i can’t tell you how frustrating it was in jazz college and I quit after 1.5 years. I have a master’s in engineering so I’m not exactly afraid of hard work. everybody trying to play and sounding like crap, with intimidating and often arrogant teachers (great musicians though). Giving us tunes like confirmation the first year and being lost trying to improvise over it.

Then I found Jimmy Bruno’s guitar institute and it became a simpler system of learning tunes and applying 5 caged shapes to the fretboard. the only missing link ( a big one in my opinion) is playing solos note for note and learning the language. Students that submitted videos would tend to ramble over scales and not really be melodic or reflect the language. He did teach chord tones, arpeggios, etc.

Then I found Greg Fishman’s jazz guitar/sax etudes. This allowed me to play at blistering speeds in really musical ways. You feel like you’re playing jazz whose power at early stages can’t be understimated. Of course you can also transcribe.

But then the challenge became how to take those skills (from the etudes) and truly improvise. Based on how I learned rock/blues it most likely becomes inherent after enough imitation and assimilation.

I’d love to somehow get this type of approach into the schools although they usually have strict policies to follow (electives, etc).

As for contextual learning…I couldn’t agree more! I’m all for studying theory, but it has to be put in the context of actually playing. And you’re right, transcribing is a great way to do that. This way we get to see how our favorite players apply the theory.

And I’ve always loved that Clark Terry quote…

I studied jazz in college and was extremely frustrated at the time because they follow the typical – cram tons of stuff down your throat and see what happens approach, lots of extraneous material (classical history, non-core electives) instead of the ‘Imitate, assimilate, innovate’ method, which implies the first phase is just learning solos (listen-execute that chris mentions). Can you imagine spending the first year of school or more just learning songs/solos instead of trying to take a scale/mode and make music out of it with no context?

I see it time and time again, students struggling to make music even though they know the scales to use. The theory and experience needed to execute the 3rd phase, innovation comes way too early in the education process in my opinion.

Also many people don’t realize that to play at high speeds requires that brain /muscles develop memory. If you tell someone here are all the modes to use over this progression, there is no way that is going to turn into music at first.

Unfortunately when I complained the implications were that the student is the one with the problem.

-Adam (@jazzman23)

Jason, thanks for stopping by. I appreciate you comment. However, I think that “the way the music is approached now and the goal of the artist” is the same as it ever was, namely to make great music that is true to the heart and find ways to get it out to people who might like it. What’s changed is the tools we have at our disposal to do that last part. The onus is still on us to put out high-quality music, but there are now SO many ways to reach your potential audience, and Twitter is just one of those ways. I can say from personal experience that I would not have even a fraction of the reach that I do (however small that may be) without the tools that internet provides.

As for your question of what folks are doing to improve the jazz world, the answer lies in checking out their websites, following them, and seeing for yourself. I can tell you that with just these 10 folks, the profile of the “jazz musician” has been raised dramatically, from Rob’s Ustream concerts to Sunna’s free downloads to Geoff, Peter and Andrew’s tour blogs and on and on and on. I think if you spend some time investigating what these artists are all about you will get some idea of how the web is being used not only for self-promotion, but for promotion of jazz music as well. I would also encourage you to follow some of the links in my blogroll, on the left-hand side of this page. People are doing all sorts of cool stuff to help jazz find it’s audience!