SCAT JAZZ is all about sharing a passion of mine - Scat Singing! I first started scatting many years ago after hearing Chet Baker’s wonderful album Chet Baker Sings: It Could Happen to You. I loved the natural way he used his voice to improvise and I related to the way his singing was connected with his trumpet playing. I went on to love the work of many other vocal improvisers including Louis Armstrong ( the first great scat singer), Ella Fitzgerald, Betty Carter and many more.

On gigs, I love to scat because it adds variety and excitement to the performance. Not only that, scat is great for developing your musicianship. So whether you are a vocalist or an instrumentalist, I’d highly recommend it. It’s a lot of fun!

I’ve begun by posting short series of videos on How to Scat Sing. These progressive tutorials will show you how to learn the song structure, which scat syllables to use and how to make your solos swing, how to embellish the melody, using jazz vocal licks and more besides! I hope you enjoy the series as much as I’ve enjoyed putting it together.

I’ll be posting more videos and resources in the weeks and months to come; more tutorials on scat singing techniques, important scat singers, great scat solos, the history of scat and more!.

If you’d like to keep updated on what’s happening with SCAT JAZZ please sign up to my mailing list here

Let me know what you think! What would you like to find out about? Who is your favourite scat singer?

If you ‘re interested in how scat singing came about, I recently came across this excellent article on the history of scat singing. It’s a very succinctly written article covering the development of scat with some great musical examples. Thanks so Matt and Sam at Jazzfuel for this. I may be exploring some of the things discussed in this article at a later date.