Have you ever felt that even if you know which scale to use on a chord, you still can’t play something that really sounds like a Jazz solo? I’ve worked with hundreds of jazz beginners who felt the same way. It’s not about learning more scales, but about turning those scales into great jazz music.
So in this video, I’ll show you how to easily build this overlooked skill—and start playing solos that sound like real jazz, with chromaticism, rhythm, and phrasing.
To start, let me show you what actually makes a solo sound like jazz, instead of just a random string of notes.
Most beginners run up and down a scale like this:
But you want to be able to sound like this:
Notice how the phrase has shape, rhythm, and connects with the chords? That’s how a Jazz phrase should sound, and it’s a lot more fun to play.
Scales are just a collection of notes. Rather than just hoping they fit, you’ll sound much better and enjoy yourself more if you learn to create phrases and licks that really work with the music.
So let’s break down a simple process you can use to create musical jazz phrases—no advanced theory or crazy fingerings required.
The Chord Connection
One thing that ruins most beginner solos is that the solo doesn’t connect with the harmony, and that is where scales immediately fall apart as a way to solo.
Here’s what you do instead:
A solid lick for a Cmaj7 using the C major scale, and an extra chromatic note, could sound like this:
We’ll get to the chromatic notes later. You don’t want to start making Cmaj7 licks thinking only of the scale, because not all notes in the scale connect to the chord. Instead, you want to start with the arpeggio of the chord.
For this Cmaj7 chord, an easy version of a Cmaj7 arpeggio, that is also easy to remember, is this:
Notice how the lick I played incorporates many of the notes from the Cmaj7 arpeggio.
So start with the arpeggio, but you can still add the scale notes around them.
When you come up with licks over a chord like Cmaj7, then think of the scale as having two layers: the scale notes, and the chord tones.
The chord tones are the notes you need to connect with the harmony, the arpeggio. Visually, I always think of them as having a different color, even if they are all in the scale.
The reason the arpeggio works is that you are playing the same notes as what is played in the chord. so of course that sounds good.
Since you want to come up with licks that connect with the harmony, it is easier to just start with the arpeggio and think of the rest as “extra notes.” That way, you know you have the right notes in there. Check out how easy this is:
Let’s start with the Cmaj7
Maybe add in a scale note between the first two notes:
And a short scale run after the arpeggio:
And a few more chord tones to round it off:
Of course, you can also start with a descending arpeggio, or only one or two notes from the arpeggio. You have a lot of things to try that you can use to create great solo lines, but using this you get the sound of the chord in there.
A great way to really get the chord tones to stand out is to add some nice tension and energy around them. Let’s look at that next!
How to Add Chromatic Notes That Sound Right
Chromatic phrases sound amazing as a way to move your solo forward, and it is fairly simple to use the notes that are not in the scale as tension, but there are a few things to get right if you want the melodies to make sense.
I completely messed this up when my teacher first introduced me to chromatic notes. I went all in on that and made a huge mess of it. If you just start adding chromatic notes everywhere, then you are really just running up and down the chromatic scale, and that is even worse than only playing scale lines. Nothing made any sense and I sounded worse than before. What I later figured out was that you still want to think of the hierarchy of notes,
so chromatic phrases that resolve to a chord tone immediately make sense to the ear.
Here’s a practical way to start: Make sure to use chromatic notes in one of these two ways:
The first example is adding a descending chromatic note between the scale note D, and the Root, C.
Having the scale note there makes it more acceptable to the ear, but when the chromatic note resolves up to a chord tone, as it does a bit later with D# going to E then you don’t need a scale note before it, but you can add one if you want to.
Here’s how you put that to use: To change things up, let’s start with a C major triad, which is the Cmaj7 arpeggio without the last note:
You can add a chromatic note before the 3rd E
And then maybe move from A down to G with another chromatic note:
And then add an ending to it:
Don’t consider the things I showed you here rules, if you find a way to add chromatic notes that you like ,then just go with that, this is just to help you get started experimenting and coming up with your own licks.
Until now, you only worked with notes, but let’s take a look at a few rhythms that can really change how your solo sounds.
Boost The Rhythm
There is no Jazz without rhythm, and until now, you have only been playing 8th note runs, but you don’t want to get stuck there, and these two tricks will change things up quickly.
It fits perfectly that the starting point for all the licks has been arpeggios because you can add a triplet rhythm to an arpeggio like this:
Here the arpeggio is played as an 8th-note triplet, which makes it begin an 8th-note later.
E
Another equally useful way to turn an arpeggio into a triplet is to add a leading note before the first note, the root. That gives you this lick, which is a favorite of both Charlie Parker and George Benson with that long chromatic run from the 7th down to the 5th:
Here’s a simple way to try this: I’ll focus on the triplet arpeggio with the leading note. So you start with this:
There is room to add a note on beat one, so let’s start there
And use the triad and a chromatic note to give it an ending.
Even with the right notes and rhythms, your solo won’t work without Jazz phrasing, and luckily, there is a trick to get you started with that as well.
Practical Phrasing
The biggest challenge with phrasing is that it’s subtle—it’s all in the details, which makes it hard to practice. But I’ll show you a simple way to improve your phrasing, and the best part is: you’ve already heard it in the examples from this video, so it is already getting into your system. Check this out:
Notice how this ending sounds a lot better than this:
The only difference is that now the phrase ends on beat 1. That makes it sound heavy and a bit boring.
But it is incredibly easy to fix if you do what I have done in the examples in this video: Just add another chord tone so that the phrase ends on an off-beat.
And this is true if you add a longer phrase as well, here I end on the 2&:
Next Level Chromatic Phrases
It is a lot of fun to create solid Jazz lines like this and start building a set of tools for putting them together.
Besides phrasing, there is another way to use chromatic passing notes that adds energy and also a layer of syncopation to them. I’ll show you how you can add phrases like this to your solos to get a much more surprising and energetic sound. That is in this video, which is also about one of the biggest aha moments I ever had learning Jazz. Check it out!
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