There are some amazing lessons available online, and I feel really proud to be in a community of so many great teachers and players. I thought it could be fun to give you a chance to check out some short lessons and both learn something useful and maybe discover a new YT channel to learn from, so I asked a few people that I think make great videos to create a short lesson on their best advice for students something that was a game-changer for them. Some of these are people I recently found and some of them are old friends of mine.
Adam Levy – Most Efficient Jazz Chords
Let’s start with Adam Levy who I hope you already know. His YouTube channel has a lot of great thoughtful advice and some fantastic interviews as well, his credentials as a teacher and the long list of successful artists he has worked with speak for themselves, the lesson is crystal clear, and also how Adam went about learning Jazz chords
Richard Peña – Making Everything Bebop
Later Sandara Sherman demonstrates a way to use Shells like these for soloing, but first, a recent discovery for me is Richard Peña, he is an amazing Jazz guitar player and has some great lessons on Instagram and YouTube, you definitely want to check him out.
Mikko Hilden – Hearing The Diminished Scale
You have seen Mikko on this channel before, I really like how he digs into topics and really explores them in a personal and thorough way, also great that he does a lot of more modern approaches. This one is about a way to not only learn the diminished scale but also how to hear it, which is much more difficult.
Quist – Rhythm First!
Rhythm and timing are so essential to Jazz, and this exercise from Quist is a great way to work on this in a more creative way as well. I am sure you already know Quist from his backing track channel, and amazing intro which you can also find on instagram and tiktok, you should also check out some of his lofi albums.
Chase Maddox – Technique And Vocabulary
Another recent discovery for me is Chase Maddox, which you may already know from the JazzMeme’s instagram that he runs with his brother, but his own YouTube video channel I have found to e a great resource for a lot of solid vocabulary and technique lessons which is also related to this exercise, and then we need to check out some Guide tone tips from Sandra and some Bebop triads.
Sandra Sherman – Guide-tone soloing
I doubt if Sandra needs any introduction, I am sure you already know her channel with lots of great lessons on chord melody and other topics. She sort of takes the same starting point as Adam did but applies it to soloing where it is as useful:
Alon Albagli – Bebop Triads
Alon Albagli, is another recent discovery he’s actually also kind of new to YouTube but he makes really solid videos and his chord Melody playing and the way he works with chords is just amazing so definitely check that out you probably also want to check out his recent solo album on Spotify
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Scale Exercises are the source of a lot of problems. I remember running into this myself when I was starting out and I also hear about it often from students. You practice a lot of exercises, but is it really helping you play better, or are you just repeating the same exercises without getting anywhere?
For me, there were some exercises that really were game changers in learning Jazz, simply because they could do more than just teach me how to play an arpeggio or a scale, and if you want to improve your playing then you should check if they won’t also be very useful for you.
What is maybe a little weird about them is that they are not all the type of exercise that you work on everyday for months with a metronome, because there are other things you need to learn besides technique, and there are other ways to practice than using a metronome. I think one of them is also a very powerful and practical way to build a fretboard overview.
Is this a video with a list that get’s filled in along the way? (#1, #2, #3, #4, #5 visible from the beginning)
#1 The Scale
B-roll:
Disappointment: Frustrated Emoji!
Playing a scale slowly
List On screen:
1 Start With The Major Scale
2 Practice All Keys
3 Be Aware and Focused
With a build-up like this is then it is maybe a bit of a disappointment that the first exercise is practicing the scale, since you are hopefully doing that already and you probably trying to not sound like you are playing scales when you solo and want to develop your musicality. But, playing the scale and knowing what notes are in there is important and as you will see it will serve as a foundation for everything else in this video plus that it is the shortest exercise you can imagine with a scale,
just make sure that you:
Start with the major scale in one position before adding other positions and other scales
Gradually get around to all keys so that you get flexible with that
Don’t just play them mindlessly but try to make them sound good and be aware of what you are playing.
There is a video of Pat Metheny turning scale practice into music which I think is very inspiring.
