Some of my favourite etudes that I ran into over the years are the Kröpsch Clarinet etudes, especially the first volume. The exercises are short, almost easy to remember and overall effective, challenging and fun to play. I always wished there would be something like that for Jazz saxophone studies.

Last year Eric Alexander published a book with similar exercises which are fun to play and easily to be used in improvisations. I recommend to check those out.

I have always enjoyed writing, or better, looking for a way to create my own exercises by taking excerpts, or modifying phrases from real solos into something like a loop. Since I’m currently in the process of switching over to Sibelius I thought it would be a incentive to learn the software and write down some exercises.

To kick things off, here’s a phrase from John Coltrane’s solo on Oleo which makes a nice loop.

As so often it is best to practice these in all keys, which you can download here, even though in fact it is better to do it without.

I plan to post more exercises like this in the future, but let’s see how that goes.