How to keep your jazz band motivated

Keeping your band motivated

By Saul Richardson

1. Goal setting

2. Rehearsal cycle

3. Plenty of music

4. Plan for a positive experience

5. Empower the students

6. Set high standards

7. Tight rehearsals

Goal Setting

Make band for something. Set achievable goals for the short, mid and long term.

Short term goals might include learning a new chart, and end of term concert, entering an eisteddfod, a workshop with a prominent musician.

Mid term goals might be an annual performance trip away, a major concert perhaps with a famous musician, a jazz festival or a CD recording.

Long term goals can include an regional or overseas tour, participation in a major competition, or to become recognized as a leader in your field.

Every time you rehearse, it really helps if the is something coming up, some reason for the rehearsal even if it is a quite distant long term goal.

The rehearsal cycle

Have a rehearsal cycle. Have periods of weeks, sometimes even a couple of months, when the band can focus exclusively on learning new music. Schedule no concerts, and decline offers of gigs if you can. Let the band spend time working at learning and perfecting new material.

Performances can actually get in the way of learning. Too busy a schedule can force us into the trap of just running over the same pieces again and again. If a concert is immanent, there is always pressure to polish the few pieces you will be playing, rather than setting aside time for something new

Play plenty of music

Play lots of new music throughout the year. This makes it interesting for the musicians and teaches them to sight read at the same time.

Early in the process or with a new band things will usually be very hard going. You may struggle to get through two or three charts in a term, or even longer. However, persistence will pay off. Certainly spend most time working on those charts, but set aside some time every rehearsal for sight reading. It might just be the first eight bars of a new tune. It doesn't matter, so long as the students are sight reading.

The worst thing you can do is what I call the competition method: A band learns only three or four charts in a year and “perfects” them so they can get high grades in various competitions. The students will more or less learn by rote. They will not learn to sight read, and the band will never be able to play more than three or four charts per year. The competitions might be exciting, but the band will be tedious.

We spend most of our time in rehearsals teaching the same things over and over again. The same “tricky” rhythms, the same things about accents, articulations, note lengths, cut-offs, dynamics, listening, intonation. The big band music young bands play typically involves different combinations of the same rhythmic cliches, the same articulations, even the same structure. Sight reading is largely when the students can generalize from one chart to another and recognize the similarities.

One of my bands, at North Sydney Boys' High School, can easily get through fifty charts in a year, playing all of them to a high performance standard. They can do this because the band can sight read. We can spend our precious little rehearsal time working on higher level concepts like ensemble and interpretation, rather than being bogged down by lower order things like notes and rhythms.

The way to start a band on the way to being able to sight read is to give them plenty of music to play. However, it is important that there is variety too.

Variety of music includes a variety of levels of difficulty as well as of style. A band should play music at its own level plus or minus a couple of levels. Most of what you do should be just a bit challenging for the band, but playable with rehearsal. A few pieces should be really tough for them, maybe even so difficult that you won't ever perform them. Your students will benefit from, and enjoy, playing this music.

Every band should also have a set of easy music, things the band can more or less sight read and that stay in the folders permanently. These charts sound great every time the band plays them. They also mean that you don't need to waste rehearsal time rehashing old music every time an ordinary gig comes along, disrupting the learning cycle.

Plan for a positive experience

It is vital that band is a fun, positive experience. When you band plays in public they and their parents should come away feeling good about what they have achieved. In concerts, program music so that most of it is comfortably playable by the band. Intersperse this with a few challenging party pieces, but only if they are properly prepared. If the party piece doesn't sound amazing, it isn't ready yet.

A word of caution too: it often seems like a good idea to end a gig with your biggest, showiest number. But what shape are young players “chops” likely to be in by the end of a gig? The average school band seems to be burnt out after about fifteen minutes of playing. End the concert with something solidly impressive, but not too demanding. Don't risk a train wreck during the closing number, because that will leave a poor impression and will leave the students feeling disappointed. Audiences will remember the last thing you played more than what happened in the middle of the set.

The same goes for rehearsals. Try to end with a strong piece so the kids can go away feeling good and motivated. When rehearsing new music play the section or sections of the piece you want to work on and then stop. Don't let it peter out and end in disaster. Tidy up whatever it is you want to focus on that day and then say “that's all I wanted to do with that one today”, and move on.

Empower the students

Teach your students about jazz and how to play it, including improvisation and rhythm section techniques. This helps put them more in control of the music and makes it a whole lot more fun.

One of the things that makes jazz fun to play is its interactivity. This is especially true for the rhythm section. There are times, for instance during improvised solos, when the musicians are (or should be) improvising collectively, making something exciting and musical out of a few vague chord symbols or suggested drum rhythms. Teach your rhythm section and soloists to do this and you band will be transformed. If you don't feel confident teaching this side of things, get someone to come in and work with them a few times.