The next exercise is a logical extension of practicing scales, and also what I often refer to as “the most important exercise for Jazz”, but remember that if you are practicing scales then it only takes a short amount of time to go over a key in all positions, and you can set up systems so that you get through all keys over a few days. It shouldn’t take hours of practice every day because you also need to play music when you practice!
As you will see with the rest of the exercises then it is important to connect things, not only the scale, arpeggios and vocabulary, but also chords, you will see what I mean.
#2 Diatonic Arpeggios
I learned this exercise the first time I went to a Barry Harris masterclass in the Hague, and it was an exercise that changed everything about how I practiced and made it all much closer connected to the music that I wanted to learn to play: Bebop. And for me, the goal of all of these exercises is to help you play better Jazz, and this exercise is actually a direct link to the music, and I think it is crazy that not everyone teaches this to their students.
Diatonic Arpeggios sounds difficult, but it is pretty simple, if you play the scale in positions then you can play a 7th chord arpeggio for each note in the scale by essentially stacking 3rds.
Explainer/close-up (a bit quick since it is twice) – hand + diagram + letters?
Show the process of stacking 3rds:
For C major if I start on C, then I build a 7th chord by stacking 3rds: C, E, G, B which is Cmaj7
for Dm7 it is the same thing: D, F, A, C.
You can probably tell that there are obvious technical benefits to working on this exercise, but if you are also aware of what notes and what arpeggios you are playing then you are really connecting some very important information on the guitar to the chords you want to solo over.
Doing this exercise makes it possible for you to take a Jazz standard and play arpeggios through the entire progression, which is a great beginning for internalizing a song and having a place to start with soloing over it, where you take an arpeggio and build a phrase around it.
Besides being a very solid foundation for improvising over chords and learning songs then it will also give you a lot more material, because if you analyze transcriptions of great Jazz musicians then you will find a lot of other arpeggios being used besides the arpeggio of the chord itself, and you are completely ready for doing that if you work on this exercise.
Take a look at how this line uses other arpeggios over the chords than the chord itself.
There are arpeggios from other chord tones that sound great over the chords, and like this you already know them!
Example II V I with other arpeggios. — First play it then cut to quick highlights with the line above as voice over
Let’s look at some exercises that are not just regular exercises, but also incorporate some chords before we get to exercises for vocabulary and fretboard overview
#3 Diatonic Chords
When you are playing Jazz then you are both playing solos and chords because you are not soloing ALL the time, and you can practice chords in scales as well, which for me was a very useful way to work on exploring new voicings, getting familiar with diatonic chords and how their extensions sound. You can even do chords in scale positions.
This exercise is actually possible with all types of chords, but the most basic version is probably a good place to start and that is to go through the major keys using shell-voicings.
If you know your major scales well enough to know the notes in there then this can be a great exercise since it is not always practical to start on the root.
For example if you want to play Diatonic chords in C major with the shell-voicings that have the root on the 6th string then you can’t start on C and F or E is a better option.
You could also explore doing this in a position, but that will not be useful for that many types of voicings, thought it is a nice exercise for the shell voicings:
The main benefits from this exercise are:
Know the chords in a key, and how they sound
Making it easier to play songs & hear the harmony
Exploring how chords move through a scale
Now, you have the scale linked to both arpeggios and chords, so let’s connect it to the notes that are not in the scale since they are a part of the picture in Jazz as well.
#4 Chromatic Notes
This exercise is such a simple concept but when I first came across it then it immediately resonated with me and it really sounds like Jazz, already as an exercise. Of course, this comes from how frequently it is a building block in Jazz solos and especially Bebop lines. When I was given the exercise then I had already heard it 1000s of times in the solos Charlie Parker, Pat Martino and Wes Montgomery, so playing it really just made that click into place and gave me tons of phrases to use in my solos.
I am, as you may have guessed, talking about the Bebop arpeggio exercise, which I have also mentioned in other videos, and this was an exercise that I learned the first time I was at a Barry Harris workshop in the Hague.
