There are some really beautiful variations and reharmonizations of a basic II V I progression that you can check out and start adding to your own repertoire. You don’t always want to play the chords exactly as written, especially if you are trying to make a chord melody arrangement or an intro sound better.
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You are always working on playing better solos, making your lines more interesting and finding the right arpeggios or scales. But Jazz is also about rhythm, and it is actually more important to work on playing more interesting rhythms in your solos. Using triplets is a great way to improve your vocabulary and not sounding like an 8th note robot with no dynamics or expression.
In this video, I am going to show you 4 ways that you can easily add 8th note triplets to your jazz lines and make them sound a lot more interesting.
Chromatic Triplets
Let’s get to it. The first place to use triplets is pretty easy to play because you can put it on one string most of the time. When you check out these examples you will also hear that these are really a core part of the Bebop Language
Chromatic enclosures add tension or dissonance that is then resolved quickly, and the combination of this with 8th note triplets is a very nice way to add some energy and momentum to a line. Here I am first using it on the Dm7 with one triplet and two 8th notes to target the F on beat 3. You can find this with Joe Pass and Charlie Parker (Pictures?)
A shorter variation is used on the Cmaj7.
This double triplet chromatic melody is one you will find often with Charlie Parker in his solos on Anthropology or Now’s the time. (Pictures?)
To practice phrases like this you could see the phrase as being a way to connect a minor 3rd with half steps, E to G.
You can then also make one for a major 3rd that starts with a whole step not a half step.
This way you can play the pattern through an Fmaj7 arpeggio like this:
The next thing to check out is how you can create some great sounding arpeggio lines with triplets
Bebop Arpeggios
Playing the Gm7 arpeggio as a triplet with a leading note is something you will find pretty much everywhere, and certainly, something that should be a part of your playing.
You could see the triplet as a way of giving emphasis to the top note, consider that a target note of the arpeggio.
Another way to use the triplets with arpeggios is what you will hear in this Wes Montgomery inspired line again the point is to target the first note after the triplet:
In this example, I also use Honeysuckle rose arpeggio played as a triplet on the Fmaj7.
The best way to practice the arpeggios like this and get them into your playing is to take them through the scale in an exercise like this:
Next I am going to show you a way to transform “normal” 8th note phrases to phrases with triplets
Triplet Transformations as 8th note variations
Here you could play this as “normal” 8th notes like this:
But you can easily hear how the first version is more exciting, and really this is just about mapping 4 8th notes on to a the rhythm with triplets
ILLUSTRATION
Another variation of this principle could be this:
Here the rhythm is this (ILLUSTRATION) and you could make other variations yourself.
Let’s look at how to use triplets for polyrhythms
Groupings and Polyrhythm
Usually, we feel triplets as groups of 3 notes like this:
EXPLAINER OVERLAY
But triplets can also be seen as the bar split into 12 notes and you can group them into 3 groups of 4 notes which sounds like this:
And this shifts on top of the quarter note pulse in a very nice way that you can also use in a solo like this:
Here you have 4-note groupings on the G7alt
Another way to use this on an entire II V I, but then playing a slightly less obvious rhythm would be this:
Here I am using a rhythm which is 3 notes and the last is a quarter note triplet.
Practicing Playing These Rhythms
When it comes to these triplet rhythms both the transformations and the polyrhythms then it can be really useful to work on playing these by working on soloing on Afro Cuban 12/8 grooves which are based on the triplets and will help you get comfortable playing them.
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A title like this is of course extreme, but I do really think that this way of working and improving your jazz solo is both underused and misunderstood, and that is a pity because it is very effective and in fact, it is also a part of The Jazz education tradition.
If you can practice in a way that makes you learn faster and sound better then what do you have to lose?
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You can use triads to play jazz chords, and it is a very powerful tool for this. Triads are very flexible and easy to play while also sounding great as chords. In this playlist, I will go over how you can use the triads you already know to play great sounding jazz progressions using only easy 3-note jazz chords.
We can play a wide range of chords with these 3-note easy jazz chords and they are very easy to add notes to or change notes to give us the extensions or alterations we want.
You can check out the videos here or go through the playlist on YouTube through this link:
Working with Triads as Jazz Chords and making it a flexible tool
This video discusses how you can work with triads and inversions when comping, showing you how to voice-lead them, use inversions, and add extensions and alterations.
Finding Triads for 7th chords
This video is actually about soloing, but the first few minutes provide a very thorough method for relating triads to a 7th chord.
Playing a Jazz Standard using Triad voicings
In this lesson, I am going to show you how you can get started with some triad voicings. Starting with what you already know and then go over 5 levels, step-by-step, of how you can play some great sounding comping ideas using these amazing voicings.
