There is a difference between how you think about chord progressions if you are a beginner and if you are more experienced, and that is something that is probably holding you back and making your solos sound like unconnected fragments instead of a real piece of music.
In this video, I am going to talk about how to fix that.
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Learning how to solo over chord changes is pretty difficult, especially if you also want to be free to play melodies that move across the chords so that you are not just playing something on one chord and something else on the next. In this video, I am going to show you 5 exercises that will help you develop these skills. The exercises are mostly pretty common and are probably more about how you understand the chord changes and think about the exercises that will help you learn to play better solos. I think you will see what I mean along the way.
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Get the PDF!
The PDF for this lesson is available through Patreon in the Patreon FB group. By joining the Patreon Community you are in the company of 200 others supporting and helping shape the content on my YouTube channel.
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If you play Jazz then you need to know how to solo over jazz chords!
In this video, I am going to talk about how just assigning a scale to a chord is not really helping you play a better solo, but another approach which will make your solos sound a lot better.
There are many ways to think about a chord progression or a piece of music, but some of the common ways we break down harmony are really not helping if you want to learn how to solo over chord changes or Jazz Standards.
Locked in Thinking Scales
I have often come across students who spend a lot of time thinking about what scale goes where. This is also often what you will find phone apps say that they can figure out or in old Aebersold books.
Obviously it is nice to have a pool of notes to use when you are soloing and a scale is a practical thing that we can play.
And if you have to think about what scale you are playing you will not sound very good.
At the same time, 7 notes don’t really tell you a lot about how it sounds, you are not going to start all your lines on the root so it is far from a complete picture.
A lot of pieces have the same 7 notes happening all the time, but they don’t sound the same (think of 4 bars of Autumn Leaves). It is also difficult to know what to play out of those 7 notes that work well over the chord. There is more to it that will make it easier to play a good solo line.
Know the chords and How the Harmony moves
First, let’s look at what you need to know and a simple way to use that before I will get into some very useful soloing concepts. So this is what you need to know and then I’ll talk about a few ways to use it.
If you know the chords and the notes in the chords you can also see how each note in the chord moves from one chord to the next, but that is only possible if you really have a good overview of it and can voice-lead from one chord to the next.
You can figure out the Target notes that you want to emphasize in your solo since they are mostly chord tones and often you can look at notes that are not in the previous chord. ‘
This already helps you play something that connects with the chords and is clearly following the harmony.
Voice-leading for melodies and solos!
In the video, I also demonstrate how Voice-leading phrases is a great way to generate lines and something you want to have in your system.
This becomes a tool to really tie together different phrases and make youse solo a more complete musical whole.
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Soloing over chord changes is a part of Jazz. It is a skill we need and in this video, I am going to go over 5 levels of exercises where you actually solo over chord changes and that will also test your knowledge of the chords, the fretboard and your ability to play strong melodies.
I am curious how far you can go, there are not that many who can do all 5 levels, but leave a comment with how far you can get. You can always pause the video and give it a try!
To keep it a bit short I am going to cover this just using a turnaround, but you could do this with any song or chord progression.
I am going to use a turnaround in C (play chords) and I am not really going to explain the scales etc. because if you are checking this out then you should have an idea about what those are already.
A lot of what this is going is about training very basic skills but getting them to a high level. Something that is very important in music. The last level is quite demanding and a goal I think we should all work towards.
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When you start soloing over chord changes in Jazz then the first concern is often what to play over each chord. Of course, that is important, but maybe the most difficult part is how to play it, so that is what I want to focus on in this video:
How to play from one chord to the next in any chord progression
A Method that helps you play better solos not just fragments
And this is really because I found that to be such a huge difference for my own playing and it is time and time again what makes my students play lines that really connect with the changes and makes their solos sound much stronger and more natural.
In this lesson, I am going to quickly go over a progression and some chords, then find some target notes and talk about how you put those two things together to start creating some solid logical solo lines.
Here’s a basic II V I in C major.
Let’s keep it really simple: I am going to focus on playing from Dm7 to G7, so the first part of a II V I progression.
The progression is in C, so we don’t really need more than the C major scale: C major. As I have talked about in some of my other videos it is really useful(or necessary) to know the arpeggios for each of the chords etc.
Understanding the chord movement and how to play it
If you play from Dm7 to G7 then the most important note to change is the C in Dm7 moving to B in G7.
The is something we can use as a target note. If you want to play a solo that sounds like a logical melody and really connects well with the changes then using the B as a target note is a great choice.
So the idea is that if we play the B on beat 1 of the G7 bar then you can hear the chord change in the line.
One of the most important things to be able to do in music in general and jazz especially is thinking ahead. If you know you want to play a B on G7 then you can improvise a melody on Dm7 that leads into the B.
You can hear how it works here:
Solo Over Chord Changes- How Tor Practice
If you want to use this then you need to practice making lines on Dm7 moving to B., Of course, you can change to other target notes, I picked B because that is a very clear note and easy to hear.
So if you practice making lines that work like this then you might get something like this:
I would suggest you sit down and just try to improvise or compose lines, so play out of time but still think 8th notes so that you are working on being able to play lines from Dm7 to G7. As you work on this you get used to this way of thinking and you can easily implement it on other chord progressions as well. B-Roll – improvising rubato
I am of course using this on a II V I, but you can probably see how this will work on any chord set. They don’t have to use the same scale or be in the same key. This works on any chord progression.
Choosing Target Notes to Improvise Towards
The easiest choice is to pick a note that was not there in the previous chord or scale, so here I use B. If it was an altered dominant I could have taken a b13 or a b9 as well since they are not strong notes on Dm7 (or Cmaj7 for that matter)
For the res,t the 3rd is usually very clear, and often the 5th is too. In the beginning, you want to pick clear notes so that when you play a solo line without comping you can still hear the harmony change. This is really useful for your ears and helps you play a lot stronger solos.
Example on Take The A-Train
Another example: Take The A-train. Going from Cmaj7 to D7(#11).
Example one: Target note F# moving from C to D7.
Another good option for a target note is the melody note G#.
If you want to explore some other approaches that will help you improvise better solos and use other concepts than what I have covered here then check out this lesson where I am talking about improvising over chord changes but also how you might approach it in different ways:
You can also download the PDF of my examples here:
If you have any questions, comments or suggestions for topics then please let me know. Leave a comment on the video or send me an e-mail. That is the best way for me to improve my lessons and make them fit what you are searching for.
