Transcription
What if I told you that after analyzing hundreds of jazz transcriptions, I discovered a way to more effectively learn jazz improvisation? That's what I'm going to show you in this video.
Now, it comes from a larger workshop I did called the Master Improvisation Blueprint Workshop, but the essence is we need to learn essential jazz patterns. There's nine of them, which I'm going to teach you in this video, and combine them to form essential jazz vocabulary. This is totally different from the standard scale approach. So, if you're having any issues with improvising, you feel like you're trying to apply the right scale to the right chord, if the chords feel like they're moving too fast, you don't know how to improvise, how to make the thirds and sevenths work, any of that, you're just feeling overwhelmed, this video will show you a much simpler and more effective way to start improvising.
Dude, can I interrupt and say that that is freaking brilliant? Thanks, Brian.
So, these are coming from these problems when improvising. These are coming from uh a bunch of you guys who had emailed saying, "Hey, my number one struggle or the number one thing I want to get out of this." And so, you guys should relate to these. Some of them were on the poll. Um, I know the scales, but I don't know where to go when I'm improvising over the tune. I'm overwhelmed by all the options. So, scales, arpeggios, patterns, um, and I don't know what to focus on. There's just a lot of stuff happening. We're going to talk about how to simplify that. And then I want to escape just running up and down scales, arpeggios, and use actual musical phrases.
This one, I think, is probably the most common way people are thinking about the issue is they are doing the work of I, hey, I'm learning the scales and I'm learning the arpeggios, but still doesn't sound like jazz. It still doesn't feel like I'm making music. So, there's a fundamental issue that is happening that's preventing us from making music using that approach. So all of these and the one Adalfo talked about, I think they're all solved by a different approach to learning how to improvise.
The first one is this scale trap. What I call a scale trap. And this is that we think or or we currently thinking that to improvise it really just means we pick notes from a scale or arpeggio that is like correct, right? So hey, I know the correct notes and improvisers are just picking better notes basically, right? Um, and so somehow we can transform the scale into musical language. That's sort of whether we're thinking about it in that term or not, that's really what is going on in in this approach. And I to me this is very similar to that old saying about monkeys typing forever eventually producing Shakespeare, right? You're doing the musical equivalent of that. Like if I eventually if I put these notes in the right order, it's going to sound like Charlie Parker, right? But we don't have centuries to wait for that to happen. So, uh, I'm going to hopefully give you guys a faster way of doing it.
Okay. So, I'm assuming everyone here knows how to speak at least one language. Um, and so I want you guys to really uh compare your approach to what you're currently doing for learning how to improvise to how you would think about learning a language, right? And so if we were going to have a conversation, the scale approach is basically the same as saying, "Hey, memorize these letters of the alphabet and then just combine them together and then we'll be able to have a conversation." You would just be listing out random letters and we wouldn't be able to say anything to each other. Nothing meaningful, right? It would just kind of sound random. And that and that's what uh our solos sound like essentially if we do that approach. So, it's there's got to be something more happening than just memorizing correct notes and then moving them together, right? If that if that was going to be the way to do it, we would have at this point, you know, seen some progress.
So, we don't want to have musical nonsense. We want to actually some of you guys were phrasing it as, you know, I want my solo to tell a story. That's that's a very common way that people describe it. I think about it more like musical communication. We want there to be musical phrases that have meaning. Um, and it doesn't have to be um something, you know, uh, necessarily profound. It just needs to communicate an idea and then from there that that can be enough.
So, let's go a little bit further with this analogy. So, when you learned your first language, you didn't start off as a baby learning grammar rules and figuring out the alphabet and how to put these letters together. We just imitated words, right? and we combine them to get what we want out of our communication. Right? So, if you need to identify something or or say that there is some state you're in, you just kind of like use a word to do that. And then as we develop um better language abilities, we can get more complex thoughts. You see this also with people who are um native speakers in a certain language. Um, I remember back in like my Spanish classes where it was like the the native Spanish speakers who could who were in that same class because I wanted an easy class. They they could speak Spanish way better than any of us trying to learn Spanish, but their grammar was not that great because they would learn they knew how to speak it, but they never had to learn the grammar in order to speak it. So, um, we want to be able to speak fluently and not care as much about the grammar. We want to just be able to play music on our instrument, right? So, we need to learn this vocabulary. And this is what I want to show you guys today is what are these, you know, there's a lot of different combinations of phrases that people discuss. And so, I've basically boiled it down to nine essential jazz patterns. Each of those patterns is its own vocabulary word, let's call it.
