This month, I wanted to bring up some useful tools to help with jazz bands. I know several of you are strictly classical players with little to no jazz experience and yet are faced with the aspect of having to teach jazz. Also, sometimes it is hard for brass teachers to get ideas across to woodwinds and vice versa. Well, there's technology to the rescue. There is a lot of great stuff out there that I wish was there when I was a kid.
The main thing is to get your students to listen to jazz. It is a language, and in order to sound like a native speaker you have to listen to native speakers. Well, with the Internet, there are now many free ways for students to listen to great jazz. For starters, there's Grooveshark.com. All one has to do is enter the name of an artist, or the name of a song, or both and find great recordings of the best jazz players ever. They can then study the recording for style, sound, articulation, etc. Additionally, last time I checked there were over 1500 Aebersolds available to listen to on Grooveshark, so if a student has a lead sheet (like from a Real Book or Aebersold book), they can then practice all they want with that play along. The longer I teach, the more I feel that the secret to good jazz improv is just to keep playing as much as possible. The theory/scales will come in time, but it's extremely important for them to hear their instrument at the same time as a rhythm section.
As a non-jazz side note, I've also had students look up orchestral excerpts on Grooveshark to help prepare for auditions. There aren't many, but there are a few out there.
Of course, the best thing for students to do with the recordings is to transcribe or learn the solo from the recording. It teaches not only about note choices at an intuitive level, but I think it's even more important that it teaches tone, energy and style. This, though, is a very daunting task. First attempts at transcription often end up just being exercises in frustration. Let's face it, it's very difficult. Well, the Internet comes to the rescue again. There are many websites out there with pdf files of jazz transcriptions. Just do a Google search with the name of the artist, the title of the song, and add pdf or transcription to it, it will yield many positive results. This can be a great tool to help the beginning improviser get a hold of the music and with Grooveshark, be able to listen to the original recording. Then, as they learn the solo, they can pick up the style and tone at the same time. As they get more experience, they will have more tools to help them when they do try to transcribe on their own.
There are many other tools to help jazz players and improvisers, but I'll stop here for now for sake of time. If you have other questions, feel free to ask me.
