Jazz and improvising as a classical trombonist?

[MStarke]

As a trained classical trombonist, how do/did you get into jazz and improvising?

I have (with just very small exceptions) had purely classical lessons/education from around 8, including all my way through my university trombone studies.
Advice on playing any kind of jazz was basically limited to the basic idea of swing versus straight eighth notes.
In brass and trombone ensembles we did play some jazz arrangements, but a jazz trombonist would probably have gone backwards out the door again when hearing it.
Still I have played in various great bigbands and didn't have relevant issues making it there, as long as I wasn't asked to improvise. With very very few exceptions I never gave this a try.

The last years I have started listening to more bigband and jazz.
I am taking lessons that help a lot with style and phrasing as well as slowly getting into improvising.
And I got myself a bunch of the Bob McChesney books.
The realbook is also lying around and being used every other day.

I would say today I feel very comfortable playing anything that's (mostly) written down and with a little preparation would be happy to do at least some improvising. But there is a lot of room for improvement.

How do you classical trombonists do this? Do you feel comfortable playing different kinds of jazz?

[Macbone1]

My experience is similar to yours. There was almost no big band activity in my HS band program, and at university in the 1970s, the dept was too "snobby" to allocate very many resources or support to jazz education. Upon joining a military band system after college, I expressed my weak background in jazz and was told "We have a training program and will train you". Not true. Band commanders (who write the training plans) were all "concert band geeks" and there was no training for jazz.

Fast forward a few decades and I'm a decent improviser with the help of the Aebersold play-alongs (a must) and LOTS of LISTENING to the jazz pros. The key is to start simple and STAY RELAXED as you learn to be creative. It is of course very much "in the moment" music making, and if you don't feel in control, the chords will just seem to fly by and you will feel lost. Start with one or 2 notes, tonguing rhythmically over a 12 bar blues. Monitor how you feel. Do the chords feel like they are racing by or are you enjoying the creativity? Feel stressed at the end or want to do more? Move on to more notes and mixed rhythms, and don't forget to use rests. improvising is not solid sheets of sound from start to finish.

[Bach5G]

What/who are you listening to?

McChesney, as impressive as he is, might be the wrong place to start. May I suggest downloading some Kai (Winding) and JJ (Johnson) recordings? Nice songs, nice solos. Tons of swing. Popular in its time and still sounds good today IMHO.

Try The Great Kai and JJ. It has Bill Evans, Paul Chambers and Roy Haynes on it.

[MStarke]

What/who are you listening to?

McChesney, as impressive as he is, might be the wrong place to start. May I suggest downloading some Kai (Winding) and JJ (Johnson) recordings? Nice songs, nice solos. Tons of swing. Popular in its time and still sounds good today IMHO.

Try The Great Kai and JJ. It has Bill Evans, Paul Chambers and Roy Haynes on it.

I am not listening much to Bob McChesney - although it is certainly great music and impressive. It's just not my very favorite.

If looking at improv stuff, I love e.g. the Andy Martin records (which I find relatively accessible), some Gordon Goodwin stuff etc. Thanks for some tips to look around more! A more local favorite of mine are some recordings by Ludwig Nuss (WDR bigband).

I like the Bob Mcchesney books a lot because they are in my opinion a good way to play some musically appealing written down material in a kind of jazz/commercial style. This is for me more for getting into the music, articulation, phrasing etc. and maybe getting some ideas of harmonics and patterns for improv.

[baileyman]

...The key is to start simple and STAY RELAXED as you learn to be creative. It is of course very much "in the moment" music making, and if you don't feel in control, the chords will just seem to fly by and you will feel lost. Start with one or 2 notes, tonguing rhythmically over a 12 bar blues. ...

Really good starting point. There is a lot to do with a note or two. It gives you a chance to play hip rhythms without getting tied up. Later on you may realize a lot of the notey things you start to play are still really just one or two notes with some pitch embellishment in addition to rhythm.

[Burgerbob]

Listen listen listen!

The next step is to play with good jazz musicians. You will learn no faster way. I only mean style and time wise- obviously it's good to hear their improvising as well, but the feel of jazz is the hardest thing to nail down without being exposed to it.

[MStarke]

Burgerbob:
Absolutely!

However in practice this isn't totally easy to arrange for myself. I have quite a few different more or less classical settings on a high level that I am playing with, but more or less no connection in the jazz world. In Germany this seems to be still quite separate. Would be great to change this!

