VIDEOS

Jazz education has been going for over 40 years and it works.  I’ve uploaded some very useful videos to the LJW myspace page that show the well-known jazz teacher JB Dyas of the Thelonious Monk Institute giving a seminar on Teaching Jazz Fundamentals To High School And College Musicians.  There are 10 videos which take around 90 minutes to view in their entirety and some include a supervised performance by a group of students:

1.  Jazz History
2.  Syncopation

3.  Jazz Instruments and Sounds

4.  Improvisation

5.  Rhythm
6.  Form

7.  Song Structure
8.  Tune Learning - The Definitive Version

9.  Getting Inside the Head
10.Improvising Based On the Head

I found the videos at www.artistshousemusic.org. This is a great site that also has videos of masterclasses by Kenny Werner (pianist and author of Effortless Mastery), Benny Golson (saxophone), Hank Jones (piano), Jesse McBride (piano), Larry Baione (guitar), Kirk Whalum (saxophone) and Jimmy and Percy Heath (saxophone, bass).

SOFTWARE

It can be a bit confusing working out what software can best support jazz education, so here are some personal views based on experience.

You will need a recording program or Digital Audio Workstation (DAW) and this costs nothing.  If you have a Mac you will have Garage Band for free.  If you have a PC you can download Audacity at http://audacity.sourceforge.net/.  There are obviously much sexier products for both machines but these are not really necessary for practicing.  Using either of these programs you can record yourself playing along with either a backing track from the likes of a Jamey Aebersold CD, or you can use an original version if you feel like it.  There’s nothing like hearing yourself as you really sound although it can be a bit of a shock at first!

Next up is transcribing.  Transcribing is the academic term for copying material from records, and it’s relevant whether you want to be John Coltrane or Keith Richards.  The Amazing Slowdowner from http://www.ronimusic.com/ costs about $50 plus VAT and allows you to change the pitch and/or tempo of an audio file with very little loss of sound quality, and to loop particular sections.  This will make trancsribing solos as painless as is realistically possible, and transcribing is a vital tool in ear training and the development of jazz vocabulary.  There is an alternative program called Transcribe! which is also very popular and a bit cheaper can be found at http://www.seventhstring.com/.  A sign of the times is that a new iPhone app called Robick has just come out, offering the same functionality for €2.99!  I’ve just bought it and it seems to work fine, although I haven’t mastered looping yet.

In previous versions of this post I didn’t discuss notation software, because the products (Finale, Sibelius) were expensive and there was similar functionality in Band In A Box (see below).  However, there is a new free product called MuseScore at http://musescore.org/ which seems to be worth checking out.  I’ve just started using it; the good news is that entering notes is very intuitive and easy, but I’m still not sure how it works for transposing lead sheets - if this can be done it’s a great option.  If you are still wondering why you might want to use notation software as A you don’t write music and/or B you are not a singer who needs to produce tailored parts in concert and other pitches, it is very useful as part of transcription.  This is because if you enter the solo you are working on into the program instead of writing it down on paper the program will play it back, which can really help resolve any worries about whether you have got the transcription correct.

Last but not least is Band In A Box from http://www.pgmusic.com/, which costs $129 for the basic version.  BIAB allows you to create your own backing tracks very easily, and to record yourself playing along with them.  If you don’t like the idea of all that inputting you can download a huge number of well known tunes in BIAB file format for free at http://phillipsmusic.net/realbook.htm.  You can change key and tempo with a mouse click.  BIAB is particularly handy for singers who need to produce charts in a key that suits them if it’s not the regular key for instrumental versions.  Once again there is an iPhone app worth considering as an alternative called iRealB (details at http://irealb.com/).  It does not have nearly as many features as BIAB (see below) but it does the basic accompanying function and has hundreds of songs and costs only €15.99.

As well as backing tracks BIAB has some other very useful features such as ear training drills and a function that can supposedly work out the chords of a song from an audio file (only tried it once and wasn’t too impressed, but that’ll be some cheat when it eventually works!).  Just one warning - if you have a choice of BIAB for Mac or Windows the Mac version has significantly FEWER features although PG Music say this will be rectified fairly soon.

So there you are.  Really meaningful support for your jazz studies for less than euro 140!

BOOKS

This could obviously be a very long section so I’ll limit its scope to books of a general nature plus one piano book, seeing as how we’re all meant to play a bit of piano.  I can vouch for all of these from experience and they are all recommended by some of the educators I’ve studied with.  I’ve put links to Amazon below the titles so you can find out more but you might want to use Ireland’s own http://www.paulryanmusic.com/ if you buy.

Improvisation

How To Improvise and Ready, Aim, Improvise by Hal Crook.
http://www.amazon.com/How-Improvise-Hal-Crook/dp/B000M1ADP4/ref=pd_sim_b_1

Theory

The Jazz Theory Book by Mark Levine
http://www.amazon.com/Jazz-Theory-Book-Mark-Levine/dp/1883217040/ref=pd_sim_b_3

Mental Approach (this matters!)

Effortless Mastery by Kenny Werner
http://www.amazon.com/Effortless-Mastery-Liberating-Master-Musician/dp/156224003X/ref=pd_sim_b_1

Free Play by Stephen Nachmanovitch
http://www.amazon.com/Free-Play-Improvisation-Life-Art/dp/0874776317/ref=pd_sim_b_1

Piano

Jazz Piano From Scratch by Charles Beale
http://www.amazon.com/Jazz-Piano-Scratch-How-Students/dp/0634033115/ref=sr_1_10?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1243554220&sr=1-10
This author wanted to fill a gap in the market for beginner jazz pianists and did it.  It’s also the course book for the ABRSM jazz piano exams.

WEBSITES

http://www.jazzimprov.com/ is the website of the magazine of the same name and the article archive is really worth a look.

http://www.allaboutjazz.com/ will shortly hit 8,000 articles in its archive and is a more general jazz website.

http://www.jazzinamerica.org is designed as a resource for seconadary school education and is run by JB Dyas (see Jazz Education Videos blog).

http://www.aebersold.com is the site for the doyen of jazz play-along recordings and has a reasonable amount of free material

GRADED JAZZ EXAMS

ABRSM provides Grade 1 to 5 examinations in jazz piano and most wind and brass instruments.  They also provide ensemble examinations at beginner, intermediate and advanced levels.

London College of Music provides Grade 1 to 8 examinations in jazz piano and most wind and brass instruments.  They also provide Grade 1 to 8 examinations in electric guitar, bass and drums – these are not specifically jazz exams but cover a lot of relevant subjects such as harmony and improvisation.

LJW is happy to put interested students in contact with teachers who can prepare them for these examinations.

JAZZ DEGREES

There is full jazz performance degree course at Newpark Music Centre in Blackrock, Dublin (www.newparkmusic.com), and numerous similar courses in the UK and elsewhere.

www.jazzservices.org.uk provides a useful course search facility.