In jazz, timing is everything. In this week's episode we will take a look at structuring our solos in such a way that the important notes fall in the right place. We want to make sure that we are putting chord tones on the strong beats of each measure. This gives our improvisation some direction and is the number one way to make you sound like you know what you're doing quickly! We come up with the skeleton of our solo and then build a complete melodic statement around that skeleton. With a … [Read more...]

This week we discuss one of the most important concepts in building a good solo. Motivic development is the principle of taking a short idea and learning to manipulate it in many different ways. This gives our listeners something to grab onto in our solo and provides us with a launching point that can go in any direction we would like it to. We are going to start by taking a simple idea and base the rest of the episode off of it. In a way, the episode is an example of motivic … [Read more...]

Caravan is a tune that everyone who plays jazz must know. It also happens to be a really fun tune to improvise over if you know what you are doing. The 'A' sections of this tune only contain two chords so one must be able to stretch their ideas over a long period of time and not run out of things to say. This tune also happens to extensively use the diminished dominant scale which we have explored in previous episodes of the podcast. In this episode we learn to use this scale and particular … [Read more...]

This is our third installment of our series on Rhythm Changes. Last week we took a look at the 'A' sections of the form and learned some exercises to get us through these rapid fire chords. This week we will focus on the bridge, where the chords spread out considerably. Because the chords come at us a little bit slower, we have to approach this section in a different way than we did on the 'A' sections. In this episode we look at a couple of different approaches. The first, is using our … [Read more...]

In today's episode we get deeper into rhythm changes and start working on a couple of concepts that will start you into the world of improvising over this important form. In this episode we will be concentrating on the "A" sections of the rhythm changes progression. We'll save the bridge for the next episode. We will start with an exercise that explores a simple linear concept over the chord changes that will start you on getting familiar with each and every chord. We then move into a more … [Read more...]