June 2013

All that Jazz-Practice With A Purpose, Practice With A Friend

June 7, 2013 08:55

Practice with a friend; Jam with a purpose

"Crepe making/Giant Steps party" was the theme this afternoon, as I look for sneaky ways to bribe my daughter Camille into practicing. Ten minutes making crepes followed by ten minutes trading solos over John Coltrane's "Giant Steps", with each of us alternating between walking bass lines on fiddle and soloing. Rinse and repeat.

As simple as it sounds, I can't get over how much more fun it is to practice with someone else. It makes me want to practice, and no matter the disparity in abilities (within reason) I think just about anyone can really grow through this kind of purposeful jamming.

I've been practicing "Giant Steps" since I was 20. I'm 41, and just now feeling like I can get through the chord progression. Camille, at 16, almost has them down. It's helped us both to have a jamming partner. Even if all you can do is play the root notes of the bass line through the form, this can be incredibly useful.

Where many drop the ball practicing jazz, in my opinion, is in neglecting to practice bass lines and accompaniment parts, i.e., playing a song as a member of the rhythm section, and thus internalizing it from every point of view. Jazz violinists, or any single line instrumentalists, tend to be more susceptible to this neglect. Ever since I made it a regular habit to play bass lines and comping parts through the entire form of any song, my confidence has increased as I begin to truly comprehend the songs I'm playing.

I've created some free resources with this in mind for classical violinists and teachers who would like to pursue this direction. Check out the Creative Strings Academy - click here.

Billy Contreras, who started playing jazz very early, sets the bar quite high, with a seemingly limitless technical facility, harmonic comprehension, and melodic inventiveness, as seen below.