Play along with recordings JUST for fun.

Students are encouraged to play along with the radio, their favorite streaming service, and with their albums and CDs.

Why?

Mark Levine, author of The Jazz Theory Book, states in his introduction:

"A good thing to remember, however, is that the answer to all of your questions is in your living room. Your CD or record collection contains the history, theory and practice of jazz. Almost all the great jazz musicians of the modern era learned most of their "licks", and gained most of their theoretical knowledge, from listening, transcribing, and analyzing tunes and solos from records."

When I played only classical music, I wanted to play more expansively and less rigidly, but what if I mess up? What if I play wrong notes? What if I miss a cue?

So many what ifs, and it turns out there are a lot of classical pianists who feel this way.

I didn't feel comfortable jumping into a jam session. Some of it was because I wasn't strong in my chord understanding and the relationship between modalities and such. In addition, it's been my experience that in the classical world, errors are forbidden, whereas I learned that in jazz, errors might lead to funky progressions or different approaches or openings to new improvisational mindsets.

Playing with the radio (and taking jazz performance classes) helped immensely with my classical presence. I am much less worried about mistakes and much more concerned about conveying the emotional components to the audience.

There is some excitement for me tonight because my piano is newly tuned. I want to play all the things. It is 3:30 in the morning.

So, just now, I put on some lo fidelity music and got tah vibin'.

I rarely record these sessions because a. this isn't about getting better in the technical sense, b. when I record there is mental effort to be competent and sometimes the fun part gets left out, and c. some things don't need to be charted and measured.

Let your judgment go. If you need to, put on headphones and use a digital keyboard for a while and play along with the tunes.

At first, you might struggle. But so what? No one is listening. At first, you might only be able to join in with a note or two with the right hand. So what? No one is listening.

And then...and then...

And then, you will notice stuff like musical patterns--and then you'll notice who breaks those patterns. And you'll notice you can match, improvise over, support and otherwise perform with those patterns.

And so on.

Let's.