I’ve been seriously working on jazz for about 1 year at this point. One of the things that mystified and literally stopped me in my tracks over and over was the notion of what it means to learn the tune.

I’ve been a classical, theater, and pop trumpet player all my life – playing off of sheet music. One skill you need to have for that kind of playing is sight reading. You look at the sacred inscriptions on the paper and create sound in a faithful reproduction of what the composer intended. Usually you need to do this simultaneously with many others and you all have to more or less agree on what is supposed to happen!

You can memorize music so that you are essentially playing it from sheet music in your mind.

This is not what it learning the tune seems to mean at all. The tune is often written out in a fake book along with chords to play. Not much to go on for the classical trumpet player. However, this is where learning the tune really is. You need to be able to play the melody by ear. You can probably sing dozens of melodies easily. You may miss a note or two but you generally sing it correctly. You need to be able to do that on your trumpet too.

Still, that is not learning the tune.

You need to understand how the melody weaves its way through the rhythm and the chords. For every note in the melody there are alternate notes that could have been there which follow a different path through the harmonic space created by the chords. To learn this deeply get the Improvise for Real book and do the exercises.

You need to hear how each chord moves the tune along like the rises and falls, twists and turns of a road through a landscape. Once you start to understand the landscape you can take different paths which criss cross the original or go off on their own.

Learning the tune is understanding the harmonic landscape of it.

In the late nineties and early 2000’s I was single after 14 years of marriage and going out to clubs. I began to hang out at one restaurant that had live Jazz on Thursday nights and made friends with the band. I recorded their music for them for a few months. I finally got my gumption up and asked if I could play trumpet with them some night. They said yes. So, I madly practiced a number of tunes and settled on Secret Love which was in their book.

I was nervous. I rarely get nervous. But this was my chance to play some Jazz. Whatever that was to me at the time. I sure appreciated the music that these guys brought every week. I listened carefully to what they did and practiced mimicking it.

The night came for me to play. I was using sheet music which some bands do and some don’t. I played after the lead man sang the song. I launched into a solo. Having survived that we traded fours with the drummer. Then we played the tune and finished. I was flush with the feeling that I accomplished something.

Later, when the band was striking their equipment, the lead man said something like “Allright John, now go home and learn the tune. Don’t just noodle around.”

I was mystified.

I did not try doing that again for over ten years partially because of his comment and partially because I got married and have two children.

Noodle around. I thought at the time that is what a Jazz solo was! Just noodling around. I could never make much sense of many Jazz solos. Especially trumpet players who like to play loud fast and high. It sounded like noodling to me.

I determined to learn what was behind Jazz and started reading, doing Jazz theory workbooks, reading Jazz text books, and learning the nomenclature.

When I lived in Houston Texas I got involved in something called the Jazz Tour. We traveled to night spots to hear live jazz. I knew it was music but I could not make sense of it. Some things really appealed to me like Thelonius Monk. Other things sounded like kids in the kitchen banging on pots and pans and playing kazoos. I understood Big Band music. It was written down!

We went to one club on the east side of Houston on the river, I think. There were two old cats in the front near the band stand. Each time the trumpet player would get up to do a solo, one or the other of them would start shaking their heads. After this happened a few times I sidled up behind them to listen in. The trumpet player put down his horn and the piano player started into his solo. The guy on the right leans over to the guy on the left and says “He don’t know the tune, man” and his buddy was nodding his head and saying “You right about dat.”

I was mystified.

What that trumpet player played sounded the same to me as what the sax man played and what the trombone man played. Those guys didn’t get the rough treatment though.

What on earth did they mean?

I’ve started to finally understand this and it has only taken me 33 years to get here.

I am 58 this year and I am just learning to play jazz on my trumpet.

Yes I have played around with Jazz for many years and played lots of jazzy things in bands and in the orchestra pit for many a show but this year I set out to really learn to play jazz. Improvisational jazz.

I hope my experiences in this journey are interesting and useful to you now that you find yourself here with me.