[chayjazz]

...with regards to knowing your tunes in all the keys. You may not be able to play the melody of all of the tunes that you learn in all 12 key (but you should be able to at least play the melody of the simpler standards and jazz tunes in any key). But if you "really" know a tune you should be able to solo over it in any key that it's called in. Trust me, if you do enough gigs in your lifetime some singer will eventually call Body And Soul in the key of "E."

It all depends on what your goals are in developing your musicianship. If you truly want to play music (any style) at a high level there's a TON of stuff that you are gonna have to learn...and learn it well!!!

 

[chayjazz]

Yeah, the tunes in all keys seems like a daunting task but as you can tell from reading the post it's not so much a matter of working out every tune in all keys. It's more about being able to hear and/or understand how the chord progression work in any key. Most tunes that I really know I can at least solo on them in any key because I have a thorough understanding of how the chord progression is put together. It's more so a matter of transposing 'sections' of the tune not individual chords. This is definitely easier with standards as opposed to modern jazz tunes because most of the early standards and jazz tunes re-use the same building blocks when it comes to the chord progressions. The more you really study your harmony the easier it becomes to understand how chord progressions are put together. (and that's not as hard as you may think...smile)

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[chayjazz]

I recently got back into really practicing my scales. Not necessarily running them up and down but breaking them up into different intervals, adding 1/2 steps before each note of the scale, playing scales and scale patterns into the altissimo register. I remember talking to a wonderful older saxophonist (Ron Washington) when I lived in Colorado about what he practiced and he say "I still practice my scales everyday." I wish that would have sunk in all those years ago...smile.