Before You Start Learning Jazz Violin

Well first you need to ask yourself a question:

Do I want to learn jazz violin?

Many people who come to me for lessons or advice often do so because they love jazz. They have listened to it throughout the years, they play the violin and they want to play that music. Maybe like Grappelli, or Stuff Smith or any other instrumentalist from the breadth of jazz history.

Many however come because they have played classical or folk their whole life and they want to be more free in their playing.

Whilst playing jazz will inevitably reap this reward through improvisation and understanding complex harmony, it’s often a bit of a steep learning curve for people to realise that actually the learning of jazz is just as detail driven and often gruelling as learning classical music.

This isn’t to say that it’s not fun and that it won’t help you feel freer in your playing, but seeing learning jazz as a means to an end (improvisation) may not be the easiest route for people who simply want to improvise.

Other Routes into Improvising on the Violin

There are other routes into improvising with a string instrument without necessarily delving deeply into jazz. They will probably entail many very similar concepts as jazz learning, but without the main focus being the rich tradition and everything that goes along with jazz as a style of music.

For instance, Christian Howes is an extremely accomplished teacher for any string musician who wants to feel free from playing “prescribed parts” all the time. His Creative Strings programme is second to none in that regard. It looks at rock, blues, pop and of course jazz (Chris is one of the best jazz violinists living today).

There is also Tracy Silverman who teaches groove-based playing for strings. He does this with his advanced “chopping” and rhythmic techniques in his Strum Bowing programme

My Own Focus

Myself, I focus on jazz. It’s what I love and it’s the main music that has inhabited my head for the past fifteen years. My grandfather was a traditional jazz musician and it’s just something that I love more than anything in the world.

These days I mainly teach this inside my jazz violin community on Skool.

I was brought up listening to Django Reinhardt and Stéphane Grappelli, as well as Louis Armstrong, Miles Davis, Charlie Parker and Oscar Peterson. I went to study on a jazz course at Leeds College of Music when I was 21 years old and this took me down some more modern paths.

However when I finished studying I took a trip to Samois-sur-Seine for the Django Reinhardt Festival, which instantly made me think of a different question.

What Sort of Jazz Do I Actually Want to Play?

The trip to Samois really sticks with me as a turning point in my musical journey and career as a jazz violinist.

I was surrounded by young people having fun in the sun, jamming simply for the sake of it. Some of the biggest names in the Django world were there just hanging out and playing tunes with everyone.

It helped me realise that this, rather than more modern jazz, was where I wanted to spend my musical life.

Once I got home I was filled with enthusiasm and inspiration to practise and learn more about the music. I would say that this experience was one of the main reasons I went so deep into the music and is why I play like I do today.

A Question for You

So if you are new to jazz and trying to work out if it’s something you want to pursue, and if you have answered yes to the question:

“Do I want to actually play jazz?”

then the next question to ask yourself is the same one I asked myself in Samois-sur-Seine:

What sort of jazz do I really love?

I’ll help you work that one out in my next post.

A Free Jazz Violin Community

If you'd like some help getting started with jazz violin, you can also join my free jazz violin community, where players share ideas, ask questions and work through material together.

Inside the community you'll also find my 10 Tunes You Must Know course, where I go through some of the jazz standards I recommend learning first, along with exercises and practice material to help you get into the music.

You can join the community here:

https://www.skool.com/jazzviolin/about