How to Learn Jazz Without Music Theory

Summary

Cecil Alexander shares innovative ways to learn Jazz without music theory, emphasizing ear training and vocalizing instead of relying solely on technical understanding of scales, chords, and arpeggios. By singing or whistling Jazz phrases and melodies, musicians can develop a deep connection to the music, allowing them to improvise fluidly without overthinking the theoretical aspects. The video suggests practical exercises like vocalizing solos, transcribing music through listening, and using the bass lines to embed melodies, promoting a natural and intuitive approach to jazz improvisation.

Highlights

• Focus less on music theory and more on what you hear and vocalize. 🎧
• Create a strong ear-to-instrument connection by singing jazz lines. 🎶
• Use bass notes and bass lines to reinforce melody and harmony comprehension. 🎸
• Transcribing solos by ear sharpens improvisational skills. 🎵
• Even if you know what you're playing, try connecting it to your ear for greater mastery. 🌟

Key Takeaways

• You don't need extensive music theory to expand your Jazz vocabulary; focus on connecting through your ear! 🎵
• Singing or vocalizing jazz phrases helps internalize them, creating a natural connection between your ears and instrument. 🎤
• Using bass lines as secondary melodies can enhance your understanding of harmony. 🎶
• Transcribing and singing solos develop your improvisational skills rapidly. 🎺
• Skipping overly fast lines in solos is okay; focus on what's within your current capability. 🚀

Overview

In the world of jazz, Cecil Alexander flips the script on traditional methods by advocating for learning through listening instead of just theoretical understanding. Alexander suggests that musicians should focus on integrating sounds into their ear, promoting a method of learning jazz vocabulary that connects melodies directly to one's musical intuition.

By emphasizing vocalization over theory, musicians can lower cognitive barriers during improvisation, allowing for a seamless flow of musical ideas. This method encourages a more instinctual approach, where musicians sing or whistle jazz lines and analyze them through intuition rather than technical breakdown.

Alexander introduces practical exercises like singing solos without instruments, transcribing music simply by listening, and using secondary melodies to strengthen one's grasp of harmony. These exercises not only build a comprehensive ear-training regimen but also instill confidence to improvise without heavily relying on theoretical knowledge.

Chapters

• 00:00 - 00:30: Introduction to Learning Jazz Without Music Theory This chapter introduces the concept of learning jazz improvisation without heavily relying on music theory. The author emphasizes that while music theory is essential for identifying scales, arpeggios, and triads, too much focus on theoretical knowledge can be counterproductive for expanding one's jazz vocabulary. Instead, the chapter suggests that learners should focus on practical improvisation techniques and intuitive understanding rather than overloading with theoretical thinking.
• 00:30 - 01:40: Connecting Jazz to Ears Through Singing The chapter emphasizes the importance of connecting improvisational skills in jazz to one's auditory perception. It discusses various methods to expand one's improvisational vocabulary, such as writing solos, transcription, deep listening, and repetition. However, it particularly highlights the effectiveness of singing as a direct means to internalize musical language and improve hearing during improvisation.
• 01:40 - 03:00: Play What You Hear This chapter emphasizes the importance of being able to vocally reproduce musical ideas as a way to internalize and truly understand them. The speaker suggests using vocal techniques, such as whistling, to become comfortable with phrases, particularly in jazz. The goal is to be so familiar with musical ideas that you can reproduce them effortlessly, without having to consciously think about the technical details such as note sequence or harmonic context. This ability to 'play what you hear' allows for greater flexibility and creativity in applying musical concepts across various contexts.
• 03:00 - 05:00: Practical Ear Training for Jazz The chapter emphasizes the importance of ear training in Jazz, focusing on recognizing scales and scale degrees while cultivating a natural connection between the ears and the instrument. It highlights the concept of 'play what you hear,' suggesting that if you can sing the phrases you play, it reflects accurately playing what you hear. The practicality of this practice is explored, aiming to enhance Jazz performance.
• 05:00 - 07:00: Whistling and Singing Ideas The chapter 'Whistling and Singing Ideas' discusses the concept of 'prehearing' in music, which involves responding to music with melodies that one can almost anticipate or imagine beforehand. This ability is not spontaneous creation but is built upon extensive preparation and familiarity with various musical components. The goal is to be able to play music that is in harmony with what one can internally 'hear,' though achieving this consistency is acknowledged as challenging.
• 07:00 - 09:00: Singing Bass Notes and Arpeggios The chapter discusses the importance of practicing singing bass notes and arpeggios. It emphasizes not overthinking when improvising, as it can lead to mental roadblocks. The focus is on building a foundational level through practice, enabling one to handle various chord changes and tempos confidently during live performances. This practice also facilitates easier real-time thinking and idea generation while playing.
• 09:00 - 11:00: Singing Solos Over Backing Tracks The chapter discusses the process of incorporating vocabulary into playing by planning out solos and using specific ideas. The author emphasizes the importance of having a vocabulary connected to the ears that can be sung, equating this to a kind of practical ear training. Techniques like solfège and singing intervals are implied to be beneficial in this context.
• 11:00 - 13:30: Solo Transcription by Singing The chapter titled "Solo Transcription by Singing" discusses the benefits of practicing ear training and improvisational skills through singing rather than relying solely on classroom theory and instrument practice. It emphasizes the importance of singing ideas mentally before playing them on an instrument to enhance one's improvisational vocabulary and develop the ability to hear and react to music in real-time.
• 13:30 - 15:30: Dealing with Fast Solos In this chapter titled 'Dealing with Fast Solos', the discussion centers around practicing on an instrument with or without accompaniment. It mentions giving oneself a chord voicing to start, such as D major 7, and even working through melodic cells without over-analyzing them. The emphasis is on the spontaneity and intuition in dealing with fast solo performances. The aim is to practice freely while maintaining a sense of harmony when required.
• 15:30 - 16:30: Conclusion and Encouragement The chapter focuses on the importance of developing musical intuition without relying heavily on music theory. It discusses techniques like thinking of music as a melody rather than through complex theoretical constructs and emphasizes the importance of familiarity with your instrument, like the fretboard, through consistent practice. It also suggests singing the bass notes of tunes as a practical exercise that can enhance jazz playing skills, highlighting that this method can be beneficial even before you are ready to internalize and connect musical vocabulary.

