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Why Their Jazz Blues Solos Always Sound Better Than Yours

Jazz Blues is surprisingly simple. The Lines are a lot simpler than you might think and probably stuff you already know, you just need to learn how to get it to sound right, and that is also easier than you might think!

Let me show you some amazing examples from what are probably also your favorite Jazz artists, they all play unbelievable Jazz blues solos and also give you some ways to make your own solid Jazz blues licks.

The sound of Jazz Blues is different than the sound of Jazz, the lines are related to Bebop lines, but they are different in quite a few ways, and that is probably what I like about them. Of course, the same is true if you compare Jazz Blues to what you might consider “straight blues playing” like this

In this video, I want to take a look at what that difference is, because if you know that then you also have an easier time getting the sound right in your playing.

Is This Overlooked When It Comes To Blues?

The first aspect of Jazz Blues is actually not as much about note choice or rhythm, it is about something that is at the core of the Blues sound. Try to listen to this part of George Benson’s solo on Bille’s Bounce. Notice how he is not just weaving through the changes, he is doing something else.

The scale that he is using here is often also a bit misunderstood, calling it Dorian is, I think, a bit misleading, but I will return to that part of it later. What you probably noticed is that he is repeating phrases, and he is also playing fairly short phrases. Obviously, motivic development is a massive part of most excellent jazz musicians’ toolbox, but here it is also related to Blues since the form of a 12-bar traditional Blues is about repeating and developing a motif through the form (Blues Progression diagram with phrases) In this case, the motif is a pretty simple descending melody and Benson is also moving the motif around rhythmically a bit, which is less common with blues but it is still clearly connected to Blues.

One thing that you want to be able to do is to play short phrases and find ways to repeat them through the form.

If you start to listen to it then you will hear this all over the place in the solos of Wes Montgomery, George Benson, and Charlie Parker, in fact, you will see quite a few examples of it in this video. Let’s look at some rhythms

Stop Playing Bebop All The Time!

Another thing that is different from more straight Jazz or Bebop is how many notes you are playing and what rhythms. Again George Benson is a great example, so I’ll start with him and then move on to Wes. Check out how this phrase sounds amazing but certainly isn’t a Bebop line:

There are several reasons that this isn’t a Bebop line, but mostly the fact that he is playing quarter notes more than 8th notes is a big part of it.

Having simpler and more grounded rhythms is in fact also a part of the Blues sound where Bebop uses more syncopated rhythms in accents in longer lines.

Like Benson, Wes can do amazing things with this, and you want to notice that both the previous 2 and this next example are really only the same notes over the Blues, which is also important to learn. You could reduce it to a scale, but that might really help you as much as you think. You can also hear some of the other things I already talked about

As you probably noticed then, Wes is also repeating a phrase and developing it, just like George Benson was in the first example.

He also relies mostly on quarter note rhythms and not a Bebop 8th note flow,

and I think sometimes people forget that if you want to be able to play phrases and rhythms like this then you need to work on that. If you only practice playing 8th note lines through changes all the time, then you won’t get there. A part of the Jazz Blues sound with both Wes and Benson examples here, and this is true for these examples but also quite common in general in the solos I have checked out, is that the phrases seem to emphasize two notes: the 6th of the key, in F major which is a D, and the Ab, the minor 3rd.

If you look at the Wes motif then it has the D as the outer note and the Ab is the other note that stands out:

And the first example with Benson sort of does the same:

Play the 2nd Benson motif where the D is also the outer notes of the scale.

Of course, that is not going to be true for all phrases, but it comes back more often than you might think, and it can be fun to mess around with. Let’s go a bit deeper with the note choices and figure out if there is a “Jazz Blues Scale”.

Is There A Jazz Blues Scale?

You may remember that I said these first 3 examples could be seen as using the same scale. To me, they don’t immediately sound like it though, so maybe it is a bit of a stretch, but check this out:

The 2nd George Benson example is clearly using the major blues scale,

so the major pentatonic with an added minor 3rd: F G Ab A C D F

And, the 1st George Benson example uses the same note set but doesn’t really use the A (except for the pickup);

if you look at the Wes example then that is also using that note set:

“The Scale Is NOT The Answer”

So all of the examples would be covered by the Major blues scale, and that is an important building block, but something that I find myself saying more and more often to people, and which seems more and more true every time I think about it:

If I am trying to understand a phrase and learn from it then the answer is almost never a scale. It is not just a set of notes that makes something music. We are all using mostly the same notes, There are Amazing Bebop phrases – and – very Boring Heavy Metal scale sequences that use the same major scale.

But at the same time, the major blues scale is a very useful resource to explore and is probably used a lot more than you’d expect in Jazz Blues, also in some pretty creative ways when it comes to double stops which you will see later in the video.

But if there isn’t really a Blues scale then there is another way to think about it.

The Mighty Triad (and a few other tricks)

Like any style of music, there isn’t a single approach that describes everything that is possible, which is probably also better because if it was a formula like that then the music would probably be boring. Still, there are some things you can do that work really well and are used often.

Notice how Parker uses motifs, or maybe riffs is a better word for it, and also how he gets from the I to the IV chord in this example from Now’s The Time:

The motif in this example is built around an F major triad on the F7

and then he changes it to Fm when the song moves to Bb7 to spell out that chord change and still connect the phrases.

In thiscase, Parker doesn’t use the major pentatonic scale, a better description is probably that he is adding notes around an F major triad, and there are some really great and fairly famous lines of his that follow that recipe, like this one from the opening of the Now’s The Time solos.