Encouraging the students to organize and run their own sectional rehearsals is a powerful way for them to develop leadership, independence and responsibility, and ownership of the music. The extra practice also helps the band sound better. Many students only play their instrument once per week, in rehearsal. If they do sectionals, they will play twice each week.

Set high standards

Set very high standards. Make it clear that you, and the band, demand quality. Build a culture that values quality through persistent effort.

Give realistic feedback to students, both praise and criticism. When something is praiseworthy explain why, and likewise if it is not. We do our students no favours by telling them they are good when they aren't. The Count Basie band is good. The Jazzgroove Mothership Orchestra is good. Does your band sound just the same as them? If not, why not? What are the differences between them and your band? Believe it or not, there are student bands that come close to a professional standard. If your students aren't there yet, let them know! Praise improvement, praise effort, let them know they are on the way or they are better than before, but don't give them delusions of being something they are not. That just builds arrogance, complacency, laziness, and mediocrity.

Tight rehearsals

Rehearsals should be disciplined, but fun. They should be planned, logical and have purpose that the students can see. A good rehearsal has a sense of urgency about it, and a feeling that everything is being done for a reason, and that it is important work.

As director one of your jobs is to control the mood. Make jokes and allow others to make jokes, but stay focused. Sometimes you need to be very serious, othertimes light hearted. Vary the pacing of the session too. Don't always do the same thing. Predictability will become boring, so avoid it.

Insist on punctuality, start on time, and end on time. Try to set a good example yourself. But if you are running late, the rehearsal should begin without you. They can still play music without you there. It is the job of section leaders and senior players to make this happen.

The “Jazz Pentatonic” scale

The “Jazz Pentatonic” scale

This is a name I have made up. It really refers to a major pentatonic scale with a flat third added to it as a blue note.

It is spelled:

1, 2, b3, 3, 5, 6, 8

It can be used effectively in any tune or section of a tune that is not in a minor key. In other words over major and dominant chord structures. Shelley Berg uses a similar approach in his “Chop Monster” method. I have also seen Australian musician/educator Ed Wilson use this approach successfully to teach complete beginners. Dan Greenblatt calls it the major blues scale in his book The Blues Scales.

It is common for beginning improvisers to be taught blues tunes and to be told to use the blues scale throughout. This can work, but is actually difficult. Also, it does not reflect what jazz musicians actually play when they improvise on a blues. We do use the blues scale, but only in conjunction with many other sounds. In fact, it is very, very, rare for a jazz musician to construct a whole solo using only the blues scale. And yet we tell young players to do so. Why? Because we think it is an easy way out. Plus, it is called the blues scale, so it must be right? But it isn’t…

The jazz pentatonic scale comes much closer to what professional jazz musicians play over a blues progression. As students progress they can add passing notes to the pentatonic scale, including notes from the blues scale. This will add variety to the sound and help create more flowing lines.

Then, as they progress still further and develop an awareness of time in their playing, students can use the many other techniques jazz players use in improvisations.

Unlike the blues scale, the Jazz Pentatonic avoids clashes:

Blues scale includes notes 4, and b5 of Chord I, 4, b9 of chord IV and 4 of chord V. Young beginners will, if given the option, ALWAYS, play the 4th against a major or dominant. They gravitate towards it. Jeff Jarvis called it “ the magnetic fourth”.

The minor 3rd of the jazz pentatonic scale against the major 3rd of major and dominant chords is a “blue note”, but is a common and accepted sound. It is a juxtaposition we are used to hearing.

The Jazz Pentatonic is easy to play, easy to hear, easy to teach and avoids bad notes. It allows beginning improvisers to sound good straight away. It gives them something they can reliably use while they learn more advanced techniques.

Examples of usage:

Blues whatever key the blues is in, use a jazz pentatonic scale in the same key. Emphasise the key note. This is an example of using the scale through a whole tune.

Rhythm changes Concert Bb jazz pentatonic scale through the A section. In the bridge, 2 bars each of D jazz pent., G jazz pent, C jazz pent and F jazz pent. This is an example of using the scale in a section of a tune.

Blue Bossa Use concert Db jazz pent. In bars 9 through 12 (II V I in Db major). Here is another example of using the scale in a section of a tune. The rest of the tune is in concert C minor.

Can improvisation be taught?

Can improvisation be taught?

There often seems to be an attitude in Australian jazz circles that, despite the global proliferation of jazz education, you can't really teach jazz. Education is important because it gives we musicians a source of income when gigs are scarce. Of course, when times are good, the teaching is the first thing we drop.

It can even a little bit humiliating to be a teacher:

“Where are you playing? “
“Oh, I'm mostly just teaching...”

This is wrong, of course. Jazz, and jazz improvisation, can be taught, and the job of teaching it should be an important part of being a musician.

