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Old 07-18-2017, 01:29 PM
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Eric Skye
 
Join Date: Oct 2000
Location: Portland, Oregon
Posts: 7,668
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I still need to read through this thread But I thought I'd quickly chime in by saying that I mostly learned jazz by buying the Real Book in middle school (back when they were illegal and you had to know a guy) and sitting on my bed with it and a chord book and learned the changes and melodies to dozens of tunes. I firmly believe if one mostly just focuses on tunes the rest will more or less fall into place. Starting by learning mainly mode patterns, arpeggio shapes, esoteric rules, getting flat wounds and a fedora... is taking the long way around.

I always tell my students to pretend they have a jazz gig coming up. What would the set list look like? Write it down (for real, on paper) and start working on it. Learn to play the chords in different areas for each tune, learn the melodies in two or three octaves, make up a cool intro and ending...maybe play along with a swing drum loop... If someone did that stuff every day for a few months, things like taking solo or coming up with a chord melody version would almost happen on their own. Then, later, if you toss in little bit of advanced theory, some patterns, etc, it'll explode.
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