Here's a cool site I found floating on the internets. This is a great resource to point any jazz player towards to see all of the greats in one place. 

In college, music students are taught to listen to music carefully and critically. We study the greatest composers in history such as Bach, Beethoven, Berlioz, Mahler, Bruckner, and Stravinsky and analyze their works note by note in hopes of tapping into a sliver of their thinking and creative process. Jazz students will study the greatest improvisors of all time like Louis Armstrong, Charlie Parker, John Coltrane, Miles Davis, Lee Morgan, Freddie Hubbard, and Chick Corea transcribing their solos note for note in the same hopes of tapping into their creative process. As wonderful as it is to dive into these great musicians and devote our college carrers to them, it creates a big problem for many of us. We can no longer listen to music without immedeately becoming analytical about what we are hearing. Then, as we hear a song on the radio, our years of training immedeately key us in on how simplistic and lame modern music has become. That's right. You're a music snob.

It's almost impossible not to be! How are we supposed to recognize the greatness of the Rite of Spring and at the same time be happy that a young spunky pop stars song  (that probably wasn't even written by said star) is the most popular song in the world right now? There's no comparison in quality between the two. We have been trained to have critical ears and to listen for the greatest nuances that have ever existed in music. But now we are plagued with a stompy ploddy quarter note melody by Tailored Smift to the words "I wear these clothes. She wears those clothes. I do this one thing. She does another thing...." Simply poetic. Is this what we have to look forward to in music? 

Here is what we forget. Sub-par music has always existed. The great writers have always been a very small part of the population. It's just now that in the last hundred years communication has sped up literally a million times over and things are changing and moving much more rapidly. The biggest thing of all though that we tend to forget is that music is somthing that is meant to be enjoyed by everyone. One of the great purposes of music is for us to be able to communicate the abstract and evoke emotion from the listener. Another purpose is also to entertain and create a small escape from reality. These days there are two big divisions of music, music as an art form and music as an entertainment industry.

We should be happy first of all that our students are listening to musc at all and enjoying it. That's the gateway we can use to get them into school music programs. Our next goal then is to communicate that even though they can enjoy the simplicities of current pop culture, there is a whole different world of music to discover that is deep and rich. We are the messengers of the world and we have a responsibility to share the gospel of music as a high art form to those who may have never appreceated it before. How do we do that? Beats me. We are still using most of the same teaching techniques and styles as we were nearly 100 years ago. We have fallen behind the times in that regard. It's time for us to get caught up and embrace what is happening while coupling it with the greats of the past. 

But another important step in this process is learning not to be so snobby ourselves. We should appreciate pop culture for what it is and how it enriches the lives of everyone we know in some way. That doesnt mean we have to love it all, but at the very least we need to understand its purpose in the world. So every once in a while put away that Alfred's publishing cd and jam out to the radio carefree. Not all music is meant to be dissected, some is just meant to be simply enjoyed. Even if you don't like pop music, you have to recognize that it's popular for some reason. If we as music teachers ignore what is popular in our field for the sake of high art, then our already dwindling profession will be driving the nails into our own coffins. 

This is just an open thought, so please COMMENT! Tell me what you think, especially if you disagree. 

     How do you teach a young musician to improvise with their instrument when they never have before? Director's approaches vary from very specific guidelines and materials to saying “It's in Bb kid. Go for it.” I have seen that there is not a very well defined curriculum that is also widely used specifically for jazz improv. I have also noticed that the majority of band directors have little training and/or experience with improvisation in their own playing. This observation isn't meant to be a criticism of directors for we all know that a band director is already doing the job of 10 or 15 people every single day. Directors work very hard and work an incredibly specialized and underappreciated job that demands more than most people have to endure. That being said, skilled improvisation is something that takes thousands of hours to become proficient in and most directors haven't gotten that deep into it. All the more reason that outside sources can be a directors best approach when it comes to teaching jazz. But, that's a different topic.


    What I want to talk about is where band directors tend to lack in their teaching of improvisation and how maybe they can improve on their method a bit. So let's get to it. Ask yourself "what is the first thing that I think about when i stand up to take a solo?" 99% of you will answer notes, scales or chord progression. This many times becomes the sole focus for many people who are both teaching and learning improv. Notes, notes, notes. The problem with this is that we tend to forget that there's a bunch more to do than just play notes. Classical and jazz both use the same 12 notes and they are entirely different. So while notes can be important, I am not going to talk much about them here and I'm even going to suggest that notes take a back seat to many other things when improvising.


