It's come to light in another thread today that some people who sit jazz exams prepare their solos and play them pretty much note for note as prepared, give or take the odd slight variation. Does anybody know what the AB's official view on this is?

I'm really surprised, as I thought you'd be expected to genuinely improvise - ie play something you hadn't worked out beforehand. Yes obviously you base it around certain scales you're already familiar with, and you can work out certain licks etc but surely there's a line you shouldn't cross? And that line is actually working out a solo and pretty much or even entirely reproducing it to order?

One poster said they got Grade 5 distinction playing a pre-prepared solo! Another poster said 'how would the examiner ever know anyway?' or words to that effect.

I'm seriously quite shocked. What do others here think?

Also, how does the quick study work, and what proportion of the marks does it take up?

Obviously it is perfectly possible to work out a solo in advance and play something you have learned. The examiner may well have their suspicions, as this is unlikely to sound very spontaneous, and presumably this is reflected in the marks. I am sure that a lot of people do this, at least to some extent. However, there are other sections of the exam in which you have to improvise, so it is impossible to get through the whole exam without improvising.
I am teaching a boy who tends to get stuck on one version of his 'improvised' solo and it is very difficult to shift him away from that version to try something different. I am changing the parameters every week to try and keep him moving along, rather than getting stuck in a rut, but it is a challenge!
The Quick Study - you can either read or choose to do it entirely aurally and have the examiner play the opening phrase for you to copy and respond to.

I'm probably with you Violinia, but a little more relaxed about it!

I've had my doubts about the usefulness of the jazz grades in preparing jazz musicians for quite a while unless they are used by teachers who really know what they are doing. But since I'm very unlikely to take a jazz exam, or rely on someone telling me they have grade 5 jazz as an indication of their playing ability I'm not going to get too upset about it.

If people want to take jazz exams "for fun" (although it beats me why anyone would take an exam for fun), or to add to their certificate collection then that's up to them. If they really love jazz, listen to it, find out about how to play it and try playing with others then they should reach their own conclusions on the usefulness or otherwise of the exams soon enough. If they don't then the desire to play jazz probably isn't really there.

Nice to see your calm attitude, Tsax! I find it harder to stay phlegmatic about these sorts of things, and am aware of my tendency to go off the deep end on occasion .

One thing that does bother me about all this is the effect that some of this jazz education may be having, in that it may well be creating a generation of formulaic players. I've been to several jazz gigs over the last few years that leave me cold in a way I can't quite put my finger on. The notes are correct, the solos well constructed, but there's a lack of passion that sends me virtually to sleep.

Unless jazz educators do their utmost to persuade their jazz students to 'play from the heart' and express something truly of themselves, jazz education may well carry the risk of killing the genre off altogether and that's what worries me.

But you can get a distinction in a non-jazz Grade exam without passing all the subsidiary sections - in fact you could get 127 - a high merit - whilst failing all the other sections! I wonder if you could get a good mark in a jazz exam without actually improvising at all? After all, you could prepare your solos for the three tunes so cleverly and fool the examiners that you were improvising, and fail the section where you had to genuinely improvise - the quick study.

Lets do the maths. Can you get a high mark for a jazz exam without doing any improvising at all? If so, the AB needs to look at these exams again and make it essential to pass the quick study to be able to pass the exam as a whole, seeing as candidates can be clever enough to fool the examiners with pre-prepared solos. Jazz isn't jazz without improvisation, and it's plain daft to be awarding high marks in a jazz exam to a candidate who didn't actually do any improvisation at all.

I don't think you can blame that one on the ABRSM jazz grades. I suspect their introduction is to recent for those who are currently gigging to have taken them.

I have to say that I have seen some amazing, passionate, inspirational and truly cutting edge playing from those graduating from the Guildhall, RAM and Trinity jazz courses in recent years.

Oh, and I've been lucky enough to have lessons both from graduates of those courses and professors for those courses and feel assured that jazz education in the UK, at least at the highest levels, is just fine.

