If you want to play jazz you probably figured out that you need to play the scale that fits the chord or the song when you improvise. We don’t need jazz scales but we do need scales.
But just knowing what scale and maybe a single position of it is not really helping you come up with better things in your solos.
You need to learn and practice things within the scale that will help you have material to play that sounds good in a solo.
Sometimes it seems that most people forget that about practicing scales…
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Practicing scale exercises is something that we do to gain flexibility and an overview of the guitar. But another thing you should also consider is that the things you practice in a Jazz scale exercise should also not be too far from what you actually need when you solo. Setting your scale practice up so that it is helping you develop vocabulary is very useful and very efficient.
In this video, I will show you 5 exercises that are scale exercises but that you can also use as great building blocks for jazz licks. When you check out these concepts you should also start to be able to make your own scale exercises that help you play better solos using the things you want to play in your solos.
We all get stuck in solos, even though you know the song, the chord or the scale. You still don’t know what to play. This video will give you some jazz guitar tips that you can use to get past this.
The 5 tricks are about looking at things differently or taking a step back and finding more options, but working on them will make you a better jazz improviser and improve how you make music.
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One thing that we probably all love is the sound of great jazz phrasing in a solo. In this video, I am going to take a look at a great example from George Benson and talk about why these jazz phrases sound great. In that process, I will also go over some ways to turn the lick into exercises and use those to make your own licks that have great phrasing.
I also explain how jazz phrasing sometimes clashes with some of the other skills we teach for jazz improvisation and how to work around that.
The George Benson Solo Example
Here is a transcription of the phrases from the Benson solo that I am using
I am going to use the 2nd line as an example.
#1 Why does it sound great?
I have talked about what makes jazz phrasing great in other videos, and there are many things that come together to make a jazz solo great, but one thing that is a huge factor is how the line lets us give some notes an accent.
Let’s focus on the last part of the example and get a little scientific by slowing it down. You can hear that in the video.
When you listen to the slow version you can hear the accents on the high notes that are not on the beat:
I am sure you already have an idea about this, and one way to access this is to sing bop lines in terms of phrasing, that really helps you realize that you probably hear it and you just need to figure out how to get it on to your instrument.
But two of these examples are similar in a way and you can practice getting that into your lines quite easily.
#2 What Should You Practice
If we look at this fragment (D# to E in bar 2) then what happens here is Benson is playing a blues phrase, but the effect is really just a leading note resolving upwards and then a lower not.
If we apply this idea to an arpeggio then you would have an exercise like this:
And at the end of our example, Benson does something similar with this arpeggio, one way to look at that is as a way of playing a 1st inversion Cmaj7 arpeggio. If you take that through a scale then you have this:
#3 How Do We Play Licks that Sound Like That?
Usually when you start playing Jazz then you have a really hard time playing logical melodies that follow the changes. And one of the first things you learn, or at least should learn, is that if you play chord tones as target notes on the heavy beats of the bar then you connect with the phrase.
This might sound like this:
Where I am playing an F on beat one and an A on beat 3, but the line doesn’t really give us a nice flow with some accents. As my old teacher used to say: “It doesn’t make me want to dance”
But with the exercises, you can start putting together your own lines and in that way getting it into your playing.
Here I am using the exercise from EX2 on the Dm7 (play that) and leaving a little more space to go from G7 to C
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This isn’t really a jazz scale lesson. A lot of teaching and a lot of online discussions are about what scales to use on what chords, and of course it is important and also the topic of one of my most viewed videos: 3 Scales To Play Jazz
But in this video, I am going to talk about how we may be overemphasizing the scales and not thinking about what we really need and give you some examples of how a lot of the artists we admire may not be thinking in scales or modes that much, and what we should think about instead.
Focus on the song not the scales
When you are improvising you are playing lines that need to match the underlying chord sequence and relate to it. The scale you use will contain the chord, but sometimes it is not that important what else is in there.
First I am going to talk about how a lick or a solo follows the changes and then about how that makes some of the notes in the scale a lot less important.
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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.
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You probably already practice arpeggios, but chances are you can do it as a better Scale exercise than what you are doing now, and that is what I want to talk about in this video. Jazz Scale Exercises should be about giving you the material you can use in your solos and help you know and play the different arpeggios and melodies found in the scale.