How to Learn Jazz Without Music Theory Transcription

• 00:00 - 00:30 so I want to make this quick video on what I think is a really important way of learning Jazz vocabulary and it happens to be a way of learning Jazz without using much if any uh music theory uh so I think theory is super important um for giving you know names to different things like scales and arpeggios and Triads and all that stuff but uh I think the mistake that we make a lot of times when we're in pursuit of expanding our vocabulary as improvisers as we give ourselves more things to think about rather than more things to
• 00:30 - 01:00 hear uh when we're in the moment improvising so I think the focus uh when you're expanding your improvisational vocabulary should be to uh connect everything to your ears and you know some people will do this through uh like writing solos on Tunes or solo transcription or deep listening or even just like Brute Force repetition of lines and language and stuff like that all of which I think is super important but I think probably the most direct way to get language into your ears is to
• 01:00 - 01:30 sing it or vocalize it in some kind of way in this video I'll be um whistling a lot of lines just because I think it's easier to do that with uh like range of jazz vocabulary and that kind of thing so if an idea is really connected to your ears and you're able to sing it consistently and without thinking about um you know what the next note is and what that leap is and all that kind of stuff um that just means that you really own it and you can apply it in a lot of different contexts without even thinking about like what Harmony it goes over
• 01:30 - 02:00 what scale it's using um and again like what the you know scale degrees are that it's outlining that kind of thing uh it really creates just the super um natural connection to um from your ears to the instrument which is ultimately like what you want with everything that you get into your playing now a lot of times when you're um you know learning Jazz you hear people use the phrase play what you hear a lot and I think if you can sing the phrases that you're playing um you know then you're playing what you're hearing so what happens in practice
• 02:00 - 02:30 usually is uh you'll hear a bass note or you hear a chord voicing and you'll be able to respond with an appropriate Melody that you're like prehearing you know and that prehearing is going to consist of a lot of preparation so you know playing what you hear doesn't mean that you're just like coming up with things out of thin air or whatever but it means that you're able to call upon all of these other things that you've connected to your ears already so obviously it's difficult to make sure that everything you play is something that you hear and I really don't think
• 02:30 - 03:00 that that should be something that you think about too much when you're in the moment improvising because that's just going to create like roadblocks and get in your way but the idea is that this practice uh creates a foundation level in your playing that makes it so that you can approach pretty much any set of chord changes um you know any Tempo or whatever and you'll have stuff that you can call upon uh when the moment comes singing ideas also eventually makes it um a lot easier to actually approach thinking about things in the moment so
• 03:00 - 03:30 you know uh there are certain things that I think um I've gotten into my playing just through like like I mentioned like thinking about or um writing solos and you know planning out like specific moments to use ideas um but I think that that process would have been a lot more difficult if I hadn't already had vocabulary that was connected to my ears and that I could sing so I usually think about this as a type of practical ear training um just because for me uh things like soulfed or uh you know singing intervals weren't
• 03:30 - 04:00 super helpful for getting out there and like playing with people and being able to hear things in the moment that was great for um like the classroom and like sight singing Melodies and that kind of thing but not so great for like actually expanding my vocabulary as an improviser so a couple things that you can do to improve your ears and your improvisational vocabulary without thinking about Theory practice uh singing ideas um without touching the instrument uh and then find those ideas
• 04:00 - 04:30 on the instrument so I might give myself um like a chord voicing to start and sometimes I'll also just do this like free without any accompaniment without thinking about any Harmony but for the sake of this video I'll just play D major 7 or any voicing really and I'll whistle something [Music] so all right I'm not even going to think about like what that is exactly like I'm you know going up a melodic cell off the
• 04:30 - 05:00 fifth degree and then I'm doing this chromatic approach from the seventh to the fifth or whatever I'm just thinking about it as a melody and I'm just grabbing it on the freck board uh and the more that you do that the easier it becomes and the more you can do it in real time with things that you're hearing you know maybe even for the first time so the next thing that you can do to improve your Jazz playing without any theory is to sing the bass notes of tunes U so this was something that I was doing a lot even before I was thinking about connecting any vocabulary to my your is just kind of is like a a
