Getting started with playing Jazz and especially getting to the point that you feel like you can play a solo on a song is difficult. You can get completely lost in learning scale positions, arpeggios, and chromatic enclosures.

This lesson simplifies the process:

- One easy song

- A single position on the neck

- Breaks Down Scales and Arpeggios in Playable Exercises

I also have included a solo where I am playing strong and natural melodies but making use of the material that I cover in the exercises. Everything is made to be playable and to enhance your abilities with a little practice.

The solo is simple, but the phrases are still both bop and swing inspired. There are examples of interesting rhythms and really phrasing in the groove.

Learning to play the Scales and Arpeggios is difficult, but many of us can sit down and work on that. The real problem is to turn that material into a solo that sounds like a real piece of music.  This is where we get into trouble:

How do you make it sound like Jazz and how do you make it sound like a piece of music, not just notes over a song.

This lesson will take help you develop your phrasing and solo playing so that you can connect the phrases in the solo and make it a complete piece of music.

The lesson is developed around a 2 chorus solo on Satin Doll. The solo is filled with strong melodic statements using the basic scales and arpeggios. I have made an analysis and a set of exercises to help you develop your own abilities as an improviser.

- Make strong melodies on Satin Doll using basic materials.

- Connect phrases using motivic development and call-response.

- Develop your Jazz phrasing and rhythmical language.

One of the most famous Jazz Waltzes in the American songbook. It is also a great interesting form with some beautiful harmony. This lesson is exploring how to improvise in 3/4. The main part of the lesson is a 4 chorus solo that I improvised and that is included as a transcription. The performance is in a friendly and groovy medium swing tempo and the key is Bb major.

Someday My Prince Will Come

The solo has two main parts, the first 2 choruses are improvised staying around the Bb major position in the 6th fret. This is a great way to build a very strong foundation for soloing over the form and really know how the harmony sounds. The second half is more free and demonstrating some different approaches and sounds in terms of both polyrhythms and reharmonizations. All of these ideas are explained in the accompanying article and annotated transcription. 

This lesson is based around a transcription of a one take improvised performance of me soloing over the chords of the song How High The Moon. The solo illustrates in some detail how I approach a lot of aspects of improvising over a jazz standard, which I also discuss in lesson video that I made.

The solo is 2 choruses long and as it is a basic example of how I play it contains a few polyrhythmic ideas as well as some cross the barline phrasing and reharmonizations. In the lesson I try to also discuss how the melodies are created and how they fit together since that is a topic that is often not covered in YouTube lessons (mostly because it is difficult to get into in a lesson of that length).

St Thomas is a must-know form in Jazz. In this lesson I am exploring how to improvise on this form in different ways. The main part of the approach is to use different chord progressions where more or less chords are used so that there are different levels of detail being used in the solo. This shows how it is easier to play more open lines with some progressions and at the same time easier to play good bop lines with other progressions.

The main part of the lesson is a 7 chorus solo that I improvised and that is included as a transcription. 

The St Thomas Solo - Calypso and Hardbop

The solo has three main segments using different chord progressions. The concept is in fact to take the original progressions and then reduce it to a lower amount of chords. With the reduced progressions it is a lot easier to play more free and open solos on the form. It is also easier to really focus on the rhythm and to improvise in a way that sounds more like calypso melodies. This is because Calypso does not really have that many chords originally.

In Jazz there are many ways to play over a minor chord. In this lesson I am demonstrating a few of them in the solo: Dorian, Melodic minor and Blues. An important part of your playing is your ability to vary how you play over the chords from chorus to chorus. Hopefully this lesson will help you develop your tool set and make you use this approach in a conscious way in your own playing.

This solo on Summertime is for the biggest part very easy to play. I tried to keep the double time and triplets to a minimum and the tempo is quite friendly.