Creative Individual Practice

[Jubey Monster]

Hey guys,

What I'm hoping for this thread to generate is a few creative ideas for practicing tunes alone. To give this a context, I live in a rural town outside the uni semester, and there's not really any jazzers about, so, bar a backing track, how does one practice tunes effectively. My first solution is to jam along with other musicians on actual recordings (I tend to think you get a lot more "feel" doing this over a backing track). Any other interesting ideas, concepts or other practice related brain-children?

 

[Mystic Michael]

My first solution is to jam along with other musicians on actual recordings (I tend to think you get a lot more "feel" doing this over a backing track).

When I first started playing years ago, I had the luxury of lots of time available. I would often keep the radio on for eight to ten hours per day - and just play along with whatever came over the air.

It didn't matter whether I had heard the music before or not. I challenged myself to learn the progression as quickly as possible, and either nail down the actual recorded bass part - or be able to accurately improvise an alternate part that would fit - again, as quickly as possible.

Usually I wouldn't learn a tune well until I'd heard it at least two or three times, but sometimes I'd make intuitive leaps that would allow me to nail it more quickly. And I gradually got better and better at this process, the more I used it. I eventually became pretty skilled at spotting the various variations of song forms immediately, such that I could sometimes anticipate where the changes were likely to go based on the form alone - without ever having heard the tune before.

It wouldn't have been much fun for a casual listener to hear me clumsily plowing my way through the changes like that, song after song after song. But boy, was it ever a great learning experience!

MM

 

[Stumbo]

Jam/learn with a tune using Best Practice or similar software. Remove/reduce the bass and u have a backing track as well.