The exercise is simple, you play each diatonic arpeggio as an 8th-note triplet and add a leading note in front of it, but it is also a great example of an exercise that is already vocabulary,
something you can use in countless lines and actually also illustrates why Barry’s method is so powerful: It is based on making exercises that are already solo lines, like this:
Obviously this is just the tip of the iceberg, and you can do so much more with adding chromatic notes or even chromatic phrases to arpeggios or intervals, and they will all be good exercise, in fact any vocabulary that you like is probably worth taking apart and turning into exercises.
Most of them will not be used as often as this one in solos, but they are still fun and useful to explore.
You can let me know in the comments if you want a link to a playlist with some of the Barry Harris videos I have done that go deeper into his method and his system for chromatic notes.
The Bebop arpeggio exercise is the typical “scale exercise” that you can work on in all keys and positions with a metronome. You could approach the next exercise like that as well, but I am not sure I think that is the point of it really. However, It does really fit with the Barry Harris ideology and it is the BEST exercise for building a practical overview of the fretboard.
#5 Vocabulary
I remember when I was starting out and with a lot of the songs I could solo over, then there would be chords where I did not have the freedom to move around on the neck, I was stuck in a single position. if I had been given these exercises then that would have developed a lot faster than it did, in fact this is probably the most practical and efficient fretboard knowledge exercise that you can work on.
The idea of learning a phrase and taking it through all 12 keys isn’t usually considered a scale exercise, but it really is a great exercise for your overview of the scale and it will help you get better at finding the things that you want to use in your solos on the instrument.
Of course, phrases don’t always fit in a single scale, but then the different scales that are in the phrase anyway go together in the music so linking them up is incredibly useful.
There are two ways you can approach this, which are different takes on the geometry of the guitar, and both are equally useful. In the end, you can use both long and short phrases and explore how it is to move them around, but for this I will stick to a relatively short phrase which is a pivot arpeggio
and an altered dominant line
like this:
Example Bebop line + Bebop line in one position and lots of keys and Bebop line in one key and several positions (Maybe Joe Pass Etudes in several positions)
The first variation is the traditional approach, so take the phrase through all 12 keys (and yes, for stuff like this the whole 15 or 30 keys or whatever that was, doesn’t make any sense at all, so 12 keys!). For this one, I am going to focus on staying around the same area of the neck, it probably won’t make sense to insist on staying completely in the same position, instead the priority should be to stay in the same area while keeping it playable and also possible to play with decent phrasing. This is much more useful, and you want to be practical!
This phrase combines an altered dominant with the key of the II V I which is a really useful connection, and taking it through the keys help you identify important building blocks in those keys and also know what the altered dominant is in those keys, which is (obviously) going to be very useful, we are not all playing in bands like AC/DC where 85% of the songs are in A.
If you are working on this exercise with licks that have common progressions and common building blocks then this is a great exercise for your playing, fretboard overview, ear training and vocabulary. It is good for a LOT of things.
The Guitaristic version of this is also really worthwhile, because you can also use this to develop the visual skills associated with the guitar and your overview of the neck.
As I mentioned in the beginning of this section then I found myself in a place where I was practicing scales in all positions, but I was only able to solo in some of those positions. I only knew how to play the scale in some places without having any vocabulary. Taking a simple phrase and then sticking to one key, but exploring how to play it in all positions is in a way the guitar version of moving a lick through 12 keys, and that can be an exercise that really opens up scale positions for you. When you find the building blocks that you need in each position by moving some lines through the positions, then it gets easier to solo in those positions. In fact, I was given this exercise by a teacher later when I moved to Copenhagen and it did indeed quickly start to do exactly that for my playing. This is also the kind of exercise that you can explore doing with the shot solos from the book the Joe Pass Guitar Style to get more out of them, but you can check that video out later.
