How To Play What You're Hearing

[Music] foreign [Music] so how do you play what you're hearing in your head when you're improvising so if you're hearing something in your head and you can't play it probably the first thing to understand is that you're probably not hearing specific notes so you're really just hearing a melodic shape or contour for example if you were to try to sing what you're hearing you probably wouldn't be able to sing actual specific pitches and that doesn't mean that you're a bad singer it really has nothing to do with your vocal abilities it just means that you don't fully understand what you're hearing yet so how do you understand what you're hearing enough to actually be able to sing correct pitches and then ultimately know what those notes are in other words how do you play what you're hearing in your head or close to hearing in your head and then actually play that on your instrument this is a question that i get asked a lot i know some of you have asked about it on youtube and it's certainly something that i get asked about a lot in master classes when i'm touring so that's what we're going to cover today and with that in mind here's a step-by-step process so i'm gonna lay this out for you all so you'll get a sense of how i practice the content that i learn so i can connect more to my instrument and transfer what i'm hearing in my head to being able to actually play it on my horn and just a quick plug before we get started here we just released the full virtual big band album it's called quarantine standards because it's full of different versions of standards that we did as a virtual big band and would love for you guys to check that out on spotify or wherever you're streaming music okay so step one and this is step one to plane what you're hearing in your head which really just means connecting with your instrument so step one to connecting with your instrument and eventually being able to play what you're hearing in your head is pretty obvious first you just want to find some content to practice okay so again this may seem obvious but you have to practice playing and internalizing good solid content if you can hear some cool lines in your head it means that you've studied this music enough that you've got a good idea of what you're going for but it doesn't mean that your answer to connecting the dots and being able to really connect with your instrument is just through kind of improvising aimlessly when you practice okay so what do i mean by that um it's important to understand that a lot of the content that you want to practice in order to become a really good improviser isn't necessarily going to be content that involves you improvising specifically just like to learn a new language you have to learn existing words you have to learn existing words from that new language and then learn how to put those words together into different sentences we have to do that same process with the jazz language in order to improvise and in order to speak freely through this jazz language you have to spend a lot of time learning existing content or language first and practicing that so to find content obviously you know there's an abundance of resources and to start as everyone always says you really want to listen to the music you want to start with recordings and get into transcription and whether you're doing it yourself to start or you're first getting the hang of transcription and maybe starting with some written transcriptions make sure to check out my video that i just did on how to transcribe effectively and in that video i did an analysis and breakdown of how to transcribe using one of my favorite charlie parker solos but today let's check out a more technical concept because you can also approach improvising from a more technical mechanical side which can be hip as well and this concept is one of my favorites for developing everything from your technique to your internalization of the jazz language it's a really great concept especially for line construction because it involves kind of taking a building block approach to building your lines so this is the concept of melodic cells that i've done a couple videos on recently and today we're going to talk specifically about melodic cell streams so first just to fill you in in case you haven't seen any of my videos where i talk about melodic cells a melodic cell is just a grouping of notes usually we think in terms of four note melodic cells and when you practice this effectively these cells can act as the building blocks of your line construction a really common example of using melodic cells that a lot of people are familiar with would be seen or heard in john coltrane's giant steps now in much of that solo we saw a really common shape of him navigating those really difficult chord changes through playing a one two three five diatonic shape and so many of the phrases that you hear in jazz improvisation especially in modern players could be analyzed as being melodic cells these building blocks put together one after another and so you can really use melodic cells to build technique by practicing cells throughout the range of your instrument in different ways and you can even put two together and create compound cells and do all sorts of cool stuff with that it's an amazing way to build technique and i did a video on that recently so if you want to take your technical facility to the next level i definitely recommend checking that out it's probably my favorite concept for building technique and dexterity on your instrument but today we're going to talk about how you can use melodic cells consecutively one after another without a specific pattern and then you can create really cool lines using that process so when you do this approach to melodic cells this is what i call melodic cell streams so when you internalize a bunch of melodic cells and you get the hang of plane from one melodic cell to another you can really connect with your instrument in a cool way because you've got this kind of unlimited amount of possibilities that you can use by connecting together these individual building blocks that you've internalized and become flexible with so let's take a look at a cool phrase using melodic cells so this is going to be a melodic cell stream and to start i'm just going to play it down and then we'll talk about it after so this is a phrase from my latest pdf package called modern phrases and this pdf has a ton of phrases using melodic cells as the base to construct lines over various chord progressions and vamps