Why You Can't Learn Jazz In a Classical Way

5 minute read

You can’t effectively learn Jazz improvisation in the traditional Classical way in which many are taught and used to. Allow me to explain:

When first starting out, oftentimes there isn’t a solid grounding or foundation on which to play from, much less improvise from, as opposed to Classical music. Why is this?

It’s because most of the chord structures, rhythms, scales, articulations, phrases, techniques and chord progressions are completely different from and do not really occur in Classical music.

Many turn to the mass amounts of printed sheet music, whether its available published transcriptions, or books that deal specifically with Jazz chords or exercises. For example, the mini-series of Oscar Peterson’s Jazz Exercises, or a book dealing specifically with Jazz chords/voicings.

The problem with many chord books is that they teach only one or two ways to voice a particular chord and oftentimes the voicings sound weak, corny and lame. Much are based on Classical triadic harmony and it’s not what any of the masters play.

An even bigger problem is that if you’re playing and learning from one chord book, there’s the chance of getting stuck into the way of thinking that the only possible ways to voice particular chords/progressions are contained in the one single chord book! Just know there are many different ways to voice a single chord, whether one-handed or two-handed.

While transcriptions give a very good sort of “guide” and a wonderful source for ideas, improvisation isn’t always playing the same exact line or solo learned from a transcription every time the same tune is played on a gig or at a jam session at the local Jazz club.

Most of the time if you learn the transcription in the “Classical” way, playing straight from a transcription note for note, you’ll be thinking about it from muscle memory rather than harmonically/really knowing it, why it works and having an expert command over it. All of which is detrimental.

What ends up happening is the musician will be playing the solo from the given transcription the exact same way in which it was played/learned, trying to implement the solo line into the playing of a tune, using the exact notes from the written solo when taking a solo themselves. Not only is this a huge mistake, it is NOT improvisation!

I have tried this method in the past and learned the hard way that playing a transcription live in front of people will often backfire, will sound contrived and not have a “real” feel and will often fall apart as you’re trying to cram it in somewhere that isn’t natural, leaving a feeling of emptiness and mystery as to why you cannot improvise!

There are many problems associated with this method which I will attempt to address from my own learning experiences. Problems of this approach and solutions:

First, for many Classical pianists, more often than not they’re stuck and reliant on the written page, only being able to play what is written on the page. Jazz is an aural art form, the goal is to play what we hear. The challenge is hearing what you want to play before it’s played and then implementing it on the spot.

Even if you play a transcribed solo enough to where it’s memorized, implementing the solo mistake-free in real time will backfire 99% of the time.

For instance, if mistakes happen or you end up playing different notes other than the notes of the transcribed solo, the muscle memory “gets lost”, resulting in not being able to play the rest of the solo from where the mistake occurred because the chord changes will already be well ahead of the spot in which an attempt is made to continue the solo.

No matter how “contrived” some solos sound, the players were in fact improvising freely, they are simply very skilled in the art of improvisation. Another key point is, Jazz is about being creative and finding your own individual and expressive voice; For instance, you would not go to the local symphony to hear how good the second or third cellist is.

Another major point I’d like to mention is the notion of playing through Jazz tunes in general, especially with an ensemble or solo piano. Classical players often stumble through a piece trying to get every note right in the initial learning process.

In Classical music, the notes are learned enough that you don’t have to think about them after a while, knowing when specific notes/chords/runs/arpeggios come up and how they feel in muscle memory. Everything is very planned out and worked out ahead of time.

Unfortunately, this is horrible training for Jazz because when playing a Jazz tune, the music and chord changes do not stop to give time to correct mistakes, the music and chord changes are constantly moving. That was one of the biggest stumbling blocks for me personally.

My advice is when playing any tune, play along with recordings of the tune with play-alongs, and with a real band as much as possible, very slowly at first. Just like sight-reading, no matter what happens, just keep going and play through your mistakes, no stopping and fixing or starting over.

The great thing about Jazz is that the tunes are usually just one page or so and throughout playing the tune, the music cycles around the tune’s form many times, making Jazz compositions much easier to remember than memorizing Classical ones.

Another problem area for Classically trained pianists is trying to nail every chord change on the downbeat which appears on the chart. If anything, one should be overlapping/playing over the bar lines especially when soloing to avoid sounding segmented from bar to bar. You do not always have to land on Beat 1! It will often sound much better if you’re “late”!

Trying to nail every single chord change when comping, or playing all the time, especially on tunes like Dizzy Gillespie’s “Con Alma” or Wayne Shorter’s “Fee-Fi-Fo-Fum” or even the standard Rhythm Changes will sound bad.

In general, pianists (including myself) feel the need to play more than what should be played in this type of music. Leaving “space” or what I refer to as “discipline”, is key.

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