Learn Jazz Standards Podcast

Today's episode marks the 2nd season of the Learn Jazz Standards podcast. Brent explains shifting the show's direction to better serve listeners by focusing on answering their specific jazz learning questions, with shorter 10-minute episodes four days a week and 'Fast Track Friday' strategy episodes. The host conveys excitement for the coming daily content and urges listeners to subscribe.In this episode:1. Taking Season 2 in a slightly different direction2. New podcast scheduleImportant Links:Free Guide to learning standards by ear: Learn Jazz Standards the Smart WayLJS Inner Circle MembershipListen to the Learn Jazz Standards Podcast

The host is taking a break from the Learn Jazz Standards podcast to recharge and make improvements for the future. They discuss feeling burnt out, their dedication to the audience, and their plans to enhance the listener experience. The host announces a temporary break, but assures listeners that the podcast will return in January.

Christian Schrader, a hobbyist musician, shares his journey of creating a pro jazz album. They discuss Christian's musical background, favorite jazz musicians, and how the album started. The process of completing the music, having a good attitude, and making the right connections are also covered.

Do you ever get that feeling when you're looking at your instrument sitting there in the corner and you just don't feel like picking it up? It's kind of a strange feeling because deep inside you're excited about music and jazz and you want to improve and you know you have that idea of practicing but then when you actually go to do it there's some kind of resistance there. And sometimes the reason that is is because practicing can sometimes be boring. That is if you practice in a boring way. So in today's episode, we're going to talk about five ways to make practice not boring so that you're having fun when you go to pick up your instrument and learn new things. In this episode:5 Ways to Make Practice Not Boring1.  Practice things you like to practice2.  Practice high-leverage activities, things that give you big results. 3.  Add purpose to your practice. Don't just be doing a meaningless task for no reason.4.  Practice in a fun way, ways that are fun for you to practice.5.  Practice with a goal in mind or goals in mind. Important Links:Free Guide to learning standards by ear: Learn Jazz Standards the Smart WayLJS Inner Circle MembershipListen to the Learn Jazz Standards PodcastLearn Jazz Standards Inner Circle: Get 50% off your first month!

This jazz podcast episode discusses the fundamentals of learning jazz for beginners, intermediates, and advanced musicians. It covers jazz theory, the three pillars of jazz improvisation, and the importance of practicing. Additionally, it emphasizes the significance of learning jazz repertoire and standards for improving improvisation skills.

So a common piece of advice when learning jazz and becoming a better improviser, learning songs is you should do it by learning it by ear rather than reading sheet music. And there are a plethora of reasons why teachers will say this is a good idea. However, for someone who is new to this idea or who was trained to read music or use tablature, this could be a very scary, foreign, and frustrating concept. So in today's episode, I want to go over ten tips that I regularly share with my Inner Circle members for how to learn music by ear. In this episode:10 Tips for Learning Music By EarTip #1:  Start smallTip #2:  Adjust your expectationsTip #3: Check your work with notation at firstTip #4:  Use a slow-downerTip #5:  Learn more tunesTip #6:  Practice melodic dictationTip #7:  Practice ear-training fundamentalsTip #8:  Mindfully listen to musicTip #9:  Sing before you playTip #10: Have a processImportant Links:Free Guide to learning standards by ear: Learn Jazz Standards the Smart WayLJS Inner Circle MembershipListen to the Learn Jazz Standards PodcastLearn Jazz Standards Inner Circle: Get 50% off your first month!

The best way to learn jazz and improve over time is simply to learn more songs, aka jazz standards. But those jazz standards, those songs are made up of chord progressions. The good news is that even though there are a lot of complex chord progressions, or at least seemingly complex chord progressions in jazz standards, a lot of them come up time and time again, over and over. So once you learn one jazz standard in two or three, you're going to start seeing those same chord progressions come up in many, many other ones. So what are the chord progressions that you need to know for jazz? In this episode, we're going to talk about nine of them that are really common and you'll see come up a lot.  In this episode:1. The major 2-5-1 chord progression2. The minor 2-5-1 chord progression3. The major 1-6-2-5 chord progression4. The minor 1-6-2-5 chord progression5. Chord progression #5 is when the 3 chord replaces the 16.  Chord progression #6 is when the sharp one diminished, replaces the 6th7.   The 1-4-3-6 chord progression8.  The chromatic 2-5s or sidestep 2-5s9.  The tritone sub of 5 Important Links:Free Guide to learning standards by ear: Learn Jazz Standards the Smart WayLJS Inner Circle MembershipListen to the Learn Jazz Standards PodcastLearn Jazz Standards Inner Circle: Get 50% off your first month!