• 05:00 - 05:30 party trick like I would sing the bass notes to like uh Giant Steps and like one of my friends would sing the melody over it so you know I might give myself like a starting [Music] point right and then I make sure that I you know end up in this same spot um
• 05:30 - 06:00 when I get to the top of the form so in that way the Baseline becomes like a secondary Melody for you right um and it makes it so that anything you already are hearing even without knowing that you're hearing vocabulary um you'll be able to connect it to the sound of the harmony because you have that underpinning of the Baseline working in your favor so um you know I don't do a whole lot of like singing arpeggios and that kind of thing I probably should do more but um you know you could even do the same sort of
• 06:00 - 06:30 exercise with the arpeggios of the [Music] tune right you know and then go through the rest of the tune like that and again by adding in the arpeggios you're just kind of giving yourself like even more harmonic information to draw from when you're improvising so the things that you play will just kind of automatically be connected to the harmony another
• 06:30 - 07:00 thing that you can do to uh improve your improv um without thinking about music theory is to sing solos over backing tracks if you're new to Jazz I would recommend doing like a blues or a jazz blues progression um but for this example I'll do uh the changes of confirmation by Charlie Parker and I'll try to put in um chord changes accompaniment uh in post so I'll do it like medium Tempo not too fast n
• 07:00 - 07:30 [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music]
• 07:30 - 08:00 so I got to the B section there but but you get the idea so um all of those Melodies that I whistled um are things that you know I can play on the guitar uh but also as I was whistling I was thinking of where I would play them on the guitar and that can kind of help with you know accuracy uh like in terms of pitch and that kind of thing and then as an extra part of that practice you could also um try you know singing something over the backing track pause the backing track and try to find that ideal on the instrument the last and I
• 08:00 - 08:30 think most important thing to do um to improve your Jazz vocabulary and improv without thinking about music theory is solo transcription so a lot of times when we think about um solo transcription especially in jazz I think uh we talk about you know writing the solo out and analyzing the lines and I think all of that is great but um a really great way to improve your ears in your improv very quickly is to practice singing solos um so this is something I would do first with just like really
• 08:30 - 09:00 simple straightforward melodic stuff nothing too fast um no double timelines that kind of thing um I might take like a Chad Baker solo uh and I'll attach some recommendations in the description below but I think his solo on it could happen to you is a really great starting point I think uh Miles Davis on if I were a bill is a great starting point or even solos by Lewis Armstrong or Lester Young um because you know a lot of the lines are very stepwise if they're not stepwise it's like a really logical
• 09:00 - 09:30 melodic uh leap that they're using in the line or whatever and everything is more or less like pretty inside of the chord changes so a process um that I found pretty useful for um singing solos is to pick a solo that I want to study um I'll listen to it like you know 500 times or a thousand times or however many times it takes for me to start to uh create like checkpoints within the solo so that I can say like um you know I'm listening to it and I'm like oh okay
• 09:30 - 10:00 in about 5 Seconds like The Pianist is going to do this little thing and they're comping and then it's going to you know make uh The Soloist respond in this way or um oh I love this line that's coming up here I love this drum fill that's coming up here the more those little checkpoints that you can create the more you're starting to internalize the sound of the solo so once you do that then you should practice uh transcribing it with your voice or like with whistling or whatever like I mentioned before and this should be kind of the same way that you would
• 10:00 - 10:30 normally transcribe with your instrument you know so you listen to like one phrase you pause the recording you try to sing it rather than finding it on the guitar so none of this you know beginning steps of this is going to include playing the instrument actually it's just all connecting it to your ears so you go a couple seconds at a time piece the entire solo together in that way uh and get it to the point where you can sing the full thing with the recording you want pretty um tight intonation you want to make sure that you're um matching the person's rhythmic