All right. So the scales are giving you that alphabet of notes, but it doesn't then tell you how do you combine these notes into a meaningful word. So we can't just stop at the scale. It's not that it's not that it's bad to learn the scale. There's reasons to learn the scale just like there's reasons to know the alphabet, right? But but we actually need to go another step and say, "Hey, let me actually learn some combination of these notes that on its own makes sense to communicate something." And so people don't do that aspect I think a lot of times because it's not really spelled out how to do that. So arpeggios are one of those let's call it spelling patterns but it doesn't really tell you how again how do I combine an arpeggio into anything else right? So you get stuck in these very kind of scale okay to arpeggio arpeggio to scale just sort of back and forth.
One of the big problems that happens here is what I call the resolution trap. A lot of times when we do this scale and arpeggio approach, we end up only playing notes that fit the chord. So all of the notes that we play fit the chord. And I am uh this is very similar to speaking in a monotone voice. So if it's technically you're saying the same information, but there's no emotional impact. There's nothing happening there uh that's going to connect with anyone listening. And different genres have different amounts of, let's call it, tension that they will allow for. Pop music has less of that. Um, and jazz music probably has some of the most um acceptance of creating tension. And so if we want to play jazz, we need to have some sort of tension within what we're playing. If we're just playing all notes that fit over C major on a C major chord, it's not really going to sound like jazz. We need to understand how do I create tension um and how do I do that? And that's a big issue that's happening. Even if you know your scales great and know your arpeggios, if you just play that over the correct chords, still not going to work. It's still not going to sound it won't sound wrong, right? You won't you you won't sound like you're hitting wrong notes, but we want to go above just not sounding bad. We want to actually we want to actually sound good.
Okay. So this tension and resolution principle, it's it's very similar to having conflict and resolution, right? Going back again to that uh storytelling aspect, we want to set up um tension and resolution and then create some tension and then resolve it. That is basically giving the listener um sort of mini payoffs as they're listening to you. whe whether we realize it or not, that's kind of what the ear is is looking for when listening to music. Something unexpected creates some tension and then it resolves. Something that doesn't quite fit the chord but then is resolved correctly um is a payoff. So the safe notes is limited emotional range and we can't get that just by doing scales and arpeggios. So we need to have that musical vocab that creates that. And this is sort of going to Adulo's point. We need to be able to respond musically without thinking. In the same way, if I'm speaking in my native language now, I'm not trying to think about how do I put these words together. I'm so fluent and I've said these sentences and these ideas so many times before that they're just coming out naturally. We need to have that same kind of um automatic reaction when we're soloing. And that's what great solists feel. And that's also why they have a hard time explaining how to do that because it just feels automatic. Um, but there's ways to just like anyone learns a language, there's ways of getting to that point of fluency.
All right. So, how do we build this musical vocabulary so we can improvise fluently? There's a broad framework and then we'll start to get into the actual um specific notes. So the first thing this 3S framework is simplifying. So stop overwhelming yourself with endless amounts of scales, arpeggios, exercises, lessons, whatever it is. I think you should learn these nine essential jazz patterns that can work over any chord, any framework. Um, and as you'll see from these nine essential jazz patterns, it in combination, they make up so much of what's happening for any soloist, any we're again, we're talking about jazz in this context. Um, it could apply to other genres with different patterns, but in the jazz context across decades, across instruments, um, I don't really, it doesn't really matter whether you prefer Jim Hall or George Benson. They're all using these patterns and in combination in their own style then so once we've simplified to that we need to systematize we need to organize how do we actually go about learning these how do we practice these and then how do we combine them so the synthesis part the nine essential jazz patterns and they're these are the ones that are absolutely essential nine essential jazz patterns there's more patterns you can add into this but when you combine essential jazz patterns. That's where you start to get what I call essential jazz vocab. So, the patterns all connect with each other to form these longer phrases. So, anytime you hear a great solist have this really cool long line or any sort of longer idea, the way that they're able to do that, what they're actually doing is connecting one pattern to another pattern to another pattern, maybe to the same pattern. And so, we need to know how do these things connect with each other. And I'll show you how we do that.
