The 10 Minute Jazz Lesson Podcast

This month is all about the man himself, Sonny Rollins! One of my favorite saxophonists, musicians, and people on the planet. Enjoy transcribing the melody and solo on I'm An Old Cowhand from his album, Way Out West. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nlatJOsLhPA https://open.spotify.com/track/0dL8xfVkwJjbnexqvMhH0r?si=zOVzhvq_QXymjDDIu4T46A

This month we are going back to a more series oriented run of shows. In July we will take a look at the interval of a fourth and how it can be used in a compelling way. We start with some basic exercises to get your ears and fingers wrapped around this sound over two very common chord symbols, the minor-seventh and the major-seventh, sharp eleventh chords. No need to do these in every key quite yet, let's keep things simple and move slowly through the learning process. Enjoy the episode and don't forget to grab the PDF! WANT THE PDF THAT GOES ALONG WITH THIS EPISODE?? Head over to our Patreon page and when you donate $3 or more a month you get this PDF and every other. We will also be bringing you many extras exclusively to our patrons including transcriptions and a FREE gift of our latest Ebook, The Diatonic Method. We hope that we bring you value every week here at the 10 Minute Jazz Lesson and we appreciate all of your support!

This week wraps up our month of listener questions. We are taking a look at the famous Wayne Shorter composition, Footprints. In particular, we are trying to make sense of the turnaround and give ourselves a fighting chance at playing something meaningful over the complicated set of chords. Enjoy the episode and remember to grab the PDF below! WANT THE PDF THAT GOES ALONG WITH THIS EPISODE?? Head over to our Patreon page and when you donate $3 or more a month you get this PDF and every other. We will also be bringing you many extras exclusively to our patrons including transcriptions and a FREE gift of our latest Ebook, The Diatonic Method. We hope that we bring you value every week here at the 10 Minute Jazz Lesson and we appreciate all of your support!

This week's episode is a natural followup to last week's and is something that is often discussed in our FB group. I also think this is one of the most essential skills to becoming a good and complete jazz musician. Vocabulary is something we all have to practice. It's a building block to being a great improviser and something we can't avoid. But how do we get that vocabulary and different sounds into our playing in a way that makes sense?? That's the million dollar question and what I try to address in this week's episode. Hope you enjoy! WANT THE PDF THAT GOES ALONG WITH THIS EPISODE?? Head over to our Patreon page and when you donate $3 or more a month you get this PDF and every other. We will also be bringing you many extras exclusively to our patrons including transcriptions and a FREE gift of our latest Ebook, The Diatonic Method. We hope that we bring you value every week here at the 10 Minute Jazz Lesson and we appreciate all of your support!

This week is a long one. You'll have to bear with me while I dive into a long winded topic that requires much discussion. We are continuing our month of episodes directly answering questions from the community. This one is all about how to interpret, understand, and memorize chord progression from our favorite jazz standards. We talk about categorizing tunes into buckets that will help us to remember the progressions at the end of the day. This task becomes harder as we learn more tunes, but hopefully some of the strategies I talk about in this episode can be of use. Enjoy! WANT THE PDF THAT GOES ALONG WITH THIS EPISODE?? Head over to our Patreon page and when you donate $3 or more a month you get this PDF and every other. We will also be bringing you many extras exclusively to our patrons including transcriptions and a FREE gift of our latest Ebook, The Diatonic Method. We hope that we bring you value every week here at the 10 Minute Jazz Lesson and we appreciate all of your support!

This week's episode is all about simplicity. When we see a flat 9 chord, our minds go to very complicated places that aren't always good. In this episode, I would like to show you an easier, clearer way to start incorporating this sound into your playing. If you're someone who struggles to use this sound and thinking about diminished dominant makes your head swim, you're in the right place. Enjoy the episode! WANT THE PDF THAT GOES ALONG WITH THIS EPISODE?? Head over to our Patreon page and when you donate $3 or more a month you get this PDF and every other. We will also be bringing you many extras exclusively to our patrons including transcriptions and a FREE gift of our latest Ebook, The Diatonic Method. We hope that we bring you value every week here at the 10 Minute Jazz Lesson and we appreciate all of your support!

This month we are going to transcribe a solo from one of the greatest musicians to ever live, Ella Fitzgerald. I'd like you to work on her scat solo over the famous composition, Take The A-Train by the great, Duke Ellington and Billy Strayhorn. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=78vRYUMHlJU

This week we are talking about a very important topic that adds on to our series studying jazz articulation. Ghost notes are crucial to both making lines a bit more natural to play, adding texture, and for many instruments, making lines much easier to accomplish! I'm providing 3 examples this week and pointing out where I would naturally ghost or de-emphasize notes to make things swing much more. This is a concept that every jazz musician should master and you can consider this your jumping off point on this important element of the jazz language. Enjoy the episode! WANT THE PDF THAT GOES ALONG WITH THIS EPISODE?? Head over to our Patreon page and when you donate $3 or more a month you get this PDF and every other. We will also be bringing you many extras exclusively to our patrons including transcriptions and a FREE gift of our latest Ebook, The Diatonic Method. We hope that we bring you value every week here at the 10 Minute Jazz Lesson and we appreciate all of your support!