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You want to use the things that you practice, so if your scale exercises are already solid vocabulary or solid licks then that is, of course, a lot easier. Practicing scales should not just be dry technical and boring. What you work on should really connect with what you want to play in your solos and be more than just moving your fingers. So let’s have a look at some great examples of exercises that are really just “Instant Bebop” vocabulary.
Practice Bebop Arpeggios, Not Just Chord Tones!
This is an important exercise! In my experience, the best way to practice arpeggios is as diatonic arpeggios in a scale like this.
That is of course, super useful but also in itself not that inspiring.
Let’s add two things that we love about Bebop and Jazz:
Chromatic Notes to add tension and movement
Interesting Rhythms to keep it grooving and alive
Let’s first work a bit with making the rhythm just a little bit more interesting.
One way to make the rhythm more energetic could be to play the arpeggio as an 8th note triplet like this:
This is something that immediately gives you licks like this:
and you can turn that into a scale exercise like this:
If you play this exercise then you can use this rhythm on all the chords and in a lot of different places, and it already starts to sound like music.
The Chromatic Leading Note
Another great way to use arpeggios that are “Instant Bebop” is combining the triplet with a chromatic leading note:
Of course, you want to work on this for all the arpeggios, so taking it through the scale gives you this:
And, besides sounding like Charlie Parker or George Benson out of the box, this means that you can make licks like this:
Here I am combining the Cmaj7 with some chromaticism, something that both Parker and Benson do all the time.
You can also put it to use on a G7:
There are a few things you want to learn from this example:
The arpeggio from the 3rd of the chord is great (here it is Bø over G7)
Leading notes can sound great on the downbeat like the Eb on beat 3
Large intervals in a scale run sound great! (I’ll return to that later in the video)
And all you have to practice is playing the arpeggio as a triplet and add a chromatic leading note before the first note. Before we move on to a great Barry Harris Exercise then don’t forget that the descending arpeggio sounds great as well, a simple version without the leading note gives the 1st note of the arpeggio a nice accent like this:
Barry Harris Knows A Few Tricks!
The first exercise was something that I learned from Barry Harris when he was giving masterclasses at the conservatory in the Hague, this next exercise is also from those masterclasses. It is what Barry calls pivot arpeggios, and what often is also called octave displacement, but the way Barry shows the exercise really already makes it like practicing building blocks for great licks.
The concept is really simple: First, you play the arpeggio and end by going down one step in the scale.
The second part is the same melody, but now you move the phrase down an octave except for the first note.
Let’s translate this to the guitar, an easy place to play it would be F major like this:
I imagine you can already hear how this already just sounds like a short lick you are moving around, and actually, both the standard way of playing the arpeggio and the pivot version is great as a line.
here’s a II V I in F major:
And it is a solid option for an Fmaj7 line as well:
And as I mentioned, you can also use the “un-pivoted” version as a great way to frame or target a note with an arpeggio like I am targeting the 3rd of the Gm7 in this line:
And cleary Barry knows his stuff because the triplet version of this melody is also a great option:
Until now it has been about getting arpeggios to become amazing Bebop lines, but you can actually also work on this with simpler scale exercises.
Bebop Boost Your Scale Runs
This exercise is just playing the scale in diatonic 6th intervals, a really pretty sound in itself but not immediately an amazing Bebop line.
I guess this is the least obvious exercise, but as you will see it is incredibly useful!
The reason why it doesn’t sound like a lick is that you are playing so many of them next to each other, so you need to spread them out a bit and add them to something like a scale run.
And this is what I used in the previous examples like ex 3 and ex 4, the concept is pretty simple. If you have a scale melody then see if you can add an extra note when you are on a chord tone. In Example 14 that was on the root which adds an E. In example 3 it was the 3rd down to the 6th, and placing it at the end of the line makes it even more dramatic.
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You need many skills if you want to play Jazz, and some of them can be hard to find good exercises for, or even realize that you need to work on them. In this video, I am going to go over 3 Easy exercises that will help you play better solos and develop skills that are difficult to fix by just practicing scales, arpeggios, or chords.