All right. So this is essentially what I'm calling the master improvisation blueprint. Essential jazz patterns and then essential jazz vocab. So you learn your patterns. You learn your nine essential jazz patterns and you combine them to form essential jazz vocab.
So what are the nine essential jazz patterns? So first up just the 1 2 3. If we'll do this all all over C major just for ease. So just starting on the root of your chord and you just walk up 1 2 and three. If you're doing a minor chord, you go to the flat three. All right. So we need to be able to move by step. That's the first pattern. The next one, 135, a triad or a skip movement. [Music] 135. We're going to do this in two octaves. I would do it in one position. Um, for this, I'm just going to do it in the third position, but you should be able to do it in both octaves. Notice we're not really talking about scales. We're not going to talk about scales really at all. I'm doing this in reference to the chord shape that I'm playing. Right? If you want to also see the scale through there, that's totally fine. Um, but the point is that we actually don't even need scales in order to think about essential jazz patterns and combining them, right? The third one is really a combination of both of these. 1 2 3 5. That's the one we're going to look at today in detail. It's probably the most common uh central jazz pattern for that that starts to get out of just like little three note ideas. Um, it's used in all kinds of different uh, combinations and um, I think it's it's a really nice one to start with whether you're more beginner or advanced. There's there's a lot of cool ideas. So 1 2 3 5 like C D E G four would be our seventh arpeggio. So starting on the root and going up to the seventh C E G [Music] B five would be the ninth arpeggio. You could also think about this as an arpeggio starting on the third. So for C major E G B D it goes up to the ninth. And then six would be a pivot arpeggio. Um, pivot arpeggios have this skip of a sixth. They basically pivot the octave that they're going to. So instead of a C going up to E, it's a C going down to E, and then it continues. So C down to E, G, B. It's a very common jazz type of movement. Um, that's important that we know. What it really does is it helps us adjust our range on the instrument. It's really important as a horn player since they have a little bit more limited range, kind of like the guitar, uh, to be able to use these pivots effectively so they can play fluently and not have to worry about starting to get too low or too high out of their range. U, piano players don't have to worry about it as much and you see them using pivot arpeggios less as a result. Um, seven, continuous chromaticism. So this is just ascending or descending literally just by a half step and different licks um based on this continuous chromaticism. We'll also look at this today in combination with three. So, I'll we're just going to use this as the one two three5 as our first example and then we'll start to see how do we connect that so you can um hopefully today at least get a glimpse at how this approach gets put together and then you know we'll talk about how do you do that for all of these um eight is two note enclosures. So very loosely just having a note that we want to target and then two notes that surround that whether that's chromatically or within um the key. And then the last one is three note enclosure. So just three notes that target a note. And so really uh just if you look at these in like groups of three, we have the 1 2 3 1 13 5 1 2 3 5 um these are like our three note patterns and the combination of that. Then four to six are the arpeggio patterns and then seven to nine are our chromatic most important chromatic type of ideas. Okay? Any of these can be combined with any other one. And I'll show you how I know that in a second. So any essential jazz pattern can be combined with any other one to create these longer phrases. So I looked at literally hundreds of transcriptions um to find actual examples. So one thing that bothers me sometimes is when um different teachers will give these type of ideas but then don't show if that's actually true in reality. Right? Is that actually how these guys are soloing? this actually how it how it works. And so I was analyzing hundreds of transcriptions and actually before I had it down to nine essential jazz patterns um I had it at 31 but since then I've even simplified it. We're simplifying it from that to to nine I think. Uh, and so what I did is from analyzing all of these solos, Charlie Parker, Joe Pass, Oscar Peterson, Wes Montgomery, Fat Navaro, Pat Martino, Lewis Armstrong, Clifford Brown, I try to get different instruments, um, etc. So, this little this is a 9 by9. I had it before it was a 31 by 31. So, this is a little bit simpler for me as well. But um there's new essential jazz patterns and new essential sorry new essential jazz vocab here for those of you guys have already gone through that 31 essential jazz patterns. Um and so what this is is the the uh rows are the first pattern and then the column is the second pattern that it connects into. So, if you're like, "Hey, Chase, is there a 1 2 35 pattern here, three, that connects with uh four is a seventh arpeggio?" This essential jazz vocab 122 is a lick from John Col Train that is 1 2 35 into a seventh arpeggio. And so, we can see what he does with that, right? Or if you want to know, okay, how do I do a pivot arpeggio? How do I go from a pivot arpeggio to chromaticism? So that' be six into seven. Okay. Benson lick 96 has an idea that does that. I think I know exactly which one it is. [Music] It's that's the Benson lick that that does that pivot because I learned that one so many times. Um so basically for every single one of these I have the actual example and even the measure and the song that it comes from. So you could listen to them playing it. Right. Dude, can I interrupt and say that? That is freaking brilliant. Thanks, Brian.
