12 Things that make a great jazz musician - L.Hutchinson

1). Listen

The great jazz musicians listened to everybody before them. They listened to records and they went to listen live. This is how they discovered and learned from each other. This does not mean you have to like everything you hear. Jazz should not be reduced to an intellectual exercise. The music has to touch you or you should not be attempting to play it. If you want to play great blues you have to listen to blues. If you want to play great rock you have to listen to rock. If you want to play great jazz you have to listen to jazz.

2). Knowledge of harmony

Jazz is by no means simple to play. It takes a lot of dedication and you have to have some knowledge of jazz harmony. If you want to improvise you must understand the functions of chords and chord substitutes available to you within a harmonic structure. You also need to develop an understanding of the tonal organization and rhythmic structure of jazz.

3.) Knowledge of Jazz Standards and Jazz tunes

While studying with Oliver Gannon in Canada, he once told me, “If you want to be able to play with other jazz musicians you are going to have to know the vocabulary, you are going to have to know the standards.” In addition, the more standards you learn the greater your knowledge of harmonic structure that these tunes are built from.

4.) Familiar with melody

Many players use the real book on gigs to improvise over the chord structures of the standards. However, many of them don’t actually know the tune. They don’t know the melody, which is the most important part. Jazz soloists from the 1920s almost exclusively would build their solos up around the melody of the tune. When improvisers started developing their solos a bit more they would often quote other melodies. Listen to the great saxophonist Dexter Gordon and you will hear he is constantly quoting melodies from different standards in his solos. Horace Silver was also a master at that. He built the quotes right into many of his compositions.

5.) Knowledge of rhythm

Over the years jazz has influenced and been influenced by various cultures around the world. Sonny Rollins composed his famous calypso tune St. Thomas infusing jazz with the calypso rhythm from the Caribbean. Bossa Nova was made

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famous by Antonio Carlos Jobim with his infusion of Brazilian rhythms the harmonic structure of jazz. Horace Silver wrote a number of tunes such as theEastern-flavored theme of "Calcutta Cutie," or the tropical-sounding rhythms of "Que Pasa?" To know the chord structure or melody in this case would not be enough. You have to have knowledge of the underlying rhythm that the tune is built on.

6.) Tempos

The tempo of a tune can have a large impact on the quality of a tune. Neal Hefti composed the standard Li'l Darlin' as a medium-tempo, sort of bounce tune. Count Basie listened to it and insisted that they slow it down and make it a ballad, a very slow ballad. It got to be one of the band's most popular songs. That was the genius of Basie, to listen to something and decide what had to be done with it. It is important to at least be aware of the tempo that various standards were conceived. You begin to get a feel of how the right tempo of a tune can improve or impair its quality.

7.) Steal and emulate from other jazz musicians

Pablo Picasso famously said, “Good artists copy, great artists steal.” Nothing comes from nothing. Every great musician has copied and stolen from all those that influenced them. It is a natural progression in music and art. You can learn so much from other jazz musicians. The way they approach a tune, the ways in which they apply substitutes to the chord structures, or the way they phrase. Every musician also has their pet motifs that they apply often to their solos. These form their individual identities.

8.) Find your own sound / innovate

Pat Metheny spoke of how he was influenced by Wes Montgomery, “The first thing I did was throw away my picks. I did everything I could to sound like Wes Montgomery. But when I started using my Wes stuff around Kansas City, I caught a major draft from the older guys for trying to sound like him. It forced me to realize that trying to imitate him wasn't musically good for me. The goal of copying and stealing from everyone is not to imitate someone else. There is only one Wes Montgomery, Joe Pass or Pat Metheny. That is what makes them special. The greats take all that knowledge they have accumulated from others then add their own special approach and develop their own voice.

9.) Practice routine

Like anything leaning to play jazz takes discipline. The great players played everyday but more importantly they were highly disciplined about what they learned and how they learned it. Charlie Parker famously disappeared out of site after the drummer Jo Jones famously threw his cymbal at him when Parker got lost in a tune. This affected Charlie Parker so much that he went off and practiced the “I Got Rhythm” changes and the changes to Cherokee in every key

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and got them up to impressive tempos. He mastered those two things before he appeared again with a bang.

In the book Outliers, author Malcolm Gladwell says that it takes roughly ten thousand hours of practice to achieve mastery in a field. However, Daniel Goleman, in his book Focus, debunked this statement by adding that without a certain level of focus the number of hours is meaningless. Extreme focus towards one exercise for 10 minutes is much more productive than a lack of focus over one hour of practice.

10.) Play with others

One of the great pleasures of playing an instrument is to share that pleasure by playing with others and it is one of the best ways to learn. Nothing can replace the experience of playing live, in the moment. There are so many things that can happen while playing that can’t be learned from a book and that you can’t be prepared for. You have to experience it. In the early days of jazz the only real way to learn was by listening, watching and playing with others. Many jazz musicians speak of their invaluable educations from being on the bandstand.

11.) Respect your audience

Russell Malone was a sideman on a gig and decided to play “hip”, which meant going outside the harmonic confines of the tunes. He noticed that a table of young guys in the front row would cheer him on every time he played “out” so he continued to play it up. Also sitting in the audience was Kenny Burrell. After the set, the group in the front row commented to Russell how much they really dug his playing and that he was really pushing the envelope. This made Russell feel good and he walked over to where Kenny was sitting and sat down beside him all puffed out like. He asked Kenny Burrell what he thought, expecting to get a thumbs up from Mr. Burrell. Instead, Kenny moved in close to Russell, put his arm around his shoulders and started chastising him “Look at the room, the audience, the context will dictate the playing style. Be respectful of the music and with those you are playing with.” Don’t forget that not everyone you are playing for is another musician. The audience is there to hear music. If you don’t respect that and play a bunch of far out long-winded solos you probably won’t be getting hired back to do that gig.

12.) Don’t stop growing

You never stop learning and to stop growing is to die. The great jazz musicians don’t stop developing their craft. If you listen to a recording by John Coltrane or Miles Davis from the early 50s you will hear a completely different player in their recordings from the 60s.

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