Action Bronson -- Terry [HipHop/Rap] (2015) (The beat is fantastic and jazzy)

I feel you man, I have ADHD too, and practicing has always been really frustrating. I finally got to the point where I gave up forcing it, and now I just try to take in 15-20 minutes of solid practice while it's easy to keep focused/motivated and just move on to the fun part.

Jazz is even worse because there's millions and millions of resources and you're told from the beginning that you need a solid grasp of multiple concepts. That's very true, but you have to master basic concepts, extremely basic concepts, before you can move on. I kind of went through theory only learning bits and pieces of each thing, and I still had to keep looking at my book or the tab or whatever to remember stuff. I gave up learning 100 scales and just focused on the major scale. If you get the major scale and intervals, then you can pretty much alter it to sound like anything without even thinking about it.

I went the Giant Steps route too, and those changes can be a nightmare. If I had any shortcuts for the ADHD method it'd be this:

  • Learn one shape for the chords you'll come across in jazz: major 7th, minor 7th, dominant 7th, minor 7b5, augmented and diminished. You probably know more, but for the sake of simplicity, just one shape each, and whether you're using open strings or not, try to keep those shapes in one position on the neck.

  • Pick a key, learn 2 or 3 of the chord progressions here and plug those chord shapes in. Jazz is generally in keys that horns can play in, like Bb, F, but whatever you like is fine.

  • Figure out 2 more shapes/inversions for each of those chord types, preferably at a different position on the neck, again trying to keep them centered around the same position.

  • From there try transposing those chords to different keys.

Really focus on the major scale and its intervals. Literally just think of it as a 'happy scale'. Examine which notes sound the 'happiest' against the root. Which sounds dissonant. Then start changing one note of the scale, doesn't matter which. Figure out what that note's relationship is to the root after you changed it. Start constructing chords based on the notes you changed.

Really emphasis the sound and feeling you get from that scale over the root chord. Maybe even assign it a color if you're a visual learner. That's the easiest way to internalize scales and chords to the point that you don't need to think about these things while you're playing. If you learn just the major scale and about modes, and give each mode a sound (i.e Lydian = dreamy, Phrygian = Spanish/Latin) and how that mode sounds over the I chord, you'll have 7 different feels you can summon at will, and you're not even changing the chord shapes.

/r/listentothis Thread Link - youtube.com