Listening.


      I think this is the absolute most important thing for any musician to do. Students and performers alike have to know what they want to sound like before the horn touches their face if they are ever going to play at a high level. Most kids get sat down in a jazz band never having listened to much jazz before. Yeah, they heard "Sing, Sing, Sing" on the Chips Ahoy commercial but they never really have listened intently. So when the director explains swing rhythm to the class, they are at best guessing at a playing style that they may have heard their band director demonstrate for 10 seconds. It's like shooting at a target with a blindfold on. Now if the director can carve out a little time in rehersals maybe once a week to listen to great jazz, the students at least have a chance of developing a feel for the style and feel of the music. If they go home and listen to more, the results will be coming out of the bell of their horn soon enough. The horn is simply a tool that reflects the mind that is holding it just like a paint brush or a pen... keyboard.


     Also, when listening a player picks up ideas from soloists on the album. Great improvisors are not just "making it up on the spot" so to speak. They are expressing the culmination of an entire lifes worth of musical experience. Our playing is a sum of our influences mixed with our own personal taste. Great players are always absorbing what others are doing, taking those outside ideas and practicing them in all 12 keys and personalizing them. Simply put, I do not think someone can learn to improvise in jazz well without spending some considerable and constant time listening to great players. 


Style/Swing/Groove


     After doing some listening and establishing a good sense of swing, a bad soloist can immediately become an ok soloist by swinging hard and phrasing well. Someone can stand up and play all the right notes all day and still be terrible and boring to listen to. That same person though can stand up and swing their tail off playing maybe half the right notes and people will still want to listen. Also, someone can stand up and play 2 notes and swing like mad and people will love it (*cough* *cough* Louis Armstrong) A good sense of style and phrasing is rarely taught, becuase it's almost impossible to teach. It still should be stressed heavily to students that style and groove will take a solo alot further than notes will. It should also be stressed that listening is the prime way to learn those things. Some things just aren't effectively taught through words in a book or from a podium. 


Phrasing


     This tends to get ignored too. Good phrasing can be the difference between sounding like an amateur or a pro. Young improvisors tend to do two things. First they will play lots of half notes and whole notes because they are still trying to figure out what to play next. They sound like a person who doesn't know what to order at McDonalds and just stands there saying "uuuuuummmmmmmmm...... uuummmmmmm". The other thing typically done when a player gets a little better is that they will throw at you every note they have ever learned without breathing. The entire solo is a run on sentence. Students tend not to think in musical phrases when they solo because they are in panic mode. Slow down and put some SPACE in there. Silence can be scary at first, but the realization will come that silence can make the played notes more powerful and meaningful. The best way to demonstrate this is by talking about people conversing. Sentences have natural phrases and stopping points and so should your music. This brings me to the next one...


Rhythm


     Rhythm kind of fits inside of what I have already been talking about, but it should be discussed in the classroom by itself. With good style and phrasing comes good rhythm too. Students should be encouraged to experiment with different rhythms all of the time. It's easy to get caught up in playing the same couple of rhythms over and over, so always be trying to think of new rhythmic ideas even if it means using less notes. Rhythm is one of the most powerful driving forces behind jazz and should not be forgotten.


Some other things that should be talked about that don't require small speeches from me are:


-Articulation
-Dynamics
-Tempo/keeping time (you don't have to be a drummer to keep time)
-Using the entire range of the instrument
-Confidence and accepting the possibility of failure. 


     I should touch on that last one. When we start doing something new, we aren't going to be very good at it. That is the nature of the beast. Everyone was terrible at first when they started improvising, even people like Charlie Parker or Chick Corea. We all start from the same place and grow from there, so students should expect to musically fall on their faces... often. The fear of failure or sounding bad scares away so many people from improvisation but it's the thing that thye fear that they should embrace. Fail, get back up and do it again. That's how we learn these things. There is no magic in learning to play music, it takes time and practice. That's the trick. When players say "I'm no good at technique X like Steve is." I always ask "how much to you practice that thing?" Of course you are no good, you never do it! I leave you with a quote from story teller Ira Glass on this very same thing. 


It's a video, worth showing to your students.


http://www.wimp.com/iraglass/


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