this phrase in particular is on a dominant chord vamp and so let's talk about how it works on this dominant chord which brings us to step two of how to really connect with your instrument and transfer what you're hearing in your head to playing it on your horn so step two is understand the composition of the phrase so in other words understand the components of what make that phrase what it is so what components make up this phrase and remember if we want to be able to really hear some cool modern lines in our head like to the point where we can sing it and play it on our instrument we need to really understand how these lines work in order to truly internalize it and eventually create our own phrases the more you really understand how a line works the more you can use it for your own application later when you start to do your own variations of these lines which we'll get to in a bit so the way this phrase works is it's actually just composed of four different melodic cells so here's all the individual melodic cells if they were to just fit inside c7 but you'll see what we do here in this line is we move them to different areas in order to create tension and release so cell one is g b flat c e flat the way i would think about this cell is it's essentially 5 7 1 and flat three of c minor or a bluesy pentatonic sound that's because if you use the reference of a c dorian scale it falls nicely in that sound but it also falls inside the blues scale or the pentatonic sound it doesn't really matter which way you think of it it's just nice to know that it functions in all of these sounds including the dominant sound because on dominant you can always play blue z and minor over a dominant chord and it will sound great so cell 2 is real simple it's got three unique notes because one note is repeated it just uses the first through third degrees of the scale and ends up being a one two three two shape now cell three is non-diatonic which just means that it doesn't fit inside of a scale it's a more chromatic shape that people use all the time when they're playing more modern and intervallically because you can really move that shape around into different places to create tension and release and it will have a really cool effect which we'll see we use that approach on this line okay now this last cell and this is the one that i mentioned earlier trane used on giant steps this last cell is really common it's just a one two three five shape and a great cell to practice for building technique again if you want more material on using a lot of cells for technique check out my video or pdf a melodic cell technique but for now let's just check out how we use these four different melodic cells to construct a full line okay so now if you look back at this line you'll see what we do is we use a lot of these cells in different places or even different ways so to start we play that first cell but we offset it so it starts on the end of one and then the downbeat of three when that cell finishes also becomes the start of but cell two is played from e flat not played from c like what we just checked out so cell 2 played from e flat is still a pretty inside sound because it's just functioning as a minor effect over dominant which we just mentioned works great so then we're going to do the cell 3 shape but we're going to do it from f sharp and e flat so that's gonna create some tension then we're gonna do that one two three five shape which was cell four but we're gonna do that from e so that's going to definitely sound outside because three of those four notes are going to clash against c7 so that f sharp g sharp and b natural are definitely going to clash then we'll play cell 3 again from b flat which will sound a bit more inside then we resolve again with that very first cell that we played cell 1 and it's going to be played in that same area it's going to be played inside and then the very last two notes of this phrase are just the third and the root as a way to resolve in c7 now it's important to know that ultimately you're not going to think about this stuff while you're improvising you're not going to think about this stuff in a deliberate verbatim type of way while you're improvising but in order to get better at creating lines like this you do want to have the discipline while you're practicing to think about this stuff in a very deliberate way the more discipline that you have while you're practicing the more freely you can think about improvising when you've improved your skills enough to be able to really improvise through this language fluently so in other words when you have the discipline to learn phrases like this very thoroughly and really understand them it's going to help you actually improvise phrases like this naturally once you've gotten comfortable with this concept now if you've watched my videos in the past you probably know that i really advocate for knowing the chord changes really well and being able to nail them and clearly outline the harmony of the chord changes but what's cool about this concept of melodic cell streams is if you internalize this concept well and you really hear what you're playing in your head on your horn you don't necessarily need to nail the changes because the lines that you're playing will have a foundation in its intervallic construction in other words if what you're playing has a very clear modern intervallic theme to it like the line that we just played your lines will sound really good even if they don't exactly line up with harmony because of the nature of the tension and release that you'll be creating using these intervallic building blocks okay so what's the next step to connecting with your instrument this one is pretty obvious but it's probably the most neglected practice technique you definitely want to sing the phrases that you're learning and what i recommend is to practice playing it first then sing it then play it again so that brings us to step three which is play it sing it play it again [Music] this process will get the content so much more internalized and it will really improve your ears a lot it's definitely a misconception that the only way you can improve your ears is through ear training specific exercises that can be really great but the reality is so much can be accomplished just by singing and making sure that you're singing all the content that you're practicing so when you sing this stuff just take it slow and have the discipline to make sure you're getting each pitch so if you just need to take it one or just a few notes at a time make