The Art of Jazz Trumpet

Video Transcript

"The Art of Jazz Trumpet. Basically, playing jazz on any instrument is the combination of technique, rhythm, and expression. Of these three, technique is the glue. Technique allows the player to be able to freely express themselves, while at the same time, being able to meet the requirements of the music that they're playing. You can think of it much like vocabulary. You need a certain vocabulary in order to speak, and then another vocabulary to be able to speak in different situations. And the greater your vocabulary, the more situations you can play...you can speak in. And, the same is true with instrument technique. The greater your technique, the greater opportunities are for you to play in different situations. The basics of developing a good technique are learning the scales and chords on your instrument. Method books provide an additional enhancement to this technique, because they're written in such a way that it puts the scales and chords in different positions, and different rhythmic variations, thus giving you a greater facility. Rhythm is probably the greatest difference between jazz improvisation and other forms of music. The rhythm in jazz is swung. This swinging of the beat develops a type of syncopation that is similar to the dotted eighth-sixteenth, and also similar to the first and last notes of the triplet. However, these are not accurate notations of swing. Swing can only really be felt, and the best way to feel it is to listen, and listen to those masters of jazz that have come before us."