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I spent most of February at home. Since I was set to leave the company I’d worked at for a year on February 26th, I used up all my remaining paid leave. It turned out to be a fulfilling month, busy in a good way. I visited the island in the Seto Inland Sea, Okayama, where I’ll be moving in March, and started building a bike camper, something I’d been planning since January that attaches to the back of my bicycle. I bought the materials at a home improvement store and began assembling it myself.
For my silent bass practice, I stayed focused on the fundamentals. This month, I worked on D major triads, last month was F♯. I’m starting with keys I’m less comfortable with. One area I felt needed improvement was my left hand in the low positions, which still feels less smooth compared to the higher positions. So rather than sticking to set drills or licks, I decided to simply spend more time in the low positions whenever I could. I often used the Moises app to transpose jazz standards into less common keys and practiced playing them exclusively in the low positions of the silent bass.
As expected, the fret spacing is wider in the low positions compared to the high ones where I use my thumb, but more importantly, I realized my left ring and pinky fingers still lack strength. So, I added finger independence exercises to my routine. When I was working full-time, my limited practice time meant I’d follow a general structure—basics → lick practice → walking bass → standard tunes → solo transcriptions. That schedule didn’t leave much room for spontaneous practice or free exploration. But this month, with more time on my hands, I was finally able to practice drawing out the licks I’ve memorized over the years. It wasn’t a bad way to train.
Among the many interviews and masterclass videos I watched this month, the one that left the deepest impression on me was with Hal Galper, the pianist who played with Cannonball Adderley. According to him, when we can’t play the musical ideas we want, it’s often assumed to be due to a lack of technical skill. But in reality, he explains, it’s usually because we’re not clearly hearing the sound we want to produce in our head. He even says that mistakes are simply the result of accurately reproducing what we’re actually hearing internally including all the imperfections.
Learning about this perspective was incredibly insightful. It reminded me how crucial it is to listen with full attention and to firmly engrain vivid sounds and articulations in my inner ear.
As a kind of experiment, Hal Galper mentioned in the video that after listening to a fast-playing pianist’s solo for about three hours, he tried playing in the same fast style and somehow managed to pull it off. But thirty minutes later, he couldn’t play it anymore. He explained that this was because the sound that had been vividly present in his mind had gradually faded with time.
Since hearing this idea, I’ve made it a point to listen with deep focus this month. Wanting to explore the essence of swing more deeply, I paid particular attention to Parker’s articulation and syncopation, often transcribing and absorbing them as I listened.
Galper also expressed a critical view of how jazz is taught today, noting that many curriculums rely heavily on Western theoretical frameworks. He reminded us that jazz is rooted in African musical traditions, and that it demands an experiential approach to learning. I couldn’t agree more. While Western scales and harmonies can be learned from textbooks, the swing feel and groove that define jazz are much harder to put into words and even harder to monetize.
That might explain why, when you search for jazz lessons on YouTube, most content tends to focus on theory like which scale to use rather than how to truly listen and internalize the unique groove of the music. When you think about how the great jazz legends learned not through books or theory, but through active listening at live shows and on records it becomes pretty clear what direction we should be heading in.