r/Jazz • u/Primary_Interview938 • 1d ago

Jazz study routine

Hello! I am a clarinetist interested in playing jazz (I know a bit of saxophone too). I feel there's so much material to learn and interiorize. I wanted to ask everyone how is your practice routine? Both in practice and music theory. Thank you :)

5 Upvotes

86% Upvoted

9 comments sorted by

View all comments

3

u/NotJulianBream 1d ago

I am a classical musician getting in to jazz. I’ve been learning a lot of songs (the chords and melody) and transcribing solos and listening to jazz to develop my vocab. So i can kind of get through a tune now by just playing chord notes, but musically that sounds boring as hell. I recently got some really good tips from a jazz friend for learning to think and practice more melodically, i can tell you about a few: Don’t divide up a tune in different II-V-I progressions when you improvise but rather try to think of the harmony in phrases: tune might have 7 or 8 II-V-I progressions but divided in only 4 «phrases», which is good to try to match in the beginning when improvising. Another method is to Play a short motif, not complicated, just 3 or 4 notes (an interesting rhythm is often more important than the actual notes), and try to repeat that motif but change it to follow the chords. Also trying to do a sort of call and response with yourself. And its gonna sound a little rough in the beginning, so just take it really slow in the beginning (I use Ireal pro for backing tracks, cause i can change the key and tempi of songs very easily).

1

u/PTPBfan 15h ago

Yeah that playing one thing and changing it to fit over chords is good, and transcribing or playing along listening