I wasn't blaming it on the ABRSM jazz grades - i was blaming it on jazz education in general. Before jazz education was conceived, jazz was doing just fine since its inception, and was played by musicians who'd usually been taught their instrument from an early age and learnt jazz as sidemen, learning on the job, so to speak. Jazz education began to flourish in universities in the 50s and 60s and coincided with the decline in the development of jazz, probably as an attempt to keep jazz going as a genre. There was a sudden leap in UK jazz audience figures in the late 80s as the result of people like Courtney Pine and Andy Sheppard coming on the scene, but right now it would be fair to say that in general jazz audiences aren't healthy.

Andy Sheppard and Courtney Pine - both truly exciting, inspirational players - were both self-taught as jazz musicians.

I agree with you that some amazing players have graduated from the conservatoire jazz courses in recent years, but are any of them making their mark in quite the way Andy Sheppard and Courtney Pine did? And if not, why not?

I don't think I'd put Andy Sheppard and Courtney Pine in quite the same category. I don't doubt that Courtney Pine brought in a new jazz audience but I'm not so sure about Andy Sheppard - I don't know how many people who aren't really into jazz (or possibly saxophones) will have heard of him. Courtney Pine is a showman, that's what sells tickets for his gigs. Incidentally, the last time I went to one of his gigs the star of the show for me was violinist Omar Puente. Certainly for the last 5 years or so I don't think there's been anything terribly innovative in the material he's released, it's edging towards commercial (nothing wrong with that).

Recent conservatoire graduates who have made an impact include Gwilym Simcock being invited to compose and perform at the Proms, Ingrid Laubrock being awarded an Arts Foundation fellowship for jazz composition.

In terms or increasing jazz audiences you'd probably find that the more formulaic approach would be more successful - after all the most popular forms of music are decidedly formulaic. The most creative, innovative jazz isn't easy to listen to and I can't see it ever having a huge audience. I remember before it's demise theJazz having a top 500 jazz tracks - a ludicrous number were Jamie Cullum, because that's were the popular vote lies.

In his heyday Andy Sheppard was virtually a household name at least around middle class circles. I agree that Courtney Pine has gone a more commercial route lately - I was really talking about back then and making the point that they both made an enormous mark at the time and were both self-taught in jazz.

I doubt you'd find many people outside the jazz or classical worlds who would have heard of either Gwilym Simcock or Ingrid Laubrock or anybody else on the contemporary British jazz scene for that matter. Thejazz made the mistake of trying to please everybody and ending up pleasing no one very much. They should have been far more specialist and tried to attract a cult audience in the way Charlie Gillett did/has with world music. Cult audiences take a while to build but are often far more successful in the long run. None of the jazz radio stations have ever really done it right - Jazz FM was sort of good for a while but also tried to please too many people and ended up failing. I agree with you that Thejazz featured far too much Jamie Cullum and it didn't save them in the end, did it?

I think a radio station that featured world music and jazz could do really well by catering to both audiences. Like an all-day Late Junction - talking of which I'm at a loss to understand why they cut Late Junction back so much. I've lost count of the people who've told me how disappointed they are - which should tell us something about what a probably growing number of people want.

I think that this hits the nail on the head. It's hard to imagine now the musical scene back in the 1930s when jazz/swing was THE popular music in America, and was all around. That's how a language is learnt.

There are young musicians around - and I'm fortunate to work with several - who immerse themselves in the sounds of the language they are learning. But the world where jazz was ubiquitous has gone. We ought to be grateful for the work that the Colleges are doing - even if they cannot replace a world that has gone.

I don't deliberately learn the improvisation bit - it just seems to happen after practising the same piece over and over.

It always surprises me that my teacher knows when I've learnt what I'm playing. So presumably the examiners would know too!!

Well, in another thread, a poster said this:



which tells us that the AB examiners can't always tell!

