You need to learn scales, arpeggios, and vocabulary to play solos and to get it to sound like Jazz, but there are other aspects of improvising a solo that you need to develop as well if you want to sound good.
This week, the focus is on some of the other essential skills you need to develop to become good at improvising Jazz. So it is not really about scales, arpeggios, and vocabulary. I take a standard and go over some of the exercises you can start to do to really learn how to become a better soloist.
The focus is on playing solos that:
Play real phrases
Make the solo one piece of music
Play what you hear
It takes more than just scales and arpeggios to play a great Jazz Solo
11:06 How to play over chord changes and make sense
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It is probably mostly a problem you are teaching yourself but organizing your Jazz Practice and getting the right things in there is something that is often going wrong. At the same time, this is so incredibly easy to avoid and all you need to do is take a step back and look at what you are trying to learn without getting lost in the details.
I say it all the time: Learn Jazz, Make Music but for you to make music you need to focus on learning some pieces to make music with and that is very often not on the list when people start practicing and studying Jazz.
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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.
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.
You Need to be able to improvise over a II V I or 2 5 1 in Jazz. In this video, I am going to show you how you can get started improvising over this progression using the scale and the diatonic arpeggios in that scale.
The examples are a 2 5 1 in C major, a scale position and the diatonic arpeggios in that position. Then I am going to give you some examples of lines using the basic arpeggios of the chords but also a few other very useful suggestions. Then I am going to add the triads in there, and in the end, you have a lot of material to work with from this very basic approach.
This is the most important part of how I improvise. Having a set of arpeggios that work for a chord in a progression is a great way to have lots of options when you improvise. So you learn to think the chord but you have 8 or 9 different arpeggios that you can use when you are improvising.
The 2 5 1 chords and scale
One of the most important and common chord progressions is the 2 5 1, sometimes written with Roman numerals as II V I.
In this lesson I am going to focus on how to improvise over this progression in the key of C major.
First let us look at how t play the C major scale and then the chords contained in there.
Building Diatonic Chords in C major
If you build diatonic chords in a scale then you stack thirds in the scale. In C major that would be:
C major : C D E F G A B C
Stacking 3rds:
1 C E G B = Cmaj7
2 D F A C = Dm7
3 E G B D = Em7
4 F A C E = Fmaj7
5 G B D F = G7
6 A C E G = Am7
7 B D F A = Bø
How to play these chords is shown here below
As you can see I have added numbers to each of the chord signifying the degree in the scale.
This is how to understand the 2 5 1 progression. A 2 51 in C major is shown below:
Practicing and Playing Diatonic Arpeggios
The next thing to check out how to play the arpeggios of all the chords in the scale. Playing each of the chords within the scale is shown here below.
Of course there are now more chords and arpeggios than we need, but that will become very useful later.
Putting the arpeggios in the Progression
The first logical thing to practice now is to take the arpeggios throught the progression. That is what is shown here below:
Making Great Licks with Basic Arpeggios
Already just using the arpeggios, so the basic chord tones of each chord. You can make some great licks:
Really using Arpeggios (so not just playing the arpeggios..)
When you check out solos from famous Jazz Artists you will notice that their lines are not only consisting of the arpeggios. The melodies are a mic of scale notes and arpeggios, but the arpeggios are on the heavy beats and work as a frame to hold the melody together.
An example of this is shown here below:
The most important Other arpeggio
Now that you know the arpeggio for each chord and can work on incorporation it in lines that also mix it with the scale. We can haveea look at the next arpeggio to check out which wil almost always work in a line: The arpeggio from the 3rd of the chord
For the progression we have these arpeggios:
Dm7: Arpeggio Fmaj7
G7: Arpeggio – Bø
Cmaj7: Arpeggio Em7
Practicing this on the progression becomes this exercise:
Making lines with the Arpeggios from the 3rd.
Now with two arpeggios for each chord you can make a lick like this:
And mixing it with the scale then something like this is possible
Adding the mighty Triad!
