You already know it: It is not nearly as important what notes you play compared to how you play them. That is what I am going to use in this video because you can just take some really basic notes and then work on playing them in a way that sounds better. Once I started thinking more like that I really started to feel a difference in what I played, and it really lifted the solos and made them sound much more like “Real Jazz” (if that is actually a thing)
We can start with a basic C7:
And then use this simple one-octave version of the arpeggio for a C7:
Phrasing And A Little Rhythm
Now you can start working playing these notes and get them to sound like a Jazz Blues phrase. This is really about imagining a slow medium groove and just see if you can make some simple melodies, something like this:
So simple short phrases in the groove, think Wes Montgomery or Grant Green, and just try experimenting with coming up with some melodies.
You can actually get them to sound even better by adding this:
All that is changing is that you slide into the notes, which is sort of the Jazz version of bending strings.
Before you move on to another technique you probably also want to start to make longer phrases as well:
Here you want to notice that the longer phrases is really just two phrases put together and that one phrase works as a call (play) and the other as a response.
You can practice this by just playing a phrase then stop and try to imagine what you think should come after it, is it an ascending or descending phrase? A lot of notes or a few etc. Try to start getting used to hearing phrases and listen to what you hear inside
The Power of Legato Dynamics
Often when you practice legato technique then you are probably working on getting notes to sound equally loud so that there is no real difference between the picked notes and the ones you play with hammer-on/pull-offs
but they do have a different quality of tone, and this is something you can use to make your solos much more expressive and add some dynamics to your lines, which is a really important part of Jazz lines.
First, you can add the rest of the position around the one-octave arpeggio
This is just to have more places with two notes on one string so that you can use legato.
Now you can start creating lines like this:
And the fact that some notes are louder than others really helps make the whole thing much more interesting, so it is also something you can incorporate in your music as a dynamic quality. In fact, the is what you will hear with a lot of players like Grant Green, Wes, and more modern guys like Pat Metheny.
Adding A Little Color
Because you start with the basic chord tones then everything you play will sound good, but also very safe and maybe even a little bit boring. Besides working with phrasing techniques you can start to add in some more colors by surrounding the arpeggio with the rest of the scale. So let’s do that and then move on to some double stops.
So you go from this:
And then you place that in the scale:
The best strategy is probably to start by just adding notes in between the notes of the arpeggio:
Here you have the A before the 7th but notice that you can still use the slide to add another sound and the F is inserted to lead to the E.
And you are using scale notes to lead into the arpeggio. here’s another example:
Notice how the slide takes an incredibly simple melody adds a more bluesy character.
So the difference between the two bars below:
Double-stops and Pedal-tones
Double stops are often associated with Blues and work great for the sound. But there is another polyphonic technique that is also really great that you use which I will cover after this.
You can use double stops as a sort of emphasis on a chord tone, like this:
Here the double-stop is the important part of the phrase, and then the descending melody ending on the b7 drives home the blues feel. This is btw something you will hear Parker do very often: ending phrases on the 7th in a blues, especially just before moving to the IV chord.
Another great way to use double-stops could be this:
Example 13
The tritone is a great choice for a double stop that also really nails the sound of the chord.
Another way to use several voices that Kenny Burrell also uses quite often works like this:
Example 14
Using Pedal notes is a great sound, and it is a little overlooked, but still something you will hear in Stevie Ray Vaughn’s playing quite frequently.
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I always dreamt about getting to that point where you are free to improvise a great jazz solo over a chord progression. You know what I mean: You can play the things that you want, the notes are right there and the lines sound great. You are just making music.
That freedom is coming out of having specific skills in place for the solo, and that is what I want to talk about in this video so if you want to move beyond thinking a lot and being locked down by the progression then check out this video.
Level #1 Play The Chords, The Key, Scales, and the Arpeggios
This first level is just some very basic technique that you want to have covered, it is the foundation for all the other things, so it has to be pretty solid, and it is important that have this covered.
#1 Play The Chords
You want to be able to play the chords so that you can hear what the progression sounds like.
In this case, I am using a basic turnaround in C: Cmaj7, A7(b9), Dm7, G7(b9)
#2 Understand What Is Going On
You also want to be aware of the key it is in and the scales.
In this case, Cmaj7 and Dm7 are found in the C major scale, A7 is a secondary dominant resolving to Dm7 so you use D harmonic minor on that. G7(b9) is borrowed from the key of C minor so that also takes C harmonic minor.
As you can see, you do want to have some understanding of what is going on in the progression to help you play better solos. That is going to make it easier to find something to play and later it will help you find more options and give you more interesting things to experiment with and get into your playing.
#3 The Melodic Version Of The Chords
You also want to be able to play the arpeggios of the chords so that you are able to play the chord tones in time through the progression, simply because those are the notes you need when you start soloing and if you can’t find them like that then soloing with them is going to very difficult. Next, you want to start turning this raw material into a solo, but first, let’s just talk about one thing to keep in mind if you are new to improvising over Jazz progressions, so you don’t crash your progress by practicing the wrong way.
Don’t Drown in Exercises
A very common mistake when trying to learn to improvise over chord changes is to think that you first need to know all the scales and arpeggios in all positions. Of course, you want to be able to do that eventually, but you are better off not drowning yourself in exercises and also give priority to actually using the material you practice. Making music is what you want to be good at, that is the goal, so if you are new to some of the material then try to figure out how to play all arpeggios and scales in one position so that you can make music with that.
Level #2 Spell Out The Changes And Give It A Flow
Once you have the foundation of scales, arpeggios and know what the progression sounds like then you can start working on soloing and also really nailing the changes.
