“Will I Ever Become a Good Jazz Improviser?”

What does it take to become proficient at improvising jazz? Will I ever become a decent player?

Have such thoughts ever nagged at you? Perhaps you’re at the stage where you’ve acquired a decent technique, but you’re uncertain how turn it into flowing, musically cohesive improvisations. Will you ever be able to make the leap between mere good chops and great jazz solos?

Or maybe you’ve been playing the sax for a while and you think you’re making strides. Then you come across a YouTube video of some young firebrand who’s blowing circles around anything you ever dreamed of playing, and your heart sags. At that point, you think one of two things: What am I wasting my time for? or I can be that good too if I work at it.

Depression or determination. I’ve felt both emotions at different times. When I was 26 years old, I took a year of music at Wayne State University in Detroit. During my time there, living on campus, I made arrangements to practice after hours in the music building, where I normally woodshedded from 9:00 p.m. to as late as 3:00 in the morning. I worked hard, doing scale exercises, running patterns, and memorizing solos from the famous Charlie Parker Omnibook.

One evening I walked into the building early and heard sounds of music drifting from the auditorium, where one of Detroit’s high school jazz bands was playing a concert. I listened for a bit. They sounded pretty good! But I had work to do, so I broke away and headed for one of the empty classrooms, which I preferred over the smaller practice rooms. Then I assembled my horn and began to work on one of the Omnibook transcriptions I was memorizing.

A few minutes later, several of the high school band members walked into the room. The concert had ended, and they had heard me playing down the hall and decided to get an earful. Cool. I didn’t mind if they hung out and listened. I chatted with them a bit, and then the bass player said, “Hey, we gotta get James.” The other guys agreed that James definitely needed to be gotten, and one of them left to look for him.

I continued to work on my Bird transcription. Pretty soon, in walked a fourteen-year-old kid with a tenor sax tucked under his arm. He listened to me for a minute, then said, “Oh, ‘Ornithology.'” He put his horn to his mouth and started to rip through the Parker solo from memory as flawlessly as if his genetic makeup included an ‘Ornithology’ chromosome. Then, having demonstrated his mastery of a solo that I was only beginning to get my arms around, the kid proceeded to double-tongue a chromatic scale up into his horn’s altissimo register, high enough to sterilize the flies in the room.

I wanted to slap him.

The kid went on to tell me how he planned to master not just the saxophone, but all of the woodwind instruments. Whether he has entirely fulfilled that lofty ambition in the years since, I can’t say, but I do know that today, jazz virtuoso James Carter plays a large number of the woodwind family in addition to the tenor sax.

Fellow saxophonist Tom Stansell, whose family owns and operates the celebrated Blue Lake Fine Arts Camp in Muskegon, where Carter spent a summer as a student years ago, once commented, “No one ever told the kid that it’s hard to play fast.”

As for me, I just kept plugging away at my saxophone. My journey as a musician hasn’t taken me to New York at age 21 or on international tours. Rather, it has placed me in Caledonia playing for cows in the pasture at the west edge of town and taking gigs as they come, which they seem to be doing more and more of lately.

And they should be. Because while I’m no James Carter, I’m a good sax player. I’ve been told on different occasions that I don’t realize how good I really am, and maybe that’s true. I hope so. Coming from capable musicians, compliments like that certainly encourage me, because I’ve worked hard to bring together all the technical stuff–the scales, arpeggios, patterns, solo transcriptions, and everything else I’ve labored at over many years–into something that sounds interesting, original, personal, passionate, and…well, musical.

I hadn’t initially planned to share the above anecdote, but there’s a point to it: discouragement and inspiration often come from the same source, and they’re just a matter of how you look at things. Maybe you’re not playing the way you wish you could play today. But if you stick with it, one day you’ll look back and realize how far you’ve come. The technique that you’re presently unsure what to do with will have become your servant, the building material of ideas which you spin with confidence and ease out of your horn. You may not be the next Michael Brecker–or maybe you will be–but that’s not what it’s about. Do what you do for the love of what you do, and everything else will follow in its time.

Not all of us have the same advantages. Not all of us grew up in musical families or were steeped in jazz at an early age. Not all of us have the same natural aptitude, the same educational opportunities, or the same life circumstances that permit us to practice as much as we’d like. But all of us have the ability to choose whether to persevere or give up. So…

“Will I ever become a good jazz improviser?”

If you quit, the answer is no.

If you keep at it, studying the music, listening to great players, and practicing diligently and consistently, the answer is yes.