Applying Triad voicings to a Jazz Blues
This lesson is going over how you find triad voicings for a C jazz blues. You will also learn what you can do with the voicings you find using melodies and inversions.
Other great 3-note Jazz Voicings to Add To Your Vocabulary
When you think about Jazz Chords then you are probably thinking about rich chords with a lot of beautiful extensions. Of course, the rich colors of Jazz are about having chords that are embellished like this. At the same time when you are playing Jazz and when you are comping then you also want to have flexible chords so that you can move from one to the next, create small melodies and 3-note chords are fantastic for this.
Using less common Triad choices on a Maj7 chord
This video is going over 6 triads that I use for my Cmaj7 voicings and will also demonstrate how you can use them in a II V I cadence in C major. At the end of the video, I go over 4 more triads that are a bit tricky to use but also yield more interesting sounds!
Let me know what you think!
These videos give you a path to work on using triads and becoming very flexible with them, is there something you are missing or maybe something else you would like to see?
Leave a comment on the post!
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Arpeggios and scales are often reduced to the notes they contain against a chord, but by doing that you throw away other information that is more important for the sound of your jazz solo, and this is something you want to be aware of and not miss.
It is a way to get so much more out of scales and even pentatonic scales that you already know because you can use them in a different way.
What is the difference?
If you listen to how quartal arpeggios sound on a II V I:
Compared to a more traditional bop line:
Of course, you can mix the two as well, but I think this makes the difference quite clear.
There are a few ways to approach this, and I am going to go over both diatonic and pentatonic options using the II V I in G major: Am7 D7alt Gmaj7
The Scale and a Diatonic Arpeggio exercise
For the Am7 and Gmaj7, you can use the G major scale, and it is fairly easy to play a G major scale in diatonic quartal arpeggios:
The construction of a diatonic quartal arpeggio is really simple:
G A B C D E F# G A B C D
if you want to find the quartal arpeggio on B you just stack 4th intervals: B E A:
or for C: C F# B, but notice here that you get an augmented 4th between C and F#:
Using this on the Am7 chord
It is easy to make some lines using these arpeggios on Am7, especially if you avoid using the ones with the F# in there (for now anyway)
That gives us these:
Example using Quartal Arpeggios on Am7
Here I am using two quartal arpeggios on Am7, the one from B and the one from A. I actually continue with quartals on the D7 altered, but I am going to cover those a little later. First, let’s try to come at this from a pentatonic scale instead of a major scale.
Am pentatonic scale and an important exercise
You all know the Am pentatonic scale:
And if you play this exercise in that scale:
A lot of these are quartal arpeggios (high light and explain) also the C and Am triads
Example using the Pentatonic scale
You can use this as a way to get to this sound in a lick like this
Quartal Arpeggios on an Altered Dominant
Now let’s look at how you can also use quartal harmony on an altered dominant:
Here I am using quartal harmony on all 3 chords and it is constructed so that I am moving two quartal arpeggios on each chord as a motif.
You can practice the quartal arpeggios in the Eb melodic minor
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In this lesson, I am going to show you some techniques and ways to play simple phrases that make them sound more like Jazz. There are some very common phrasing techniques in Jazz Guitar that are a huge part of the sound, and you can quite easily start adding them to your playing if you want to work on your Jazz phrasing.
I am going to go over how you might play them and also give you some good examples of how they can be added to a line.
In the lesson, I will show you how to get better sounding lines by adding them to a basic Cmaj7 arpeggio, and while I was preparing this video I was actually quite surprised about how they really give you a lot of sounds, especially some of the longer embellishments at the end of the video.
Slides (and the triplet trick)
The basic Cmaj7 arpeggio can be played as is shown below.
I am also going to play it with a leading note and then making it a triplet which is also a very bebop thing to do, which is shown in the following bar.
Adding a Slide to the top-note
One of the easiest ways to get this slightly boring arpeggio to have a little more life is to use slides, so you can slide into the top note, which serves as a sort of target for the arpeggio when you use the triplet.
Notice how I play the notes at the end of the phrases short most of the time, that is also a way to connect with the groove and make the lick sound better.
This is a big part of Wes Montgomery’s phrasing vocabulary like this from his solo on Unit 7. which is a Gm(11) arpeggio over a C7 chord
Delaying the target note
Chromatic passing notes are great for getting things to sound like Jazz, and this is a quite simple way to make that work on the Cmaj7 arpeggio. As I said before, the “target note” of the arpeggio is the B, and delaying this works really well:
Sometimes you will get told that chromatic leading notes have to be on the offbeat and resolve back on the beat. As you can hear in this example that is not true, but don’t take my word for it, ask Charlie Parker:
Above you can see how Parker uses a leading note on the beat. In bar 2, beat 4 and in bar 6, beat 3 and 4.
