butxifxnot

I've just been to a camp of sorts, and there was a cellist who could play piano something awesome (including improvised piano jazz accompaniment). He was playing piano in Bb (a swing beat) and I found out that I can do a little improvising. The only real thing to keep in mind of are the chord progressions and the beat and you're pretty well set to play what you want via blues scales, minor key, major key with some alterations, etc.

Any advice? To continue learning, I mean.

Stradivarius

you can through in a few half valve notes and flutter tongues to add excitement

butxifxnot

and some Ferguson-esque upward glisses, as well, right?

But what about filler in between the hits and bigger moments? Kind of a weird question. If anynoe can answer it in a way other than "You gotta feel it, babe", kudos, because I would understand if that is what one would have to resort to.

Clarence

find some books on point and counter point, as well as some books on contrapuntal melody,s.

trumpetpimp

At this point for you all you have to do is listen to lots of great jazz players and try to practice improvising as much as you can. Do it with friends, or Aebersold's, or even just alone and unaccompanied. You get more and more comfortable improvising and begin to have more interesting things to play.

In a little bit you're going to want to start doing transcriptions and playing along with those. And you'll also want to practice patterns in all keys and tonalities. You can start with Clarke's #2 in major but try to do them in all keys in major, minor, altered, diminished, and whole tone.

As Chase Sanborn says, a jazz player must be able to play anything one hears and they must be able to hear something worth playing.

the8thchef

play long tones. learn your instrument. know where each sound exists and learn what you need to do to get there. jazz is less about the notes and more about speaking yourself, your insides, through pure and raw sound. you know how words sometimes get in the way of what you're really trying to say? thats what this is like; although knowing your scales and chords is valuable, to know sound and be able to manipulate it (like einstein's relativity, learn how to manipulate the energy of sound through time and space) will take you much further than merely focusing on named notes, scales, and chords. if you make music with musicians of other cultures, where Western music theory both is unknown and inadequate, you will still have to make music; therefore, cases such as these, to know sound and time and space will prove to be infinitely more valuable than relying on mere scales and chords.

play long tones. learn your instrument. know where each sound exists and learn what you need to do to get there.

hotep

kundun ka sabaka

dizforprez

Take a tune(such as a simple blues) and a metronome. Play though the tune several times, each time playing different notes of the chord(1st time play all the roots, 2nd time play all the 3rds, etc..), after you can do that play simply patterns or scales over the chords. (ie 123454321)

also practice writing out ,on some staff paper, some improve over the changes .

MrLT

There's a thread on Brass-forum started by nick drozdoff which addresses your question in some detail. having (ahem) contributed to it and read those of others it touches a lot of bases.


http://www.brass-forum.co.uk/cgi-bin...num=1120053343