About to get on a plane for a family Christmas in Poland! No session tonight for our Christmas Break but there’s the first part of my new Etude on Coquette up in the Études course (classroom), for anyone who wants to get some practise in over the holiday period. Also today is the last day of $100 for my Jazz Violin Starter Pack. Combined with the free bowing course in there it’s the perfect setup for becoming a jazz violinist. Get hold of it for the next 12 hours at this low price. Merry Christmas!

My present mission is to try to incorporate some of what I'm learning here into my improvising, much easier said than done! To that end I've been practicing some 4 bar lines, just over 1 chord. This example has elements of a bebop scale pattern, arpeggio and an enclosure. All comments and advice gratefully accepted.

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

Hi all, We’ve been working hard on the tune Avalon this last month in the practise club. Post a video of you improvising over the tune and get some feedback and encouragement from the group! Use the backing track here! https://youtu.be/97k8jD9Bgd4?si=OLDCdx8RubuKPyyg Here’s my version!

Why is sometimes not the easiest question to answer. I know that I got into playing jazz because my grandfather helped me at the start. However I think the “why” is that when I was a teenager I played the violin, but I wasn’t great at reading music and I naturally preferred learning by ear and just sort of playing around with music. I went through lots of music obsessions when I was young. Metal, hip hop, classic rock, country, folk. I remember being at youth orchestra rehearsal across town with a bunch of kids who I didn’t know and not really feeing like I fitted in with anyone. I wasn’t really interested int he music we were playing at the time, I was the worst violinist there and I didn’t really feel any motivation to become the best. I played drums at school too, I would give up my lunch break to go to a rehearsal room with my friends and make noise. Learning to improvise on the violin gave me the opportunity to use my natural skills in learning by ear. It meant I could jam with other people and made me feel like I could really CREATE, but I could do it with the violin this time. I still feel out of place in an orchestra but I’m at home in a rehearsal room trying to work out a nice arrangement for a jazz tune. What about you?