This was the first Major ii V7 I line I practiced. I want to do it much slower and focus on good intonation but I have no idea which position or fingering to use for the keys of Ab Db Gb….. I want to be able to play these intervals by ear in the jazz keys the horn players want!!! I started with B then E, A, D, G, C, F etc.

I have started to create a new course for you all. It will be available on all paid plans once finished. A sample is in the Classroom and I wanted your feedback on how it seems so far. The plan is to have the chapters laid out as they but with video example attached too. Each different enclosure and approach note will have an explanation page with some playable examples and some lines built with the enclosures, followed by a set of exercises (in PDF form) that I've designed to help you drill them into your playing (plus some other ideas injected in there too). Its a little like my book "Enclosure Studies For Jazz Violin" but laid out a little more like I wanted and with more of an emphasis on the long exercises I like to use to practise them. (I had to change my book a lot to go with the format that the publishing company generally worked with) Please go check it out in the Classroom and either comment on here or message me directly with your thoughts. Matt

What’s one thing that you think the violin can offer to jazz that hasn’t been explored enough in your opinion? I’d say double stops. Oscar Peterson always said that pianists should play like pianists and use the instrument for what it’s good for. The context being that when bebop first appeared, many pianists were focusing their playing mainly around single line work, emulating sax players, not exploring their left hand as much as in previous periods of jazz. Whilst the violin doesn’t have the same chordal possibilities as the piano, I think we should try to use the two note possibilities of the violin more. In both our arsel of improvisational techniques and our practise when we are trying improve our playing as a whole. In my 10 tunes course I incorporate it as an integral part of learning chord sequences. Using double stops two note chords as a way of learning the changes for tunes. If you can play through a tune using simple shapes for each chord, you will know the tune a lot better! Tcha Limberger is a great proponent of using double stops in his playing, I learned a lot from his approach to practising improv and technique.

🏅The Challenge🎻 You have two options: 1. Take a line that you often play in C Major and learn to play it in Eb, Gb/F# and A. 2. Just learn my line in all of those keys (shown in the video) Then post it on here, you will get some feedback and encouragement from me and the group! As a thank you for taking part il send you a transcription of this line! ❓Why do this⁉️ Learning lines in major or minor thirds really helps you learn lines properly. It also gets you working out how you might change position or fingering for each key to make it work for you. There’s usually some way to play any piece of jazz language in each keys that will work, doing this sort of transposition helps you find the gaps you have in your technique whilst solidifying jazz language.

It’s Q&A time next Monday. Anybody got anything that hey want help with? Let me know in the comments?