If you’re a budding jazz saxophonist, this post can make a huge difference in your playing. If you’re a seasoned player, you can probably skip it. Then again, you just might find it valuable, in the manner that hearing your mother’s voice in the back of your head asking you whether you’re eating your vegetables can be valuable.
Are you practicing your intervals?
They’re so good for you.
Oh, I know, you’d rather shove them aside and concentrate on the steak and potatoes of memorizing jazz licks and solo transcriptions. But if you want your instrumental technique to grow up big and strong, then don’t forget to sit down with your Larry Teal workbook, or whatever technique book you’re using, and invest some serious time memorizing and maintaining interval exercises along the chromatic scale. Seconds, thirds, fourths, all the way up to sevenths and even beyond…unless you plan to play nothing but scales in all your solos, all of the aforementioned are building blocks that you really need to get your arms around. So don’t ignore interval practice. Do it because you’ll acquire a greater command of your instrument, speed up your thinking, and enhance your creativity. Do it because your mother would want you to.
Increasing your dexterity is of course an important objective of interval exercises. But don’t make that your sole focus. As you practice, also think of application.
Let’s say, for instance, that you’re spending some time taking diads of a minor sixth up and down the chromatic scale. What are some practical uses of that interval that you’re likely to encounter?
For starters, you can use it to ascend from the third of a major triad to its root. Also, in an augmented triad, a minor sixth (or, enharmonically, an augmented fifth) is the distance both from the root to the raised fifth of the chord, and from the third to the root. With a V9, you can ascend from the root to the flatted thirteenth (aka flatted sixth) and resolve down a half-step to the fifth; or you can leap from the second to the flatted seventh.
And of course, the order of these upward leaps can be reversed. For instance, you can leap downward from the flat seventh to the second of the V9 chord, or from the root downward to the third.
The point is, while you’re practicing your intervals, exercise your mind along with your fingers by thinking of ways you’re actually going to apply all that fabulous technique you’re building. Engage your brain and ears as you’re doing the grunt work.
And with all that being said, sit down and git ‘er done. Practice, practice, practice. Make your mother proud.