One of the strongest melodies we have is triads. The diatonic triads as arpeggios in the scale is shown here below.
Finding triads for the chords
There are several triads that fit with each chord.
For a Dm7 you can use the three below.
Notice that if you have a Dm7(9) arpeggio: D F A C E then you have all 5 notes that make up the 3 triads.
The same approach applied to G7 is yielding these 3 triads. So a triad from the root, 3rd and 5th.
And finally we have the C, Em and G for Cmaj7:
Using Triads in a 2 5 1 Lick
Putting some of the triads to use in a lick could give us something like this:
If you want to explore more ideas with Arpeggios and scales in the key of C major then check out this lesson based on a solo on the Strayhorn tune Take The A-train:
You can also download the PDF of my examples by entering your e-mail here. You will be forwarded to a download page automatically.
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What if the way that you practice makes sure that you don’t feel like you are practicing something that you never get to use? Jazz Practice is difficult to get right and there are some mistakes that I see people make again and again.
What if you could work in a way that you could feel that your playing was improving? Maybe it is often better to take a more practical approach and practice in a way that is really focused on fixing a problem in the music that you are playing.
If you start with the music and choose goals to fix problems you encounter while making music you are much more likely to improve and also able to feel yourself improve.
In this video, I am going to talk about how to learn jazz guitar and how to choose the right strategies for some of the problems we encounter. It is easy to get lost in empty exercises and not work on something that is directly related to the music you play, but that can quickly leave you drowning in exercises.
Content:
0:00 Intro 0:12 Solve problems in your playing? 0:38 Strategies and how to Improve specific things in your playing. 1:23 Two Types of Solutions 1:54 The Two Examples in this video: Soloing and Comping. 2:13 #1 Soloing: How to Learn New Vocabulary 2:45 Long-term Goal and solution 3:51 Short-term Approach – Specific and Fixing the problem in the song 4:49 Less information more focus on using it while making music 5:42 #2 Comping: Learning New Voicings 6:18 Long-term for Learning All Voicings and Inversions 7:22 Short-term Approach – Think about what you already play and Add to That! 8:54 Be Practical if you want to improve your playing fast. 10:33 Teachers does this as well! 10:56 Like the video? Check out My Patreon Page!
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Setting up an efficient Jazz Practice is both important and difficult. You have to take care to spend your time efficiently and not have unrealistic goals or expectations. This video goes over some things that you want to think about and consider when you are learning jazz or any other style of music like jazz (though it probably applies to studying other styles as well). It is coming out of my own experiences with a few suggestions from people like Allan Holdsworth and Peter Bernstein.
Having the right mindset when studying and learning music is extremely important and I am curious what you think about this 10 topics, so please chip in with thoughts and suggestions!
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We want to be free when we improvise over difficult chord progressions. This Flexible Scale exercise is a great way to start working on having an overview of the fretboard and the scales you need for difficult chord progresssions like Giant Steps, Moments Notice and Very Early.
The exercise helps you learn to think ahead, know where you are in the bar and play towards target notes. The goal is that your melodic idea is stronger than the movement of the chord progression.
List of content:
0:00 Intro — The Exercise for difficult progressions
0:39 The Chord Progression for this lesson and where this works well
Comping is a lot more than just what chords or chord voicings you play. It can be very difficult to practice, but there are some things you can be aware of to perform a lot better when comping in a jazz setting. In this video I will try to highlight and describe some of these approaches.
I will also go over why being a great at comping will make you a much better soloist!
There are two important skills you can work on to get better at playing better solos and most of the time we never talk about them because they are either forgotten or under developed. Yet they are both essential parts of what we end up playing.
In this video I will go over how you can use harmonic analysis and compositions as tools in developing your ability to play better lines and also how to increase your vocabulary. The examples make use of both Charlie Parker licks as an inspiration and a way of implementing an arpeggio in your lines.
PDF with sheets/tab for the examples available on my Patreon Page!
If you don’t want to waste your time you want to make sure to turn everything you practice into material that you can use when you improvise.
