Paul Hirsh
jazz panpipe pioneer and designerRecent Comments
Tag Archives: improvisation method
Weightlessness
Jazz education generally does its best to keep up with the latest trends in music, with thousands of teachers worldwide analysing classic performances and attempting to reverse-engineer them into exercises that you can try at home. Working always on the … Continue reading
MOVES: Melodic Freedom for the Classically Chained
Followers of this blog (both of you) will have noticed that I like to quote the NLP adage: “The Map is not the Territory”. And one of my main beefs about most traditional musical instruments, when it comes to learning … Continue reading
Posted in Interval Training, Moves notation, Musicianship
Tagged chromatic exercises, Classical theory, ear training, guitar scales, improvisation method, improvising, interval names, interval training, intervallic awareness, intervallic improvising, intervallic notation, intuitive improvising, MOVES notation
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Musical theorems: a bluffer’s guide
The idea of musical theorems is all about drawing simple conclusions from your basic knowledge about notes, and putting them to use in your playing. An example. You know every major scale contains three notes from one wholetone scale and … Continue reading
How to work a lick
So you can’t get that lick or turnaround out of your head. You wonder how anyone can just come up with something that cool – just like that! – in the middle of a solo. You realize it’s time to … Continue reading
Posted in Interval Training, Moves notation
Tagged giant steps, improvisation method, intervallic improvising, intuitive improvising, jazz viola, jazz violin, John Coltrane, learning improv, licks, melodic improvising., turnarounds, tweetable, viola exercise, viola practice, violin exercise, violin practice
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Reading Between the Dots
One of the commonest exercises in jazz improvisation methods is the transposition exercise. You are given a lick or an arpeggio, usually in the key of C, and you are required to practice it in all twelve keys. The assumption … Continue reading
Intervallic Awareness for Improvisers 