One of the best ways to work on playing solos is to practice writing them, so it can be really useful, for example, to take the arpeggio and the scale and then try to write some line that you can use in your solo. The advantage here is that when you are working on writing lines then you are improvising over the chord progression, but you have time to make sure that it sounds good and you can improve the lines you come up with. In that way, you can start building your vocabulary and your ability to play stronger solo lines.
Here I am actually writing out the lines, and that can be a good exercise, but you don’t always need to do that.
When it comes really connecting the solo to the chords under it then the first approach I would suggest you use is target notes, so that you choose specific clear notes that really connect to the chord and then place those at the beginning of the bar so that it is obvious that the chord changes.
I am not going to cover this in too much detail, but there is a link to a video in the description where I discuss this solid strategy for playing chord changes in a solo.
Level #3 What About The Rhythm?
There are many things you can check out with rhythm, and a lot of them are complicated and often students underestimate how demanding they are technically.
But you don’t have to make it that complicated, in fact, the best thing to do is to make it simpler!
Instead of adding fast runs and subdivisions or difficult polyrhythms then the place to start is probably to make it easier to focus on the rhythm and become more creative.
If you limit the notes you use then you will force yourself to make the rhythms interesting. In this example, I am using only 2 notes per chord, and that is forcing me to think differently which I can then try to take with me when I start soloing without that restriction.
Other things that I have found very useful were learning some of the easier themes that had great rhythms like Bernie’s Tune or Lady Bird. This coupled with listening for rhythm and maybe even transcribing some solos, is really what you want to work on.
Practicing Things In The Right Order
What you may be realizing with this video is that in the end, you start to mix up the order that you work on it. It is not first the scales and arpeggios and then the rhythm, or then soloing it is back and forth and these skills you can zoom in on and develop further again and again.
In what order would you work with these levels? let me know in the comments.
The next two levels I would suggest that you save for a little bit later, but maybe you don’t think so.
Now you know how to play the changes and the lines make sense, but everything is still a bit “something on this chord and then something else on this chord” If you listen to great soloists then you can hear them really have a longer story going in the solo, and there are ways to work on that and skills you can develop.
Turning Phrases Into Stories
The first thing that I would try to work on is developing the melodies you play and in that way use what you just played to come up with the next thing to play. One way to think about that is motivic development where you take the phrase you play and then try to repeat it, but change it a little. That way it sounds both new and familiar to the listener.
Like this way of moving a melody from Cmaj7 to A7
You can practice this by just playing a short melody on the first chord, stop, and then from what you played, try to make a line that works on the next chord. In that way, there is a clear connection and a sense of development in your solo. First, practice that rubato, and then later you can work on it in time.
Turning Phrases Into A Conversation
A variation of this way of thinking is to think about your solo as phrases that are a part of a conversation, so using call-response to create melodies. You probably know about this from Blues.
Something like this:
first a statement and then as an answer to the ascending phrase, a descending phrase. And you can keep this type of conversation going through the entire progression.
For me, this is where you really start to make music. This is what I aim for and what I want to feel able to do when I practice pieces. Trying to come up with a way to tell a story on top of the song is such an essential part of making music, and you hear this with so many great players from Parker to Getz to Pat Metheny.
Let’s have a look at how you can start creating completely different sounds by starting to not only improvise notes on chord progression but also improvise with the chord progression!
Level #5 Improvise With The Chords
Until now the way you improvised was by figuring out what to play over the chord progression, but actually, that is not really how it works in Jazz.
You are allowed to change the chords! (Dramatic pause, WHAAAT!)
This chord progression is really just a way to go from C and then back to C, and you are pretty free to take another way there. As long as you can find a logical way to get back home.
You may be thinking that this is only for weird modern incomprehensible Jazz, but actually, you can find examples of this all the way back in history to Charlie Parker, and it is just one more thing to make music with.
You can experiment with this, by just changing one or two chords. An example would be to use altered dominants that don’t really belong in there, but this is so common that we don’t think of it as a reharmonization, even though it is most of the time.
For this progression, a simple example could be to use a lot of parallel chromatic movement.
Or you can choose some unexpected chord sounds:
And of course, creating suspensions when the listener expects a resolution like the final G7 to C is a great effect:
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Learning to play Jazz is a huge challenge, and when I started out then I spent a lot of time working out some solos by ear which taught me a lot of things, and also a lot of things I didn’t realize I was learning. In this video, I am going to recommend some good solos if you want to get started learning solos by ear, some I checked out myself in the beginning and some that I have use often with students, and along the way, I am going to talk about what you learn and give you some tips about how to learn from by ear.
The most efficient way to learn what is probably a lot of the most important things in Jazz is to learn solos by ear, what we often call transcribing even though you might not really want to write them down, but I will talk about that later. Among other things this is something that helps you improve: Swing, Timing, Phrasing, Dynamics, Shape, Contrast, Build up, Technique, Fretboard Knowledge.
This is pretty difficult to get started with, and getting sensible suggestions that help you get started with this is something that there are nowhere near enough recommendations for. I will go over some more tips later in the video, but If you are new to Jazz then don’t start by transcribing Charlie Parker on Donna Lee or John Coltrane on Countdown, find some short and easy examples and build your skills so that you give yourself the best possible chance to develop this ability. Otherwise, you are just going to get frustrated and fail
The Conga Conundrum
The first solo is one that I did not check out when I was learning Jazz, in fact, I somehow missed Kenny Burrell almost completely for some reason and didn’t discover him until much later, but this is the opening track from a truly iconic jazz guitar album: Midnight Blue. A weird side-step here, but In the early 60s everybody had to add conga’s to their jazz albums. You can hear that with Pat Martino but also with Wes (El hombre and Cotton Tail)
I wish somebody could explain to me why they did that?
