HOW TO LEARN A JAZZ STANDARD

 

If you don't know three hundred standards don't move to New York, they say.

So, many of my friends, blog viewers, students and other jazz lovers asked me to propose some effective strategy to learn these freaking three hundred standards...and here we go.

First of all: there are many, many ways to learn a jazz standard – some are great, some are fine, some other, I believe, rather sub-optimal.  I am going to propose my own way, which has shown its efficacy along many years of personal and teaching experience.

Here below the detailed steps I follow – and suggest to my students – when I approach a new standard

1. Find 4/5 great renditions of the piece you want to learn (if possible, a couple also sung) and have a general listen to them
2. Have a look at the lyrics, it helps to understand the intention and the mood
3. Have a notepad and some paper music (or a digital notation tool, MuseScore is free and very easy to use) at hand
4. Start your playback device, be ready to stop, rewind, forward - do it in a place and time slot where you will not be disturbed
5. Transcribe the melody. I believe that transcribing by hear is 100% more powerful and formative than reading the music on a fakebook - without considering that fake books are often full of errors and Berkeleyan idiosyncrasies
6. Optional: if you have the original (and I mean original) score, check the differences between what the Tin Pan Alley composer wrote and what the musician you listened to really played.
7. Now, look at the melody and identify if there are “blocks” repeating themselves – with or without variations. Then start to organize these blocks to understand the overall architecture of the piece (the use of color codes can help)
8. Do the same with the chords. Keep it simple, you don't need - at last at this stage - to identify extensions or alterations, except when they are quintessential to the overall sound (for example extended/altered notes, or peculiar harmonic devices line the aug chord in some of the renditions of Take the A Train)
9. Note everything on your notepad and music paper
   

 

Example: Autumn Leaves

 

What have we learnt?

• The overall structure is made of two almost identical eight bar sections (A and A') an eight bar section (B) and another eight bar section (C)
• The A section is made of a two-bar motif, starting from the tonic and then repeated a tone below, and so on, except the last A' motif that is modified to allow a strong cadence on the tonic 
• The B section is made of a new two-bar motif, starting on the third and repeated a tone up, the third time modified to allow the cadence to the relative major
• The C section is made of of a third four-bar motif starting from the fifth and repeated with a rather strong variation to allow the final cadence on the tonic
• Summarizing: A and A' are very plain, the same motif with the starting note descending through the G minor scale with a subtle variation at the end of A', while B and C are a little more complex but, again, based on motives repetition and variation

Et voila! The standard is learnt - just remember to drill mentally about structure, blocks, chords, motives and so on and so forth.

 

And now the last step: take your favorite play-along recording and start to practice...and have fun!

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