I answered @Su Kingsley question about finding the 3rds and 7ths of a tune.

I chatted today in practise club a little about playing fast. For me it goes like this… Muscle memory (scales, enclosures and learnt lines)for eighth notes Your ear for more “soaring” long notes that are more melodic Think in rhythms above all else. In the session today We worked on playing a scalic line through the changes that goes from the top of first position, down to the bottom. Listen to me play here at my gig last night, I did something like that about 10 times… Pick a starting point and an end point on your instrument and change the scale you use to fits the chords. For playing fast, it’s really got to be something that fits under your fingers and feels good to play, otherwise it just isn’t coming out. It’s not quite “beautiful” music of course but it’s how I manage to keep up with creating something interesting at fast tempos. Message me or comment on this post if you want to try a practise club next Monday at 6pm.

This is my “medium term” practice project at the moment. Getting difficult concepts into your playing is something that often seems impossible. But for me it’s the same as getting anything into your improvisational language. It’s about consistency and looking at it in as many different ways as possible. Here’s what I’m doing: Picking a key each day and practising the scale up and down slowly with a drone. Finding a pattern within the scale and playing that up and down in first position, not worrying about application yet, just enjoying the melody that comes from the pattern. Picking a chord sequence that fits the scale, generally the V7 chord in a ii-V-I sequence, and creating a line that is semi improvised and semi worked out. Playing the line in different keys. Then trying to improvise over the same sequence and dropping in the line, letting different aspects of the scale come out naturally. All of this takes up about 30 to 45 minutes of each practice session. This approach works for any concept you might be working on. It might be a few notes from a transcription that grabbed your attention, getting an enclosure into your playing, or just playing melodically with the major scale over a ii-V-I. Everything I teach is something I use in my own practice every day as a professional jazz violinist. What are you working on at the moment? Drop it in the comments, I’d love to hear.

I'm now putting little transcribed snippets of my Instagram and YT content for free in the classroom. I'm so gratefull of everyone on here and everyone who follows me on there and wanted to give you guys something to say thanks! I'll be adding to it slowly over time when I think there's something that might help you all! Click here to check out the first one.

7th chords are four notes chords, made up from clustering thirds from within a scale on top of each other. People at the start of their “theory” journey often get this term confused with 7 chords which is the term people use for Dominant chords. These ARE types of 7th chords but are more specifically major triads with a flattened seventh on top. They are found as chord V from the major scale. They might even be confused with “chord vii” which is the seventh chord that is made from the seventh degree of the major scale and is a m7b5 chord. Confusing I know.