Jazz Time Feel

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Jazz Time Feel- with UK jazz guitarist Jamie Taylor

Amazing time and fantastic feel is the constant factor that unites all the jazz greats in history, from Louis Armstrong to Kurt Rosenwinkel. I’m always surprised that it isn’t discussed more often, and there are certainly a lot of myths surrounding the topic, such as “feel can’t be taught”, “jazz quavers are really triplets” (at best, a massive over-simplification!), or the contrasting and equally misleading tenet that “jazz quavers can’t be notated”.

Of course, the truth is that feel can be analyzed and worked on just like anything else, and a little bit of focus on this topic can produce really dramatic improvements in your playing in a short time. Sometimes what we need to do as musicians is not to get new things into our playing, but to deliver our existing vocabulary better. That well-worn II-V-I lick you’re so tired of can suddenly sound like a million dollars when you get it right in the middle of the pocket!

This lesson includes:

• Analysis and demonstration of different kinds of jazz quaver feel

• Exercises to develop your relationship with the time – play deliberately behind the beat, then snap back up against the pulse!

• “Gear shifting” exercises to improve your rhythmic accuracy.

• A wide range of metronome exercises to really benefit your improvisation and comping.

• A highly flexible “phrase chart” exercise, that helps you to develop complete variety and control in your phrasing and articulation over familiar forms.

• Advice on preparing to play repertoire from either end of the tempo spectrum.

• Suggested listening to help you identify the different types of delivery employed by the jazz greats.

• Synchronized on-screen captions so that you know exactly what you’re hearing, as you’re hearing it!

• Neatly presented written examples of all exercises in PDF format.

View a clip from Jamie’s class