And another poster said this:



I'm seriously quite baffled by this whole attitude because I thought you were supposed to improvise in jazz exams otherwise the whole idea of jazz exams makes little sense. Yes you could show demonstrate your knowledge of jazz theory I suppose, but jazz is first and foremost about improvisation so without improvisation there's no jazz!

So what did the exam board say?

Are you constantly practising with a backing track?

I find that practising a lot with the same backing track makes me get stuck in a rut. I hear exactly the same thing over and over again so I respond in the same way.

Ways to get out of the rut that I've found to work include:

Do more practice without the backing track. You've still got to keep to the correct number of bars/chord changes etc. This is hard - because it's hard it forces you to play something simple with a structure, otherwise you lose your place. Believe it or not something structured and simple sounds a lot better than something complicated and waffly.

When you do use the backing track set yourself constraints such as, this time I'm only going to play the notes C, Bb and G for the whole solo (forces you to be rhythmically interesting), this time I'm going to base my solo around a particular rhythmic idea, this time I'm not going to start any phrase on beat 1, or use only chord tones, or draw yourself a "map" to follow e.g. start a phrase on beat 1 bar1, finish on beat 2 bar 3, start next phrase on and of 4 bar 3 and take through to bar 6 etc.

Sticking to the constraints again gives your solo a structure, and varying the constraints means you can't stick to the same old ideas.

These are my thoughts too - as a teacher who gave it a go, but doesn't really know what I'm doing. There was really no mission of most of my 'jazz' students improvising on the spot, though some were very good at coming up with good music after some preparation. As such, we all decided to forego the actual exam and just learn a bit more about basic improvisation (prepared or otherwise, if the former isn't a contradiction in terms), harmonic progression, rhythms and so on. But while I really got nowhere in preparing 'jazz musicians', we all learnt from the experience and are continuing to do so. They were all existing pupils who agreed to come together as a group for for a while for very little money so that we could all see what we could do. But I seriously doubt if very many will be improvising on the spot in the exams; an unseen piece should make it clear, though! But then - does it matter in the early grades?

I think the longer you hold off from improvising the scarier it gets, especially for those who are already reasonably advanced classical musicians. I would have thought that the emphasis at the early grades should be on producing simple solos, without too many notes, demonstrating a knowledge of the chords and being rhythmically sound. I suspect there's a perception that the solo has to be at least, if not more, complicated than the head with lots of notes and be quite "showy". If the candidate feels that the solo has to be at a level above where they are comfortable improvising then there's going to be the temptation to memorise or write things down, especially for classical musicians who are used to having their music in that way.

Pretty much every jazz teacher I've ever had has emphasised the importance of keeping things simple, and of the rhythm being more important than the notes.

This isn't an excuse, jinxi - I really haven't had time as had to work unexpectedly all day on Monday. Have a free morning tomorrow so will do it then and report straight back.

Well, here's what happened. I called the Associated Board this morning and spoke to a person who deals with jazz syllabus enquiries. She basically told me that the only parts of the exam where improvisation is essential is in the quick study and in the aural tests. The quick study carries 21 marks - pass mark 14, and the aural tests carry 18 marks - pass mark 12. This means you could theoretically get a distinction at any grade while failing at the two parts of the exam where you need to improvise. For example:

Piece A: 28
Piece B: 28
Piece C: 29

Scales: 21
Quick Study: 13
Aural Test: 11

Total: 130 = distinction.

You could get these marks by getting a jazz musician to write you fantastic jazz solos for the three pieces which you then learn and play from memory, and learning the scales very thoroughly. You fail the quick study and the aural tests because you really haven't learnt how to improvise. You could do this right up to Grade 8.