Kenny Burrell – Chitlins Con Carne
This is one of the first solos that I give to my students, mainly because it is just a medium 12-bar blues in C, not even a Jazz Blues because there is no II V. Kenny Burrell is mostly just using C minor pentatonic and you can play it mostly in the Box 1 pentatonic position. The lines are great, so you learn how he is using a lot of interesting techniques, melodies, and phrasing.
On the recording, Kenny Burrell is comping himself, with the C7#9 but to make it easier in the beginning then I usually tell students to leave out the chords, just to make it simpler. In a way, the fact that Kenny Burrell plays the chords really helps make the whole thing easier to learn, because it is keeping the phrases compact, and with a clear beginning and end, divided by the chords.
This solo is very easy, and I tend to use it to help people get started transcribing and really get used to how it is to learn a solo by ear more than trying to teach phrasing and vocabulary, but of course, you do learn a lot of other things while checking out the solo. Starting to get used to learning by ear will help you pick up a lot of things so much faster, so that is extremely important and useful and that is important enough to see learning this solo by ear as an independent goal.
I’ll talk more about some of the things you want to do when you are transcribing solos later in the video.
Let’s take another example which was one of the very first solos I ever learned played by no other than the father of Jazz Guitar!
Charlie Christian – Grand Slam
Sometimes you learn a solo just because you are curious about what is being played and why it sounds like Jazz. That was the main reason I checked out Charlie Christian’s Grand Slam solo. At that point, I had an idea about what it meant to solo over changes but I hadn’t figured out enough examples to really know what to do and how it worked.
This 30-second 2-chorus blues solo by Charlie Christian is a great study in especially rhythm. Charlie Christians playing here is bebop-related, but the lines are as much swing language as they are bop, and they are great clear examples of that. Often having rhythms like this in your playing is really overlooked, but it will really boost how you sound if you work on it.
This was on one of the first Jazz CDs that I ever bought and I sat down and learned this solo in a day to figure out what was going on. At the time I was tuning my Strat down a half step and not being familiar with Jazz found the key of F for a blues a very odd choice (and I was in fact playing it in F# of course), I have since become more used to playing Blues in F, maybe even more so than in E…
Two other guitarists, that I checked out a lot, both talk about Charlie Christian as their main influence: Wes Montgomery and Jim Hall. Jim Hall even credits the Grand Slam solo as the reason for him getting into playing Jazz.
Grant Green – Cool Blues
Another solo that I picked up along the way as a teacher was Grant Green’s solo on Cool Blues. Grant Green is a great resource for learning Bebop on guitar and most of my students have had his solos as homework.
This solo is on Green’s “Born To Be Blue Album” and it is full of the typical strong Bebop Grant Green language that is so useful to check out and also very playable on the guitar. I imagine he got it straight from Parker, but I actually don’t know. This is a practical solo because the tempo is relaxed and the solo is not that long.
A bonus to this recording is that Grant takes an extra solo before the last theme, so if you are in the zone you can check that out as well.
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Tips for Transcribing solos
There is a right and a wrong way to go about learning a solo by ear, and here are a few things you want to pay attention to and try to get right when you are learning a solo.
Listen To The Solo (And Then Listen To It Another 10 times)
This can not be understated, the more you listen to the solo the easier it will be for you to learn to play it, and trust me, you will probably save time if you first just listen to the solo a lot, and I mean REALLY a lot! In fact, just listen until you can sing it.
Know The Song
Solos in Jazz are generally on a form, and if you know the chords where they are in the song then you are going to have a much easier time learning the solo and hearing what is being played, simply because you know what that part of the song sounds like, for example, if you are transcribing a solo on Just Friends and knows that it goes from Bbmaj7 to Bbm6 then it is easier to figure out what is going on.
Learn Phrases Not Single Notes
If you want to remember what you are learning then it is important that you start thinking of the solo in phrases and learn it phrase by phrase. That way it is going to make more sense and be a lot easier to get into your system. It is similar to how you don’t try to learn a language word for word, but really try to learn to say something.
Don’t Write It Down, Focus On Playing The Solo
I think it is often overlooked what is most useful in learning a solo, because I don’t think it is the exact phrases or notes. It is much more about the way the phrase sits on the groove in this performance or the exact phrasing and subtle things like that don’t make into a transcription, so you are better of learning it by ear and memorizing it like that instead of writing it out and then playing what is on the page, which is really more of a reading exercise that leaves a lot of information behind.
Wes Montgomery – Four On Six
Four on Six is probably the most famous Wes song, and the first recording off “The Incredible Jazz Guitar” album is a great solo to check out for some of the things that you definitely want to learn from Wes:
Melodic and short phrases, motivic development, Call-response, rhythm. It is all in there.
For this solo you can also leave out the octave and chord parts as they are more difficult, just learning the first few single-note choruses will already teach you a ton of great stuff.
Learning Wes solos taught me a lot about phrasing and being melodic but still swinging, and the clarity in his melodic ideas are worthwhile checking out for anybody who wants to play Jazz. I ended up having a year in my study where I was always learning Wes solos and got through most of Smokin’ at The Half Note and a lot of other songs as well.
I have always loved how George Benson could make pretty much anything sound like fantastic Jazz phrases, and this solo on “The Borgia Stick, off The George Benson Cook Book” is no exception. This was also one of the first solos that I say down and obsessed about when I was just starting out, and I am still a bit surprised that I managed to figure out the chords in there.
This solo is great if you are not that at home in Jazz Harmony. The lines are surprisingly simple and most are really just A minor pentatonic stuff, but learning to play them and add all the beautiful rhythms and grace notes in this Benson solo is going to be great for your playing. His use of intervals and chords is also amazing and still fairly simple.