The first part is really just an F major triad with some chromatic approach notes:

Phrasing Without Bends

But you can also go more for more of a major pentatonic phrase like this Wes line from his solo on Fried Pies, and notice how Wes is really relying on slides as a part of his phrasing, you could say that he uses those instead of bends in the phrase, and the slides are mostly targeting the major 3rd, A. Something that is very common for this sound:

In general, slides, hammer-on and pull-offs are often the preferred techniques in Jazz blues over bending, probably because people like Wes had very heavy strings and not a lot of sustain, but you can find examples of bending, they are just less common. What you want to explore is using slides and hammer-ons to get to the 3rd of the chord:

You had George Bensons pick up in the first example –

But you also have a sort of enclosure like this:

or using a hammer on like this

Without bending there are other things that Jazz guitarists get very creative with: Double Stops.

The Power of Double Stops

This first one is a great example of how Jazz Blues should not always go with the changes in the way Bebop usually does, because in this chorus from Wes’s solo, he just sticks to the same 2 bar riff, but what you want to notice besides the double-stops is also how that really creates some tension and drives the whole thing forward. And pay attention to what type of double stop this is.

This type of double stop is a sort of pedal point where the high D note is ringing through and then you have a G that is sometimes turned into a short blues phrase.

A great variation on this double stop you can hear in Wes’ solo on Fried Pies. The high D is still a pedal point but it is now becoming a part of a call-response phrase and I think this double stop is a lot less common outside Jazz:

You want to listen to this solo for how he develops phrases and connects from one phrase to the next, it is pretty amazing!

Chord Solos in Jazz Blues

Another important part of Jazz Blues is combining Jazz chords with Blues licks, which is an amazing sound, and here Joe Pass is absolutely mind-blowing. If you want to explore how he does this and also how he approaches Jazz Blues in general, then check out this video which has some of the most solid Jazz Blues you will ever hear!

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The Most Important Thing To Learn From Wes Montgomery

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Wes is Amazing!

Pretty much every Wes Montgomery solo is a lesson in phrasing, and they are all small works of art that contain lots of fantastic and creative ideas. But how does it work?

When you are improvising and finding your way through the changes using scales and arpeggios then you probably don’t manage that, and that could be because you are not focusing on the right things.

Let’s take a look at some Wes solos and see if you can figure out what to practice to develop that aspect in your playing. The essence of it is surprisingly simple.

I’ll focus mostly on examples from fairly simple songs which you might already play, so that should make it easier for you to take these concepts and apply them to your own playing as well, but the first one is a really fast song with not very many chords.

Never Overplaying!

Notice how this is not a lot of long 8th note lines but instead short phrases and often with a lot of repetition:

Here’s the first A section

So there are a few 8th note lines but it is much more sparse a lot more space, he is really digging into that tritone interval to get the m7(13) sound out there.

Then he starts very simple and turns that into a repeated phrase:

So short phrases, in fact just a single note, that he repeats and develops. You should notice how he is pretty free and even if the phrases are not incredibly complicated then they are not placed very predictably in the form which makes them more interesting.

For a listener that is not a giant Jazz nerd, then that is much easier to relate to as a listener since it is not so dense and not an information overload. In this case, Wes sticks to this approach throughout the solo. If you compare this to how Pat Martino plays the song then that is of course a pretty massive contrast, and Pat’s approach to improvisation is very different from Wes even if he certainly also checked out a lot of Wes’s stuff

And before the comment section explodes, don’t get me wrong, Pat Martino’s take on impressions is amazing and I really like it, but it is a very different take on it. The thing you want to keep in mind is that while you are learning to make your way through a chord progression and play lines that flow through the harmony in a natural way, then you also want to work on playing simpler, melodic things as well so that you have more options.

#1 Making It Music

Listen to yourself

Often when you are new to learning Jazz then what you are playing becomes a never-ending stream of notes, but that is not really a melody. If you start working on making shorter statements and leave more space between them then you have time to listen to what you just played and then use that to decide what the next phrase should sound like.

This is in many ways the first step in learning to play what you hear because you give yourself room to actively listen for what you should play.

Give Your Solo An Arc

Being able to play shorter phrases also gives you a larger dynamic range since not playing in a solo often creates tension. Wes uses this incredibly well at the beginning of his solo on “No Blues” just starting with fairly basic Blues phrases with lots of space in between.

Example 2 – No Blues – Chorus 1 – first 8-9 bars

Focus On Rhythm

Another thing that is easier when you are working with shorter phrases is creating variation in the rhythm, something that Wes very clearly uses to great effect. Check out how takes this straightforward triad phrase:

and moves it around the bar in the solo on Missile Blues, which is a Blues in G, almost a Parker Blues.

He is first moving it around the bar and then starts to develop it further to continue in the progression. It is incredibly creative!

So a lot of this is not only about playing short phrases but also connecting and developing them so that they make sense and create a story for the listener. There are two ways to work on this that Wes employs in pretty much all of his solos. These two core techniques for creating melodies are probably in all great solos, but Wes is really good at using them!

#2 Call-Response

Usually, we Call-response in music is a way to describe how two parts of an ensemble communicate, so for example how Muddy Waters has a conversation with the band answering each of his phrases:

But you can also use this way of thinking to connect phrases in a solo, often connected to some motivic development which I will also give you examples of later. Wes uses this very often. In this example, it serves as a way to deal with the repeating harmony in Satin Doll and lets him develop the phrases from bar to bar:

Here you can hear a clear call at the beginning, and then he turns around the melody to make that sound more like an answer then moves up the original phrase and plays a variation on that followed by a different answer.

Another way that Wes uses Call-Response in his phrases is to use either octaves or chords to have two layers. You can hear an example of this in The No Blues Solo where he uses different short blues phrases and then makes them call response with a single octave hit. Simple but effective!

This approach could be a good way to start because either on a Blues like this or with another song where you can easily add an octave hit every 2 or 4 bars. You can find quite a few examples of Wes doing this, in a recent video I covered one from The version of Four On Six off the incredible jazz guitar album (album cover maybe sheet music)

#3 Motivic Development

Call response is one of the major ways to connect phrases, but another equally important technique to develop, one that also depends on you being able to play solid short phrases or statements is Motivic Development, something that is often associated with classical and film music like Leit motifs

But it is a major part of how Wes works with melodies as well, even if he actually goes about it in a different way very often.

