Today, on the podcast, I"m gonna be talking about an important concept that I call, "The Practicing Snowball".

"The Practicing Snowball" is something that's going to leave you feeling super encouraged, I believe, by the end of this episode. And it's going to show you how the compounding effects of your practice really come into play from looking at this from a variety of different angles.

In this episode:
1. The Practicing Snowball and what it is
2. The many different skills you didn't know you were practicing
3. How the Practicing Snowball mindset shift will motivate you

Important Links:
Free Guide to learning standards by ear: Learn Jazz Standards the Smart Way
LJS Inner Circle Membership

Learn Jazz Standards Inner Circle: Get 50% off your first month!

If you've ever felt overwhelmed at jazz improvisation and unsure of where to get started, today I'm going to show you exactly how it works, make it simple so you get headed in the right direction.

In this episode:
1. How to start improvising over 2-5-1
2. The most basic notes you can play
3. The modes of each chord
4. The most important notes
5. The actual scale used  by jazz musicians
6. How jazz musicians actually play the chromatic and major scale
7. How a jazz musician might resolve to a chord tone
8. How jazz musicians approach chord tones to create melodies

Important Links and Resources:

LJS Inner Circle Membership

Free Guide to learn standards by ear: Learn Jazz Standards the Smart Way 

Listen to the Learn Jazz Standards Podcast

Get our Amazon Best Selling book

Learn Jazz Standards Inner Circle: Get 50% off your first month!

One thing that attracts musicians to jazz is the fact that the possibilities are endless.  When it comes to improvisation, really, there are so many different avenues to explore, so many different things you can play and after listening to some of the greatest jazz musicians in the world, you realize there's a massive amount of vocabulary out there that you can express.

The rules are there but, really, the rules are meant to be broken. The problem with jazz, though, is that there are too many possibilities and therefore it can be difficult for you to figure out what to actually play, or how to actually improve.

So, today on the podcast, I'm gonna be talking about something called "Restrictive Practicing" and how this can actually help you improve faster and create more meaningful melodic solos.

In this episode:
1. Restrictive practicing and what it is
2. Restricting note choices
3. Restricting rhythmic choices
4. Restricting melodic choices

Important Links:
Free Guide to learning standards by ear: Learn Jazz Standards the Smart Way
LJS Inner Circle Membership

Learn Jazz Standards Inner Circle: Get 50% off your first month!

In today's episode, we're gonna talk about where is the best place for you to learn jazz: Is it music books? Is it YouTube videos and podcast episodes like this? Is it courses? Is it memberships, or is it private lessons?

We're gonna go through them and talk about the pros and cons of each one.

In this episode:
1. The Pros and Cons of Music Books
2. The Pros and Cons of Online Content
3. The Pros and Cons of Courses
4. The Pros and Cons of Memberships
5. The Pros and Cons of Private Lessons

Important Links:
Free Guide to learning standards by ear: Learn Jazz Standards the Smart Way
LJS Inner Circle Membership

Learn Jazz Standards Inner Circle: Get 50% off your first month!

What's up, guys? It's Brent here. So I was just surfing the Internet and I found a video of me playing a gig from 10 years ago.

Today, I'm gonna watch that video, give you my reaction to it, and let's see how messy it gets.

In this episode:
1.  Intro
2.  The melody
3.  Pro Tip
4.  The organ solo (by Camden Hughes) - my impression
5.  My impression of my comping
6.  Pro Tip
7.  When I hit it pretty good
8.  How I rate my solo
9.  How I failed on trading 4s
10. How I rate my trading 4s
11. Evaluation

Important Links:
Free Guide to learning standards by ear: Learn Jazz Standards the Smart Way
LJS Inner Circle Membership
Listen to the Learn Jazz Standards Podcast
Get our Amazon Best Selling book

Learn Jazz Standards Inner Circle: Get 50% off your first month!

Are you trying to get back "into shape" after being off of playing for a while?

In today's episode, I will be sharing some tips on how to help you get back into the flow and feel that connection with your instrument and your music to prepare you to perform or just get you to play again. 

In this episode:
1. Listen to music that is "sticky" for you
2. Start getting reacquainted with your instrument
3. Start practicing common chord progressions
4. Practice a song you are comfortable with
5. Practice a song from a performance you are preparing for

Important Links:
Free Guide to learning standards by ear: Learn Jazz Standards the Smart Way
LJS Inner Circle Membership

Learn Jazz Standards Inner Circle: Get 50% off your first month!

Giant Steps is notoriously one of the most feared jazz standards for musicians to learn and improvise over, not only because of the complex harmony but also because of the speed.

So today, I'm gonna talk about how we can learn the chords most efficiently so we can improvise over them well and find out the harmonic secrets that Giant Steps has to offer.

In this episode:
1. Intro
2. Preparing to learn the melody - LIST process
3. Analyzing the chords (featuring Brett Pontecorvo)
4. The ii-V-I cadences
5. Moving down by major 3rds
6. The V-I cadences
7. Using the melody to organize key centers
8. Second half of the tune
9. Moving up by major 3rds
10. Recap

Important Links:

LJS Inner Circle Membership

Free Guide to learn standards by ear: Learn Jazz Standards the Smart Way 

Listen to the Learn Jazz Standards Podcast

Get our Amazon Best Selling book

Learn Jazz Standards Inner Circle: Get 50% off your first month!

"What prevents you from achieving your jazz goals?". This was a question we recently polled our community over on YouTube about, and we got a lot of really interesting answers and responses to our poll.

So, in today's episode what I wanna do is I wanna go over those results; what people are saying and talk about each result and help you understand how really, they're not actually truly holding you from your jazz goals if you channel them in the different direction.

In this episode:
1. Addressing "No Time To Practice"
2. Addressing "Not Enough Technique"
3. Addressing "Not Understanding Jazz Theory"
4. Addressing "Not Enough Motivation"

Important Links:
LJS Inner Circle Membership
Free Guide to learn standards by ear: Learn Jazz Standards the Smart Way

Learn Jazz Standards Inner Circle: Get 50% off your first month!

Today, we're talking about the classic minor jazz standard, "Softly, As In A Morning Sunrise". We'll take a look at the chords to figure out the most efficient way to learn it as well as some harmonic secrets within the tune that will help us improvise over it.

in this episode:

1. Short demo
2. The best way to learn the melody
3. Identifying the key - The first A section
4. Things you can do with a minor ii-V-I progression
5. A tritone substitution
6. Chord substitution options
7. Associating the melody of the song with the chords
8. The second A section
9. The relative major key
10. Diminished substitution
11. Passing diminished chord
12. The best way to improvise on a dim7 chords
13. The bridge

Important Links:
Free Guide to learning standards by ear: Learn Jazz Standards the Smart Way
LJS Inner Circle Membership
Listen to the Learn Jazz Standards Podcast
Get our Amazon Best Selling book

Learn Jazz Standards Inner Circle: Get 50% off your first month!

Today on the podcast I have a member of my team, Brett Pontecorvo, to the show with me to discuss 2 questions.

 And those questions are:
- What is one musical skill you are/were lacking that caused you some trouble in your career?
   and
- If you could start over, what would be the one musical skill you would master?

A lot of gold within these hills.

In this episode:
1. What is one musical skill you are/were lacking that caused you some trouble in your career?
2. If you could start over, what would be the one musical skill you would master?

Important Links:
LJS Inner Circle Membership
Free Guide to learn standards by ear: Learn Jazz Standards the Smart Way

Learn Jazz Standards Inner Circle: Get 50% off your first month!