Honorable Mentions
Of course, there are many many solos to check out, and these 5 are just the tip of the iceberg. If you have great suggestions for Jazz guitar solos to learn then leave a comment, maybe we can make an even longer list of recommendations to help learn Jazz..
A few others that I spent time on, in the beginning, deserve a mention as well:
Jim Hall on Stella By Starlight, in fact, that whole first Jim Hall Album is a masterclass in swinging rhythms and motivic development, but the Stella solo is fairly easy to check out.
Another Stella solo is by Ulf Wakenius. This is fairly unknown, and it is off a Niels Henning Ørsted Pedersen album called “To A Brother” and Ulf Wakenius is playing a lot simpler than what I am used to from him, but both this solo and the one on Alone Together are great and really helped me out in the first few months when I had trouble telling what was the theme and what was the solo.
Another thing that you should not underestimate is the wealth of great solos that are on YouTube and not on any albums. A Solo that I always found to be a great example of Bensons playing is this really simple 1-chorus solo on Take The A-train from some obscure television show in the 70s. Lots of Blues but only great phrases! There are some hidden gems out there!
You can also download the PDF of my examples here:
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Sometimes everything you play sounds the same and it is uninspired and predictable. There are only so many arpeggios and scales, so chasing after that is not the answer. Instead, you want to become better at making the lines interesting. You want to use stronger melodies and develop your melodic skills.
In this video, I am going to show you a few different ways to look at your solo lines and give you an easy way to add some new melodic ideas to your playing. I am not happy to admit it, but these strategies took me years to figure out but you can just check out this video.
The Jazz Turnaround
I am going to use a basic Jazz turnaround in C major, Cmaj7 – A7(b9) – Dm7 – G7(b9), It is not that important what the progression is, but here you can easily hear how powerful this is and how it will improve your playing.
The first melodic approach is to add a lot of forward motion to the lines and then later I will show you some other very strong strategies to also start using.
The Strongest Type Of Connected Melody
This example is, what I would consider, a basic strong Jazz line with a natural flow, I’ll show you an example with a more interesting rhythm in a bit. The concept here is that you create lines that are moving to the target note on the next chord which really makes the chords clear and makes the melody flow in a natural way.
In this example, the C and D on Cmaj7 are taking us to the C# on the A7. In a similar way, the G G# A has a strong pull towards the final A, the 5th of Dm7. In this type of progression, you can really see the melodies as 4-note patterns ending on beat 1 or beat 3 (highlight)
Like this, the lines are a bit dense and fill up the bar, but if you open up the rhythm with the same strategy then it still works:
Now you have a more syncopated and interesting rhythm, but the target notes are still “contact-points” with the harmony. (highlight target notes in the example)
In this example, The C# on A7 is now anticipated and placed on 2& instead of 3, and the melodies in the 2nd bar are leaving more space and use more offbeats.
This is of course, great but not enough on its own. Let’s have a look at lines that use what is probably the strongest and most used approach to creating longer melodic phrases that really tell stories
Melodic Voice-leading
The technique I am talking about is, of course, motivic development. The foundation of a lot of storytelling in music. This is the reason that when you hear this the Imperial March in a Star Wars movie, then you already know who is coming down the ramp. He has a motif that is repeated and used whenever he appears. And this is something you want to use in your solos to tie the whole thing together.
A very clear example of motifs, without suggesting that Barney Kessel is like Darth Vader would be this part of his solo on Satin Doll.
First the large motif that is repeated and then the shorter motif that is repeated and then developed to end the phrase.
The way Kessel moves the motifs is by following the harmony and voice-leading the melody, just making slight variations to the rhythm.
Making you own motivic licks
Working on doing this through changes is a very useful exercise. For the Turnaround that could give you something like this:
Here the melodies are voice-leading very closely until the G7. That is a little freer to not be too predictable and also round off the phrase in a more natural way.
Whenever you work on stuff like this then try to make it into music.
A similar way to do this but then being a bit freer with the melodic direction could be something like this:
The concept here is to move down Coltrane Patterns through the progression, C major, Bbm, Am, Abm and there is a clear connection between each group because it is moving down similar melodies in a stepwise manner.
Of course, you can do the same thing with a simple two-note motif and in that way have room to make the rhythm more interesting. Moving motifs with rhythm are perhaps the technique that is the most powerful in Jazz solos. Just listen to Keith Jarrett or John Scofield.
There are other variations of motivic development that also are great ways to tie things together, let’s check one more out.
Sticky Notes
A pedal point is a static note that remains part of the melody or harmony through the progression. In the previous example, I was using a G since that is a note that works well through this progression which is in C major. The G is placed at the beginning of each phrase with a little bit of variation in the rhythm.
Again it pays off to explore melodies like this but with more accent on the rhythm. Something like this:
Some Great Tricks Using Direction Of Melody
This was something that took me a long time to figure out, and I don’t think I ever heard anybody talk about it in a lesson: You don’t want to have lines that always move in the same direction it becomes predictable and that makes the whole thing boring. So let’s take a look at a few ways to change that up. This example is moving to the target notes, but it is always changing direction on the heavy beats and that makes it a little too heavy, especially if you do this all the time.
All The Way Up!
It can be really cool and also create some tension and excitement to play a line that moves in the same direction throughout the progression like this:
And especially with the ascending lines, you get the effect of “melodic tension” which is a really cool way to change things up. But you can get the same effect moving down as well:
All The Way Down!
But the real trick is of course to change direction more often and have more surprising skips in your lines. You can do this with cascading lines with a more energetic rhythm like this:
Impressive Arpeggios
Melodic Triads
But a lot of it is also about adding some larger intervals into the lines and there are two ways that are easy to do that and still have melodic lines. The first one is to use some sort of pattern with arpeggios and let the arpeggio pull it all together:
And here as well you can open up the rhythm to add some nice syncopation to the mix:
The Bebop Way
Another fantastic way to get some larger intervals into your lines is this Bebop trick that they actually sort of stole from Bach: Octave displacement. This gives you lines like this:
Here you have octave displacement on the Em7 arpeggio over Cmaj7 and with the Fmaj7 arpeggio that I am playing over the Dm7 chord.
