{"id":7974,"date":"2013-04-09T14:12:39","date_gmt":"2013-04-09T18:12:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.neffmusic.com\/blog\/?post_type=product&p=7974"},"modified":"2026-01-09T15:51:54","modified_gmt":"2026-01-09T20:51:54","slug":"approach-note-velocity-volume-1-major-pdf-book","status":"publish","type":"product","link":"https:\/\/www.neffmusic.com\/blog\/product\/approach-note-velocity-volume-1-major-pdf-book\/","title":{"rendered":"Approach Note Velocity Volume 1-Major (Digital PDF Book)"},"content":{"rendered":"

A number of years ago, I was frustrated with my playing over static major and minor grooves. It seemed like I always ran out of ideas and the ideas I had were stale and unoriginal. At that time, although I could play in all keys, more often than not I was held back to the same old diatonic patterns and licks I had studied as a kid. Besides this frustration, I felt like there were many keys with which I wasn\u2019t comfortable. As a solution, I decided to come up with a comprehensive method using approach notes that I could use to systematically solve these perceived weaknesses in my playing.<\/p>\n

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I started by writing out every approach I could think of in every key. For about 4-5 months, I worked on these approaches while playing along to Jamey Aebersold\u2019s Volume 24 \u201cMajor and Minor\u201d CD. As I worked on, and added to, my collection of approaches, I saw the positive results in my performances. Not only was I able to play faster over tunes, but I was feeling a confidence that I could start an idea on any note and find a way to resolve it and make it sound good.<\/div>\n
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As I worked on them in depth, I began to notice that my confidence in every key was improving. Also, the method I was using was helping my ear to more easily hear key centers, and something cool was happening to my time concept. I was starting to play ideas in odd meters against 4. I wasn\u2019t tied down to the 1,2,3,4 groove, but was playing across the bar lines. I really believe that working on these exercises has helped my playing immensely. I hope that you get as much out of these exercises as I have and that they will improve your performances. Thanks, Steve<\/div>\n
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A number of years ago, I was frustrated with my playing over static major and minor grooves. It seemed like I always ran out of ideas and the ideas I had were stale and unoriginal. At that time, although I could play in all keys, more often than not I was held back to the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":61141,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"content-sidebar"},"product_brand":[],"product_cat":[837],"product_tag":[1328,861,466,1313],"class_list":{"0":"post-7974","1":"product","2":"type-product","3":"status-publish","4":"has-post-thumbnail","6":"product_cat-jazz-books","7":"product_tag-approach-notes","8":"product_tag-jazz-improvisation-2","9":"product_tag-neighboring-tones","10":"product_tag-steve-neff","11":"entry","13":"first","14":"instock","15":"featured","16":"downloadable","17":"virtual","18":"purchasable","19":"product-type-simple"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.neffmusic.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/product\/7974","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.neffmusic.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/product"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.neffmusic.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/product"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.neffmusic.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7974"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.neffmusic.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/61141"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.neffmusic.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7974"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"product_brand","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.neffmusic.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/product_brand?post=7974"},{"taxonomy":"product_cat","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.neffmusic.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/product_cat?post=7974"},{"taxonomy":"product_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.neffmusic.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/product_tag?post=7974"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}