Last night, after a particularly inspirational practice session, I found myself thinking about what it was that I was accomplishing. Saturating myself in the rarely used key of concert A, as I’ve been doing lately, and also taking new material through all twelve keys, has not only been unlocking my saxophone technique overall, but it is also causing me to consider the result I’m after. In a nutshell, I want my fingers to hear the music.

That’s my way of saying that I want to get the muscle memory in my fingers integrally linked with my inner ear, and my inner ear to what I’m actually hearing moment by moment in a given improvisational setting, so intimately that I can conceive ideas instantly and execute them flawlessly.

Have you noticed that there are certain keys in which your fingers just naturally know where to go? Keys and tunes in which you’ve mastered your melodic materials to the point where they’re innate; where licks and patterns are just tools in your toolkit, not your life raft that keeps you afloat? Concert Bb, F, and C major are keys most jazz musicians are quite familiar with, for instance. But what about B, D, A, or F#? The American Songbook may not abound with tunes written in the “hard” keys, but lots of songs have momentary digressions to them.

“Ornithology,” for example, has a temporary excursion into the key of concert A in the form of a iii-VI7-ii-V7 progression. The bridge section to “Cherokee” includes an entire four-bar ii-V7-I cadence in that same key. Spending time trying to master those two tunes has given me incentive to hash out the key of A, to the point where my fingers are starting to “hear” in that key. They “feel” where the third and leading tone of the scale are, and how those notes fit into different harmonic contexts; they’re getting better at handling the avoid-tone of the fourth; they’re becoming friends with passing and non-harmonic tones, and growing more adept at using non-diatonic notes to realize borrowed harmonies.

It’s a process that begins with thinking things through, then working your thinking into your fingers through repetition over many practice sessions. The result, over time, is less deliberation (“If I play an E, that’ll be the #9 of the C#+7#9 chord, moving down to D, then resolving to the root”) and more instantaneous response. Once you reach that point, you no longer need to tell your fingers what to do; they feel it for themselves in their wee little finger souls. Your thinking speeds up, and your fingers are right there with you, eager to serve your ideas and fully capable of doing so.

How many keys, and how many tunes, can you hear with your fingers? Pay your dues in the woodshed, transcribe and memorize jazz solos, play out whenever you get a chance, and over time, your fingers will develop big ears.