When you improvise in Jazz then the lines or melodies that you play are related to the chords you are playing over and the solo follows the chord progression it is played over. One easy way to do this is to use the arpeggios of each chord.
You can use the arpeggio of the chord you are playing over, but in fact, there are more options than this and the exercise in this lesson will help you tie all of that together in one exercise.
Practicing Arpeggios in the Scale
The reason why it makes a lot of sense to practice diatonic arpeggios in a scale position is quite simple.
When you improvise a solo you are not only playing scales and then only arpeggios. The jazz lines you are making are a mix of the two. Therefore it is essential to have the arpeggios placed in a scale as notes that are important, and the rest are available.
Here is a C major scale in the 8th position
Playing the diatonic one-octave arpeggios through this scale position would give you this exercise:
Know the Scale!
Often when you learn Guitar in the beginning you rely mostly on the visual aspect of the instrument. Scales, Chords and Arpeggios are shapes that you can see on the fretboard.
This works really well for learning and remembering, but make sure that you also know what notes you are playing and what notes are in those chords and arpeggios. It will become very useful along the way.
For the exercises here above, it is a very good idea if you also play them while saying the notes or saying the names of the chord that you are arpeggiating. This will teach you the fretboard and the music theory on another level and also really attach it to what you play.
Using the arpeggios in your solos
It is not enough to just practice the scale exercise and then hope that your solos will suddenly magically include the arpeggios.
To show you how you can make some basic licks mixing scales and arpeggios here are a few ideas using a Cmaj7 arpeggio and chord.
The first one starts with the Cmaj arpeggio and then continues with a scale melody.
In the second example You can see how it is possible to mix scale notes into the arpeggio and also add a little chromaticism to more of a bebop sound.
Bebop Arpeggios!
This is a great variation on the exercise that also is really setting you up to play some bebop lines. Here you play the arpeggio as a triplet and insert a chromatic leading note in front of the root. This creates some energy and motion that then really brings out the target note that is the 7th of the arpeggio.
This exercise for the scale looks like this:
Make some Bebop Licks!
Using this way of playing arpeggios can be used in licks like this.
The first lick is using the Cmaj7 arpeggio in the lower octave and combining it with an intervallic melody in the2nd half of the bar.
The 2nd example is using the higher octave and adding a chromatic run between D and C before ending on G.
The Arpeggio from the 3rd
Until now I have only been talking about what how to use the basic Cmaj7 arpeggio over a Cmaj7 chord, but you can use more arpeggios.
The way to understand this is quite simple. You can use other arpeggios that contain notes that work well on the chord. The Arpeggio from the 3rd of a chord is usually a great option:
Cmaj7: C E G B – Em7: E G B D
So the two arpeggios share E G B and the Em7 is only adding the D on top of the Cmaj7 which is the 9th and a good note to add in there.
A few ways of playing an Em7 arpeggio in this position is shown here below:
Jazz Licks with an Em7 arpeggio on a Cmaj7 chord
You can use the Em7 arpeggio like this.
The first example is a basic “bebop Em7 arpeggio” that continues with a more modern sounding Quartal arpeggio from B.
The 2nd example is again focusing more on adding some chromatic ideas. Here the first half of the bar is a chromatic enclosure that is leading us to the first note of the Em7 arpeggio.
Putting all of this into a II V I lick
To give you and idea about how easy this is to generalize to a progression I have added this final example.
Take a look at the lick and see how I am using Fmaj7 on Dm7. Both Bø and G7 on the G7 and also both Em7 and Cmaj7 arpeggios on the Cmaj7.
If you play Jazz Guitar then you will often be confronted with learning and practicing scales. The major scale, pentatonic scale or a jazz scale like melodic minor.
A big part of the vocabulary and the material that you use when you are improvising is linked to scales in some form or other and it is common to practice scales on a daily basis.
But of course, you want to also make sure that you can actually make music with it and think a little bit about how and what you practice
8:14 Cmaj7(#11) identifying triads that are good upper-structures9:00 Like the video? Check out my Patreon Page
How To Learn and Practice Scales for Jazz Guitar
How do you practice and learn scales for Jazz Guitar? These videos go over different approaches and practice strategies with exercises for scale practice.
