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March 21, 2014 |
by Jason Lindsey |
No Comments The spirit of improvised music, jazz, has always been a personal music. Each person playing jazz has their own sound, articulations, phrasing, note-choice and personal ways of constructing their solos. Some solos are simple, laid back and very melodic while others can be just the opposite with lots of 16th notes, high energy and running throughout.
As you gain facility on your instrument, your mind’s melodic and harmonic ideas may change to match your new knowledge. Thus, you have players who go through stages of development and may have admirers at one stage but lose them at the next stage.
Imagination has no limit. The mind can conceive anything it chooses and as you practice, you’ll often come up with more things to practice. Once you begin making your own music and feel comfortable improvising, you’ll find there just aren’t enough hours in the day to practice, work on ear training, compose, arrange tunes, rehearse with your group, etc.
This is why I always recommend avoiding anything that knowingly may delay or stop you from reaching your musical goals. Anything self-destructive such as alcohol, tobacco, recreational drugs, marijuana, negativity and laziness can hinder your progress.
For many years drugs of various kinds were thought to help ones inspiration and enhance creativity. With the advent of jazz education and Eastern spirituality and meditation in the mid 1950’s, ways were found to enhance creativity without using tobacco, alcohol or other drugs. You could use your mind. Without having to rely on outside sources to achieve ones musical goal, many more people were experiencing the joy of playing their own inspired music and thus the image of jazz musicians gradually changed.
In the past, jazz has been very competitive. Competition: Compete with that part of yourself that tends to be lazy.
A primary goal of jazz education is to allow people the opportunity to express music creatively and spontaneously. We owe it to ourselves and the world to bring out into the open our creative musical potential.
“Anyone Can Improvise” is my motto. I know because I’ve heard it over and over. Our mind hears melodies. Our voice can approximate those melodies and with practice and discipline, those same melodies can be reproduced on our instrument. Keep at it, never give up.
All of us at Jamey Aebersold Jazz are here to help you better achieve your musical goals.
Jazz means FREEDOM. We love FREEDOM. We love JAZZ.
- Jamey Aebersold
January 23, 2014 |
by Jason Lindsey |
No Comments For 48 years I’ve been actively involved in conducting Summer Jazz Workshops around the world. I can truly say the first two weeks of July at the Univ. of Louisville will be a continuation of the best in jazz education you’ll find anywhere. I surround myself with only the finest educators and jazz musicians for my faculty. The staff is outstanding and caters to your every need. I am so pleased to each year see both young and old playing jazz and having the time of their lives.
Playing jazz has always had a mystery about it and for that reason, many are afraid to “give it a try.” I felt the same way at age 15 when I took my first jazz lesson. My knees were knocking and I quickly found out I didn’t know much, but that help was on the way. I dove in: asking questions, getting answers, listening to jazz, practicing the best I could with the knowledge I had, and in time I found it wasn’t nearly as difficult as I had led myself to believe.
Breakthrough moments came when:
Recording myself enabled me to hear what I sounded like, I could pick and choose what I liked and wanted to keep, and what I didn’t like and would thus delete from my playing. In time, listening became more fun because I could begin to HEAR what the famous jazz musicians were actually doing … how they were making those beautiful lines across the chord progression, how they used various articulation to personalize their solos, and how they seemed to find those “special notes.”
Ah, a lifetime of jazz and I wouldn’t trade a note of it. It has been a learning experience for me and had I attended a Summer Jazz Workshop like the ones I now conduct at the University of Louisville as a kid or young adult, I would have been making beautiful music much sooner.
Don’t put off until tomorrow what you can do today. The music is inside you. Let me help you get it out.
January 10, 2014 |
by Jason Lindsey |
No Comments A week with us could change your life!
We are happy to announce that you can now register for the 2014 Jamey Aebersold Summer Jazz Workshops at the University of Louisville!
We hope that you will take an opportunity to see why our workshops are the place to hone your skills on jazz and improvisation. Don’t miss out, get signed up, and bring your friends! If you have any questions, don’t hesitate to contact us.
August 8, 2013 |
by Gigi Collier |
No Comments Here are some pics Jamey took during this year’s camps.. SJW 2013 Gallery Pics
February 12, 2013 |
by Gigi Collier |
No Comments KET was just here filming a segment for their show “Louisville Live.” Check it out!
July 6, 2012 |
by Gigi Collier |
No Comments Hi Jazz Campers,
Please feel free to post your SJW pictures to our Twitter and Facebook pages. We would love for you to share your experience with us! Also – you can mention #jameysjw in your tweets. Thanks!
May 18, 2012 |
by Jason Lindsey |
No Comments This is just a sample of some of the awesome music you’ll hear at lunchtime during the Summer Jazz Workshops – EVERY DAY!
May 14, 2012 |
by Jason Lindsey |
No Comments We don’t want you to miss out on an incredible opportunity to play jazz with us this summer. As of this writing, we still have openings for ALL instruments for ALL of our workshops. We take ALL instruments, ALL abilities, and ALL ages – seriously.
If you know any BASS players or DRUMMERS, please ask them to join us! Sometimes, these instrumentalists don’t know that our workshops are for them too — The more rhythm section players we have, the more live groups we can put together.
If you have any questions about our workshops, don’t hesitate to contact Jason – 812-944-8141. He will help answer all of your questions.