What makes Wes different

The first part of Motivic development is having a motif. And you have already heard a few examples of how Wes repeats phrases as he did in Impressions, and here is another great example from Satin Doll:

What is different here is that Wes does have a motif, but he is actually not really using motivic development, and just repeating the melody, only changing it he needs to fit it to the chords.

This is probably better described as a riff than as motivic development. I suspect that he got this from listening to swing music which is more common. In later styles, like Bebop there is a lot less repetition and the focus in the music is on another type of energy. But he doesn’t keep it as a riff, and instead uses those first repetitions to set up our expectations Then he develops the motif before playing another phrase as an end to this chapter of the solo. Check it out!

This way of connecting phrases across complete sections of the song is a really strong way to have more of a story happening in the solo

and is also often everything that is missing for beginner players when they have just reached the skills needed to play a solo over chord changes without getting lost or playing a lot of wrong notes. It is important that you don’t get stuck zooming in on what happens on each chord and instead also hear what the entire solo sounds like.

The Exercises That You Need For This

If you want to develop this aspect of your playing then there are exercises that you can start working on and ways to think about the music that will help you develop that skill. But the first thing that you want to do is of course to start recognizing it in the music. It is ear-training just like learning licks by ear, you are just listening for a different structure. The other exercises that will help you get more flexible with both motivic development and call-response are more improvisation based and if you want to get started with that then check out this video that covers some thoughts on how you can start working with shorter phrases in a creative way. Just like Wes!

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Why They Sound Better Than You Every Time!

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What is the difference between a good solo and a great solo? And what are some of the skills you want to develop to go from playing the right notes to really playing a great solo?

There is a set of 3 skills that especially a beginner won’t notice because you are too busy finding the chord tones and playing chromatic notes, and you want to start working on this from early on if you want to play solos that make sense and are not just random phrases.

The Problem With The Right Notes

When I was getting started playing Jazz then I practice scales and arpeggios since I had learned that I needed those to play Jazz. The problem I had with my solos was that even if I could play the right notes then it still sounded very fragmented and messy because I played everything per chord. Let me show you how that is the opposite of how George Benson plays. My playing at the time was like this:

These are all the right notes. but as you can clearly hear then it doesn’t make any sense at all because I am:

#1 Starting a new idea every bar

#2 Always Starting on Beat 1

#3 Stop playing so I Can Think Of The next chord

George Benson Gets It!

So what is the difference? He is playing from one chord to the next, so his melodies are ending on a note that clearly tells your ear that the chord is changing. In this case. it is super clear by hitting the 3rd every time:

Getting stuck with just playing something more or less random on each is a natural part of learning to play changes, but you can quite easily get started fixing it, and that is a really important skill to get in there so let’s look at that, and then dive into two other approaches that you hear a lot in the playing of Wes Montgomery and Jim Hall.

Forward Motion

When it comes to Bop-inspired Jazz, then a core principle in the solos is that often the melodies are dense with a lot of notes and are really pushing forward to the chord changes, similar to what you heard in the George Benson example. This is not that different from how Bach wrote music even if Jazz uses different harmony and also some “extra” notes here and there.

Hal Galper wrote a good book about this calling it Forward Motion

which is a good way to describe it. The simple version of the concept is that you practice playing lines that end somewhere, so target notes. The notes in a solo line are not just random pitches against a chord,

they should fit together as a melody that moves to the next chord. Which is what you heard in the Benson example.

But there are some things that you can get wrong when you are working on target notes, so here’s a suggestion for getting started, and actually you should consider buying that book.

Choosing Target Notes and Practicing

For finding the right target notes then you sort of have to forget what you learned when you started checking out Jazz chords.

I am sure you have had lessons telling you that when you play chords then you just need the 3rd and the 7th to get the sound of the chord across. That would also suggest that you can use those two as target notes, but that is actually not really true.

Let’s look a II V I in C major:

The 3rd of the chord is still a really good option, as you heard in the George Benson example,

but the 7th is often a bit vague, and in the beginning, you want to train your ear by having very clear notes that tell you that the chord has changed.

On Dm7 then the C doesn’t really sound like a Dm7 on it’s own, it sounds much more like a C major chord, so having that as a target is going to be much more difficult.

The 5th, A, is however a very good target note instead, which is sort of the first note you would throw out of a chord. This is true for Cmaj7 as well where the 7th, B will really just sound like you are not resolving the V chord in a II V I. Of course, you can play melodies that make these notes possible, but as I said, you want to keep it easy to hear in the beginning.

Let’s say that we keep it easy and play the 3rd as a target note on all the chords, just like George.

You want to practice coming up with Dm7 lines that play towards and end on a B, a simple version could be something like this:

Or like this:

These are of course super simple, and I don’t actually have to start with the F on the Dm7, but I think you can hear how the melodies are naturally moving towards the chord change. Before we get to the Wes and Jim Hall examples then let me just show you how you can easily make it a lot more embellished with trills, leading notes etc:

So here it is a little less clear and the target note is often moved to the 4& which also makes it a bit lighter, but that is really just the next step to work on and it is the same concept.

How To Practice Forward Motion

If you practice soloing like this then you will get a lot better at creating lines that have a flow and that don’t sound like random things copy-pasted on top of the progression. I would suggest starting with keeping it simple composing lines and then gradually going from improvising over a basic turnaround rubato into playing in time and then taking it to some songs.

This skill is essential for anything Bop inspired, but the next two are maybe even more powerful and less Jazz specific. The first one is in everyone’s playing, but Jim Hall is truly a master at this!

Make People Remember Your Phrases

What Jim Hall does in this solo is probably the strongest melodic principle that we have, it is at the core of so many great solos and great compositions.

You first have a motif being repeated and developed over the Dm section of the song. He then rounds this off with a very chromatic line on the Aø D7 before starting to work with a short intervallic motif that is moved around in triplets.