Don’t rob yourself of the joy of playing music worth hearing. Don’t deprive the world around you of the pleasure of hearing you. And don’t belittle the talent God gave you, because into that talent is woven a purpose that is higher than you may imagine.

Stay with it. You’ll be glad you did.

August 5, 2009 by
Filed Under: Band, Entertainment, Jazz, Jazz Improvisation and Technique, Life, Music, Nature, Saxophone, Tornadoes, Weather Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

I Hope You Don’t Mind If I Repeat Myself

There are two broad aspects of productive practice on the saxophone, or for that matter, on any musical instrument. Those aspects are the intellectual and the physical. The intellectual side involves figuring out what you’re doing and why. The physical part is pure muscle memory, a matter of developing technique. Your goal as a musician is to gradually and increasingly knit together both of those aspects into a seamless whole. For that matter, neither of the two exists apart from other, but there are times when you will find that you’re weighting one concern more heavily than the other.

In this post, I’ll address a critical component of successfully developing the physical side. It’s really no deep, dark secret, but it eluded me for a long time, and when I finally discovered it, my technique–and consequently my playing overall–took a quantum leap forward. So, Grasshopper, I now pass on to you the chops-building key of the ages. Make the following wisdom your practice mantra:

Repeat, repeat, repeat.

I repeat: REPEAT.

Whether it’s a simple scale pattern, a complex lick, or a digital exercise that you’re striving to run seamlessly through all twelve keys, repetition is the vehicle that moves the material you’re practicing from that first phase of slowly piecing it together under your fingers, to internalizing it in a way where you own it and can produce it at a moment’s notice.

What do I mean by “repeat”? Simple. You play your material–slowly enough to play it well. Then you play it again. And again. And again. And again, and again, and again…

You increase your speed gradually as the material works its way into your fingers. Ten times, fifteen times, twenty times…what you’re doing is programming your fingers. It’s the same principle as learning to type. The more you do it, the less you have to think about what you’re doing as muscle memory takes over, converting the intellectual aspect of what you’re practicing into automatic response.

Repetition is not some strange concept. It’s the norm. It’s what you do if you want to become proficient on your axe.

It takes time. Yes, time. That’s one reason why an hour is really nothing once you become truly immersed in practicing your instrument. Two hours is more realistic–and believe me, once you discover the magic of the woodshed, you can go much longer than that, and you’ll want to.

Repetition isn’t a magic bullet, but it’ll go a long way to developing the stuff you need in order to be a great improviser.

So I hope you don’t mind if I repeat myself one more time:

Repeat, repeat, repeat.

Now…tell me what I just said.

Very good, that’s right…

Repeat.

June 2, 2009 by
Filed Under: Entertainment, Jazz, Jazz Improvisation and Technique, Music, Nature, Saxophone, Tornadoes Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , ,

Chicken Soup for the Solo

The meds that the doc prescribed for me seem to finally be working their mojo. I’m still coughing, but it’s no longer a painful cough, and yesterday’s feverishness has passed. Today I went out and bought a bunch of Amish chicken and a whole passel of assorted veggies and rice, and I made up a huge potful of chicken soup. I’ve heard more than one person tell me that the old wive’s tale is true: homemade chicken soup has a wholesome, curative property. I believe it. People breathing their last gasp have been known to revive at a mere whiff of my chicken soup.

Anyway, it’s been a week since I’ve played my horn, and in the interrim, I’ve felt so lousy that I haven’t even thought about it. As for storm chasing, ha. Good thing I didn’t go down to Tornado Alley last weekend with Bill and Tom–not only would I have been miserable, but by now they would be, too.

Storms have been lighting up the Plains pretty much all week. My friend Kurt Hulst was out in Oklahoma yesterday with his pal Nick, and he posted some nice pics on his blog. I’m assuming he caught the supercells in northern Texas earlier today as well. Can’t wait to see those photos.

Of course, I’ve been out of the action. Out of practice on my sax, out of the picture for chasing storms. In another couple of days, though, I should be ready to rumble. I just hope the weather feels the same way. My head is finally back on my shoulders only barely enough that I might start giving a rip about the forecast models, and maybe even be able to make some sense out of them again.

Enough for now. Tornadoes can wait. Right now, a bowlful of chicken soup is calling my name. If I eat enough, I might find myself in good enough shape by tomorrow to blow a few notes on my saxophone. Chicken soup for the solo. I like that idea.

