Here’s another great post from David Valdez at Casa Valdez Studios. One of his students emailed him a tough question.
Is it normal to spend an hour or more trying to learn a lick? I was learning the last four bars of Chris Potter’s RC solo but it felt like it took forever just to get the fingers to work through the notes in every key.
David begins his response by saying that learning licks in all twelve keys is a total waste of time. It sounds sort of crazy at first, but you should go read his whole explanation. He has some good suggestions about learning to play in all keys comfortably and some interesting food for thought.
Very interesting. I disagree with him, but it is good food for thought.
The key is not unlike your other post about “playing what you hear”: what you do in practice and what you do in performance are entirely different things (or should be, for an improvising musician, at least at early stage of development).
Valdez’ post is spot on, and even more applicable to trombone than sax, since the trombone is so severely asymmetric. Most jazz method books appear to be written by sax players, and it’s just plain inappropriate to follow their suit. Finding the trombone way is necessary. The proof is in the melody of Carl Fontana, together with his economy of slide movement. No sax licks here. But plenty of inspiration from sax players, Zoot, Al, Holman, Marsh, Perk.
On the other hand, if it takes more than an hour, that’s what it takes. If it’s only an hour to get a lick, that’s cheap. More likely 10 minutes every other day for a couple months before it soaks in. YMMV.