10 Exercises Every Jazz Musician Should Know

Great stuff, but I’d say these are more exercises than warm-ups (at least speaking as a brass player). Warming up with so much would bust my chops before the gig started. You can buy the sheet music for these here.

You Are Playing Your Scales Wrong (The Map Technique)

I’d only add that learning all 12 (of anything: licks, scales, whatev) is a waste of time, especially if you aren’t a guitar player, because they can so easily shift keys with the same patterns. Hit the scale and/or lick really hard in the key it’s in, maybe transpose it into some nearby keys in the…

3 Things To Practice To Improve Your Playing FAST

Been digging Rick Beato’s stuff lately. Here’s one that’s a little guitar-centric, but translate them to any instrument. I’m doing some of these on both guitar and trumpet. this one, too:

Devil’s interval: What makes music sound scary?

Metal bands and horror films stoke sonic dread the same way 18th century composers did—with a forbidden sequence of notes known as the “devil’s interval.” Think of the first two notes of Jimi Hendrix’s “Purple Haze” or Metallica’s “Enter Sandman”—or American police sirens. Click through for all the meaty details on the Devil’s Interval. Oh, and…

On gospel, Abba and the death of the record: An audience with Brian Eno

He’s been a Roxy original, the inventor of ‘ambient’, Bowie’s muse, the brain in Talking Heads and U2’s ‘fifth man’. Now Eno tells Paul Morley where he’s heading next: snip: “Instruments sound interesting not because of their sound but because of the relationship a player has with them. Instrumentalists build a rapport with their instruments…