IFR blog > Practice tips > Mastering your instrument
Modal improvisation jam with tenor sax and upright bass

Enjoy this great jam in the 5th harmonic environment recorded at the iconic jazz club Robadors 23 in Barcelona, Spain.

Practice in all keys or master one at a time

Is it better to start each improvisation exercise from a random note on our instrument? Or is it better to stay in one key until we've mastered it?

IFR video lesson: Build the Map

In this video I'll show you two fantastic exercises for beginners to the IFR method. These two exercises will greatly accelerate your ability to visualize the notes of any key on your instrument.

Learning to see your entire musical range at once

In Exercise 1 you describe "...looking down on this musical terrain from above..." Does this mean visualizing fingerings on your horn, notes on a staff, letters on a page or something else?

IFR Exercise 1 Daily Meditation with half steps on tenor sax

For IFR students practicing Exercise 1: Landscape, this is a demonstration of the Exercise 1 Daily Meditation. Miguel 'Pintxo' Villar demonstrates the exercise on the tenor saxophone using the interval of a half step.

IFR Exercise 1 Daily Meditation with whole steps for soprano sax

For IFR students practicing Exercise 1: Landscape, this is a demonstration of the Exercise 1 Daily Meditation. Marina Vallet demonstrates the exercise on the soprano saxophone using the interval of a whole step.

The relationship between technique and creativity

Instrument technique and improvisation are two practices that feed one another: we need technical skills to be able to express ourselves creatively, and when we improvise we put into practice and consolidate our technical skills.

IFR video lesson : Adjacent chords

For IFR students practicing Exercise 3: Pure Harmony, this video lesson demonstrates a great way to accelerate your mastery of all seven chords. By studying these chords in adjacent pairs, we can learn to visualize all of these sounds in the tonal octave much faster.

How to practice difficult movements in Exercise 1

I'm wondering about the trombone? The image you use of the notes being connected as one long chain doesn’t really fit with the trombone because the notes are not evenly spaced. Do you have any suggestions?