So, it's every combination because, you know, first of all, as a as a teacher, I want to make sure that this is actual actually true and that all of these combinations work together um and can be found, right? Cuz you might find something interesting. Maybe I couldn't find any example of pivot arpeggio into another pivot arpeggio, and that would be interesting to know or or other combinations that just don't exist. But all of these I found in many cases multiple examples. Um, but at least one example from a real solo from one of these guys that I think we would all consider masters of the language.
All right. So, we're going to start off with this what I call essential jazz pattern number three. This 1 2 35. And so, let's do this. Um, we'll do this as a 251. And then you guys I'll put the backing track on here too if you guys want to go through this. So C major 7. I would do this in two different octaves. 1 2 3 5. 1 2 3 5. If you're more advanced, move this around. Do this in different positions. Right? Just figure out where your chord is and where where you would play that. Okay? But if you stick to one position, that's what I would do. So, we want to do that for our different chord types. If we're going to do it, again, we're going to do this over at 251 in a minute. So, for G7, G13, it's really the same shape. 1 2 3 5. It's like a major type of pattern. It doesn't matter that it's a major 7 or dominant 7 because we're not playing the seventh. So, it's the same G, A, B, D. do this in one position so that you can um make the adjustment from one pattern to the next. That's part of what we want to develop is being able to go from in the same place from one pattern and start to visualize it. We're really just building awareness of these patterns and shapes in one spot. And then when you feel a little bit more comfortable in that spot, you know, you can start to connect to other positions or master other positions. And then lastly, um, for D minor, this one, just remember, we have a minor third, so it changes the shape of the [Music] pattern. One other thing I should mention here, it's just for ease of writing it. I write it all together in one measure, but I would take a break in between this octave. Right? So, for right now, you're it's not like I literally want you to play like that. play the first octave and then adjust. So like if in this D minor, if you need to move your first finger to this next part, you can do that. Just the purpose of here is just make sure you're practicing it in both [Music] octaves in that position.
All right. So one way we would go through this, let me just use it with the backing track here. And I'll I'll sort of demonstrate. I'm just going to I'll play it as um like an eighth note pattern and then I'll wait and then I'll do the next one. So for I'll it's D minor. Do 251 D minor G7 C major. [Music] So wait next [Music] one. Let's do it again. [Music] I'll do the higher octave now. So, starting on this [Music] D. As you start to get comfortable, you can start to mess with the rhythm. [Music] We could also start to do it in reverse, right? So 5 3 2 [Music] 1, but I'm just really trying to get comfortable. I I like to think about it as like I'm just playing with this idea. So I'm just trying to manipulate this almost like it's a physical like Rubik's cube, but I'm just trying to change the shape of it. Hey, what if I move it this way? What if I do it in reverse? What if I change the rhythm? All of those kind of things will make you really really comfortable with this simple pattern so that you'll start to hear different ways to use it. Right? So like one thing that you might notice is, oh wait, if I go through this D E F A and my next one's G, it connects really easily into that G A B D. And then actually the next one C D E G, right? these these are kind of simple connections to that that you start to just figure out on your own, right? So the we want to take a like creative exploratory approach to these. It's not like a specific exercise in how to do it. Um and also I want to get you away from um reading music is great. I'm I've I'm it's been super helpful to be able to read music, but it's a big issue that I see a lot of people have is they're too stuck to the page and they're not really allowing themselves to develop the awareness because they're looking at you're not going to develop the awareness from looking at the music. You need to be looking at your guitar and really developing that connection, right? Um so that's why we had it for a little bit. Learn what the shape is, learn how it is, but then look at your hand.
