This basically means that listening should be worked into your practice routine. Each day, for example, in your piano practice routine, twenty minutes could be spent on scale patterns, twenty minutes playing classical pieces and thirty minutes learning a new tune. You should also add in listening, so then add twenty minutes of listening. Whatever you are working on in your practicing, link that to your listening. Schedule your time and work it into your practice routine, twenty minutes on technique, twenty on improvisation, twenty on learning new tunes, and twenty minutes listening. That should be part of your daily routine everyday. You begin to listen and study the great players and musicians purposefully and methodically. Then you can bring that to your own music.

Many musicians can become obsessed with practicing and tend to treat listening as a luxury. This is not the way it is, listening is not a luxury. Listening is a necessary part of the process. The more music that you listen to and absorb, the more you feed your imagination and learn about the art form, the more fluid your ears will become. It will become easier to let your ears guide you and increase the size and depth of your creative wellspring.

You need to plan into your practice routine every day and continually listen, listen, listen. When constructing your music plans, practice routines and so forth, be sure to think of listening as important, if not the most important, in some cases. Creativity does not happen in a vacuum. You must feed your mind. Listening and studying the masters will serve as your springboard for ideas and inspiration, as well as the basic foundation of your vocabulary, your vocabulary of jazz, which you are building and developing. Work this into your schedule.

Schedule time to listen. This is such an important thing that often becomes overlooked. Many musicians get caught up in the technical exercises and that side of things and then listening gets pushed to the back burner. They are listening just in the background, when in the car or eating dinner or whatever. But you want to work that into your practicing, schedule time to listen into your practice routine.

Chris Punis is an active jazz musician in the northeast. He is founding member of the critically acclaimed group Gypsy Schaeffer and a member of renowned saxophonist Charlie Kohlhase’s group The Explorer’s Club. Chris is also 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.