Hey, my friends, Brent here from Learn Jazz Standards. Here on the podcast for the month of August, we've been doing a themed month called Free Masterclass August, where I've been giving away different Masterclasses that we've done in the past here on Learn Jazz Standards, whether it be from our virtual summits, retreats or otherwise, just to, you know, it's the summer, it's the end of the summer.  We're about to go into the fall coming up here soon, and I just kind of wanted to unleash a lot of value and information for you to kind of set you up for when perhaps you're going to be more active in practicing and getting back to it, improving and getting to your musical goals again.Today's masterclass, honestly, if I'm being really honest with you, I had a little bit of a hard time pulling the trigger on sharing this one with you. The reason for that is because this is kind of one of our most valuable Signature Masterclasses that I usually ask for an exchange of an email address to receive this Masterclass. So it usually is free, but of course, with the exchange of an email address. So I had a little bit of hesitation just kind of sharing this here on the podcast today. But again, in the spirit of the Free Masterclass August, I decided if it makes me feel just a tad bit uncomfortable, then it probably is a good thing just to unleash all the value on you this month and just help you improve. So in that spirit, I'm sharing with you our masterclass called Jazz Standards Mastery Formula, our signature masterclass. It really sort of gives the big overarching philosophy behind our company, Learn Jazz Standards. How do you learn to play jazz songs? How do you improvise over jazz songs? This is kind of like our approach and really is a lot of what we actually do in our Inner Circle membership. You will hear me give a little bit of a hard pitch for the Inner Circle membership at the end of Jazz Standards Mastery Formula here. But just know that everything I teach here in this masterclass can be used outside of our Inner Circle membership. Our Inner Circle membership just makes it easier for you to execute on some of these things. And also, just a little note as well is, obviously this masterclass was originally presented in a video format, so there are examples on the screen at times. There are visuals, there are slides. And so while you won't be able to see those today, you'll still be able to really get a lot out of just listening to the master class in itself. So, my friends, our signature masterclass Jazz Standards Mastery Formula. In this episode:1. Secret #1: How to learn jazz standards so you don't get lost or forget them.2. Secret #2: How to start improvising over Jazz standards from scratch, from zero to hero. 3. Secret #3: The 3-Step strategy for Skyrocketing your practice results, all while practicing less.4. What has pizza got to do with this?5. Applying the L.I.S.T. process.6. Less is always more.Important Links:Free Guide to learning standards by ear: Learn Jazz Standards the Smart WayLJS Inner Circle MembershipListen to the Learn Jazz Standards PodcastLearn Jazz Standards Inner Circle: Get 50% off your first month!

Hey, my friends, Brent here from Learn Jazz standards. We are continuing our themed month of August called Free Masterclass August, where I'm giving away some Masterclasses here on the podcast that we've done in the past at various different events and mediums just to give a little extra special, a little bit of fun here and value for finishing up the summer so. So, I hope you enjoy it. We've had some great Masterclasses this month on the podcast. Already today, I want to share a Masterclass that was given during our Learn Jazz Live Virtual Summit in 2022 by a team member of mine, Brett Pontecorvo. And those of you who are Inner Circle members know Brett very well because he's in the community coaching, and he creates some of our content for our monthly Jazz Standard Studies. And he gave a really great masterclass that year called "Orchestrating Your Musical Breakthrough". So, a lot of us sometimes feel a little stuck in our playing, feel like we hit plateaus, or perhaps just don't really understand that we have so much potential as musicians. And so what Brett does is he talks about in this Masterclass ways for us to start achieving a musical breakthrough. That "AHA!" moment where you feel like you're improving and you get excited. That moment that we're all really searching for when we sit down with our instruments. So without further ado, let's go ahead and get Brett Pontecorvo on to give this masterclass, "Orchestrating Your Musical Breakthrough".  In this episode:Achieve breakthroughs and make progress in learning jazz with the following strategies:1. Define a game you can win by setting clear and achievable goals with measurable victory conditions2. Develop a strategy to achieve these goals by overcoming barriers like negative self-talk, lack of time, and lack of information 3. Take consistent action by practicing regularly in short bursts, making the process fun, and sticking to your plan4. Acknowledge your wins and progress to stay motivated, and repeat the process to continue improving. The overall mindset is to become the type of person who takes action and achieves breakthroughs through deliberate practice and persistence.Important Links:Free Guide to learning standards by ear: Learn Jazz Standards the Smart WayLJS Inner Circle MembershipListen to the Learn Jazz Standards PodcastLearn Jazz Standards Inner Circle: Get 50% off your first month!

Hey, my friend Brent here from LearnJazz Standards. We are continuing our themed month here in the podcast of free masterclass August, where I'm giving away different masterclasses that we've done in the past here on LearnJazz Standards. Last week, we came out with a free masterclass podcast episode and we're continuing that on here in today's episode. So really excited to dive into this one. This particular masterclass was a masterclass that was conducted at our Inner Circle Retreat earlier this year. Now this Inner Circle Retreat was an invite -only event for our Inner Circle members, our LearnJazz Standards Inner Circle members. So you'll hear a lot of stuff in the masterclass referring to the Inner Circle and the things that we do in the Inner Circle. So of course, if that's something that you're interested in, definitely go check it out, lgsinnersercle .com, or you'll find the link to that in the description down below. And just to note, this was, of course, a live event. So it was conducted over Zoom. I was sharing slide presentations and so on and so forth. So there are visual elements to it. However, the audio version of this is going to work just fine. You'll also notice as well during the masterclass that I'm referring to other workshops and masterclasses that are yet to come, this being the very first masterclass we conducted during this retreat. And so while we won't be giving those away, especially out of respect for our Inner Circle members who pay to attend this, you'll still get a lot of value from the material presented here at this masterclass, 100% really valuable stuff here. So I hope you enjoy this masterclass. This is called your best jazz playing ever. In this episode:Things that hold us back from attaining our jazz goals: 1. Doing the same things and expecting different results2. Unrealistic expectations3. Ineffective practicing4. Loss of motivationSteps to move us forward toward our jazz goals:1. Step #1:  Complete a monthly project that sets you up to win every single time2. Step #2:  Commit to taking 365 B.A.D. jazz solos3. Step #3:  Master P.B.R. practiceImportant Links:Free Guide to learning standards by ear: Learn Jazz Standards the Smart WayLJS Inner Circle MembershipListen to the Learn Jazz Standards PodcastLearn Jazz Standards Inner Circle: Get 50% off your first month!