Learning Jazz

Joe Henderson’s “Inner Urge” from his iconic 1965 record also entitled Inner Urge is one of the most frequently called tunes at jam sessions when jazz musicians want to play a fast and challenging...

Here on Learn Jazz Standards, there are a few great posts on walking bass lines for bass players: How to Keep Your Bass Lines Interesting and How to Write a Walking Bass Line. In this post,...

One of the biggest pet peeves of being a drummer is to deal with poorly made charts. For some strange reason, musicians tend to neglect drum charts. I believe it has to do with the lack of...

As jazz musicians, we’re always trying to find ways to hear and come up with different types of melodic lines while improvising. One strategy that can help break up a hyper scale-focused approach to building...

When I’m learning a new song, one of the most important things I do is repeatedly play through the harmony of a tune. Repetition is a key component for committing new tunes to long-term...

A few months ago, I started this series of articles to develop our coordination with the left foot on the hi-hat cymbals. In the previous lesson, Developing Your Hi-Hat Technique: An Introduction To The Third Voice, I...

I’ve talked about voice leading with guide-tones and using chromatic surrounding/approach tones here on LJS before, and now I want to combine these two concepts and apply them to “There is No Greater Love.” The...

7th chords have been covered here before on LJS, so in this post, I want to expand our ideas about 7th chords and offer up a fun way to practice 7th chords in all...

There is nothing scarier than coming to a gig, and suddenly the band leader pulls out a chart, and the first thing you see is a bunch of different time signatures all over it. I remember...

Once we’ve mastered some of the basic types of jazz vocabulary, we’re always striving to find new and interesting ways of breaking up and varying our improvised melodies. One of the most effective ways to...