Let's look at some actual examples. So, these are coming from that um colorcoded spreadsheet that you guys saw, and we're going to focus on the 1 2 3 5, right? Cuz you've gotten some experience playing through it, and now, you know, we know how to connect it to some chromaticism, but um it still might not sound like it's an actual jazz line because you don't really know some actual examples from jazz language, from um recordings of how that actually gets put together. So let's look at this third. This is the EJP number three is this 1 2 3 5 pattern into the first one which is just a scale. So this is from Joe pass on speak low. So he plays this 1 2 3 5 C D E G. So that is the same pattern we were just looking at. What's happening here though? He's using it over a minor. Okay. So then going down this [Music] scale. Okay. So this is one way. In this example, it's starting on the upbeat, right? You just even want to take this first part of it. Forget about the D7 for a second. Right? Even just that we could play that in a [Music] way, right? Try and try and get as much music as you can out of it. Don't play like right. Don't don't play it stiff. Play it like like you're trying to sing this through your [Music] instrument. Right. Um and then continuing through that. So that's one way of doing 1 2 3 5 into this scale. this whole scale. After that, he connects it to a pivot, right? So, he's connecting to another one, but we just care about this first part. 1 2 3 5 into a triad. Um, this is from Have you Memphis Jones. So, over G flat major, 1 2 3 5 from the fifth. So, D flat, E flat, F, and A flat. This is a super common way to use 1 2 3 5 because it gets you really nice notes over the major 7. And then he comes down the G flat major [Music] triad. Like if we wanted to apply this to what we were just doing with the key of C, we would do a 1 2 3 5 from [Music] G and then we would come down C major triad. So G A B D C G E [Music] C right all notes that are technically in our C major scale or Dorian scale or G mixelian scale, but you just wouldn't play it like that if you were thinking about the scale, right? And so that's that's the point. The scale approach is going to get you away from playing things in the way that these guys are actually connecting two ideas together. He's thinking about the 1 2 3 5. Yeah, he's sorry. He's not thinking about it. He's hearing that 1 2 3 5 and then he's coming down the triad to get to this next part. Um 1 2 3 5 into 1 2 3 5. This is another very common one. Um Joe, these are all Joe Pass examples. Um mainly because Joe pass uses 1 1235 all over the place. So I knew that I would have a lot of examples, a lot of good examples. Um, one two three five into another one two three five is very common. So from all the things you [Music] are, it's also a really good pattern on guitar because the even number of notes per string makes it very straightforward to play fast. So you can do like and it sort of serves as a good connection point. So it's just 1 2 3 5 from G 1 2 3 5 from C.