Turns
The names for embellishments like this are a little open, so sometimes what I am calling turns here are also called trills and slurs. It’s like chord symbols, just try to figure out what is meant and don’t worry about it.
For this video, a turn is more or less a short faster phrase with notes close to a target note. The examples will make it easier to understand what I mean.
There are a few ways you can add turns to this arpeggio.
Turn #1 – 16th note pull-off
The first variation is shown here below:
The easiest way to work on this is probably to play the scale with the turn on one string like this:
Turn #2 – 16th triplet – Mid Phrase
The 16th note triplet is also a good way to get into this. It should be executed with a quick hammer-on/pull-off and is a very common and very effective way to break things up.
Turn #3 – 16th triplet – Begin Phrase
Another way you can use this embellishment is at the beginning of a phrase.
That is what I am doing in the example below, think of it as a way of sending off the arpeggio. The line continues with a slide to the high B.
Joe Pass using “Double Turns”
To give you an example of how this is used by jazz artists, here is a lick from Joe Pass on a II V I in D major.
Pass uses the turns in the 2nd half of the A7 bar, and the last turn is used to introduce a b13 and create a little tension before resolving to Dmaj7.
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Sometimes it is hard to come up with something that inspires you when you are improvising a jazz solo. There are a lot of things you can use if you want to improvise over a maj7 chord, and in this video, I am going to give you some of my favourites terms of arpeggios, triads, pentatonics and a few special tricks as well.
You should have a lot of things to start working with at the end of this video, and most of it is really just a new way to use the things you already know.
Focus on how it sounds because I think that is how you are going to be inspired by it, and I will also give you some other tips on getting new ideas that are not only about what notes to play.
Cmaj7 – You can always get more out of this!
The basic material in this video is this chord, the C major scale.
And the one Cmaj7 octave arpeggio
Chromaticism – Pure Bebop
A great way to tap into Jazz as a sound and getting this type of melodies into your playing is to use chromaticism.
The example below has two short lines using different chromatic enclosures and a melody build around a Cmaj7 chord. You can check out more information on different types of chromatic enclosures here: 5 chromatic enclosures
Very often when I listen to a great line and check out what it is and how to use it. Often I find that the melody is actually a basic arpeggio melody. Below are some examples of lines like this that I have come across.
You can use a variation of the Rosenwinkel melody like this:
You can also experiment with inventing melodies playing patterns with a one octave arpeggio. Try to mess around and see if you find something that sounds like an interesting melody.
Em7 – Don’t Box yourself in, you are missing out
The Em7 arpeggio is the diatonic arpeggio from the 3rd of Cmaj7.
If you look at the notes of Cmaj7: C E G B – and look at the notes of Em7: E G B D you can see that they share most of the notes and the Em7 adds a D, the 9th of C. That makes it a great arpeggio to use on a Cmaj7.
In fact the arpeggio found on the 3rd of the chord works great for most chords.
Sometimes you miss great melodies because the focus is on learning in a position, in a scale or in some other shape. This example using an Em7 arpeggio is branching out of the regular patterns and making specific melodies a lot easier to play.
Gsus4 – Not Obivous and Very Cool
The thing with the sus triads is that they sound a little less obvious and that is why they are great to use once in a while. In this first example I am using the Gsus4 triad to make a 5-note group that I can repeat before continuing, another way to change things up in a solo: odd-note groupings.
Another way to play the notes of the Gsus4 triad is this beautiful C quintal arpeggio that is the perfect way to add some larger intervals to your lines. In this case, I am combining it with a sus4 triad which is another great tool on a Cmaj7.
The Esus4 triad is really useful (leave this clip out?)
Esus4 – Complete Chord And some Color!
The Esus4 is really the complete chord, it has an E and a B so the 3rd and 7th of Cmaj7 and also the 13th: A adding some color. Here I am using it as a 3-note grouping and again taking advantage of sus4 triads being less obvious so that it is easier to repeat them in a melody without it getting boring.
Em pentatonic – Quartal Cmaj7 licks
The Pentatonic scale is very closely related to the sound of quartal harmony, and since it is a scale that we guitarists are usually very familiar with then it is a great place to find some interesting lines.
Practicing the pentatonic scale in the way shown below can help you explore melodies similar to what I use in the example.
Triad Pairs
This triad pair works fantastic for Cmaj7, besides that they are also what I used to make the most annoying picking exercise I ever cam up with…. (B-roll) and the way I usually improvise with triad pairs is by chaining together inversions to get different colors on top of the chords. This has a sound that is different from other types of melodies and still produces very strong melodies.
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When you use the chord shapes you play to make solo lines you can access a lot of very useful material. The Link also helps your solos in other ways because it makes it easier to use the chords to tie together several phrases.