If you removed the octave displacement or reverse engineered the line then you could get something like this:
This sounds fine, but the movement in the previous example is more surprising and exciting.
If you want to explore more examples of what you can do with octave displacement then check out this lesson:
You can also download the PDF of my examples here:
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Some of the things that I really like to play in my solos are not just an arpeggio or just a scale run, but more a combination of things or a certain way of playing something that makes it more interesting.
In this lesson, I am going to show you 10 different patterns that I like to use for C7 chords. Most of them are longer runs for just a single chord, but you can, of course, use them in many ways.
Let’s just start with some of the basic arpeggios because there is a lot to be said for being creative with the things you already know and you can always get more out of them. Then gradually it is going to get more complicated and even outside.
#1 Know Your Arpeggios (even better)
This is coming out of a basic C7 arpeggio like this one:
But playing the pattern that I am using here makes it sound much more interesting because the pattern creates groups of 3 notes that move around on top of the meter in a very nice way.
A lot of what you want to explore with material like this is finding a combination of what makes the notes, arpeggio or scale or something else, sounds good and also practical and easy to play.
Before I am going to get into the less common structures then the next logical candidate is the arpeggio from the 3rd of the chord, Eø which becomes a great intervallic melody like this:
#2 It Doesn’t Really Sound Like An Arpeggio
This example is just a way of playing this basic arpeggio shape:
Here I am using legato-technique to make the line easier to play, by giving your right hand a bit more time to move, so the pull-off is giving you time to change to the next string.
This pattern is something you can apply to a lot of different arpeggios to get melodies that move around more instead of running up and down arpeggios or scales all the time.
Let’s check out some less obvious examples that sound really solid.
#3 Is It A Pentatonic Scale Or An Arpeggio?
This example is using a group of 5-notes, and I am playing it so that it repeats in octaves, something you will see quite often in this video, again really just because that is practical on the guitar.
The 5 notes are G A Bb D E which sort of spells out a Gm6/9 or you could consider it a type of Gm6 pentatonic scale. Against the C it is C7(9,13) so it is pretty spot-on for the sound of the chord.
The way I am using it here, it is turned into a melody that is a group of 6 notes. If you just play the pattern then you get 5 note groupings, and while groups of 5 notes might seem hipper, then the melody with the 6 notes is a bit more interesting and it is also easy to play.
If you want to practice the 5 notes you could turn that into this exercise:
The next example is a more distinct or dissonant sound on the chord but still works great.
#4 Digging The Wrong Note!
This pattern is a way to really emphasize a wrong note on the C7.
The basic group of notes is a Bb major triad with an added #11, which you could practice like this:
The note F is, sort of, a wrong note on the C7, and this pattern is really playing with that sound to get it to stand out.
I often convert melodies to chords to have an idea about how it sounds, and in this case, that would be this:
And the melody I am using here is designed to really make the E and the F come out on top of the chord to get that dissonance because that is the interesting effect here.
That is also why it is great to have it as a repeating pattern
Let’s have a look at some triad options that sound incredible!
#5 The Only Thing Better Than One Triad
I think that the only thing that is better than a triad is two triads, or rather a triad pair.
Here I am using Gm and Am triads, and the way I am improvising with them is pretty free, but I am using one triad at a time to create shifting colors on top of the chord.
If you want to improvise with triad pairs, then spend time learning triads in inversions, as diatonic triads in scales, positions and inversions, and string sets. That way it will get a lot easier to put them together in lines and create great sounds like this.
You can check out this video on practicing triads if you want some more strategies and exercises:
Now it’s time to add some interesting notes to the mix before I’ll show you some structures that are not really arpeggios like the ones I have used until now.
#6 Using Fancy Arpeggios
This arpeggio is from the C Lydian b7 or G melodic minor scale and it is not really a diatonic arpeggio:
Diatonic Arpeggios of G melodic minor:
GmMaj7 Am7 Bbmaj7(#5) C7 D7 Eø F#ø
But you can still construct it:
F# G A Bb C D E F# G
F# G A Bb C D E F# G – F# Bb D E
and it sounds great on the C7 chord as a C7(9,#11)
#7 Modern Structures And Great Melodies
You can view this as one large quartal arpeggio or two 3-note quartal arpeggios, and you can use it either way. I like this way of playing it because it creates a melody that is less one-directional.
You probably know the sound as chords like this:
But all of these you can also explore as arpeggios and they sound great because they are so different from the regular stacked 3rds that you use all the time.
Let’s check out a more exotic-sounding triad pair before it’s time to get into some outside stuff!
#8 Inside and Outside
Once you start to also use the Lydian dominant sound on the C7 you can actually get some really interesting sounds by finding the right way to emphasize that sound.
As you know the Lydian b7 and the basic C7 scale are identical except for the F# and F
C D E F G A Bb C
C D E F# G A Bb C
Using triad pairs can be a great way to create some beautiful sounding melodies that really get the sound across in an interesting way:
Here I am using the Bb augmented and the C major triads which together actually form a C7(9,#11)
C E G Bb D F#
1 3 5 b7 9 #11
I love how these shift on top of the chords and you should explore these for all sorts of melodic minor modes like altered dominants or Lydian dominants.
Now we can take it a bit outside!
#9 Wrong Triads Are Great As Well
This is Close to the sound of the Lydian b7, but it is more dissonant and more out.