Check it out:

So this is all over Jim Hall’s playing, but Wes uses this as well:

Here are a few very clear examples from Four on Six.

Clear, but still changing the rhythm on a simple 4-note motif. Notice that he plays it 3 times and then sort of finishes the sentence with something else. That is very common.

Both Wes and Jim Hall uses forward motion and motivic development, it is not one or the other, some of Jim Hall’s motifs have forward motion. Beethoven and Mozart knew how motivic development worked as well. The effect of this as a listener is that you hear something that you recognize but it is not just a loop, it changes and stays interesting in that way.

How To Practice Developing Motifs

The first important step is that you want to recognize these things when you listen to music,so try to listen to solos that you know and that you like and recognize the motifs in there. Again the way to practice this is to solo and try to stick with motifs when you improvise, so start rubato and play a short phrase then imagine how this phrase should move through the changes. Later you can start just sticking with a motif over a song and see what you can do with it.

I sometimes see comments on YouTube that want to attribute Wes’ playing to magic or some other vague term. I think that is surprising when his genius is, to me anyway, the clarity of his strong melodic ideas. Can you be tone-deaf for melodies like melody-deaf?

Wes Montgomery uses another melodic technique quite often, and that is also a great strategy for making your solos a longer story.

Have A Conversation With Yourself

I often talk about how music is a language, and music is a form of communication, a place where conversations happen.

And this can also be in your solo where you are having a conversation between phrases, what is often referred to as Call-response.

Check out how Wes does this:

He actually also has a great example of this with octaves from the earlier recorded version:

So this is about hearing different phrases as a back and forth between two sides.

Bebop 101 for Guitar!

Another guitar player that is really great at this and has some amazing lines to learn from both in terms of solid bebop and motivic development is Grant Green, and if you check out this video then you can learn something about how he creates melodic, playable, and beautiful bebop lines. Especially since it is bebop but not too difficult for guitar!

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The Real Reason You Are Not Getting Better At Jazz

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You don’t want to only play other people’s licks in your solos. You want to improvise, that is the point of Jazz!

But at the same time, maybe your solos don’t sound right, maybe they don’t even sound like Jazz.

If are you already practicing scales and arpeggios, then this video is about the next thing you need to learn, which was probably also how people like Joe Pass and Wes learned to play Jazz.

Learning solos by ear is a part of this, but it’s not the only thing. For a really long time, when I was studying then I felt that I didn’t learn a lot from transcribing solos, and that made me think that it should not be a big priority for my study, but in hindsight, that was completely wrong and not even how I was actually studying, but I’ll get back to that.

The Answer Is Not A Scale!

Let’s start with something that is so often presented wrong in lessons and probably also the reason you are watching this video.

Try to imagine that you are listening to your favorite part of one of your favorite solos. I am sure you can see how the answer to understanding why that phrase in a solo sounds great is not just a scale name.

You can’t listen to a Wes Montgomery solo, stop somewhere in the middle and go “Dorian” and then your solos start sounding amazing.

That’s obviously not how it works, and that is because when you are playing music then you are not thinking about a scale or an arpeggio. When I am playing solo then I am thinking about phrases that fit the music, the other stuff is too many steps from being something I can play. So you want to learn phrases and be able to play phrases, not just notes and scales.

And this is where the food analogy is a good description of a Jazz phrase:

A Jazz phrase is like a recipe for something that tastes great.

The scale and arpeggios, chromatic phrases are all ingredients, but it is as important that you know how to turn them into the dish.

I am sure you can imagine that even if you have all the ingredients for a burger then mixing the stuff up in random order is not likely to yield a delicious meal.

Jazz phrases are the same, it is only a part of the picture to know what the ingredients are, and only studying that won’t really get you very far, because it is like just knowing a lot of stuff that can be ingredients in food but clearly, that doesn’t mean you can cook something great.

So you have to not only memorize the ingredients but also learn how you put them together, that is the core of the recipe.

Where Do You Learn The Recipe

And there are some skills needed to understand the recipe for a jazz lick.

As I mentioned, then for a very long time I felt like I wasn’t really learning anything from transcribing entire solos. In the beginning, I was doing that really a lot, because that was what people around me suggested that should do, and especially when I did not have a teacher that was the only thing I could do to learn something new. But I sort of stopped when that didn’t seem as useful as a lot of the other things that I was working on, stuff I had picked up from Barry Harris and the material I was given by my teachers. But maybe that was more how I saw it at the time and not really what was going on, because next to this I was also starting to build other skills that would help me get so much more out of what I transcribed.

In the beginning when I was learning solos then I could at most just repeat what I had transcribed and hopefully connect it to my own vocabulary. That already makes it useful, but it is also far from taking the material to the level where you can use it freely in your own playing. Let’s say that I transcribed this part of a phrase from Grant Green:

One thing is learning the solo by ear and playing it along with Grant. That is incredibly valuable for phrasing and timing and a lot of other things, but now I want to use it to become better at making my own Jazz lines. And I took this phrase because, as you will see, it is an example of something that you want to understand and recognize and learn how to use in your own lines. Grant Green is also a very clear example of someone who checked out Charlie Parker, which is also important, but I will return to that later.

You can look at this phrase at different levels.

#1 The Notes

On the surface: If I look at the notes being used over Gm7 then I have the G, in the bass, and then 5 more notes: Bb C D F, and A.

So if I have to attach a scale to it then it could be G Natural minor, or Aeolian, or it could be a Gm7 chord in F major. In this case, the Gm7 is a part of a II V I in F major so it makes sense to go with that. Music is about context.

But just knowing the scale would NEVER help you play a line like this, there is a lot more going on.

#2 The Harmony and Arpeggios

It is a Gm7 chord, you can see a Dm triad here (highlight),

even if that isn’t really the best way to understand that. You can also see that he is playing the 5th on the 4& so as an anticipated beat 1,

and the Bb is on beat 3 so he is really connecting to the chord tones on the heavy beats.