sure that you do that so that would sound like this [Music] [Music] you people always say that practice makes perfect i like to say that patient practicing makes perfect the key a lot of times is having discipline okay so step four is going to be learn a phrase through the keys that's really going to solidify it ironically when someone asks me how they can learn a phrase and make use of it in a way that isn't just verbatim and just plugging the phrase in when they're improvising which doesn't really feel like improvising my answer for that is to learn it 11 more times in 11 more places so to learn it in all 12 keys now you wouldn't think that the answer to using a phrase more creatively would just be hammering it out in all 12 keys and just doing it more and more but i really believe that's the way to go and here's why when you just end up plugging a phrase in and playing it verbatim you're usually just kind of doing it through muscle memory but when you learn a phrase in all 12 keys you really internalize it to the point where you understand it enough that you can easily create variations of that phrase and use it in different ways it really just solidifies your understanding of the language so much more and really helps when you want to start applying it in a more natural organic way and it's one of those things where you really have to just try and go through the process to believe it and understand how effective it can be you might not feel a difference after just doing it with one phrase but after you've done this with several trust me you're really going to start to get it and it's really going to start to click and once you've done it with several different phrases then it's going to make it a lot easier when you get into what we're going to do with step 5 which is going to be improvising variations of the phrase so improvising a variation of a phrase is kind of like learning a sentence in a new language but then practicing using those words and creating new sentences with those words or combining that sentence with some other words that you've learned in that language to make some new sentences and that really applies to improvising with this concept because again with this concept of melodic cells and then creating melodic cell streams we're really improvising and when we start to get flexible with using these cells as building blocks we're able to create more shapes and constructions in other words we're able to create cooler lines so let's check out a few different phrases from the dominant section of this pdf now these phrases are written out in all 12 keys but we're just gonna look at a few of the phrases written from c dominant or c7 and what we're going to do is we're going to take these four different phrases and we're going to create a single line using a bar from each phrase so we're going to take bar 1 of phrase 1 bar 2 of phrase 2 bar 3 of phrase 3 and bar 4 of phrase 4 and put those individual bars consecutively and create a new line from that so that line will sound like this so that worked out really well mainly because we're using this concept of melodic cells again we're using these building blocks and a lot of times you can put together these building blocks in different ways and will still work out really well so that's one of the reasons why this is such a great concept to absorb and develop in your plane so remember the more deliberately that you learn this language the more accurately that you hear the language in your head and then the easier it is to connect those ideas onto your instrument also when you learn more language really deliberately and very well you also absorb more of the material that you listen to so when you're listening to some really awesome players just having fun listening to their great solos you'll get a lot more information out of the listening process instantaneously which just helps you develop even more and develop at a faster rate and the more you get better at this the more you have fun with improvising which is really the main point of our pursuit as jazz musicians and improvisers and just as a final thought remember the building technique and technical proficiency can really help connect the ideas from your head onto your instrument if you're practicing technique the right way and singing the exercises that you're learning and really internalizing these exercises building technique can not only help you understand and clarify what you're hearing in your head but it can also help you really connect the dots so what you're hearing in your head is something that you can connect and play on your instrument so when you're practicing your technique just make sure that you're focusing on not only proficiency but also memorization and the more proficient that you become with different concepts and the more that you internalize and memorize these concepts the more easily that you can play this content and the more you'll hear cool new lines in your head remember technique and phrasing are not separate vehicles when you practice right the more you build technique the more you can develop and play really cool lines so if you're looking to get into building modern technique and playing modern phrases and playing modern solos and choruses over standards even check out this new modern combo package of my pdfs on jazzlessonvideos.com this modern combo package has a bunch of the pdf ebooks that i've written on this melodic sales concept to me this is one of the hippest concepts that you can improvise with and conveniently it's also one of the most accessible modern concepts that you can get into it really does not take that long until you can start to incorporate this concept into your plane and start to improvise these ideas if you want to get a download of that pdf combo package or really anything else that you check out on that website you can use the coupon code jlv5 for five dollars off so thanks for watching guys it's nice to be able to make some more content for you while i'm off tour here as i've been saying please make sure to subscribe and leave a comment for me about what you'd like me to cover in future videos while i'm off the road and if you haven't already make sure to click that bell next to the subscribe button so you can get notifications when i've done new posts here so you can make sure you're not missing any of this content alright guys thanks again for watching and i'll see you next time

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Id: UoNEuZ7yT2c

Length: 20min 6sec (1206 seconds)

Published: Tue Aug 25 2020