Uploaded May 2025 | Updated September 2026, 1 week ago
Playing along with the legend Leroy Jones on Whoopin' Blues
Many students ask me to give them exercises or a course of study on how they can get a better or more authentic swing feel or ask me about the finer points of jazz articulation. Thing is, I don't really know how to teach that stuff beyond surface level or really general advice. Maybe that's on me. But I don't think there's any way to put it in words or convey it adequately.
For me, it's always going to back to recordings that make me feel like a badass just for listening to them. I can honestly say that I'd be perfectly happy sitting here and playing this melody with these musicians for hours. Trying to get closer to this MASTERFUL feel. The effortless flow and deep groove. To crawl inside of it and become one with it. Not because it allows me to check something off in my practice list, but because I love doing it so damn much.
Many people know the way to truly get to the level they want with time, feel, sound, articulation, rhythm, and other intangibles, they need to be living with the recordings. But they choose the recordings they think will accomplish their 'goal' instead of choosing the recordings that truly speak to them on a DNA level. Choose recordings that make you feel something. Recordings that, without realizing it, you have played along with hundreds of times and you are ready to go back for 100 more.
If this is the kind of stuff you KNOW is the most important, but are too overwhelmed with the speed of information, hit me up on my website. I have some lesson slots open and some space in my group program, The Jazz Intensive (we talk about and do activities like this all the time!) I love helping people through the process of tapping into their insane potential by finding the paths into the music that really resonate with them. That allow them to find all of the payoff in the process instead of the results.
#jazz #saxophone #musician #improvisation
Playing along with the legend Leroy Jones on Whoopin' Blues
Many students ask me to give them exercises or a course of study on how they can get a better or more authentic swing feel or ask me about the finer points of jazz articulation. Thing is, I don't really know how to teach that stuff beyond surface level or really general advice. Maybe that's on me. But I don't think there's any way to put it in words or convey it adequately.
For me, it's always going to back to recordings that make me feel like a badass just for listening to them. I can honestly say that I'd be perfectly happy sitting here and playing this melody with these musicians for hours. Trying to get closer to this MASTERFUL feel. The effortless flow and deep groove. To crawl inside of it and become one with it. Not because it allows me to check something off in my practice list, but because I love doing it so damn much.
Many people know the way to truly get to the level they want with time, feel, sound, articulation, rhythm, and other intangibles, they need to be living with the recordings. But they choose the recordings they think will accomplish their 'goal' instead of choosing the recordings that truly speak to them on a DNA level. Choose recordings that make you feel something. Recordings that, without realizing it, you have played along with hundreds of times and you are ready to go back for 100 more.
If this is the kind of stuff you KNOW is the most important, but are too overwhelmed with the speed of information, hit me up on my website. I have some lesson slots open and some space in my group program, The Jazz Intensive (we talk about and do activities like this all the time!) I love helping people through the process of tapping into their insane potential by finding the paths into the music that really resonate with them. That allow them to find all of the payoff in the process instead of the results.
#jazz #saxophone #musician #improvisation