The two notes before Bb are an enclosure, so he is playing towards the note on beat 3, making that a target note.

This is already getting you closer to being able to create something that will sound right and not just throw random notes at the chords, because there is a direction and some notes need to go in certain places.

You can probably also tell that this takes some experience with both analyzing and listening to the music, but that is definitely something you want to learn.

I said that it wasn’t really a Dm triad, so let’s look at that because that is really important here.

#3 Melody

I already pointed out that it is not enough to just look at what notes are being played, you need to understand how they work in the line to understand what is going on.

An example of this could be this excerpt of a George Benson line which is also on a Gm7 chord in a II V I in F major:

If you don’t realize that the C# and the F# are chromatic leading notes

then you are going to end up thinking that this is a very weird scale, probably with 9 or more notes. And you realize that by noticing where the C# and F# are going. (show resolutions in sheet music))

This is also happening in the Grant Green example:

The A and C are an enclosure pulling towards the Bb on beat 3.

You also want to notice that the melody moves down from D to Bb but the enclosure is placed so that it skips down to A and then moves up to C, so it is in the opposite direction.

In fact, Benson does the same thing, the melody is moving up from D to G, but the enclosure is moving down from A to F# (highlight)

So that is something to keep in mind if you are making lines with chromatic enclosures: If the melody moves up then try to let the enclosure move down and vice versa.

The Triad That Isn’t A Triad

Let’s demystify The Dm triad that isnt a Dm triad. You want to see this as a part of another melody: A Bbmaj7 Pivot Arpeggio.

So, a Pivot arpeggio is an arpeggio where instead of playing the ascending arpeggio like this:

then you play the first note and move the rest down an octave to create this beautiful melody with a large interval skip:

And this can be hard to recognize until you have transcribed a few solos and seen this happen often, but that is why you keep learning solos by ear and get more familiar with the language.

Analyzing Solos For Recipes

I never did an analysis like this on an entire solo, but I did do it every time I had a spot that I thought was really good, so that I could not only learn the lick but also learn the concept or the recipe. In many ways that is also what Barry Harris teaches, it is not only what to play but also how to put it together, how to turn it into music. That is why he invented concepts like pivot arpeggios and why he is such a valuable resource when you are trying to learn.

This also brings me back to my story about how I wasn’t transcribing complete solos a lot for some time because what I was still doing was figuring out all the “good bits” so I would have solos that I listened to and they would have parts that I liked and that I didn’t understand, but I wanted to have in my playing, those I kept going for, and that still makes me figure things out. Later I realized that my phrasing and swing feel really benefitted from learning solos by ear and then I got back into working on entire solos, which I still do regularly.

Learn Like The Masters = Learn From The Masters

Of course, learning the solos is only a part of it, another activity is as important when it comes to getting this into your playing, but first, I already mentioned how I hear Grant Green (and actually also George Benson) as coming straight from Charlie Parker when it comes to vocabulary. This is really just about recognizing parts of phrases and melodic techniques that are similar to Parker. You can also find examples here and there of Wes playing Parker licks.

To give you an example then check out this phrase from Wes Montgomery’s Solo on, The Parker F-Blues, Au Privave:

This sounded very familiar to me, and Wes probably got that from this part of Parkers solo on Now’s The Time, which is essentially the same phrase at the same place in the form since both songs are 12-bar blues progressions in F.

Connecting all of this across songs and artists is really about listening to a lot of music, and listening more than once. Something that is often worthwhile is listening together with other people and talking about the music you are listening to. Hanging out can be as useful as a lesson!

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3 Reasons You Will Regret Not Working On Chord Soloing

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Once I started getting interested in Jazz and Jazz guitar then it didn’t take long until I heard some of the first chord solos especially Wes Montgomery and shortly after Joe Pass, and That was pretty mind-blowing coming from Pearl Jam and Stevie Ray Vaughn.

The idea of soloing with chords like that was completely new to me, and that seemed both unbelievably difficult and also the coolest thing I had ever heard, so of course, I had to figure this out!

Besides being a great sound that you can use in your solos then there are actually a few other things that you can really take up a few levels if you start working on playing chord solos, and as you will see, it doesn’t have to be that difficult.

How Not To Start!

#1 Too Simple and hard to use

#2 Too Difficult and hard to use

The #1 Mistake that I see students make when they start with chord solos is not being practical and starting with harmonized scales that are technically much more difficult to use, requires more theory, and is in general much more information.

That is not the place to start. I didn’t try to take that exact approach but, but I also made a mess out of it!

You want to keep it practical and simple, If you are new to improvising and want to learn what you can play over a m7 chord then you don’t start with “A love Supreme”

and I will give you a much more practical strategy in this video.

In the beginning, I didn’t have a choice, I had a few CDs but there were no transcriptions, so I was limited to whatever I could figure out by ear, which was a pretty steep limitation. I managed to figure out a few Wes things here and there and The George Bensons solos on the Borgia Stick which have some chord solo parts. But this wasn’t really getting me anywhere for two reasons:

it was either too simple to help me create my own solos or too difficult to play and therefore impossible to use.

I was mostly listening to Wes, and when Wes plays chord solos then he is really block-harmonizing a lot, so he will in fact play different chord voicings under each melody note which makes it demanding to play, and also requires you to have quite a few things figured out about chords and theory.

From Wes’ solo on “The Thumb”

Joe Pass And A Winning Strategy

But that changed later once I started having lessons after having moved from Århus to Copenhagen.

One of my teachers at the time, Morten Kargaard, gave me a photocopy of a chord solo from Joe Pass’ chord solo book.

Learning that solo was a LOT of work, which quite a few of my students also can tell you, but while working on it then I started to see some things in the Joe Pass solo that were a lot easier to move into my own playing, because phrases were often a static chord under a moving melody, so visually you would see the chord and then use the notes available to create a chord solo phrase.

This was a huge breakthrough and quickly gave me something I could move over to my own playing. Let me show you how easy this is to work with and then also how it will help your single-note soloing.