We all practice scales and work on our technique by doing Scale Exercises, arpeggios, diatonic triads and patterns. In this video I want to show you how you can take your exercises and start turning them into jazz licks.
The Diatonic Triads in a Scale Position
Let’s just start with an exercise that I am sure you already practice: Diatonic Triads. Here below I have written it out in the key of C major:
Turning this exercise into a II V I is shown here below where it is used on a II V I in C: Dm7, G7, Cmaj7:
I am using the descending version of the exercise above on the Dm7. It is then used with the triads of Dm, C and finally B dim. From here it continues with a G7 altered lick before resolving to C.
Diatonic Triads in Patterns
A great way to practice diatonic triads is to play them in a pattern so that you break up the order of the notes. In the example below I have written out the diatonic triads in a 3 1 5 pattern:
Using this type of exercise in a jazz lick is a great way to add some larger intervals to your lines.
The lick here below is using the F,G and Am triads over the Dm7. It then continues with a G7 altered line that is based on a Bmaj7(#5) arpeggio before it resolves to Cmaj7.
Triads along the neck
Another way to practice the triads is to play them on a string set along the neck. This is shown in a 2-1 fingering here below.
Turning this into a lick is easy. I am using the F,Em and Dm triads descending and then continue the triad idea on the G altered with Eb and F dim triads to resolve to the 3rd(E) of Cmaj7.
A good variation on this is to use Db and Eb triads on the G7. This idea is shown here below:
Changing the way we practice scales
In the previous examples I had to rely on scale exercises that are stepwise in nature, so the triads are played in stepwise order: C, Dm, Em etc.
The problem with this is that If you use triads on a Dm7 chord then Dm, F and Am are fine, but Em and G are less strong and therefore difficult to use in a lick.
One way of getting around that is to look at how the Dm, F and Am are a 3rd apart in the scale. This means that we have can start working on practicing the triads in 3rds in the scale to get them together in the sets that work together. An example of how you can do this is shown here:
The lick below is using the triads like this, and they are played in a 5 1 3 patttern. The triads used then are Dm, F and Am which are all closely related to a Dm7.
Beyond the triads: Shell voicings
Of course you can apply this to any type of structure. In the example here below I am doing hte same type of exercise as example 7, but now using Shell Voicings.
Turning this into a lick is shown in example 10 where I use Fmaj7 and Am7 shell voicings on the Dm7. On the G7 I am also using a Db7 shell voicing and combining that with an AbmMaj7 arpeggio before resolving to C.
Putting it all together
As you can see in these example it is not only important to try to use the exercises you do, but it can also be a great idea to try to shape your exercises so that they are immediately easier to use when improvising or composing lines.
It makes a lot of sense to try to work a lot with 3rds because it reflects how we build chords and keep the triads closely related to the chord you want to use them on.
Get a Free Ebook
If you want to download a Free E-book of 15 II Valt I licks then subscribe to my newsletter:
Get the PDF!
You can also download the PDF of my examples here:
If you have any questions, comments or suggestions for topics or how I can make the lessons better 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.
Working on Exercises while improvising is a very efficient way to improve your jazz improvisation. Developing you abilities while improvising means that you are finalizing what you have checked out as exercises or written new material with. In this video I will cover 3 exercises that you can add to your jazz guitar practice routine and help different aspects of improvising and translating your technical skills to your improvised solos.
I have also added an extra exercise that will give you a new way of developing and understanding of the harmony and voice-leading plus elp you come up with new licks or lines.
List of contents:
1:32 Solo only using Basic Diatonic Arpeggios 2:11 Discussion of Arpeggio solo exercise 4:32 Solo in one position 5:08 What to take away from soloing in one place on the neck 6:59 Continuous Motion solo 7:36 What to focus on and learn from Continuous Neck movement on the neck 9:43 When and how to use these exercises 11:04 The Bonus exercise to develop new licks or lines 13:31 How to make guide tones and what you can work on with this exercise.
