A question for you today. As jazz violinists, when you practice, do you mainly work on “how” you execute your notes or “what” notes you play?

Challenge! Record your version of this, depending on what’s doable for you, either… In the original key (C Major over a G7) In a few other keys Inside an improvisation over a standard Or as we did last night in practise club, see below… We worked on this one in practise club last night. We took the pattern that this line is based on and played it all the way through all the chords in the C major scale, helping us understand why the melody works and how we can use it. What does this do? Helps us navigate the major scale with patterns and enclosures Drills the sound into our ears and fingers Serves as a technical exercise for our left hand If you are interested in trying out the jazz violin practise club for freejust send me a message or comment on this post.

Hey @Viktor Houf has been working on this tune and I saw in the comments that he had been working on that tricky B section. Here is a lesson straight from Charlie Parker about sounding fluent and musical over that string of ii-V-Is. Viktor is one of the new VIP members currently taking monthly lessons with me, get in touch if you are interested in chatting about getting 1-1 help from me with your playing.

I’m mainly hanging out with family today and tomorrow, I’m sat in a park in south east London right now not really doing much moving because I injured my knee… This afternoon at 4pm however I’m jumping on zoom for a free workshop “getting started with jazz violin”, just for you LJV skoolers. It’s for violinists who are totally new to jazz who want a simple way in. You can sign up via the link below or in the calendar section up top. https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/cWbXLCGRSPOcRwg_nXlFUA#/registration Let me know in the comments what you are up to this weekend! If you are practising, why not show us what you are up to with a video?

Tell me the first hurdle you came up against when starting to play jazz. I think my first hurdle was actually due to self belief. I heard Grappelli and thought “there is no way I could play that”. I loved the music but didn’t understand it and couldn’t work out how he was improvising it all. Tell me in the poll if you think your first hurdle was belief, technique, theory, rhythm, something else or and even better, elaborate in the comments.