Okay. So how do we go about systematically learning essential jazz patterns and um vocab? This is how I structure it. This is how I am structuring it. Basically three different phases. first learning the first three essential jazz patterns and I know some of you guys are already going through this have started to go through this just getting comfortable with what those patterns are different combinations of them really understanding them then going into applying it to some actual vocabulary. So the 3x3 means for any of these first three patterns, you should know how they connect with any of the other first three patterns, right? How does 1 2 3 5 go into 1 2 3 5 or into a triad or into a scale? How does a scale go into a scale, a triad or 1 2 3 5, right? So we have nine of those. Then after you've mastered that, going back to learn some more. So the four through six are like our arpeggio patterns. Then we have a bit more work to do. This is also the problem a lot of people have by not if they don't do it systematically, this is the problem you run into. The first three combine with each other for just nine different vocabulary pieces. But then when we add more patterns, all of those have to be combined with all the other ones. So we get we have 36 ones that we need to kind of figure out. And so the amount of um practice we need, the amount of information as we just add one more pattern really grows. Here we just needed to learn nine. Then we go to the next one. We need to learn 27 new ideas to really understand these. And so it just takes more time as you get more advanced. That's where it can start to feel like you're not improving as fast because there's just more work to be done to have that same amount of improvement, right? It's not like you're doing anything wrong necessarily. It just takes more work. So, bouncing between learn the patterns and then learn the vocabulary that is um from these great solos. And so, that's what I have. The other aspect of this is I would practice these in over the most common chord progressions. Um the way I've structured it for this course, it's 251, the take the A train a section progression. So, you get that 27 chord. Um and then a beginning part of all the things you are. So you're hitting a lot of the main diietonic harmony and then doing them in multiple keys so we really really get comfortable with it. Um the four most common keys for jazz if you don't know C, F, B flat, E flat. So basically in that order is um flat keys, right? Um but after E flat it it's debatable. It could go back to the key of G for more common than key of A flat. Um, and then practicing these from structured examples and then also practicing like we were doing a little bit here of just your own improvisation. So, actually trying to build your own melodic ability. Um, and I've also done it so that each of the video lessons are they probably actually average like 10 minutes or less, but some of them are 15 minutes. And then it's 10 to 15 minutes of watching the video and then take the next 45 minutes to practice it yourself with the backing tracks um or with different backing tracks or songs. So that really minimum time to improve would be about an hour a week which I think most of us if we have improvisation as a goal could manage an hour a week. Um and actually for those in CG right now I just uploaded the first 12 lessons for this. So, you had access to the first three, but now the first 12 are in there. Um, and then similar for the essential jazz vocab, we saw some of them do them in different harmonic contexts, different songs, different keys, four most common keys. And then a really important part about learning the essential jazz vocab is improvising into the essential jazz vocab and improvising out of it. So starting to if we want to really fit these ideas into our playing so that they come out naturally, we actually have to work on how do I get into this idea? Like if that idea, say the one we were just doing, it starts on F down here on the D minor. Well, I need to be able to get to that F if I'm leading into that, right? So it matters what chord's coming before that. and then I can figure out ways of getting to that so that I can play the idea. Um, if we don't practice that, you're gonna feel really stuck because you'll have these licks, but you have no connection to the other ideas you have, right? So, if you think about like your knowledge as like this network and you want to add in this piece, but you don't connect it to any of the current network, you're just never going to be able to access it. It doesn't have any connection points to that new idea. Um, so the ways of getting connection points there is practicing it on different songs, different keys, how to get into it, how to get out of it, all of these different ways start to make it, um, much more connected.
All right. And then, um, the backing tracks that we have, I actually had my brother comp, um, so that it's not an Ireel Pro, uh, computerenerated backing track. It's my brother comping on organ. Um, so it's a more realistic sort of feel.
All right. So, if you guys want to stop practicing scales and start speaking this language, um like I said, the first 12 lessons of essential jazz patterns are already in CGA as well as master standards blueprint, jazz blues accelerator. Um, and if any of you guys sign up today, I'll give you guys a complimentary 45minute one-on-one session so I can help you personally. If you guys enjoyed this video, drop me a comment below with your number one takeaway, what you learned from it, how it helped you out. If you also enjoy this format of the workshop, you would love Chasey Guitar Academy. And I want to let you know that we are increasing the price to join very, very soon. On July 15th, the price will increase to $79 a month or $699 a year. This is really to reflect the fact that we get in some of the world's best jazz guitarists teaching here. Right now during the summer, they're teaching here every single week. And as we're growing very very rapidly, we're soon approaching 200 members. I just need to make sure that we keep everyone in here at the right level who are focused and committed to their jazz guitar journey because I want to be able to personally help every single member in here. And so in order to do that, I can't have a thousand members. I need to really limit who is inside Chase Guitar Academy. If that sounds like something you'd be interested in, you can check out a 7-day free trial in the links below. And I'd love for you to join.