When you learn a scale on guitar because you want to use it to play jazz guitar and improvise then there are many things you need to know and some things that can make your practice more efficient. These videos will give you ideas on how to work on this and build a scale practice routine or strategy that fits your way of working.
You can check out more information over this topic in this playlist:
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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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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You problably know the feeling of trying to come up or with lines and then even though you know the notes are right it is impossible to get it to sound like jazz.
In this video I am going to show you some things that you need to be aware of when trying to come up with lines and which will help you jazz phrasing really a lot. One thing that is really interesting about this is that it is actually possible to write jazz licks that really are not possible to phrase well. This is about how you play the notes and a little about which notes you play, and for me it was really a huge part of getting my bop lines to sound good.
How to learn good Jazz Phrasing
I am going to cover two things: First how to write lines like this and later I’ll talk about how to hear it in examples and get it into your system so that you don’t have to think about it, because that is what you eventually want to have. Phrasing is something you hear and feel not something you think about while you are playing.
The Lick that doesn’t swing
Have a look at this lick: Harmony is clear, the notes are mostly chord tones. Target notes make sense but it sounds heavy.
This line has direction and it spells out the chords, but the melody sounds heavy because it asks for accents on the heavy beats: 1 and 3. There is no place where we have a not popping out to make it dance.
In short: That sounds more like Megadeth than Charlie Parker.
Writing better line with Better Phrasing
Luckily you probably already have a good idea about how a good jazz solo sounds. If you try to sing the phrasing of that then you get a much more.
If you pay attentiont to what you are singing and slow that down then you start to notice that the accents in the phrase are not on the beat, so accents are on the off-beat
In Jazz, or bebop, the accents are naturally on the off beats. The question is then how do you make melodies where you can create those accents.
Let’s look at an example:
In the example above the accents are the higher notes in the phrase, so the C on 1-and plus the A on the 3-and.
The rule you want to notice here is:
If a note is higher (in pitch) than the following note and not on the beat. Then you can give it an accent.
In the line above there are therefore two notes that can get an accent.
Using your technique to make it easier to phrase
Very often the easiest way to accent something is not to play that note a lot louder but instead to play the surrounding notes a little softer. Using legato is a great way to naturally do that.
The way I use this is to pick the note that gets an accent and then use a pull-off to play the following (lower) notes.
Another example of a line where this strategy will give it a natural phrasing is shown below:
Bebop Phrasing on a II V I
Of course this way of thinking and using this rule can also be applied to a complete II V I lick as shown below.
You will notice that the accents are on 4-and in bar 1 and on 2-and in bar 2. The line also ends with a classic “bebop” phrase where the descending interval is the sound that gave the genre it’s name.
Learning to hear good phrasing
Besides writing lines it is also important to listen to great solos and it can be useful to analyze transcriptions to find places where there are accents in the solo.
Be sure to listen to bebop and hardbop artists to get the most out of this. You also want to keep in mind that even if you don’t analyze it then just hearing good phrasing in huge amounts will also help you a lot.
How Wes Montgomery Gets it Right
As an example of an analysis of a solo let’s have a look at the opening phrase from Wes Montgomerys solo on Four on Six off the Smokin’ at the half note album.
The first part of the pickup is a sliding 5th interval which is on the beat. This is not a bebop 8th note line so or ideas about accents doesn’t really apply.
The next phrase is a Gm pentatonic phrase an here Wes is playing 8th notes. The phrase is essentially a descending scale run and he does in fact accent the top note (a C).
The ascending arpeggio that follows does not allow any accents, but the descending Dm triad in bar 3 does, and here the first note does get an accent.
The way to better phrasing
For me it was a combination of knowing how to phrase bebop themes and lines, composing lines with the accents in the right place and certainly also training my ears by listening and playing along with great examples.
I would suggest you find a way to mix in all of those approaches if you are working on your phrasing.
A short cut to improve your Bebop Phrasing
One way to speed up the process could be to check out this webstore lesson with analysis and examples of lines that are easy to play and have great phrasing.
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.