A 3-minute Chord Solo method

Let’s take a II V In G major, so Am7 D7 Gmaj7.

Here’s an Am7 chord to start with:

and you can use these 4 notes as different melodies over that:

For D7 then let’s use this D7alt:

and then these 4 notes for melody options:

For Gmaj7 then this is a great Gmaj7(9)

And you have these 4 notes:

Now you have the chords next to each other and melodies that are close to each other as well, so turning that into a solo phrase is not that difficult:

Or another variation like this one:

And this is a lot easier to start with instead of being stuck with having to put different chords under each note in the melody that you want to improvise, which of course you can start working on later, but it can also help you get another dimension into your single-note solos as well.

Wes Montgomery And The Power Of Limitation

Before I moved to The Netherlands to study I lived in Copenhagen and I was lucky to sometimes get to play with musicians that were a lot further than I was. While jamming with a piano player he gave me some advice that I, unfortunately, couldn’t put to use right away, but it later turned out to be very useful!

When you are working on chord solos in the way that I just showed you for the II V I in G major then you can’t play dense bebop lines like you usually do:

But that limitation is actually really useful because, you don’t want to play dense lines all the time, you also want to play more sparse melodies with more emphasis on rhythm. The kind of phrases you hear Wes use very often, like his solo on Four On Six:

Technically you can’t really play harmonized bebop lines in chord solos and therefore the lines are more simple, but you can still make some solid chord solo lines and that is actually helping you get into exactly those types of “Wes” melodies. That was also the observation the piano player made when we were jamming: “your solos lack rhythm but you actually play much more interesting stuff when you play chord solos, so you need to get that into your solos as well”. At that time, I couldn’t really implement that, but a few years later that realization really helped me develop that type of phrasing in my playing because I was already used to hearing those phrases in my chord solos. And this is really about taking phrases like this one:

And realize that it works without the chords as well:

Let’s look at another thing that working on this type of chord soloing really helps you develop.

Making Jazz Chords Into Music

The biggest challenge when it comes to comping is to go from chord symbols to music. Because a row of letters is, of course, not really music.

One of the strongest ways to get your chords to work together is melody, so if you can go further than just playing the chords like a robot and start to add some rhythm and melody to how you play them then you are really getting somewhere.

You want to turn it into phrases, repeat motifs and make it a story

That would be something like this:

But really this is just playing “lazy” or “sparse” chord solo phrases, so approaching comping like this will give you material from your chord solos and also help you develop new chord solo material as you are comping the song.

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3 Reasons Wes Montgomery Is Amazing And Worth Checking Out

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Wes Montgomery is the father of modern Jazz guitar, but it was not because he played with his thumb or used octaves. This video explores what is truly amazing about his playing.

Discovering Wes

There are not that many recordings that made such a huge impact on me that I remember where I was and what I was doing when I heard them the first time, but it is amazing when you have that experience. My classical guitar teacher, Morten Skott, had suggested that if I wanted to learn Jazz then I should listen to Wes Montgomery, so I went from that lesson down to the record store and bought a Verve compilation on my way home.

The first tracks didn’t really resonate with me, and especially the string orchestra and big band were not what I expected. I was used to Parker playing with small groups and Scofield playing trio or quartet.

I guess it was the blues that really made the difference for me when I got to the last track on the album, the thumb. My way into Jazz was really coming through blues, I had the same thing with Parker where I completely got, KC Blues, Now’s The Time, and Au Privave but a piece like Donna Lee that I had heard of as being very famous just sounded random and chaotic to me.

The Thumb, is Wes playing in a trio with Ron Carter and Grady Tate, and the track is a masterclass in phrasing and Jazz tradition. Wes makes the trio sound like a big band and really relies as much on swing and blues tradition as he does on bebop harmony, again not unlike Charlie Parker.

It Is Not Playing Octaves With Your Thumb

To me, the essential lessons you learn from Wes are not about playing with your thumb, using octaves, or playing chord solos. Those are really great techniques, but they are just techniques. I think there are much more important things to learn and get into your own playing than focusing on those.

Now, If that offends you then feel free to relieve your anger in the comments, down below.

These discussions with only playing Wes line with your thumb and Django only used two fingers. To me, it doesn’t really make sense, but I guess for hardcore Django fans there is only one way to go…

At the same time if you listen to people like Robin, Christiaan and Mikko then I think have all fingers seems work too.

For the rest, you will probably agree with everything else I say in this video and I have one influence on Wes that I think is seriously overlooked, but I’ll get back to that later.

#1 Not Afraid To Keep It Simple

One of the things that Wes does really well is to make every note count, and he doesn’t rely on using many notes very often.

You can see examples of this in how Wes often uses quarter note with a single note, like this phrase from Four On Six:

and it is common when he plays octaves like this example from the thumb:

In this example from the Thumb, he is actually ignoring the changes and just playing the root for almost 4 bars which is also not that common in Jazz.

You also want to notice that he might be playing one note and only play quarter notes, but he is still playing with dynamics adding an accent to 2 and 4 to lock in with the groove.

#2 The Power Of Short Phrases

Compared to a lot of other great improvisers then Wes plays a lot of short phrases, especially if you compare him to a lot of other Bebop and Hardbop guitarists, but that is also one thing that he uses to make his solos so incredibly melodic and often also incredibly groovy.

Wes will play short melodic ideas and he is a master at tying them together in very creative ways:

In this example, he starts out with call-response between a lower and a higher melody.

Then this is turned into a descending arpeggio motif that he takes through the shifting II V’s

And you can easily hear how the shorter phrases are connected to each other and develop tying the entire segment together as a complete piece of music. Again not playing more notes than needed.

Side-note: If you know your Wes solos, then you will probably notice that I am using fragments from both the Incredible Jazz Guitar version and the Smokin’ at the half note version. This last one was from Smokin at the half note.