[ngrinder]

To me (and all this is in my incredibly humble opinion - there is no "right" or "wrong" way to learn) it first comes down to finding a recording you absolutely love, so much that you feel it needs to be a part of you. If you haven't found that yet, continue to listen and explore. There is something out there that you will connect with. Or, if you found something you think you like but haven't totally fallen in love, put it on repeat. Listen to the ride cymbal, the snare hits, the piano comping - get DEEP into the recording. This step of finding something you "love" and not something you "think you should like" is extremely important - the music that you love is the kind of musician you are and will become. I transcribed a lot of music I wasn't 100% connected to, and while it was very beneficial, I ultimately didn't fully digest it because the love for it wasn't there. That's not to say I didn't find things I loved about it through the process...but I still think it's better to lead with your heart!

After you've found that, it's time to transcribe it. Sing it first, then figure it out on your horn, with or without the aid of pencil and paper.

Of course it is good to play with others and play with Aebersolds, etc, but thorough and complete transcription will fast track you to a deep connection and understanding with the music.

This is a great essay by Dave Liebman on his process, which I think gives amazing results. It can be intimidating, but even doing this once or twice can be extremely beneficial.

http://davidliebman.com/home/ed_article ... n-process/

The first trombone recording I fell absolutely in love with was "Yesterdays" - JJ and Stan Getz at the Opera House. JJ's playing on that still gets me.

Enjoy!

[GGJazz]

Hello MStarke.

I would like to add my opinion too.

To me , improvise music is basically as compose music ; the difference is that it have to be done in real time , instead of think and re- think about it , and then put it down on a paper .
Anyway , at the end , one have to create melodies and lines , over a chords' progression ( or a single chord) .

I think that there are some points that can help to achieve this ability :
1) to free our mind/ear relation 2) assimilate the rhythmic pulse 3) learn how to resolve the notes at the point chords changes 4) imitate/assimilate a soloist/soloists style . Of corse there are many others things , but those can be enough , for a while .

About point 1) , to me a useful thing is to play BY EAR , in all the keys, a simple melody one know wery well ( like "happy birthday to you" , or "when the saints go marchin' in ; later , move to something more difficult ).

About point 2) , one have to learn how stay on tempo in a pure jazz- way ; so , one of the best thing , to me , it is to play along BY EAR with some Big Band' recorded tune , like "Splanky " from the Count Basie' "Atomic Basie" album . This teach us the way to swing eights notes , anticipations , ecc .

The point 3) is about the melodic motion of a tone at the point chords changes ; so , for example , one can play a I/IV ( C / F ) repeated chords , and see how an E played on the first bar ( C ) become an F on the second bar ( F) , ecc . (Then move to I/II- , I/V7 , I/VI- , ecc) .

About point 4) I believe that one of the best thing to do is listen a Jazz solo , identifie BY EAR (of course with the horn' help) every single note , memorize everything without transcribe it , and play it over and over ,along the original record . So , it is better to start with short and "easy" solos ( or even only a chorus , or just eigth bars , ecc). To me , J. J. Johnson is one of the best soloist from who to learn this way .

Anyway , the more you can stay away from the sheet music , the better is !
Of course , this is my point of wiew .

Regards
Giancarlo

[AndrewMeronek]

A pretty common theme among just about all great jazz musicians is that at some point they did a lot of very deep dives into some recordings. Memorizing solos, of course. Memorizing song forms, of course. But it's more than that, and it's more than cranking out reps on something like Abersold play-alongs. All great jazz players have the vocabulary, but what sets them apart (from what I've seen) is that they all have giant ears. You can't get that from books, or Abersolds. You can get that from listening to Coltrane hundreds and thousands of times, really digging into it, playing and singing along, figuring out everyone's parts and hits, and then going to jam sessions and trying out how what you get out of that listening translates to the jam.

There is more to it, of course, but I think that kind of intense listening and focus on figuring out on a deep level some recordings is pretty universal among jazz musicians who "figure it out".

[stevenvortigern]

Transcription/imitation is the primary learning tool that will yield the quickest result. I agree with the idea of not notating your transcriptions. Its tempting to think you need to harmonically analyze the lines you learn, but its much more valuable to focus on imitating the articulations of the jazz musicians you love. The articulations are the biggest difference between jazz and classical. Notation can't capture this, and notation will not help improve your musical memory. Being good at remembering musical lines is a huge asset in jazz.