I am using triads a tritone apart from the diminished scale.
The dim scale that goes with C7 is:
C Db Eb E F# G A Bb C:
and in there you have C, Eb, Gb, and A major triads.
This example uses the A and the Eb together:
This pattern gives you a lot of tension on top of the C7 but it is also not completely far away.
The next example is pretty out there and atonal so it should sound a lot more outside and dissonant than it actually does
#10 This Should Sound A Lot Weirder Than It Does
The Augmented scale is a weird-sounding scale because it is symmetrical and atonal but that is also why it can be such a nice effect on the chord. In this case, I am using the Bb augmented scale:
There are three major triads in there: Bb, D, and F#
If you think about the material in the scale it should sound pretty weird, but it actually sounds really cool and not that far out because of the strong symmetrical melodies.
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If you check out the solos by great Jazz players then you will probably find that they don’t really play other scales or notes than you do, simply because it is not about the notes you play, it is about what you play with them. So you don’t need new scales or arpeggios, you need to become better at making music with the ones you already know.
If you feel stuck and always playing the same things then this video will give you a straightforward way to deal with that and also a way to develop new things in your playing.
The Problem with Scales and Arpeggios
The problem is that you need to do more than just run up and down the scale to make the solo interesting, and it is difficult to be inspired with just an arpeggio and a scale.
So let’s say you are playing over a Dm7 chord in C major. You have the Dm7 arpeggio and also the scale that goes with it.
And you can make some solid lines with that as you can see here below:
But quickly things start to sound similar and it gets a bit boring and not so fun to play.
Checklist approach to inspiration
In this video, I am going to give you a checklist approach and show you how that can help you create a lot of new stuff, and also test and improve your abilities to create your own lines.
For all the chords you have to improvise over you have melodic tools or types of building blocks that you can use to create the melodies, and if you start thinking about it like that then you will help yourself come up with new and better material. And you can make that into a checklist and one of the first things you want to put on it would what I will cover next:
More Arpeggios
An obvious and practical place to start is to go a little beyond the basic arpeggio. So you can try other arpeggios or changing the rhythm of how you play the arpeggio
For example, turning it into a triplet works well for getting a Bebop sound:
but then try to see if you can use the one from the 3rd (play Fmaj7) and maybe play it as a triplet:
You could also see if the arpeggio from the 5th is an option, in this case, you have an Am7and then try to see if you can use that in a line:
The way you use this to add to your vocabulary is of course that if you can’t immediately use this in a line then you can sit down and work on composing a few examples and in that way start to get it into your playing and add to your vocabulary
But maybe you don’t feel like using arpeggios, then try using something else from the checklist:
Chromatic Melodies
Chromaticism is an important part of the Jazz sound, and there are many ways you can use this in your solos. Often a chromatic enclosure targeting a chord tone is a great idea:
Or some shorter enclosures and a few leading notes
The important thing is that if you feel stuck on a chord and you have this type of checklist it can help you come up with something to try, or prompt you to use this to create something new. This is not for stuff that you practice all variations of, it is for reminding you of things that you think sound great and that you want to use.
Let’s add another option that is a little less specific but really useful.
Bebop Tricks
This is hardly a very precise term, but for a list like this then the names don’t have to be theoretically correct, it is more important that it resonates with you, so if you think of Bebop tricks then that may be Parker inspired chromaticism *EXAMPLE
or it can be octave displacement.
It is about kick-starting your imagination after all.
Pentatonics
For a m7 chord then the pentatonic scale sounds like a pretty boring set of notes that you already have in the scale that you are using, but if you have some nice Pentatonic patterns then you can hear how it is a different sound that you can give to the things you play.
Maybe it will fit with what you are hearing, maybe it won’t, it could be that the Bebop inspiration is better here, but it is still useful to have on the list and it only takes a second to decide that it is not what you want.
What would you put on a list like this?
Since these concepts or tools that I am listing here are just general sounds that I use then maybe you have other ideas that you would like to add, leave a comment if you have a suggestion that I didn’t talk about since this can help spark a lot of useful ideas for others.
Outside
Another option that you can mess around with is to add some outside phrases in there, often a short side-slip or a super-imposed chord can be a great way to add some new sounds to this place in a song.
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Usually, you connect Jazz with chords with a lot of extensions and alterations. But Triads are still an amazing resource that you can create beautiful lines with and something you definitely want to check out. In fact, you can use triads to add some things to your playing that are essential to Jazz and not just about what notes you play over a chord.
Of course, there are more than two things that are great about triads, but the two I talk about here are really useful for Jazz, but If you have other suggestions why triads are great and how you can use them then leave a comment.
Diatonic Triads – The Raw Material
Before you start using the triads then you should also have an overview of them and two things you can work on to have that overview would be to practice the diatonic triads in the scales:
and also check out the triads on string sets like this:
This is simple and basic stuff, you want to know diatonic triads and 7th chords for all scales that you need for soloing, and please start with major scales because you need that the most.
Triads Can Help Your Rhythm
First I want to show you how you can use triads to create more interesting rhythms in your lines. One problem that many students run into, and I know I did, is that when they figure out how to play changes, then everything starts to sound heavy and obvious when it should be light and swinging.
So you don’t want to sound like this
What is missing here is that the rhythm and the melodies are predictable and all move to and from the heavy beats
And instead, you want the accents to be on off-beats more syncopation and more surprising and a lot lighter. Since triads are 3 notes they are really good for having melodies that shift accents and make the solo dance more. Something like this:
So I am playing triads to create a pattern of 3 notes that shifts on top of the 4-4 meter and in that way sound a lot better.
And you can explore this in many ways, you can also add chromatic passing notes and not only use triads but still get a great effect:
Finding Triads
To come up with lines like this then it is useful to find the triads that sound great over a chord. Then you have some options to create the licks that sound great.