Another example of how he employs Call response is from the other recording of four on six:

Here you have a very clear call with octaves and then the response with the arpeggio melody.

Again the idea is that we recognize one part and hear the other part change

The most important aspect of this is that it ties the whole solo together, he is not just playing from one note to the next. He is playing phrases that are related to each other, and often this ties together longer periods like 8 or 16 bars.

I think this is a huge part of what Pat Metheny describes as “melodic clarity” when he talks about how Wes influenced him in the interview on Alex Skolnick’s podcast “Moods and Modes”. If you haven’t heard that then go check it out, it is certainly worth listening to, both for Pat being an amazing musician, but also for Alex’s really useful perspective and explanations that tie together the whole thing.

#3 Repetition Legitimizes

Another thing that is closely related to the short phrases that Wes also really takes advantage of very often is using riffs. In the Thumb he repeats a two-note figure that really comes across as a part of a big band shout chorus:

Example 5

Essentially he plays the same melody with the same rhythm and only changes things to fit the chord progression.

The use of quarter note rhythms and drop2 voicings also really helps to bring the big band vibe.

The Secret to Wes’ Phrasing?

There is one influence on Wes that is rarely mentioned but is clearly very important.

This example is almost a direct quote of the shout chorus riff in Count Basie’s Splanky, and usually we talk about Wes being inspired by Charlie Christian, and you can hear Parker licks in his playing quite often, but you have to remember that he was also growing in a period where popular music was Big Band Swing, and those types of melodies and that type of phrasing is not getting the credit it deserves for being a part of his playing.

Splanky is off the legendary Count Basie album Atomic Basie, and if you want to improve your phrasing and learn to think in shorter riff like phrases in your solos then learning a few of those melodies and playing them along with this amazing big band is probably not the worst idea in the world.

Another example of a similar big band inspired riff is found in his solo on Nica’s Dream, again using rhythm and drop2 voicings to make it really stand out:

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How To Write Great Jazz Vocabulary And Learn From Charlie Parker

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Sometimes I like to challenge myself to find new things to play in solos, and one way I do that is to limit myself to a single thing and then really explore that, and that is what I am going to do in this video with a basic Cmaj7 arpeggio and all the Bebop Tricks I can think of, or at least most of them.

#1 Parker and the Blues Mystery

Of course, you want to explore the beautiful vocabulary of the great players, and then use that to make your own licks.

This is classic Bebop: maj7 arpeggio followed by a descending chromatic run. This is all over Parker and Benson solos.

This specific example is really just a variation of a Parker line that he plays on Au Privave:

Charlie Parker and the Maj7 arpeggios on a Blues

An interesting side-note here is that Parker is old-school: he plays Fmaj7 on an F blues, especially in bar 6. There are quite a few examples of this and that is a great sound to explore! Of course, this is coming from Blues first being just triads F, Bb and C, then probably 6th chords before we started using dominant chords, and I think this is a great reminder of you should not always reduce songs to chord symbols, because we lose something in the process. I am curious what you think?

As I said, Charlie Parker does this very often and another great variation is this example from his solo on Now’s The Time. (Example)

But you don’t want to only play ascending melodies with arpeggios, so before we make it really complicated then let’s try a descending version:

#2 Descending Is Great As Well

With this example, I really love how you can really bring out the chromatic leading notes by sliding into the resolution. Here it sounds great and also helps you get away with a fairly harsh leading note on beat one, and as you can hear the descending 8th note triplet sounds great as well.

To me, whether something is Bebop is probably more about how the melody flows than what notes are being played, I will give you a more detailed example of that later in the video.

#3 Making Scale Runs Sound Amazing

When you are creating lines with a certain type of arpeggio like this Cmaj7 then it is also a test of what you can do with all the other things you know.

In this example, the line is really just the arpeggio and a scale run, but I am adding in a few chord tones to break up the scale run that otherwise would be:

Example scale run #1

And then I am adding Cmaj7 chord tones on off-beats to make the line pop and make more interesting like this:

Example scale run #2

So here you have a high G on the 4& and a low G on the 1&.

#4 This Is Also In There

Combining Arpeggios is a great way to make interesting melodies, a bonus with the Cmaj7 is that you can also just take the upper part which is an Em triad like I do here triads are after all incredibly strong melodies. Another great option is to add more complicated and interesting chromatic enclosures as you will see in the next example.

#5 First A Beautiful Chromatic Phrase

Here I have a chromatic enclosure that is targeting the B, and follow this with the descending arpeggio creating a great line. You could also see the entire descending melody as an Am9 arpeggio. But you don’t need to only add the chromatic phrases before or after the arpeggio, they fit in the middle as well.

When Is It Bebop?

I keep talking about Bebop , but when is something bebop? To me, the type of melody in the examples are Bebop oriented, which I think mostly means that the melody has direction and follows the harmony. In Bebop you are finding creative ways to spell out the changes and create beautiful flowing melodies, but you can easily play licks with the same material that are not like this at all but still sound great:

In this lick, the Am7 line only uses Cmaj7 arpeggio notes, but it does not really sound like a Bebop melody, mostly because it is skipping around more wildly, and the melodies don’t have as much forward motion.

#6 Chromatic Detour

This line is really just a Cmaj7 arpeggio where I add two chromatic phrases..

You start with the Cmaj7 then on the 3rd(E) you add an enclosure which is scale note above, F, chromatic below: D#

The next step is to add a walk-up to the 7th using A and A# as an approach.

Having several descending melodies next to each other can create a great rhythmical cascading effect, like the next lick which is Wes Inspired.

#7 A Great rhythm from Wes, Pat Martino or Parker?

This combination adds a descending line that I have found in both Wes Montgomery and Pat Martino solos, and actually, I have the impression that it is really a Parker lick, but I can’t remember where I heard it. You can let me know in the comments if you know.

This rhythm is an example of playing groups of 3 8th notes, which is both an important sound in Jazz and a great way to change things up. Of course, the Cmaj7 doesn’t have to be the one-chord in the progression, it can also be an upper-structure like it is in the next example.