In the past there was a golden age in which gigs were abundant, jazz was everywhere, and the young musician could learn on the bandstand through a kind of apprenticeship system. There were jam sessions, there were many entry-level gigs, and young players could get gigs alongside more experienced players.

Sadly, this is no more. The gigs have dried up and competition for playing work is fierce. Jam sessions occasionally come and go, but they are rare and fleeting. They are not serious gatherings of experienced musicians mingling with young up-and-comers. They are places where kids go and hear other kids, or even worse, they degenerate into a kind of shabby open mike session. Certainly not the learning experience of old. Nothing compared to, say, watching every tenor player in town coming down to try to best Ben Webster as he passed through with Ellington's band.

The apprenticeship system is mostly gone. What to replace it with? Jazz education.

The site of learning jazz has moved from the bandstand to the universities and schools. The great musicians of our time are commonly found on the faculty of a university, college, school or conservatorium. They are there passing on their knowledge, handing down the legacy of jazz, just as they used to on the bandstand.

Use planning to improve your students results and become a more successful teacher

Planning for effective teaching in instrumental music lessons

By Saul Richardson, Principal at Jazz Workshop Australia.

This article suggests that by planning individual, sequenced instruction for each of your students, you can become a dramatically more successful music teacher. The examples used are all related to teaching jazz. because that is what I do. You can apply planning to any kind of teaching, just as professional teachers do the world over.

Planning what and how you are going to teach is a powerful tool for improving your students' results. I use planning in my own lessons and in the improvisation workshops I regulary run for young people in Sydney. Not only does it make my job as a private music teacher easier, it helps motivate my students and keeps them coming back for more lessons.

A powerful technique is to plan units of work for your students. A unit of work is a series of teaching and learning activities based around a concept or skill. It introduces the concept/skill and then takes the student through a planned sequence of activities designed to help them learn and practice it. I use planning in my own lessons and in the improvisation workshops I regularly run for young people.

Ask five basic questions:

1. What do I want the student to achieve at the end of this unit of work?
2. What skills or concepts does it involve?
3. In what order will it be best to work through these skill or concepts?
4. What activities can I work through with the student to help him or her develop each skill or concept?
5. How will I know at the end that they have learnt the skill or concept?

You might want to estimate the amount of time you will set aside for each activity. Then you can teach the material, in the order that you planned.

Here is an example of a unit of work:


Goal: The student will be able to confidently improvise in a jazz style over a min7 chord using a Dorian scale.

They will play with a strong tone, will incorporate phrases of various lengths into their playing, and will use a variety of rhythms.


Concepts:
● Fingering for the dorian mode in several, if not all keys
● It is a distinctive pattern of sounds
● Phrases are relatively self-contained ideas, like a sentence.
● Phrases come in different lengths
● Jazz musicians use a variety of different rhythms when they improvise
● Always play with a good, strong tone (unless you are deliberately trying to achieve some special effect)


Sequencing:
For this unit of work

1. The dorian scale is a distinctive pattern of sounds
2. Fingering
3. Rhythmic variety
4. Phrasing

Tone is an ongoing concept taught from the very beginning and constantly reinforced through every activity we take the student through.

Some possible teaching/learning activities:

These could go over three thirty-minute lessons. Some students will need more or less time.

Lesson 1: Activities 1 – 3.
Lesson 2: Revision and then activities 3 – 4
Lesson 3: Revision and then activity 4 in more detail.

1. Student listens to part of Miles Davis's So What. The piece, particularly during Davis's solo, is an exploration of the sound of the scale against a single chord. Maybe play another recorded tune. Demonstrate on your own instrument.

2. Teach the student how to play the scale, preferably in more than one key. If they are a very inexperienced player, it may be slow and halting at first. That doesn't matter: everything they play will be like that at first, but it will improve over time.

3. Ask the student to improvise using only crotchets; then only minims; then only quavers; then triplets; etc. Then have them solo using different combinations of rhythms. Point out that jazz players tend to use mostly quavers when they improvise. Use mostly quavers, but some other rhythms as a contrast. If there is no rhythmic contrast, the solo is likely to become boring. (This assumes you have already taught the student what improvisation is and how to start doing it, in a previous lesson. Otherwise you would need to do that first.)

4. Explain that phrases in music can be long, medium of short in length. Jazz musicians use a variety of phrase lengths to create variety in their improvisations. Have the student play for one bar, then rest for one bar. This is a one bar phrase. Repeat with other lengths of phrase and other lengths of silence between phrases. Aim to have the student improvise using a variety of different phrase lengths. Then have them incorporate rhythmic variety, etc.


This could complete a basic introduction to the dorian mode for a beginning improviser. The next step might be to teach them a tune using the dorian, perhaps So What, but there are many others. Chameleon, by Herbie Hancock is another one they often enjoy where they can use an all-dorian solo.

