Sing and swing drills

You can honestly guarantee the effectiveness of this technique

This is one drill that we guarantee will make you a more natural and musical player, by its very design. Best of all, it’s so simple. The only downside is, anyone listening may think you’re a bit crazy.

All you do is, 1) sing a short musical line. Start with a fairly short phrase you might play in a solo.

And then 2) play it on your instrument. As you get better, you can sing longer and longer lines before playing them back.

The great thing about this drill is that is gets you thinking ahead musically. Oscar Peterson, the great jazz pianist, developed the ability to be thinking up to 4 bars ahead, very early in his career-and it shows in the fluency and confidence with which he played.

This drill is particularly powerful if you do it over the changes of a standard of your choice, e.g. one of the ones from the real book, to anchor the skills in even more strongly.

If you play piano, guitar, or any instrument which doesn’t need you to blow, you can sing and play (George Benson style) at the same time - which really helps to shape the lines you play. Don’t worry if you can’t sing, the point is that you’re deciding inside your head what kind of line you want to play, from a musical perspective, rather than as a ‘button pusher’.

Photo by Isaac Ibbott on Unsplash