dolphin Street and I play a chordal solo. There's very little that monophonic here. I tried to hit always with 2,3 or 4 mallets. 

I played a few choruses of Green Dolphin Street and transcibed it. 

I also talk about little bit about this series. I will continue it by doing a video for each of the technical ways I am doing this. 

Check out the transcription below.

Here's a second part to the other lesson titled "A Way To Practice Soloing and Comping Together".  
I took a couple other examples about how to practice this. Ultimately, you just do it and try to make music. I know for some of you it won't sound great in the beginning. I always think that if you keep doing it and doing it, eventually you play something good and recognize it and learn from it. Know what I mean????