Hearing Your Way Through Difficult Changes (Have You Met Miss Jones)

Hearing your way though changes on tough tunes is a real challenge, but is an integral part of developing your musicianship. Let's look at some tricks that can be used to help you hear those shifts in tonality and improve your improvising and raise your ear training to a new level.

Common Intros - Lesson

How to take an intro. Let's go over 4 very well-known and frequently-called intros that you can use when you're playing in your jazz combo.

Live! Taking Requests And Q And A To Celebrate 10K

4/5/2017 streaming To Celebrate 10K - Alpine Field, Welcome to the Jungle, My Foolish Heart, I Got Rhythm, Giant Steps Josie, All Blues, Georgia, Over The Rainbow, Sweet Lorraine, Superstition, City of Stars, Estate, April in Paris, Space Oddity, Just the Way You Are, If I Should Loose You, Autumn Leaves, You go to my head, As Days Go By (Family Matters theme) ...and much more...

Once I Loved (duet with Tony Dumas)

This afternoon, I hung out with my good friend, Tony Dumas at his place in Altadena. Tony is one of the best bass players in LA and I'm always honored to play with the man who has recorded with JJ Johnson, Nat Adderley, Cedar Walton, Billy Higgins, Art Pepper, Joe Henderson, Etta James, Freddie Hubbard, and so many more, not to mention tours with Sarah Vaughan and Carmen Mcrae! I know I have said in the past that I love a bass player who plays the root on beat one, etc., but in the right setting (especially an intimate one such as this), there's nothing quite like a creative and thoughtful accompanist in a bass player and no one embodies this more than Tony. Listen to the brilliant treatment he gives Jobim's "Once I Loved."

Why It's Important To REALLY Learn The Melody

When you are learning a new jazz tune, it's imperative to get the melody right. To learn it the right way. What is the right way? How do you know that? Let me tell you.

So In Love (duet with Mike Scott)

Another duet from our session. Cole Porter's "So In Love" Recorded with: Vocals: AKG P220 Piano: Rode NT4 Guitar: Shure SM 58 next to Mike's amp (see comments on YouTube for more guitar info). Using the direct SD card record feature from the Presonus AR8 mixer

Yanni vs.Laurel And Aural Perception

Before you're all too sick of it, let's focus on the amazing mind and ears that come with our human bodies and talk about how it's possible to perceive sound in different ways!