This Simple Soloing Exercise Changes Everything

Are you stuck with solos that never really sound like jazz, no matter WHAT you try?

I struggled with this too, until I discovered this SIMPLE exercise that fixed my rhythm and phrasing and made my solos finally FEEL like jazz.

So, in this video, I will show you the exercise and exactly how you can use it to give your solos the rhythm and feel that’s missing.

And, the surprising part is that you probably already know the exercise.

The “Boring Exercise”

I’m talking about soloing using only the notes in each chord—1, 3, 5, and 7. What’s also called chord tone soloing.

But most people practice so they sound mechanical, like this:

But here’s the surprising part: Limiting yourself to just chord tones actually helps you focus on rhythm and phrasing—and that’s when it starts to sound like music.

Now let me show you how to build this—starting with just two shapes on the first four bars of a jazz blues.

Step #1 – Foundation & Basic Exercise

We’re going to build this from the ground up.

And stay on the first four bars of a jazz blues in C, so you only need two chords for this: C7… then F7… then back to C7.

For this exercise, don’t move around the neck. Stay in one position so the lines can connect. I’ll show you why later in the video.

Here’s a simple one-octave C7 arpeggio.

And here’s the F7 arpeggio—in the same area of the neck.

Now let’s put them over the chords to hear how they sound. Keeping it as simple as possible.

This is, of course, the “boring version” just a technical exercise—but it is useful.

The point of this step is just: can you find and play the chord tones and stay in time without getting lost?

Why one octave?

Now you might wonder why we’re only using one-octave arpeggios.

That’s because this is all you need to start making music—and it keeps everything simple and close enough that your lines can connect.

Next, let’s open up what you can do with these simple arpeggios.

How To Practice (3 steps)

Here are 3 quick levels to practice. They will make it easy to improvise with the chord tones:

Level 1 — Descending

You already played the basic ascending arpeggios, but not all melodies move up. Play the arpeggio descending, so your ear starts to hear that option as well.

This is easier than you think, and you can practice it like this to connect it to the music:

Level 2 — Start On The 3rd

Then, start on the 3rd of each chord instead of the root.

For C7, that could be,

and for F7:

This is the first step toward making it sound like a line instead of a pattern, and the 3rd is a very strong note in the chord. Check it out:

And the final exercise that will make you much more free: “Don’t just practice arpeggios.” Create simple licks and move them from chord to chord to get flexible.

Take a simple C7 line like this:

And see how it is to move this to the F7, which is really just mapping 1,3,5,7 to that chord:

And then you get an exercise like this:

So now you’ve got the raw material.

But if you stop here, it’ll still sound like an exercise.

In the next step, I’ll show you how to use these same four notes to make phrases that connect—so you are playing a solo with a story, not just a bunch of licks.

Let’s start improvising with just four notes.

Step #2 — Making Music with Just 4 Notes

Ok—this is the part that most people skip.

You can play the arpeggios… but how do you make it sound like a solo instead of a mechanical exercise?

The goal is actually simple: stop thinking “arpeggio” and start thinking “phrase.”

And the easiest way to do that is to use one small idea and develop it.

The Motif “Superpower”

Here’s the rule: pick a very short motif—literally 2 to 4 notes—and repeat it, but move it with the chords. Like this simple motif on C7.

We’re only using chord tones, and you already saw how easy they are to move.

So mapping the notes by just thinking 1, 3, 5, 7 of the next chord gives you this.

Now listen to what happens when I take that same motif through the four bars of the blues. But notice how it doesn’t really sound like a solo yet:

This is still very much an exercise, so try changing the rhythm for each development:

If it starts to sound boring, don’t ditch the motif—change one thing: the rhythm. That ALWAYS works.

Call-and-Response Shortcut

Next is call-response. This is one of the fastest ways to get that “conversation” feel in your solo where one phrase asks and the next answers.

Here’s the shortcut: play a short call… then answer it with a variation that is sort of the opposite.

Here’s a simple call on C7.

And here’s an easy response: same shape, reversed by changing the direction of the last part..

Of course, you can create answers in other ways as well, but this is simple, and it works.

Check out how this sounds, and in the next section, I’ll show you some phrasing tips you can also add:

Notice what we didn’t do: we didn’t add more notes.

We just made the notes sound like music.

And the next section will show you how to take the exact same ideas and make them sound even more “human” with phrasing, maybe the most important part of any style.

Step #3 — Phrasing & Dynamics – Make 4 notes sound human

Ok—now you’ve got phrases: motif, call-response.

But what makes a solo really great is often subtle details like dynamics, timing, or a well-placed grace note.

And the nice part is: with only four notes, you can actually focus on these details without getting overwhelmed.

Check out this phrase, which is maybe a bit boring like this:

And it gets much more interesting and alive, just adding a bit of phrasing:

And this is what you want to get into your playing to not sound like a robot. The next example also highlights something else you’ll learn by working with this approach:

Hear that part? I’m still on C7, but I’m already aiming for the F7 in bar 5.

That’s a huge part of the jazz sound: connecting chords, not just jumping from shape to shape. Before we expand the arpeggios, keep this in mind: If you can’t make four notes sound like music, adding more won’t fix it. Jazz lives in the rhythm and phrasing, NOT how many notes you play.

Step #4 — Expanding the Arpeggio

Up to now we used the 4-note version of the arpeggio. Now we’ll open it up into the full arpeggio position, so you can create longer lines and connect chords more smoothly—without jumping around the neck.

This depends on how you play arpeggios as well, so use what you are familiar with. You might have other choices than mine, that’s not really important. And another point: This is about knowing the full position, so the root is not always the lowest note. Similar to scale positions.

For C7 you get this:

And For F7:

The way I think about this is pretty simple: the full position is just the one-octave version,

with a few extra notes added above and below.

So you’re not memorizing “new patterns”—you’re just expanding the same map you already had.

Now you can start creating lines like this, with a bigger range:

But having more notes isn’t the win by itself.

The win is knowing where to go when the chord changes—so your lines don’t stop at every bar line. You want to flow through the progression like real jazz.

Step #5 – Connecting Chords

Now that you’ve got the full arpeggio shapes, connecting chords gets way easier.

With the one-octave version, sometimes it is impossible to make smooth transitions.

Here’s the skill you want: while you’re playing over the chord you’re on, you’re already aiming for a note in the next chord.

So here’s the one thing to focus on: pick a target note.

That’s how your lines stop sounding like separate chunks

So if you’re on C7

while you’re improvising with these arpeggio notes then you also want to see the arpeggio of the next chord F7

And then you want to play a line that ends on one of these notes, which instantly makes everything flow. That could be something like this

and here of course the last part of that line is really just designed to end on that A, the third of F7 (play)

Applying this to our 4 bars gives you this, and notice how everything flows much more naturally.

Jazz Chords -> Music

You get the exact same problem happens when you play chords.

You can play the “right” chords all day and still not have any feel or rhythm—because the real goal is turning chord symbols into rhythm and movement, not just playing a chord grip on beat one.

Joe Pass had a great approach for chords that fixes this. I break that down in this video, so check that out if you want to make your comping come alive!

Learn Jazz Make Music

https://jenslarsen.nl/the-jazz-chord-system-that-pros-use-but-nobody-teaches/

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