• 10:30 - 11:00 feel and their phrasing with your voice that kind of thing um and then you want to start to distance yourself from the recording so you want to get it to the point where you can sing the entire thing in the same key you know and end up in the same spot at the end um without any of the recording at all right so you're really making sure that this is like a collection of Melodies that you're able to hear away from your instrument away from you know any auditory reference at all and then from there you trans describe the solo onto
• 11:00 - 11:30 the guitar from your singing so you take each phrase go you know phrase by phrase at a time and piece it together but every time you sing a phrase you try to find those notes on the instrument so a good example is um in chat Baker solo and it could happen to you uh the first phrase he sings is so I would find that on the guitar [Music]
• 11:30 - 12:00 right so I've done the solo already so it's you know I know like what fingerings I want to use and what key get in and everything like that but um you do that process with the entire solo and then you uh go back to the recording as a reference and you start to maybe correct any mistakes that you've made from singing it um that you know maybe certain things you just couldn't quite get the leaps right or the intervals right that kind of thing um and then from there you're done you don't have have to analyze the solo or anything now
• 12:00 - 12:30 that solo that collection of Melodies is a part of your playing uh even without you knowing it sometimes and you can draw upon that stuff when you're in the moment improvising so a common question with solo transcription uh when you're singing lines and that kind of thing is you know what do you do if it gets too fast like what if the solo is plays like a double time line or like some flurry of notes it's just insanely fast I would actually skip over that stuff um if you can't like really hear it at your
• 12:30 - 13:00 current stage uh you might get to the point where you know there are like Charlie Parker lines or John Cole train lines that you can actually sing with pretty you know um good intonation and pitch and everything like that the point is not so much to get that double time vocabulary like really tight with the recording unless maybe you're like a a jazz vocalist or something like that you know so the idea with the faster lines is the soloists are still you know pre hearing that stuff but you know when you
• 13:00 - 13:30 sing something and you can get it like consistent like I mentioned before where you don't have to like guess what the next pitch is and you don't have to like um you know think about like oh you know I'm going to the fifth here I'm going to do a leap of an major 7th Year and that kind of thing when you can do that consistently you can then kind of like muddy up the pitch of the line and you can kind of just sing the shape or the Contour of the line and you'll know what it is right right and then from there
• 13:30 - 14:00 it's kind of just like you put it in different subdivisions or you put it in different um Tempo ranges and that kind of thing it's like uh more so a part of you at that point you can kind of do whatever you want with it so like if I sing something uh like over G major s [Music] right you know that's not even like super fast but it's you know like kind of at the limit of like how fast I can
• 14:00 - 14:30 sing um you know I I heard it I could hear like the starting point and like the last note of the phrase and everything in between was just kind of like like Wiggly shapes that I was trying to sing right so it's not like I'm really focused on getting the intonation exactly perfect fast but it's like you know I've done that stuff slow so many times that I can just kind of do the shape or do the Contour like I mentioned so all of these practices um you know towards improving your ears and uh getting more Jazz vocabulary into
• 14:30 - 15:00 your fingers um will work really well together like if you do all of this stuff as part of a practice routine I guarantee that you'll like get better and you'll be able to play over Tunes without even really thinking about the chord changes in the time that I've been playing guitar and in the time that I've been playing uh Jazz and improvised music I would say I've met way more people that can play really well and don't know what they're doing like they don't know like what scale all the stuff
• 15:00 - 15:30 is coming from or what arpeggios or concepts they're using then I've met people that know a lot of theory and can play so I would place an emphasis on connecting as much as you can to your ears regardless of what stage you're at and you're playing um this stuff will again will apply to beginners intermediates Advanced players whatever uh and especially if you're Advanced I would recommend taking things that are already like under your fingers and trying to connect them to your ears through singing because it's just going to give you like way more own ship over
• 15:30 - 16:00 those lines and those Concepts so feel free to leave any questions that you have in the comment section below I think that covers all of it [Music] [Music]