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Owned by Matt
Begin or develop your jazz violin playing by chatting, sharing, taking courses and live classes.
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64 contributions to Learning Jazz Violin
20h •
Practice today!
OK - just having practiced a bit and then watched Matt's 'quick start' video - I started with blues and bebop scales in all keys, and then worked through a bit of Usher Abell's 'Jazz violin studies'.
0 likes • 14h
Nice, great work! Sounds like a great workout for the brain and the fingers! A tip: Make sure you inject a bit of “playing” practise too. It’s always important in my opinion to jam a bit over a tune too! A question: do you practise the scales from root to root?
23h •
Free live bowing class in an hour
Im testing out a new feature on here. Going Live! I'll be going through some of my jazz bowing exercises for people to practise along with LIVE! Come try it out for free at 1.30, you can see the "Event" in the "Calendar" section.
0 likes • 21h
Sorry to all who tried to join on time. I was having a nightmare with the tech. We did start but a little later. Il make sure to let people know more in advance about these going forward!
3d •
A killer Stuff Smith solo
I think this was the first video I ever saw of Stuff playing. I remember being super excited to hear some things I was always looking for in a jazz violinist. Groove, grit and jazz melody.
0 likes • 2d
@Su Kingsley she is amazing here I agree!
3d •
Diminished chord practise
I took a short bit of the line we worked on in the Practise Club yesterday and used it to explore different V7 → i minor progressions where the A diminished works. A diminished 7th chord can be used over a dominant chord that’s a semitone below its root. Because a diminished 7th chord is made up of the same interval stacked over and over, the same diminished chord works in four different keys. So A°7 can be used over G#7, B7, D7, and F7. I played the same basic line each time, just changing the ending slightly to fit each key. Here are the progressions I played it over: • D7 → G minor • F7 → Bb minor • G#7 → C# minor • B7 → E minor
9d •
Did You Know?
Did you know that the first semblance of bebop played on the violin might not have been Jean-Luc Ponty, as a lot of people think? Has anyone ever heard of Harry Lookofsky? He was a classical violinist who led the orchestra on loads of L.A. string sessions, including many of the famous “jazz musician with strings” recordings you might have heard. But he also loved jazz, and in 1959 he recorded a great album called Stringsville. The album has lots of really hip arrangements of well-known jazz tunes and some completely wild solos played by Harry. The interesting thing is that he didn’t improvise. He got his jazz musician friends, including Hank Jones and Bob Brookmeyer, to help him write the solos and work on the arrangements. The lines are full of bebop language and he swings really hard, but he didn’t improvise a note. What do you think?
1 like • 8d
@Tom Sykes yeah it’s a good question. I love that the solos and arrangements were carefully put together by seasoned jazz musicians and that Harry executed it all with amazing feel and precision. It probably isn’t really jazz though you are right, more like a presentation of jazz by an amazing violinist. It’s the best example of this still to this day though.
0 likes • 3d
@Alison Foyle good point but yes I think they will have been improvising. It certainly throws off the whole process if even one person isn’t improvising!
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