You could lose 10 more marks and still get a merit, so for a merit you could have:

Piece A: 25
Piece B: 25
Piece C: 27

Scales: 19
Quick Study: 13
Aural Test: 11

Do the maths. You could work out any number of credible scenarios where a candidate could fail the only parts of the exam where you need to improvise yet still get a merit. How about this:

Piece A: 30
Piece B: 30
Piece C: 30

Scales: 21
Quick Study: 5
Aural Test: 4

Total: 120 = merit

OK that one's a bit unlikely but the fact remains that to do quite well at an AB jazz exam you don't actually need to be able to improvise a single note. I think this is wrong, as it has the potential to give jazz candidates an unrealistic idea of their abilities in jazz which after all is first and foremost about improvisation. Yes of course it's about jazz harmony, jazz scales, jazz rhythm and everything else related to the jazz genre but without genuine improvisation there is no genuine jazz! Period, end of story.

The woman I spoke to suggested I put my thoughts into writing and send them to the Board and I will.

Just as I thought...!

As I said...this is an issue about the exam format, isn't it? I was chatting to my teacher about this on Monday she was saying that she saw the jazz grades as a bit of an intro to jazz, a bit of a change for the students and was under no illusions that doing these grades would make someone into a jazz musician. I can't imagine any teacher with half a brain would think otherwise and neither could she.

She said that she has a lot of younger students who want to do it, perhaps when they are 'in between' grades. They love the pieces, but she has to help them a lot with the impros - she gives them some pointers to get them started, they 'practice' improvising in lessons, but ultimately they wouldn't be able to completely improvise whole sections in the exam. If these exams are open to anyone of anyone age then surely it has to be left open-ended- prepared, semi-prepared or fully improvised on the day? I imagine all this was debated/discussed when the syllabus was put together. I still think there is great value in going through the process of putting together impros - my teacher agrees. She did say she thought it would be better to call the exams 'intro to jazz' or something like that though.

And with regard to teachers writing impros for students. My teacher has had no input whatsoever into mine - as she says, with the kids, she has to get them started. Surely we have to trust teachers' professionalism on this one?

I'm not sure about that! I don't know how many teachers would knowingly send their pupils in to do something in an exam when they know that a little more input from the teacher would have made it a whole lot better. Human nature is not always professional in cases like this! It's the same scenario as coursework for GCSEs etc. What constitutes advice, and at what point is the teacher basically doing it for them? I don't really have a big problem with teacher and pupil working together on this as it's a learning experience; but I think it would be better if it was officially acknowledged that this will happen, as those who ARE genuinely improvising on the spot, or who have at least prepared their own, will appear less accomplished than those who have had lots of help.

Then we're all agreed that the jazz exams should be called 'An Introduction to Jazz' or something. But on the other hand, can you go up to Grade 8 with the jazz exams? I know you can with TG but previously you could only go to Grade 5 (or was it 6) with the AB jazz exams. So should it really be effectively just an 'introduction to jazz' at Grade 8 level? Surely candidates should be expected to improvise during the pieces at Grade 8 level, otherwise what does Grade 8 jazz really mean? Not a lot in my view if there's hardly any improvising going on - or none where the marks really count.

There certainly seems to be some confusion surrounding the 'impro' sections in the pieces as it now appears that there are no particular advantages in learning to improvise. The exams either can't tell the difference or don't mind either way, which I frankly find most peculiar because preparing solos isn't what jazz is about!!! I know improvisation can be difficult but I've managed to get quite young children doing credible improvisations at Grade 1-3 level and can't understand why so many posters in this thread are balking at the very idea of getting children - or anyone for that matter by the sound of it - to let loose and improvise in an exam setting.

If nobody's really improvising in the 3 pieces, then calling them 'jazz exams' is a bit of a misnomer in my view.

AB Jazz exams still only go to G5. I'm not sure that the TG ones are Jazz grades in the same way but perhaps someone who is more familiar with them can clarify. My daughter has looked at LCM post G5 as two of the pieces require improvisation and one is in a Jazz style.

Violinia I thought your description of the marks required was very interesting. Emsoboe had the opposite senario in her Jazz Piano G2 exam. Full marks for Quick Study and high marks for Aural (she's stronger at the Jazz aural than classical) and lower marks for pieces (24's, 25's) but still got a distinction.