Anyone like to improvise?

Mark Cooper very nice Mark.  I like that you slipped into "The Shadow of Your Smile" at the end.  It's a natural for these voicings and scales you are using.

Vicki Hi Vicki, there are plenty of courses and books out there including material here on tonebase.

but I think that it’s very difficult learning jazz lines from books and courses . My personal opinion is that there is no substitute for listening to recordings and transcribing solos and licks .

my recommendation as a starting point is to listen to the last 4 Prestige albums of the Miles Davis quintet , 1956. ( workin, steamin,relaxin,cookin)

there is fantastic material here, lots of American song book standards. I would listen carefully to each instrument.

Beyond that , I would transcribe portions of the wynton  Kelly and Miles Davis solos from Freddie Freeloader, the first track from the Kind of Blue album. The lines are relatively simple and easy to follow I think, once you’ve learned them you can try playing along with the recordings which is a great exercise 
 

hope this helps 

Vicki I know this might be irrelevant, and I am coming from a strictly classical perspective, but I imagine that learning, or at least being familiar with, partimenti, figured bass, and basso continuo could be helpful. However, I may not understand the question as I don't know if Viennese-style classical training teaches jazz terminology, so disregard this if it is completely irrelevant. 

Maria Maria, I agree with you that jazz players have a lot to learn from Partimento. Partimento was a whole system of harmonization and improvisation that made it unnecessary for composers to have to write out all the parts of a piece, because there was an existing system (i.e. Partimento) that the player could use to fill in the blanks and vary it to taste.

Tonebase has a 3 excellent courses on this by John Mortensen (search for his last name on the home page search bar and they will pop up).  I've been studying them with the objective of incorporating some of these ideas into my improvisations.  (still have a long way to go there!)

Also Derek Remes has two excellent courses on this methodology, "Reverse Engineering Bach" and "Bach's Compositional Methods" . which are also relevant to this subject.   He has two great books called "The Art of Preluding" which I purchased, and a "Compendium of Voice Leading Patterns"  which I downloaded free from his Web site which have also taught me a lot about the Baroque methodology.

Vicki Hi Vicki, the workbooks to Jeremy Siskind's Intro to Jazz course that I mentioned elsewhere in this thread have some written out solo lines and exercises.  I've used a book called the Jazz Piano Book by Mark Levine that many Berklee pianists consider a kind of bible for learning jazz, but it focuses very much on chords and chord voicings, which may not be that useful for you yet.

I agree with Mark that it is very difficult to learn jazz "from the top down" by trying to derive performance ideas from theory.  

I would suggest instead that you start from the other direction:  Start by picking out a familiar tune by ear.  Just the melody to start, and then start playing with it by adding notes here and there and stepping between the melody notes.  Then think about what chords go underneath the melody  (or check a lead sheet if you are having trouble figuring out the applicable chords). 

That's when your theory starts to become helpful:  the concept of a "scale" can be used to give you an idea of what notes you can choose from when deviating from the melody or playing in between the melody notes, and the chords can also help with the choosing of relevant scale notes -- but your ear will also tell you what is working and what is not.

I believe most jazz players start by picking songs and sounds out on their own, and imitating others, i.e. this is basically what "playing by ear" is all about.  Then they start to see some connections with certain notes and chords and gradually accumulate theoretical knowledge, whether by inference or by training, which helps them understand what they are doing.  That then can provide them with ideas about other things they can do.  That's how it worked for me anyway.

Why don't you post a video of your playing something not derived from note-by-note sheet music.  --don't be shy about it! -- and then some of us can assess where you are at and make some suggestions about next steps for you.

Peter Golemme I am glad that my suggestion was not completely irrelevant, despite my complete lack of jazz experience.

My teacher trained me in partimento and figured bass, and while, as I said, I have never played jazz, I have heard of fake books and lead sheets and realized they seem basically like the jazz version of partimento/figured bass. I may be very wrong, however. 

Peter Golemme I greatly indebted to you as well as everyone's input on how to learn jazz improv.  I think the suggestions of using an established tune to begin with will help me greatly and then  working in different concepts over that tune as I learn them.  This is a great post - will be keeping my eye on it for the next 12 months as you rotate around the circle of fifths!

Vicki You're welcome Vicki. 

Learning jazz is a lot less intimidating if you don't think about it as "sitting down and improvising something out of nothing".  Instead, especially starting out, just think about it as "playing something without relying on sheet music."  I would suggest a common and familiar pop song with  a clear and easily recognizable melody such as "Over the Rainbow" or a Beatle song, or if you are really just beginning, something like "happy Birthday".  See whether you can pick out the notes of the melody by trial and error. I can guarantee that that is how virtually every great jazz musician started out -- trying to play something they had heard.

Many experienced classical players think they can't play by ear, and I always tell them they can. They are so advanced with their classical technique and reading and repertoire, that they assume that if they can't sit down and play at the same level by ear that they don't have the gift.  The truth is that it is a SKILL that you develop with practice, and you have to start at the beginning.

Maria Maria, you are right on target.  Partimento and figured bass are absolutely the 17th-18th century version of lead sheets.  The numbers are ways of communicating to the player how they should harmonize a musical line.  With a lead sheet, the Chord symbols (C, Am, F G7, etc.) serve exactly the same purpose.  Based on these symbols in each case, the player chooses the notes and other features that fit withing those chords and harmonies designated by the symbols.. 

Can you play from a figured bases  That would be very impressive.  I'm working on that, and getting to where I understand most of what the numbers mean, but am still a very long way from being able to play something fluently from a figured bass..  On the other hand, lead sheets  with a melody and chord symbols are like second nature to me.  It's all about whether you've worked with something enough to have learned it well.

Peter Golemme You are very encouraging Peter.  Thank you.   The tonebase Jeremy Siskind course and his books are excellent- I've been looking into it since he was mentioned in your above post.  And happy to find that he actually gives online courses twice a year (August and January).  Very much appreciate that reference as well.

Peter Golemme Yes, I can play from figured bass. I do know what chord symbols (G7, Bsus4, F#7, etc) mean, but I actually learned figured bass first.