This month, we are going to take a look at the amazing Jerome Kern standard, Yesterdays through the lens of the articulation principles we have been discussing in the past 3 episodes. We have a three chorus etude and our aim is to get a bit more adventurous as we move through the composition. One important thing to remember, is to keep the basic principles of swing in mind for the entire etude. Just because we are mixing things up a bit, doesn't mean we can ignore the basics. Enjoy the etude and remember to grab the PDF on Patreon! WANT THE PDF THAT GOES ALONG WITH THIS EPISODE?? Head over to our Patreon page and when you donate $3 or more a month you get this PDF and every other. We will also be bringing you many extras exclusively to our patrons including transcriptions and a FREE gift of our latest Ebook, The Diatonic Method. We hope that we bring you value every week here at the 10 Minute Jazz Lesson and we appreciate all of your support!

This week we begin talking about the off-beat accent. This is crucial in the understanding of how to play swing music and once you start to grasp this concept, you'll hear all of your favorite musicians doing it. We move from a very obvious example, to more subtle as we move through the episode. It's important to remember that all of the other concepts we have talked about still apply, even when taking this new idea into account. Enjoy the episode! WANT THE PDF THAT GOES ALONG WITH THIS EPISODE?? Head over to our Patreon page and when you donate $3 or more a month you get this PDF and every other. We will also be bringing you many extras exclusively to our patrons including transcriptions and a FREE gift of our latest Ebook, The Diatonic Method. We hope that we bring you value every week here at the 10 Minute Jazz Lesson and we appreciate all of your support!

This month is less about listening to an album, and more about tuning in to something on Facebook. Chris Potter, the masterful jazz musician, has been doing performances/clinics on FB live and they are amazing! Check them out here: https://www.facebook.com/chrispottermusic/videos/543492763036120/ https://www.facebook.com/chrispottermusic/videos/3406314779385209/

This week we dive deeper into the principles of jazz articulation. Last episode, we covered some general thoughts on how to articulate in a swinging, legato manner. This week, we start to bend the rules a bit and talk about how injecting some staccato notes into our lines can be a great way to add life and character to our lines. We use these notes sparingly and in a calculated way to create the effect we are after. Enjoy the episode and let me know if you have any questions! WANT THE PDF THAT GOES ALONG WITH THIS EPISODE?? Head over to our Patreon page and when you donate $3 or more a month you get this PDF and every other. We will also be bringing you many extras exclusively to our patrons including transcriptions and a FREE gift of our latest Ebook, The Diatonic Method. We hope that we bring you value every week here at the 10 Minute Jazz Lesson and we appreciate all of your support!

This month's project is all about one of my favorite trumpeters, musicians, and composers, Kenny Dorham. We are tackling his solo on the amazing jazz standard, Mack The Knife. Enjoy and have fun with this month's project! Would you like to support the creators of this podcast? If so, please head over to our Patreon page and show your love by donating $3 or more each month. You get incredible benefits and this keeps the podcast coming at you regularly. Thanks so much! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TOSyb2jWa1A

This week's episode begins a series on articulation and some core concepts related to this important topic. This was a listener request and something I have been meaning to do for a while. Articulation is something that can completely change the texture and feel of our lines by changing a few subtle things. I'm excited to dive into this topic with all of you and I hope you enjoy the first episode! WANT THE PDF THAT GOES ALONG WITH THIS EPISODE?? Head over to our Patreon page and when you donate $3 or more a month you get this PDF and every other. We will also be bringing you many extras exclusively to our patrons including transcriptions and a FREE gift of our latest Ebook, The Diatonic Method. We hope that we bring you value every week here at the 10 Minute Jazz Lesson and we appreciate all of your support!

This week we are taking all of the concepts we learned about the bebop scale and applying them to one of my favorite jazz standards by Duke Ellington, In A Mellow Tone. Your job this month will be to find all of the instances of the bebop scale used in this etude and see how they are incorporated into the bigger picture. I'm a fan of the chord progression here because it largely follows the circle of fourths and relies heavily on the dominant chord (a great place for the bebop scale!). Enjoy the episode! WANT THE PDF THAT GOES ALONG WITH THIS EPISODE?? Head over to our Patreon page and when you donate $3 or more a month you get this PDF and every other. We will also be bringing you many extras exclusively to our patrons including transcriptions and a FREE gift of our latest Ebook, The Diatonic Method. We hope that we bring you value every week here at the 10 Minute Jazz Lesson and we appreciate all of your support!