I am going to give you an easy way to explore that, before covering the other great triad trick you that is super useful for so many other things as well. There is a very easy way to do that by writing the scale out in 3rds.
So for Dm7, this is coming from the C major scale, which you can write in 3rds like this:
C E G B D F A C E G
The Dm7 chord is here: D F A C, and the triads we can use would be
Dm, F, Am, and C which you can see still contain some basic chord tones and also adds some beautiful extensions.
The G7 that you heard in the examples was coming from the C harmonic minor scale, so in fact, you are borrowing the dominant from minor to get some interesting notes, and also some really great sounding triad options:
So here you have the C harmonic minor scale written out in 3rds.
C Eb G B D F Ab C Eb G
The G7 is here! and then you have the triads G Bdim and Ddim, but Eb augmented works as well and you can make some really interesting melodies with them.
Writing out stuff like this is incredibly useful for your overview of the scales and will give you a ton of options to use in your solos.
Change The Chords!
The other thing that triads do really well is that you can get your melodies to make sense by playing the triads of a super-imposed progression and in that way create a sort of counterpoint to the original chord progression. Because you are playing something that works but also moves differently.
This is pretty easy, you can do this on a single chord like this:
Here I am playing a short walk up Cmaj7 Dm7 Em7 just using the basic triads and since Em sounds great on C major then the Dm triad just becomes a diatonic passing chord used in the melody that resolves back into the sound of the Cmaj7. But it really adds some movement instead of just playing up and down a Cmaj7 arpeggio.
More Chord Progressions
The same type of concept used on a II V I could give you something like this:
Here I am using triads from both C major and C harmonic minor, first walking up Dm and Em and then Fm and G from harmonic minor adding a Ddim before resolving. In this way, you have a line that shifts on top of the meter with 3-note groupings and also adds a different kind of movement in the chords.
Notice how using stepwise movement is a pretty easy and strong way to create these progressions.
This is a variation of the same idea, but now moving down from F to Dm and then using a D dim triad to get the G7(b9) sound.
If you really want to open up this type of thinking then you want to also add the triads in the altered scale, that gives you something like this:
Here the chord progression is F and Am on the Dm7 and then Abm and Db on the G7alt . You can hear how this also might work as chords:
And you sort of can turn the G7alt into a tritone II V using Abm7 Db7.
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This video is coming out of the worst advice that I see given on the internet, maybe not the worst advice but certainly, the most horrible way to give it.
I am talking about when somebody asks something about getting better at playing anything with Jazz guitar and the standard answer is “Learn from the masters”. Now don’t get me wrong, it is super useful to check out solos by ear, but without any context or suggestions than “learn from the masters” is so lazy that it is just bad advice. You might as well just say “practice guitar” Feel free to answer them with this rant!
Any good teacher will have much more specific advice that will help you get started learning some easy solos, and I know that because I asked a lot of them and this video is full of their suggestions for great easy solos to check out.
Let me know in the comments if there was one that you really liked or if you have other useful suggestions, this topic is not covered anywhere near enough and that is really a pity.
Thanks to all the great musicians and teachers who were a part of this video! Again if you have solos that are easy to learn and useful for playing Jazz then leave a comment and let’s start building a solid list!
Maybe it says something about my abilities as a teacher or maybe I should make a separate video with some suggestions for easy solos?
Besides working on learning solos by ear, you also want to work on learning a lot of other things and you can check out this playlist if you want to dig into which arpeggios, how to play over chord changes or how to play jazz chords all the basic things you need to work on and how to get started.
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There is a skill that you can develop in your playing that will really help you play jazz solos, and this is not even that difficult to get started with all you need is a few arpeggios and a simple progression. This video will also show you how to practice more efficiently and not drown your practice sessions in just doing exercises.
An Easy Exercise on a Blues In F
One of the first exercises you should do if you want to get started playing Jazz is to outline a chord progression with one-octave arpeggios. Here is an easy version of that, and you can maybe even try to play along right away. After that, I will show you how to make that into a really strong solo developing rhythms, phrasing, and forward-motion, and I will also explain why I think this one of the most important things about being efficient with what you practice.
F Jazz Blues with arps
If this is still a bit tricky to play you can take the video back and try again or practice it later and return to really nail it, just because sometimes that really feels good.
Notice that you just need 5 one-octave arpeggios for this jazz blues and 4 of them are dominant arpeggios (show diagrams on screen)
F7:
Bb7:
D7:
Gm7:
C7:
Some Easy Music on a Blues In F
With this exercise, you can already start to make some music, and you want to, because that is why you practiced the arpeggios in the first place and it is not so difficult. I’ll play the example and then talk about how you go about playing like that.
F Jazz Blues
When you improvise like this then you are limited to four notes, and that can maybe seem difficult because you want to play bebop lines like
But with just the arpeggio you can start working on some things that are just as important as playing many notes: Phrasing and Rhythm and that is a much bigger part of Jazz in the end than long 8th note lines. Especially working on adding some interesting rhythms to your playing.
If you want some inspiration for this type of playing on guitar then Charlie Christian is worthwhile checking out.
What You Can Learn From Charlie Christian
When I was starting out playing Jazz then I was lucky in one way because one of the first things I had was a compilation album of Charlie Christian, I also had some Scofield and some Charlie Parker which I also loved, but at the time I could only figure out how to learn the Charlie Christian solos. Scofield was too weird and Parker was too fast and difficult to learn by ear. Charlie Christian’s style of playing is a lot less dense and with a lot of clear examples of great swinging rhythms which you want to learn. That is one HUGE reason to check out Charlie Christian and learn some stuff. Remember that Jim Hall heard one Charlie Christian Solo and from that decided to dedicate his life to playing Jazz music.
