[Steve]

Hola Lluís, ¡bienvenido! :)

Espero que algunos miembros del estudio puedan responder pronto. Este mes estamos trabajando con escalas pentatónicas sobre estándares. Escucha la melodía de la unidad "Bye Bye Blackbird" para ver en qué están trabajando los alumnos.

Personalmente, he estado practicando líneas largas de blues en las 12 tonalidades. Voy probando una tonalidad a la vez hasta que me siento cómodo con los dedos y luego paso a la siguiente.

¡Tengo muchas ganas de oírte tocar!

[Steve]

Translation of Reply:

Hi Lluis and welcome 🙂

Hopefully some studio members can respond here sometime soon. This month we are working using pentatonics over standards. Check out the ‘Bye Bye Blackbird Unit’ tune into what the students are working on directly.

I personally have been practicing trying to play long lines on the blues in all 12 keys. I’ve been going 1 key at a time until it feels good under the fingers and then moving to the next one.

I look forward to hearing you play!

[Steve]

Lluis’ Translation:

Hello everyone.

My name is Lluis and I live in Barcelona, ​​Spain.

I've been playing the tenor saxophone as a hobby for a few years now.

I also play in an adult big band at a music school, and I've decided to join this group to improve my improvisation skills (which are quite limited).

I hope to learn a lot with the help of Steve and all of you.

By the way, are you working on any particular piece this month?

Best regards to all.

[Steve]

Welcome back Robert! Great to have you here. Have a look around and let me know if you have any questions about anything 🙂

[Steve]

HAHAHAHA – I put this right up there with my favorite trombone player joke… What’s the difference between a Bone player and a Pizza? The Pizza can feed a family of 4 😅

[Steve]

Or Yawn Slowtrane….

[Steve]

LOLOL nice one 😅

[Steve]

Mike!! Great to have you on here and looking forward to working with you on whatever you may have questions about. Life catches up with us and we can all use a break sometime but I can safely say that when you do this from the standpoint of wanting to have fun rather than making it feel like work, it becomes a lot easier!

Looking forward to hearing you play and reaching our goals together. Rock on!

[Steve]

Awesome lol… Most of these can be used at the next concert band rehearsal 🔥

Thanks Becky!

[Steve]

👌 so accurate… 🤣

[Steve]

I can’t wait to use this one on the bandleader… 😅

[Steve]

Ha! Perfect – love it.

[Steve]

Super glad you’re here Becky! Talk to you soon I’m sure 🙂

[Steve]

Love to hear this Robert- welcome back! I will agree that there is some technical work involved but once you can get a nice workflow going where you understand what to practice, I’ve found it can be such a rewarding experience regardless of what level you’re at. It sounds like you have a good trajectory going on – super happy to hear this! Thanks for sharing 🎶

[Steve]

Woohoo!! Awesome so glad to have you here 🙂

I promise, being a nice guy is not just an act. I feel I am genuinely a happy person and I have music as a career to thank for this sunny disposition haha… Thanks for the kind words about the live stream I have really enjoyed getting to produce them

I just have 2 basic rules that I always apply to anybody studying jazz and improvisation:

1. Don’t compare yourself to anybody but yourself. It will take the joy out of the process and cause you to practice things that you don’t need to be working on.
2. Always be working on a song and use the song and its chord progression to improve your toolkit as an improviser.

As a classical player myself I can totally relate with you on the feeling of being ‘stuck’. It definitely will take some work and repetitions of ideas but the main thing that we all need to do is improvisers is relocate the visual element (reading music) of playing music to the ear. This is where the exercises over chord changes come into play.

When you are able to take musical ideas, shapes and melodies and apply them to any chord you see… BOOM! You are improvising! People a lot of times don’t realize that it is that simple I don’t think. The difficult part is training your brain to think this way. We’ll get there!

Thanks for joining the studio and just one more rule: Ask me any questions that may come up as you are looking through material. I’m here to help! A lot of time you will not be the only person that has a question and this helps me understand how to be a better teacher.

Looking forward to hearing you play and working on some tunes! Have a great weekend 🙂