What Time Is It?

Lots of great stuff going on here, and over the past few weeks I’ve experienced the same thing that many of you email me about: life can become too busy for us to get to our music (or, in my case, this newsletter) as often as we’d like. I’ve been performing and teaching around the … Read More

“Practice licks.” “Don’t practice licks.” “Play everything in all 12 keys.” “Stay with one key for a while until you’ve mastered it.” “The Real Book is great!” “The Real Book is terrible!” “Start by improvising with scales.” “Start by improvising on chord tones. Hey Improvisers, Let’s begin by taking a deep breath. It’s been about … Read More

Hey Improvisers! Have you ever wondered how some rock, pop, and jazz musicians play with such a relaxed, natural-sounding rhythm? With many of them, especially those who developed their sound in the 1960s, it’s because they grew up listening to and playing the classic songs of the 1930s and 1940s. These songs had catchy melodies, … Read More

Hey Improvisers, I received the most inspiring comment today on my KeyboardImprov YouTube channel. Nyssa wrote: “I love this! I am working on this tune for an arranging class, and we didn’t understand why a Monk tune was labeled bebop. Thanks for the historical context!” First of all, good luck to Nyssa and the other … Read More

Hey Improvisers, As revered as the composer arranger Gil Evans is in some ways, his true role in the development of modal jazz is usually unrecognized. Let’s put it another way: when we hear someone credit Miles Davis with inventing or developing modal jazz, we could easily substitute Gil’s name for Miles’s. (Or, at the … Read More

Hey Improvisers! Lately, I’ve been doing a lot of thinking about what holds people back from learning to improvise. And every week, with all types of pianists, I’ve noticed that it’s not due to a lack of talent, or a lack of time, or any of that. In fact, the number one thing that holds … Read More

Hey Improvisers, After I make each of my Journey Through The Real Book videos, I enjoy watching them and writing all the annotations for the timestamps. Since I don’t usually plan the musical arrangements, it’s fun to go back and see what I actually played! Today, I was a little surprised to hear that I … Read More

Hey Improvisers! Even though there’s more music available to us nowadays than ever before, I’ve noticed that we generally don’t tend to listen as deeply as we once did. While it’s great to listen to music in the car, or while at work, it’s also vital to listen while doing nothing else, so we can … Read More

Hey Improvisers, The great Charlie Watts passed away this week. Watts was (is) one of my musical heroes, and in a very real sense was a jazz drummer trapped in one of the most popular rock bands on the planet. (Please excuse the “trapped” pun!) Charlie discovered jazz as a youth when he heard Gerry … Read More

Hey Improvisers! It’s very common these days to feel overwhelmed when we sit down at the piano. And yes, this is understandable because there’s so much we could practice. If we feel all of this at once, then we’ll usually feel overwhelmed. We pianists, however, deserve better. Much better. The piano is such an amazing … Read More