#8 It Does Not Have To Be A Cmaj7 Chord

Here I am using the Cmaj7 for an Am7 chord in a II V in G.

One of the things I really like about this lick is that I am using the arpeggios to harmonize a really simple melody, so in a way, it is just this melody

That is harmonized with descending arpeggios creating Cmaj7, Am7, and then a C Diminished triad.

#9 Creating Patterns and Pedal Notes

A great way to not only have lines moving from target note to target note is to add some pedal point melodies as I do in this example where the E in the Cmaj7 arpeggio becomes a pedal point with the G B and A melody above.

Another way to make the lines more interesting is to use phrasing and, to me, a Master of that was Wes, so the next example is using some of his techniques.

#10 Wes Uses Technique To Get Phrasing

In this example, there is a bit more space, and the line is using chromatic passing notes that slide into the resolution. This is a technique that I really picked up on from Wes, and it is one of the best ways to just add a subtle change in the sound of your lines, while also making it more surprising. You hear George Benson use this very often as well.

This example is adding leading notes to the B and the E.

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5 Easy Solos to Learn By Ear and Boost Your Jazz Guitar Skills

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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.

Don’t forget to like the video if you find this useful, that is a huge help for me and the channel.

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.

If you want to check out some of my videos on Wes solos then there is a playlist in the video description: Videos analyzing Wes Montgomery solos

George Benson

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!

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3 Great Ways To Use Arpeggios In A Solo

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Arpeggios are one of the building blocks you need to have in your vocabulary. But using Arpeggios in a solo can be very difficult. They can be hard to use in a way that sounds like a natural melody and not an exercise.

One way you can learn that is to check out how master jazz guitarists like Wes Montgomery and Pat Martino use arpeggios in their playing. Take over some of their great ideas and start using similar concepts in your own jazz licks and solos.

In this video, I am going to show analyze some great arpeggio phrases and talk about how you can use them in your own playing.

Content:

0:00 Intro – Arpeggios and Jazz Vocabulary

0:35 Example #1

0:37 Wes Montgomery – Great Arpeggio Polyrhythm idea

1:47 Example #1 Slow

1:52 Example #2

2:07 Pat Martino’s take on this rhythmical idea

3:02 Example #2 Slow

3:09 Putting this into your playing #1

3:29 Putting this into your playing #2

4:12 Example #3

4:14 Pat Martino’s Power Arpeggio Pickup

5:08 A Great Chromatic Idea

5:25 Example #3

5:49 Putting this into your playing #3

6:07 Putting this into your playing #4

6:41 How To Practice This and What To Focus on

7:27 Example #4

7:38 Wes’ Amazing Sense Of Melody

8:29 Example #4 Slow

8:46 Making Long Phrases like Wes!

9:27 Putting this into your playing #4

9:33 Like The Video? Check out My Patreon Page!

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5 Jazz Blues Licks – How to use Transcribed ideas

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In this video, I go over 5 longer Jazz Blues Licks that incorporate different ideas that I took from transcriptions of great guitarists such as Grant Green, George Benson, Charlie Parker(not really a guitarist, but he wished he was), Wes Montgomery, and John Scofield.

These examples really highlights how I work with material that I have transcribed, and most of them are in fact in videos I have done on these artists.

How I use transcribed licks

For me using larger chunks of a solo from somebody else was never really working. I always preferred to work with small phrases or even the concept behind a phrase and then use that to make my own version of that idea.

In these examples, I am mostly using small bits and pieces of other guitarists licks. This is mainly because the relation to the original would maybe be too unclear.

Grant Green and his great triad lick

This first example uses an opening phrase that is quite common with Grant Green. He uses this 2nd inversion triad in both Miss Ann’s Tempo and I’ll Remember April.

For the rest the line is using some of the great ideas that we use in Blues influenced jazz with the sliding leading notes and especially approaching the 3rd from a half step below.

Another typical jazz line is the use of the G augmented triad to help pull towards the C7.

George Bensons Major Blues Genius

A comment on my recent video on George Benson went on and on about how his use of major pentatonic lines was dreadful. A very strange idea since most of the guys (like Parker and Coltrane) use this sound a lot. And besides that I can’t imagine not wanting to be able to play Blues phrases with the soul of Benson.

The quote in this phrase is in the middle of the line. It starts in bar 2 and continues into bar 3. In the original(in F) he playes the upbeat in quarter notes. Here I turned that into 8th ntoes.

The phrase in bar 4 is a Parker line similar to one of his lines in his original version of Billie’s Bounce.

Kenny Burrel and Wes Montgomery

The first phrase (another major pentatonic 🙂 ) is from Kenny Burrell. The descending 6th at the end is really beautiful. On the C7 I am using a double stop trill that you can hear both Benson and Montgomery use. Wes plays a whole chorus in No Blues off Smoking at the Half note with this phrase. Here I am putting it on the IV chord rather than the I where both Benson and Wes use it.

Scofield’s Amazing Arpeggio Ideas and slides

This example is beginning with a lick that is not exactly taken from a Scofield solo but is more “in the vein of” The way he uses different types of legato techniques to create a really nice flow is beautiful, even if it is a little tricky to play.

The phrase in bars 3 and 4 is more of a direct quote from Scofield but the 2nd half is my take on developing the original as a motif. Here I take the opportunity to also turn it into a more altered sound.

Imitating Wes is always worthwhile

This example is a take on a Wes line from his (unbelievable) solo on Four on Six off the Smoking at the half note album. The original is on 4 bars of G minor, but here I have taken it to G major keeping the basic shape and changing the notes around.

What to take away from this lesson

I think these examples describe how I work with material that I have transcribed. Some of the examples I might really play in a solo and some that I might work with while practicing to develop them into more personal takes on the lines.

Developing your own material is important (and fun) so I’d suggest you do the same.

Supercharge your Blues playing!

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