It might be a good idea then to move on to something new. Keeping things moving keeps the lessons fresh and interesting for the student. Revisit the dorian mode again later to introduce further concepts and to improve their performance with it.

Extension activities with the dorian mode in this example might be: melodic development; using and transposing motifs; solo structure; rhythmic displacement; repetition; side-stepping. Whatever you do, keep it appropriate to the age and stage of the student.


Some points to remember and mistakes to avoid:

No student is going to sound like a professional player right away. At first they usually sound pretty juvenile. But they improve, over a long time. Just like you did. One of the most absurd mistakes a teacher can make is to drill a basic concept or skill to death thinking that if the student doesn't sound like a professional, they haven't learnt it. Just because they don't sound like you yet does not mean they haven't learnt it. Check that they understand it, and then move on. They will probably take as long as you did to start sounding good.

Do not expect perfection from a student. That isn't realistic. Expect approximation, then consolidation and improvement and, finally, mastery. This can take weeks, months, or years. Get the student sounding close to what you want, or better than they were, and then move on. Come back to it later if needs be.

It is vital to plan what you are doing with each student. It makes your teaching effective and efficient, far more so than unplanned lessons. It also helps keep students motivated and coming back for more.

Many teachers make the grave mistake of simply making up their lessons as they go along. Maybe even just do the same thing with every student on a given day, and then the next week, do something else quite unrelated. This ad hoc approach is about the least efficient way to teach. Don't just do the first thing that comes into your head: plan individual sequenced instruction for each student.

Use planning
Planning is a powerful tool for ensuring that your teaching is effective and efficient. The better you plan, the better your students will perform and the more they will achieve. This is good for them and for you. When your students do well, they keep paying for lessons, they attend regularly, they practice, and they are motivated. Word spreads quickly about who is a good teacher and who is slack.

Unleash the power of planning to make your teaching more satisfying and financially rewarding.


Glossary of some important educational terms

Approximation
A student moves in the direction of a skill or understanding, or comes close to it. It is the first stage in trying to use a skill.

Assessment
Checking that our teaching has been effective.

Consolidation
Where a student exhibits a rough, unformed but recognisable version of a skill or understanding. This takes place during the middle of the learning process.

Generalisation
Where a student can independently apply a skill or understanding to any situation. This is one of the ultimate goals of education and one of the highest states of understanding.

Mastery
Where a student can effectively use a skill or understanding. It comes at the end of the learning process

Pacing
The rate at which we work through a sequence of activities

Sequencing
The order in which we present a series of teaching and learning activities

How to play jazz

Years ago, I heard a student ask Blaine Whittaker, one of Australia’s great jazz saxophonists, "How do you learn to play jazz?"

After a moment’s consideration Blaine replied, "learn your scales and listen heaps". And that is it in a nutshell! But what does that really mean?
Learn your scales means be able to play your instrument, anything and everything on your instrument.

Listen heaps means listen to the music.

Listen:
Learning to play jazz is like learning to speak a language. There is a vocabulary, there are accents, and there are different registers, or ways of speaking, appropriate to different situations. There are various types of text to come to grips with, and so on.

We learnt to speak our native language by hearing others speak it. We copied sounds, words and phrases. We learnt to associate various words and phrases with objects and concepts. Eventually, we learnt to improvise with our speech: to make up sentences, and whole speeches, "off the cuff".

We are improvising just about every time we speak. It is possible, when we speak, to say absolutely anything. The words we use and the way we
utter them change their meaning. We can even speak nonsense, if we want to. We change the way we speak according to the context. We use one kind of language when we
speak to our mates in the playground or the pub, and quite a different one when addressing a judge in court, or the monarch of a nation. We use one kind of language when talking casually with a loved one, and another when giving a speech to a wedding reception.
Jazz is exactly the same. We must learn a vocabulary, and how to use it appropriately in various situations.

If you want to sound like a jazz player when you improvise, you must listen to others playing jazz. If the only music you have heard is classical, then that is what you will sound like when you improvise. If all you have ever listened to is rock, then that is what you will sound like.
Mozart was a famous improviser, but you can be sure that it didn’t sound like jazz!

Learn Your Scales:
I’m going to keep the language analogy going. To speak, you have to be able to use your voice. To play jazz you have to become be an expert in playing your instrument. Today’s standard in jazz performance requires virtuosity. Just because the music is based on improvisation does not mean that it is music for slackers. It isn’t.

We all had a lot of help with our native language as we grew up and went through school. The most effective speakers, and writers, tend overwhelmingly to be pretty well educated. It makes
good sense that, if you want to play jazz, you should get the help of the best teachers you can find. It also makes sense to go and hear and see people playing jazz live, so you can learn how it all works. Plus, if you like the music, it is enjoyable!

Good luck, and happy listening! Saul Richardson
www.jazzworkshop.com.au
Jazz Workshop Australia