#1 Playing Changes – A Little Easier
Hope you are having a great day playing some Jazz! This video should help you develop your melodies, your rhythm and your phrasing.
This is something you get hit by very hard the first few times you try to improvise over a jazz standard. I know I certainly did, thinking that it must be impossible to follow the chords that move so fast! When you try to play a solo, chords are flying at you left and right and it seems like you have to be a math genius or a computer to figure out what to play and where to play it.
But improvising over chord changes is a part of Jazz and you want to be able to not only follow the chords but also play melodies that make sense.
This first exercise makes that a lot easier, and mastering this and the next exercise will already make you sound really good when you solo.
Let’s use a bit of the Standard How High The Moon:
The chords are:
The Trick is to do the “calculations” beforehand because eventually, you can get by without having to solve crazy equations whenever you see a chord progression, that is mostly a matter of experience. If you practice like this then you build that skill and it becomes something you can quite easily get into your playing (B-roll on top: complex equation overlay on How High The Moon)
I am not going to cover how you find chord tones, diatonic arpeggios and how to analyze chord progressions in this video. I want to focus on how you practice soloing, but if you want to dig into that then check out the playlist I link to in the description with videos that help you get started with that:
Of course, you want to play something on the chord progression that makes sense and has a natural flow. The best way to do that is to play phrases that begin on one chord and end on the chord change.
So in the song, when you move from Gmaj7 to Gm7 then the chords sound like this:
and a clear line going from Gmaj7 to Gm7 could sound like this:
So you play towards a very clear note in the next chord often a chord tone, and you can hear how it gives you a natural-sounding melody and also makes the change of chord very clear.
With How High The Moon:
Essentially this is two bars of G major, the key of the piece followed by a II V I in F major.
The simple thing you can do is to target the 3rd of the chord, but you should also check how well the 5th might work because that is a very strong melodic note, the 7th is for solos often not a very strong target note. If you play like this then that could give you:
So when you want to develop this skill then take the chord progression and
1 – Find target notes (especially 3rd and 5th)
2 – Make sure Target Notes are in the same area of the neck
3 – Practice playing short phrases to hit each target note
To develop this keep it simple, in one position and one target note at a time. If you develop a skill like this you can expand on it later.
You also want to give yourself time to think ahead, so just stop on the target note and think about making a melody to the next target note. Later you can open this up and become much freer and also not only play to target notes on beats one and three.
This approach is one of the best ways to develop a natural flow when you improvise over changes and learning to think ahead is incredibly important for so many things in Music, not just playing solos over chord changes.
Working like this you can end up with some very heavy phrasing that doesn’t really sound like Jazz which is why you want to check out the next exercise.
#2 The Most Important Part Of Jazz
The most important ingredient in Jazz is rhythm, but it can be difficult to develop mainly because you forget it when you focus on the chord changes and that can really ruin how you sound.
In general, a great way to develop a skill is to reduce your freedom with other things so that you are forced to focus on training and developing that skill.
When it comes to rhythm, then a very useful exercise is to limit your note choice so that you only have two notes and have to focus on being creative with rhythm to get what you play to work, and if you try this exercise then you will probably be surprised how much you can learn. Let’s check out an example and then talk about what you need to focus on to really develop your rhythm.
You Stepped Out Of A Dream
When you set up this exercise for yourself:
1 – Try to choose notes that are mostly chord tones and close to each other across chords so that you have an easier time connecting.
2 – Explore how to use a lot of off-beats especially ending phrases on an off-beat
(this is the sound of bebop phrasing and will help your solos sound 10x better)
3 – Try to play melodies with quarter notes
You always focus on learning to play 8th note lines and forget how great it can sound to play quarter-note rhythms
#3 Passing Notes – Grown Up Jazz Licks
When you can already play a solo over the harmony and you are beginning to use some more interesting rhythms
Maybe cut in: “I mean that you are working on exercise one and two from this video…”
Then you can start working on making the melodies more surprising and more complicated, and you do that by playing a lot of wrong notes and then resolving them to some right notes.