Transcription will teach jazz vocabulary and the more you know, the more convincing your improv will sound. This is a life long learning learning project. Youtube is great for slowing things without changing the pitch. What a fun way to spend hours of practice! So much of jazz improv is not the creation of completely new ideas. It is rather the application of well-rehearsed phrases and phrase fragments (i.e. vocabulary) in new and interesting combinations and arrangements

To get comfortable actually improvising, the "fundamentals" are the play-alongs that repeat ii-V-I over and over in the same key. Its nice to be able to explore a single key center for a good long while. I encourage you not to think too much about the underlying harmony (consider that trombone privilege). Don't try to imagine a new scale with a fancy name for each chord. Just play the major scale and really try to hear the pull of each scale degree and how that changes through the ii-V-I. With very few exceptions, all diatonic notes work on all the chords when properly treated as part of a cool phrase. Apply the vocabulary you know and be creative with making it fit in different ways- another fun way to spend hours of practice! The main point is to hear your way through these simple harmonies. Intellectualizing the melody-harmony relationship will impede the development of your jazz ear and jazz phrasing (and its a lot less fun).

To really sound jazzy, you will need to expand your developing major scale concept to include chromaticism. Start by exploring the notes not in the major scale as passing tones (the notes between scale degrees 1-2, 2-3, 4-5, 5-6 and 6-7) There is a wealth of coolness there alone. Hear how they sound, get used to that, then go on and start lingering on them longer and start putting them on downbeats. Viola, you are playing altered notes. Your vocabulary from the masters is your best guide on how to really treat these chromatic notes in a jazzy way. Listen to how Curtis Fuller treats the b2 in "I'm Old Fashioned."

When learning tunes, I like to simplify, simplify, simplify. Time spent on the above "fundamentals" in all keys will aid your fluidity immensely here. Learn heads (from the recording) before you look at the harmony. Spend a long time improvising with playalongs before you look closely at the harmony. The A section of so many tunes can be reduced to one key center. See how far you can get just knowing the key. Practice hearing your way through before you fill your mind with harmonic details. The more you do this, the more easily you will hear the departures from the diatonic and be ready to incorporate them into your improv.

The real goal is to get so comfortable with the notes in a tune so that you can forget them and focus on the rhythms you are improvising. Cluing into the hi-hat and playing with that is much more effective at making a memorable experience for the audience than melodic inventiveness alone. As mentioned in another post, a lot of time, two notes is all it takes. When having a conversation, we don't need to completely plan a sentence to start it. Often, we pause mid-sentence to find the right words to finish it. Sometimes what we come up with is way more eloquent than any original idea we might have had. Improv is like this. If your vocabulary is deep enough, and your ear is wide enough, you can respond to all manner of "wrong notes" and stuttered phrasing with something that ties it together in a way that sounds completely coherent and conveys meaning in a beautiful way..

[Doug Elliott]

Lots of good ideas here.
However the question should not be "how does a classical player learn jazz" unless you want to continue sounding like a classical player trying to play jazz.

Learn it the way a jazz player learns. Listen and imitate.

Immerse yourself in ONE recording of a great player or group you like. When you've listened to it closely about 100 times that's good start. Keep trying to hear more things in it. Then transcribe it, to the horn and to paper, after you've already memorized it because you heard it so many times already.

Then move on to another recording and do the same.

[MStarke]

Thanks everyone, that's all great advice!

I also totally see that lots of listening helps getting a more authentic feel/phrasing/sound.
Honestly that is almost my biggest concern hereTo play jazz - no matter if it is written down or improvised - and just by the phrasing etc. making it totally obvious that I grew up playing Sachse concerto...

[Trombo]

I agree with previous speakers. I would like to add a few details. Modern jazz is based on be-bop. All jazz education around the world is based on be-bop. Be-bop is pure musical mathematics. The game "from the heart" is not suitable here. You have to learn and learn chords, modes, alterations and more. For this you will need a piano. All good be-bop improvisers know the piano. Think about hitting the chords. Improvisation must first be recorded, then learned. Then you can vary it, add or remove something. That's what the great JJ did, that's why he became great. Well, besides jazz, listen to Prokofiev, Stravinsky, as JJ did.