In this lesson, I am going to go over this approach with some easy chord shapes and show you how you can apply this to a song and also how you can put it to use on complicated progressions like Giant Steps.
Setting up this Jazz Solo Lesson
To show you how easy this is I am going to take the first 8 bars of Take The A-train, make some easy voicings and use them to make some lines. (here we go)
Finding Voicings for a Solo
A simple way to play the chords of Take The A-train with basic jazz chords could be:
To make them more useful for solos then it makes sense to take away the root and turn them into more compact 3-note voicings:
Examples making lines on a Cmaj7
Now you have some chord voicings and you can start working on turning them into solo lines. The concept is really simple, the melody is using the notes of the chord and adding notes around it from the scale.
These two examples are just basic ways to turn the rootless Cmaj7 voicing into a line by using the voicing and some of the notes around the voicing.
Another example could be this one:
Notice how the lines are different from what you normally will end up with if you use scales and arpeggios.
Playing a Solo based on the Chords
Turning this into a complete solo is really just following the same principle
First, let’s have a look at how the lick is constructed and then I can show you how that works in connecting the lines.
Voice-leading Jazz Licks
The big advantage is that now you have a melody based around the 3-note chord and for the next chord you can use the same lick and just move it to that voicing. In that way you are voice-leading the entire thing. This is exactly what I do in example 3 on the Cmaj7-D7 chords.
Voicings as more interesting melodies
If you use this technique on a II V I with common voicings like the ones shown below, then you can get some really great fresh sounding melodies.
The melody is really just arpeggiating the Dm7 shape, but because the voicing has the 9th(E) in there then we get a nice maj7 interval in the melody.
If you think about this then it is as much a question of learning songs to improvise on and then use the chords as a way of getting some solo material as well
A Practical approach to turnarounds
A basic way to play a turnaround in C could be using the chords shown below.
This is easily turned into a lick, just playing the chord shapes and adding an occasional extra note here and there:
A Solid Strategy for Giant Steps
This is also a refreshing way to approach Giant Steps where you can get some new melodies using shapes that you already have in your fingers.
Using these shapes to play a lick could give you something like this:
With Giant Steps I think it really works well to also add melodies that are not only 8th notes, something that we play too often on changes like that.
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For many beginners, the half diminished chord or m7b5 chord is a weird mysterious chord, but it is actually a very flexible chord to have in your vocabulary
In this video, I am going to talk about how to construct and play them and then go through how you can use them in a song, not only as half-diminished chords but also as a lot of other chord sounds.
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Drop 2 voicings are often made into this mysterious thing that is hard to practice and learn. Something that you have to spend months practicing to get into your playing and be able to use.
That is of course not true and in this video, I am going to show you some of the simple things you can practice, how to remember the chords and how you start using it in your playing.
It is about staying practical!
3 Types of Drop2 voicings
For this lesson I am using the song, Solar known as a Miles Davis Tune but it is actually written by Chuck Wayne.
First I am going to go over some voicings that we need to play the song. It really is just 2 sets of 4 voicings on the top strings and then a dim chord.
Then I am going to use those voicings to play through Solar and embellish the basic comping and show you how you can add to it yourself.
I will talk about why we use some voicings and explain it from a music theory point of view, but also a more visual description that really helps understanding and remembering the voicings.
Basic Set of Drop 2 Voicings
The m6 is a very useful voicing for three types of chords:
First we need a m6 voicing, that will also work as a m7b5 and a dom7 chord:
The m7 chord can be used for m7 but also maj7 chords:
The Voicings would be these:
Putting it to use on a Song
This first example of how to use the drop 2 voicings is using one voicing per chord. Everything is kept simple and I am using the same voicing sets for the II V I’s in F and Eb major.
The II V I in Db is a little different because I want to move closer to where I will play the Dø.
This is about reusing as much as possible and playing music with only a few voicings. That way we have something to build from.
Progessions as building blocks, not chords
It is extremely important to start thinking in progressions more than single chords. If you do that then you can sum up a song in a few blocks where it might be twice or three times as many chords.
That is also what is clear in how I think in II V I progressions and treat them as one thing, more than separate chords.
Adding Melody – Making Music
The next step is to use the same chord voicings but now I am also using different top-note melodies to have some melody and variation in the comping.
From Chords to Musical Statements
The important part of adding more melodies and thinking more like a melody is that it is easier to comp in a way that responds and supports whoever you are playing chords for. Developing this skill is so essential, and it is important to remember that comping should be a piece of music, not just some chords on a groove.
Expanding What You can Play
Now that there are some melodic options and you probably have one voicing in your system then you can start adding voicings by using the surrounding inversions. An example of how that might work is shown below:
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