Obviously, this is a HUGE topic, but an easy way to get started is to do two really simple things:
1 Add a chromatic note before the start of a phrase like an arpeggio
2 Add a chromatic note between two notes in the scale.
And if you if put that to use over Ladybird then that sounds like this:
In the beginning, you want to resolve to chord tones and have the resolution on the beat, as you see here where:
The first Cmaj7 bar starts with adding a chromatic passing note between D and C, and later between A and G
on the Fm7 I am adding a chromatic leading note before the Fm7 and making the arpeggio an 8th note triplet which is a great Bebop sound.
The Bb7 has a passing note between the C and the Bb, and transitions back to the Cmaj7 by moving up from the 5 to the G on Cmaj7
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Any scale exercise is a melody. When you practice scale exercises you are practicing playing a lot of similar melodies that you want to have in your ears and in your fingers so you can use them when you improvise Jazz Solos. In Jazz, Scale exercises are a part of building vocabulary.
This video covers some great melodic structures that you can practice as scale exercises and add to your vocabulary. I find that them extremely useful and you will also hear them being used in a lot of especially more modern jazz solos by people ranging from Michael Brecker via Peter Bernstein to Kurt Rosenwinkel.
The PDF with examples for this video is available through Patreon. You can check out my Patreon Page here: https://www.patreon.com/jenslarsen
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It is important that we practice and improve our technique, and often a good way to do this is to work on jazz guitar exercises like a phrase or musical fragment. In this video I am going to go over some technical topics you can work on and a few phrases to help you develop your technique.
The format of this lesson is different from what I normally do since it is a set of exercises to work on that will work as technical and musical exercises teaching you.
#1 Triads are great Jazz Chords
#2 Mix Triads with 3-part Quartal chords and sus4 triads
#3 Advanced 3-Part Jazz Chords
#4 Drop2 chords
#5 Drop2 chords with extensions
#6 Beautiful Inner-voice movement
#7 Must Know Drop2 voicings
#8 Medium-swing Bop Lines
#9 Chaining Arpeggios together
#10 Charlie Christian Inspired
#11 F7 Blues line #1
#12 F7 Blues line #2
#13 F7 Blues line #3
#14 Challenge your right-hand
#15 String Skips in arpeggios
#16 Quartal arpeggios
#17 Using Legato in lines
#18 Using Slides
#19 Legato in arpeggios
#20 8th note triplets in lines #1
#21 8th note triplets in lines #2
#22 8th note triplets in lines #3
#23 Sweeping Arpeggios #1
#24 Sweeping Arpeggios #2
#25 Sweeping Arpeggios #3
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If you want to play jazz and want to learn how to play jazz solos then you are probably also practicing scales and working on scale exercises.
In this lesson, I am going to go over a few scale exercises that you probably already know or at least should check out and then I am going to talk about how to connect them to chords and really use them to make music.
It is very important that you don’t just work on moving your fingers with exercises, you should always try to practice the things you need when you are playing.
Getting Started – Basic Scale Exercises
So first I am going to go over a few exercises and then I am going to relate this to a little simple music theory and show you how you can turn that into something you can make music with.
Let’s look at some of the fundamental things you check out in a scale, just playing the scale and playing thirds.
Lets take a Cmaj7 chord and this C major scale.
You want to play these two exercises because they are going to help you develop the technique to play the things that you can use in lines. Of course, you can use both 3rd intervals and scale runs in solos, but that is something I will save for another lesson.
The Mighty Triad – Powerful Melodic Structures
For most of this lesson, I am going to focus on how to practice and use triads because they are both flexible and powerful tools in soloing. But the process is really the same for all sorts of arpeggios.
There are a few great ways to practice triad arpeggios in the scales. First here is a basic version: play Diatonic Triads
But you can also give it more of a jazz sound already at the exercise level by adding leading notes both ascending
and descending:
Now we can start working on making some really great sounding licks with these exercises, but first, we need to figure out which triads will work over a Cmaj7.
