I love the smell of jazz in the morning. It smells like victory. I nail three hours practice every morning, Unless life gets in the way. Before I start anything difficult, I just play whatever I want. This is evolution. I really put myself through the mill back in the 90s It got to the point where I was actually dreading picking up the instrument because the practice was so hard. So I told myself that I should enjoy myself first! I don’t always play a tune, but I did this morning. (It could happen to you).I just tried to let the ideas come really gently.. It’s too easy to get into the habit of forcing things through, but if you allow enough space then ideas can easily drop in seemingly all by themselves. I watched this back and I might record myself comping along to it later, because the time feels pretty good. In the meantime, you’re welcome to comp along yourself!

It’s amazing how much easier that 6bpm makes it. Still not totally immaculate, but not too shabby! What’s the lesson we learned from this? Slower is harder. Slower is better. This kind of practice is the hard stuff and it’s potentially not as enjoyable so we may as well make the most out of it, eh? Turn that dial to the left. When you can do beat four of every fourth bar at 40bpm, then you know you’re onto something! I will post something like that another time…

It’s not immaculate, but I thought you might like that. It’s early in the day, and I’m a little bit of ahead of it, but you can hear me correcting and trying to get right back on it. This is part of the skill that you need in a live environment - Being able to slowly bring it back in without the chain coming off!

One of the solutions!