EDUCATION
Music education is in a tough moment. The vast cuts in grade school music depriving kids of musical instruments, ensembles, and coaching have resulted in a large gap in awareness. Imagine the shape a popular sport such as football would be if one or two whole generations had football amnesia, not only forgetting the rules of the game and the history,but also had little or no access to playing the game or even watching it. This is what has happened to music.

So what to do?

For the interested student, it is important to share enthusiasm with peers and family. Also, the relative ability of the Internet to provide samples of important music and information can help. In the jazz world, here are some notable websites:

www.iaje.org/ (International Association of Jazz Educators, very active
organization)

www.allaboutjazz.com (All About Jazz, online magazine)

www.jazzimprov.com/ (Jazz Improv Magazine, filled with helpful
information)

http://ucjazz.berkeley.edu/ucjazz/info/lesson1.html

BEGINNING IMPROVISATION, PART I

Listening to a good jazz player's improvisation is hearing someone in a full flight of the imagination. Sometimes it is hard for beginning students to know where to begin study. Formal instrumental training, knowledge of tunes, ensemble experience, and vocabulary are all important and useful. However, if you can play a simple tune on an instrument, that can be enough to start. The tune can come from any style. What could you do to add a few notes to that tune? Do you hear it differently from its written or recorded version?

Do those "new notes" make sense or do you need to try some others? Work the tune...can you add a twist to it? Even one new note can make a difference.

The great jazz pianist Bill Evans said that his first experience with improvisation came in high school. He was playing in a school band, reading a band chart, and one day decided to added a few notes of his own, leaving some written notes out, and thus had a different melody.

On a more technical level, if you can read basic chord changes, try changing the melody where there is a chord note with a different chord note. Does that make the melody jump somewhere else? If so, does another note or notes need to be changed so the melody still makes sense?

Who have you listened to? Can you get jazz recordings out of libraries, or on the Web?

You are the sum total of all your musical experiences. Who has made sense to you musically?

Whoever that is, you have to learn some of their vocabulary and use it.