Music Theory (just a little..)
Now, we have 7 triads in the scale. They don’t all sound that great on the chord, so first we need to find some that work.
The only note that sounds funny on the Cmaj7 is an F. I don’t like calling it an avoid note, but if we are looking for triads then that is not the greatest one to use.
We have all these triads: C, Dm, Em, F, G, Am, Bdim,
C: C E G Dm: D F A Em: E G B F: F A C G: G B D Am: A C E Bdim: B D F
If we remove the triads that contain an F then we get these 4 triads C, Em, G, Am
These fit!
C: C E G (1, 3, 5) Em: E G B (3, 5, 7) G: G B D (5, 7, 9) Am: A C E (13(6), 1, 3)
Now we can start making lines with these exercises and then I will show you another exercise that is great for creating solid melodies
Making Lines with the triads
The first example is using an Em triad and adding a leading note to the 5th:
Another way to work with the Em triad is to play the triad as a triplet to change up the rhythm:
You can also chain together triads as I am doing here with G major and Em triads:
Another Great Exercise
Since the triads work so well in licks it is also possible to change the order of the notes. Until now it was always 1 3 5 or 5 3 1 but if you practice other patterns you can really get some great melodies as well.
Here is a simple pattern that starts on the third: 3 1 5 pattern example
If I make some licks with this pattern then you get something like this:
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.
The ingredients of most common approach to jazz guitar: Scales and Arpeggios. never thought I would hear myself say this, but you can make some really great lines by ignoring scales completely. This way of thinking is quite different from the idea of assigning scales to the chords the way we usually do. At the same time it is a traditional way of making lines and a very useful approach to changing things up.
The problem with too much scale movement
The way of making lines that I am going to cover here is at the very least helping you get rid of lines that sound as predictable and boring as this:
Of course in the long run you probably want to learn you scales just the same. It is better to have more options after all. I will talk about why later.
The George Benson Connection
I came across this way of making lines while analyzing a George Benson solo and I realized that if create lines with this concept you can make some really strong lines that don’t move in a predictable way but still make sense.
In this video I am going to show you how it works and how you can start experimenting with it in your own playing.
The basic concept: Triads and Leading notes
This is a really simple concept. Instead of making lines with scales and arpeggios (my entire system for guitar just fell apart) then we can also just think in simple triad arpeggios and leading notes. So Lines are constructed by having triad tones as targets and adding small melodies of leading notes that point towards those triad tones.
The Chord and The Progression
For this lesson I am going to focus on how to use this on a II V I in Bb major, and especially the Cm7 in that progression!
Cm Triad and leading notes – Two Exercises
So the way the melodies are made are from using the simple triads for example: Cm. The basic material I am using is an enclosure and a leading note on a Cm triad like this:
Putting the idea to use in a II V I lick
And an example of a line using this could be something like this:
Above the triad targes are first Eb, then a low G and finally a C. The beginning of the F7 line is also using a chromatic enclosure to move to the 3rd.
The big advantage to Chord and Leading notes approach
What is liberating is that when we play like this then it often works to just jump from one place to the next and you don’t have to think so much about the direction of the scale run or arpeggio run, and because it is using a very basic arpeggio then the leading note melodies make a lot of sense.
Here’s another example on a II V I. Again using chromatic approach phrases to move to both Cm7 and F7 chord tones.
Of course there are also some things that this doesn’t do, and I would not only use this way of playing as a total approach to everything, but it is a nice way to come up with some lines that sound different and still work with the chords. Using this method to create lines with more more extensions gets a little difficult because the extensions also want to sound like leading notes and the leading notes for the extensions are often chord tones.
This example is using one of the lines that Benson uses a lot on the dominant. It is in fact a Parker lick that Benson learned.
How to work on this approach
So the best way to work on this is to mix it with another approach. This is also what George Benson does in his solo. I will link to my video analyzing this in the description of this video.
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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.
