The other benefit of recording yourself is to be able to hear your playing from a few weeks/months/years ago and judge for yourself how you progressed. you probably never, ever will be satisfied with your iwn playing (no one ever is! ) but at least you will appreciate the distance traveled along your journey! it is a huge boost of motivation for me.

Maybe aim for small wins? 

https://stageflow.music/v/7b42.....22cb13214b

Went back to the Focus on Feel lesson, thought I'd start lifting the nuggets therein!

Here's the "major" part by minor 3rds:

Also, when playing it by descending major 3rds, the last note of a cell becomes the first note of the next and you can do this neat thing:

“Transcribing and studying the masters is a big part of the process.  The next step, is trying to get past just the notes of the solo, and into the concepts about the way that those players navigate the harmony through the use of voice leading and thematic development. There is more to it than just playing some chord tones and applying a few simple patterns. It sounds to me like what you really need to do is to develop is your ability to hear the chords in your mind and to hear the voice leading that will connect the chords in a smooth way. You also need to learn and understand how to sequence, develop and explore an idea and learn to keep the musical ideas flowing—telling a musical story, rather than just hitting random chord tones.”

The advice seems great, however, the proposed work plan was more scales, chords, intervals, licks, and etudes.

I have been following here for a few months and I applaud everyone’s work on the transcription challenges.  I know the efforts are substantial.  My question is how is all this work finding its way into your improvisation.  Maybe, I have not looked hard enough but I do not see many members posting their improvisations.  Before you point those postings out to me let me say that the ones I have seen are from those much further along in the journey.

I do understand that this is a journey.

I do feel that there are many others here in the studio that find themselves in this predicament.

I'd really appreciate hearing from anyone who has experienced this. What did you change in your practice, and how long did it take before improvising started to feel more natural?

I completely failed to keep a regular practice this summer, due to the change of rhythm with the kids and the summer vacations. I'm planning to get back at this in September, since I will be working from home two days a week which means I will have time at lunch time to practice !

Anyhow, I still had a productive summer with the Zappa gigs. We had two more gigs with the band around mid-august, and it was sooo much fun ! The two gigs were, this time, recorded in multi track directly at the soundboard so I should have nice recordings to share soon (hopefully). After the second gig, the keyboard player told me that my outside playing in solos was really nice, which is a big win given the fact that I spent quite some time working on this specifically (there's a dedicated thread somewhere where people pitched in which gave me nice practice ideas). 

Now, I need to get back to regular practice which is not easy after such nice gigs . I'm now working on Girl from Ipanema because folks in my local jazz band want to play it. I'm revisiting the videos from the recent challenge, and trying to work on the harmony (which is definitely not easy !). I also need to get back to the visualization course, again ... 

The link is my submission for the August challange. It is part of 2 chorus' just before a piano and then a bass solo and includes the time from 7 and 1/2 to 8 minutes. It starts at 4th bar of the 1st chorus and ends in the 7th bar of the 2nd chorus. I chose it because of the long lines of tripelets. As usual it is at the limits of my technical abilities and I could only play it at 60% of Sonny's tempo.  I couldn't do more because I'm going on vacation. The section I learned ties in really well with the foundation exercises from last month and the #11 is everywhere. Sonny tongues a lot: it is hard to replicate.

I really feel fortunate to be a part of this workshop. This work is enjoyable and I can already feel improvement in my playing. With this early post I miss the other submissions that were very helpful in the previous months. 

To get to the Vocab Coach click on your profile picture top right and then vocab coach. there you will get to the nugget creation screen. The Songpool is for Sheets and Backing Tracks (not single Licks). Hope it helps 🙂

Regards Jan

Thank you so much for this tool. I am having problems after I set my account to find the place where I saved the videos. Is it an audio pool? 

I'm having problems opening up the video to set up the nuggets. Your help would be greatly appreciated! 

Thank you so much for helping everybody. 

Blessings 

Dean

I’m penning this on my iPhone as I’m currently unable to log in to the site on my Mac. Has anyone had this issue before? When I try to log in I just end up in a doom loop, with the message telling me to login to view the content. 

Thanks!

Simon