Posts by Michael Lake
How to improvise more melodically – part 2 of 2
30 percent of your brain’s cerebral cortex is dedicated to visual processing. A paultry three percent is dedicated to hearing. That says a lot. One, it explains why it’s harder to retain the content of an audio book than reading a physical book. It explains why people often say, “I’m a visual learner” (of course…
Read MoreHow to improvise more melodically – part 1 of 2
The title of this post reflects the majority of responses I received recently when I asked the question of 1,500 musicians: What are you struggling to accomplish with your jazz playing Some people put it in terms of playing solos that were more inventive or riveting, or creative. One respondent wrote, “Combining ideas into melodies…
Read MoreThe core skill of jazz improvisation you have probably not yet been taught
It’s been way too long since I wrote something here. My musical life has shifted and blogging has taken a back seat. It wasn’t that long ago that I felt guilty if I hadn’t written anything that week. As you’ll see throughout the next thousand words, my lack of blogging has not been for a…
Read MoreGetting a peek at an improvisation virtual lesson
I’ve had a few people submit their playing for the end of the 30-day challenge I put out there in my video called Jazz Improvisation: Simple 30-day Exercise to Rapidly Develop Your Skills I was demonstrating how a habit of a certain type of ear training could lead to results. “Habit” is the key word.…
Read MoreHow to learn difficult skills faster and more deeply
I am very excited to be finishing up my new book. The point of the book is, strengthening one’s musical ear to enable better musicianship and improvisation. That’s not the title, just the concept. The working title is Jazz Patterns for Ear. As I reached the end of creating and embedding the almost 150 audio…
Read MoreTrombones swimming in the luscious reverb of Biosphere2
Gerry Pagano came to town this past week. It’s odd. Every time he comes here, remarkable music gets recorded. The first time Gerry came to Phoenix after a long absence was to record the CD Roads Less Traveled. Two years later he and Doug Yeo descended upon my studio to record the CD Fratras. This…
Read MoreTraining your brain for both left and right brain improvising
Except for only the last couple hundred years–a sliver of time for us– human existence on earth has been hard. Very hard. Over 200,000 years, our brains have evolved to protect us from the dangers of being eaten by animals, surviving harsh weather, and attacks from warring factions. In order to survive, our brains have…
Read MoreDriver assist for guiding your improvisation
Last week’s video was on simplifying improvisation to the point of making it much easier for you to feel confident standing up to play a solo. I used the standard I Thought About You to demonstrate that you can play nothing but Eb major and sound good throughout the entire form of the tune. My…
Read MoreSimplifying your jazz improvisation
I’m organizing my thoughts for my next video and I wanted to use this post as a way to flesh them out a bit and to share some concepts with you. Improvising over jazz is hard. You have so many choices as the rhythm section is flowing along that it’s hard to believe improvising over…
Read MoreAnswers to a few excellent questions on alto trombone
I received an email today from a trombonist who packed a lot of good questions into I was looking into getting an alto trombone and I was wondering, is a trigger really necessary? Or Would it be better just to find an alto without one? Also what alto trombone do you use and how did…
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