Notice that I immediately start making music with the arpeggios that I am practicing, that is very important for everything you work on, I’ll return to that a little later.
Next, Let’s try adding some different types of phrasing, so you have some more sounds available and can change that up as well.
Some Easy Phrasing on a Jazz Blues In F
As you can tell this is really simple, you can add a lot more blues feeling and dynamics just by using some slides (example) and some (hammer-on/pull-off) and when you do that then you are really focusing on the music and how it sounds, it is not about technique or being flashy, you are trying to get it to sound great.
Another thing that is really a part of Jazz which you can also work on with this is to make the changes clear with strong natural flowing melodies, so that is something I’ll show you how to develop later as well.
Should You Practice All The Arpeggios?
What you can see here is that I am really working on getting as much music as possible out of these few arpeggios, and I think that is something to keep in mind, I at least need to remind myself very often, that you don’t always want to spend time first learning all inversions in all keys and all positions, on all string sets in all tempos, subdivisions and all tunings — phew
Maybe it is actually more efficient for your playing if you take a single position work on some simple and easy arpeggios and really get that to the place where you can make music with it. That is much more useful than getting lost in a sea of technical exercises because you actually get to make music with it and you can check out the next position some other day.
Nailing The Changes on a Blues In F
Now that you can play some interesting rhythms and add some phrasing to those lines, then it makes sense to also start to make the melodies longer so that you don’t end up just playing short isolated melodies for each chord which is hard to get to sound like a great solo.
There are a few ways you can do that and the first one you might have heard me talk about before is: Thinking ahead and playing towards target notes. When you do that with simple material like this then you are really working on digging into the harmony and figuring out how it moves and how you can improvise with that movement and connect a longer melody across chords.
The concept is simple: For each chord, you pick a target note and then you practice making melodies with your 4-note arpeggios that lead to the target note on the next chord. An example could sound something like this:
I took this part of the form because it has the most movement so that you can easily hear and understand what is going on.
An easy target note is often the 3rd of the chord simply because that is the most colorful note. This is also why you think about chords in two groups: major or minor depending on the 3rd.
As you can hear and see in the example, the solo really connects with the harmony moving from D7, Gm7 to C7 and because I am thinking ahead and playing towards a note then the melody has a natural flow and sounds much stronger.
With this technique you don’t only want to practice connecting everything and end up with one long line weaving through the entire form, there are other ways to play solid melodies, and one of them is really tied to Blues as a genre.
Blues Melodies But They Work in Jazz
Sometimes it seems that the advice nobody is giving is that you have to learn how to listen to yourself, and I don’t mean that you have to learn to listen to recordings of yourself, even though that is important too. I am talking about playing a phrase and then listening to how it sounded and using this to play the next phrase. When you are playing a solo then working like this is like having a conversation with yourself, and we usually refer to this way of making melodies as call-response.
This is an incredibly effective way to tie together phrases and pretty simple to do and is mostly about giving yourself time to listen and respond. An example of how that might sound could be this:
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Sometimes it is great to have some things to fall back on when you are soloing. Stuff that you can easily get to sound good and that fits the chord, whether you solo on a song or on a Blues, you don’t want to run out of ideas or play something that doesn’t work.
In this video, I am going to show you some easy things to use on a C7 chord. Most of this stuff, you already know, I just want to show you how to tweak it and make it sound better.
Chromatic Shortcut
So we keep it simple, this C7 and this scale around it:
You probably know this way of adding chromatic enclosures around the notes of a chord where you use a diatonic note above and a chromatic note below. Joe Pass does this really often.
There is a way of using this that nobody really talks about, that really makes it sound so much better, I will get to that in a minute.
Like anything else, you should mix it with other things like the scale. Then you can make lines like this:
Here I have an enclosure around the G and the E, but this line sounds a little predictable and you can make it much more interesting if you turn around the enclosures:
so now I am skipping down to F# back up to A and then resolve to G, and the same thing happens on the E. This makes the line sound much more interesting and unpredictable but still has a natural flow.
So if you work on using enclosures then think about turning them around like I am doing here, that can really make a huge difference.
Make an Arpeggio Sound Amazing
Before I show you a visual trick that works great for dominant chords then you should check out this really useful concept that combines arpeggios, chromaticism and triplet rhythms.
If you have seen any of my videos then you have probably heard me talk about how you can use the arpeggio from the 3rd of the chord.
For the C7 then you have the C7 arpeggio and from the 3rd, the E, then you have this Eø arpeggio.
This already gives you a lot of material, but an easy way to play this arpeggio so it sounds even better is to add some chromaticism around it and change the rhythm.
Here you add a chromatic leading note before the arpeggio, play the arpeggio as a triplet to add a little energy, and then also add some chromaticism going down from the top note.
And this works great for the Eø, George Benson does this all the time, but you can also do that from the root:
As you can see it is great to really know the diatonic arpeggios because a lot of them work on other chords, so if you want to check out some exercises for this then check out this video called The Most Important Scale Exercise For Jazz
Visual Triad and Quartal arpeggios
You probably know this as the top of a C7(13)
and a great visual connection is how this is diagonal across the strings and you can flip it around and then you have a C major triad.
and that is what I am using here, which sounds great and is pretty easy to play.
Let’s look at some another great arpeggio option
A Secret Arpeggio
One arpeggio, which is in fact another favorite of both Charlie Parker and George Benson, is using the arpeggio from the 7th of the chord, so for C7 that is a Bbmaj7 arpeggio. (filmed end of the examples no backing)
That is what I am using here, playing it as a triplet and putting it together with some basic scale melodies, typical bebop
But you can also connect it to a Gm triad like this:
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