Much of learning music, musical progress, comes from repetition, and listening is no different. Repeated listening to the same phrase will slowly uncover more and more of the nuances and details to you. You want to take a phrase in music, a line, a melody, a groove, whatever it is, and listen to it over and over, until you absorb it, and you can hear that phrase in your mind. And ideally until you can see it, the notes on the page or you can see the musician playing it, where you can imagine the player or yourself playing it, if it is on your own instrument or if it can be translated to your own instrument.

Repeat your listening until you have really absorbed this stuff. Listen until you get to the point where you can pick up your instrument and play it. I have done this with drum solos, transcribing by ear, not really writing down per se but listening to a phrase until I can hear the whole thing. I listen until I can hear the whole thing with drums, up to four voices going on at the same time and coordination of different sounds.

I would listen until I could hear a groove, the bass drum, the snare, and the cymbal all at the same time and until I could repeat it in my imagination and imagine myself playing it. When you get to that point, sit down with your instrument and you’ve got it and you’re feeding your creativity again.

Listening will strengthen your ears immensely. Your ears will get faster and faster at learning and absorbing music. This will have the effect of making you learn music faster, absorb faster and build your creative well-spring deeper and deeper. This will feed your imagination, your creativity. So listen to things until you own them, until you can hear and see it in your mind. Listen until you can hear subtle little details and you can see and hear the entire phrase. This is a powerful approach to ear training: to listen to something until you can hear it in your inner ear and see yourself playing it in your inner mind.


Chris Punis is an active jazz musician in the northeast, an accomplished jazz educator and author of "The Monster Jazz Formula." For more information about his teaching methods and to receive your free lessons, "21 Great Ways To Become a Monster Jazz Musician," visit www.learnjazzfaster.com.