May 1, 2009 by
Filed Under: Humor, Jazz, Life, Music, Saxophone, Storm Chasing Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Of Sax Practice and Railroad Tracks

I just returned from a nice, two-hour saxophone practice session out by the railroad tracks.

The railroad tracks?

Oh, I guess I haven’t told you about my practice habits. They have as much to do with where I practice as what I practice.

Living in an apartment, I try to be considerate of my neighbors. I like to think that they’d enjoy my music, but realistically, there’s only so much that even the most ardent jazz lovers can take of listening to the same licks, patterns, and scales repeated ad nauseum, blaring down the hallway and through the walls. So for years, my practice room has been my car. My routine has consisted of driving to the outbacks of Kent County and parking at various locations along the CSX tracks between Kentwood and Lansing, where I practice my horn and watch for the trains to roll by.

I love trains. Obviously, I also love playing my sax. It’s nice to be able to combine those two interests in a productive way. Tonight, as I do so often, I parked at one of my favorite trackside spots near a small community called, appropriately, Alto. I didn’t see any trains, but I had a most productive practice hashing out some diminished and diminished/whole tone licks, and woodshedding the Charlie Parker tune “Ornithology” in several keys.

I always return feeling good about my playing after a session like tonight’s. The time goes so fast! And that’s as it should be.

The best way to make a living is to earn money doing things we’d pay money to do. Playing the sax is one of those things. I can’t say I make a living at it, but it certainly supplements my cash flow; it’s part of the picture of my livelihood. I’ve been at it a long time now, and most of that time I’ve been practicing in my car by the tracks–or, during the warm months, often outdoors. If I ever do buy a house and gain an honest-to-goodness practice room of my own, I think I will still maintain my railroad track sessions. I’d miss them far too much not to. Habits are hard to break, and there’s no reason to break a good one in the first place.

April 3, 2009 by
Filed Under: Jazz, Jazz Improvisation and Technique, Life, Music, Saxophone Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , , ,

The Wisdom of Not Chasing Storms in February (or, Gee, I’m Glad I Practiced My Sax Instead!)

When it comes to chasing early-season severe systems, I’m getting better about reining myself in. Today was the big test. With a whopper of an H5 jet max–upwards of 120 knots–pushing through northern Kentucky into southern Indiana and Ohio, it was tempting to make the drive down to Xenia and parts thereabouts. True, the whole thing looked to be a massive straight-line wind event, but you never know, right? Particularly when you’ve been cooped up all winter with a nasty case of SDS (Supercell Deficiency Syndrome).

I’m patting myself on the back for not going. In fact, I didn’t chase squat today, not even the grunge that was drifting north from the border and offered at least the possibility of a little lightning. That would have been nice to see in February, but I just couldn’t muster the enthusiasm, and now I’m congratulating myself for my restraint.  The wind event did in fact materialize, but way to the south, down in southern Ohio, Kentucky, Tennessee, and on to the east, and not a solitary tornado report do I see in the whole batch of SPC storm reports. So I’m very glad I managed to ward off the temptation to grasp at straws. Not only am I not presently driving the long 350 miles home, wondering what on earth I was thinking that brought me down there in the first place, but I invested my time into practicing my saxophone, a much more profitable activity.

I worked with my new copy of Emile and Laura De Cosmo’s book The Diatonic Cycle, which arrived today in the mail. It’s fun to work with a practice book again. These days, I do so much of my practicing straight out of my head, and the De Cosmos‘ well-conceived, organized, and interesting approach comes as a welcome new way to work on my scales and keys. It should keep me occupied for a few months as I work my way through all twenty-four major and harmonic minor scales as presented in the book.

Opting for practicing my horn over chasing storms was a smart move today. Yesterday, on the other hand…well, if I lived 500 miles closer to Oklahoma, I’d have been all over yesterday’s severe weather. Sadly, that weather marked the year’s first tornado fatalities. It appears that the sirens weren’t working as a large, violent wedge rototilled the town of Lone Grove, Oklahoma, west of Ardmore, doing EF4 damage and taking fifteen lives. According to reports, some people were caught out in a parking lot. How awful. February is not a time when folks in the Great Plains expect such things, and I’d imagine that many people were caught off guard.

Looking ahead, the Gulf of Mexico appears to be opening up for business in Dixie Alley, but we won’t be seeing any of that moisture this far north again in the foreseeable future.  Tonight we plunge back into snowy conditions. This is, after all, February in Michigan.

February 11, 2009 by
Filed Under: Jazz, Jazz Improvisation and Technique, Music, Saxophone, Storm Chasing, Tornadoes, Weather Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,