Jazz scales for trombone.

Question for jazz pianists about practicing chords and scales?

• If you are a jazz pianist, how do you practice chords and scales? Can you play the circle of 4th's all the way through with all types of jazz chords with every inversion of the chord? Because for me that just seems so boring, and I tend to get my practice in through playing songs. The only problem with that is I could get away with doing it that way in classical music, but with jazz I get the feeling that you need to know chords much better for improvisation. So how would you suggesting learning all the chords, and in what order? For example, should I learn all inversions of a chord type until moving onto another chord type?

• Answer:

  You defintiely have to know all the 12 major scales, 12 blues scales, and the 12 pentatonic scales so good that you can dream them. You also defintely have to know all the minor7,maj7, dominant7 chords and you must be able to play them in different voicings. No way around it. You need also to be able to transpose a easy jazz song like autumn leaves in all 12 keys. Big time. Yes, its boring. No, its not a great deal of work if you have a little dicipline and patience. Learning all the songs though is much more work, or think of transcribing a solo and play it? Thats why it takes about 15 years to get somewhere in music, and thats why not everybody can do it. But your question was "how" It depends. why dont you just take a song you play, learn all his chords and scales, and when your done, you move on to the next song? It will get easier from song to song.