Jazz Improvisation Exercises
The goal of this lesson is twofold:
- To give you a few exercises you can practice to improve your ability to improvise; and
- To give you the tools to create your own exercises
You can choose to memorise these exercises as licks and use them verbatim in your solos. Or you can simply use them as a springboard to create your own licks.
Jazz Piano Licks
Learning licks is an important part of improvisation. Not only does it give you a feel for the type of rhythm and phrasing that is typically used in Jazz improvisation, but memorised licks are also a good fall-back option if you run out of ideas while you’re improvising. It’s almost like a get out of jail free card. If you ever make a mistake or get lost during a solo, play a snazzy little lick and people will think you know exactly what you’re doing.
We’re going to apply these licks over a ii-V7-I progression, simply because it is the most commonly used chord progression in Jazz. But with a bit of transposition you can use most of the ideas found in these exercises over any chord progression.
We’re going to think about and analyse these licks as a combination of:
- Arpeggios
- Diatonic scale
- Chromatic passing notes
But instead of arpeggiating just the plain old 7th chord, we are going to arpeggiate the available tensions of each chord as well. So rather than just playing chord tones (1, 3, 5, 7), we’ll also include the chord’s tensions (9, 11, 13). But, as covered in a previous lesson, not all tensions are allowed over every chord type. Below is a brief summary of what tensions are considered ‘available’ for each of the three major chord types.
- m7 = 9, 11, 13
- V7 = b9, 9, #9, #11, b13, 13
- Maj7 = 9, #11, 13
And we are going to pay special attention to the last note in each phrase. We want a strong resolution for each phrase, and in order to do this we will finish each phrase either on a chord tone or an available tension of the chord.
ii-V7-I Licks
Below are five Jazz licks played over a ii-V7-I in Bb, so our diatonic scale will be Bb Major. Play through each of these exercises a number of time (say, three times) and try to figure out what’s going on. What is the soloist ‘thinking’ while he or she is improvising these licks. While you are playing these look for:
- Arpeggios (including available tensions)
- Scale runs
- Passing notes outside of the scale
- Repetition/sequences/repeating rhythmic patterns
- What note each phrase starts and ends on
- What beat (on or off-beat) each phrases starts and ends on
- The different durations of the notes (eighth notes, triplets, quarter notes, etc)
The first four Jazz improvisation exercises use a ii-V7-I over 4 bars.
The last lick uses a ii-V7-I over 2 bars (i.e. it has a faster harmonic rhythm)
As stated earlier, feel free to memorise these few Jazz improvisation exercises and use them as licks. Or use them as inspiration to create your own licks.
For a PDF of the above licks Click Here.
Common Threads
Hopefully you noticed that these licks generally have the following characteristics:
- They heavily use arpeggios (with available tensions)
- We are especially the 9th
- They use the diatonic scale (Bb Major)
- They use chromatic passing notes (occasionally just to get us to the next note in the scale)
- Lick 2 uses short chromatic run
- Each phrase finishes on a chord tone or available tension
- They use a lot of repetition and sequences and rhythmic patterns
- Licks 1 & 2 are just the same phrase transposed to each of the different chords
- Using repetition helps link the individual phrases into your solo into a logical, holistic improvisation
- They mostly use a combination of swung 8th notes and triplets
- Phrases often start and end on an off-beat
- This helps create a little bit of syncopation in your solo
The last two points are especially important for jazz rhythm and phrasing. Jazz improvisation often uses phrases that start and end on off-beats and combine swung eighth notes with triplets. You’ll also often find 16th notes (played straight), but these are not covered in the above examples.
At its simplest, that’s all there is to creating licks and improvising. Applying these harmonic, melodic, and rhythmic ideas helps you create a strong sounding improvisation. Putting these ideas together in your improvisation can get you sounding really smooth and professional and jazzy. And, of course, we can then add infinite layers of complexity on top of this basic improvisation, by adding exotic scale or cycled patterns or side slipping or superimposition. But if you just want a nice sounding, strong and simple improvising, this is the way to do it.
How & What to Think When You’re Improvising
Your end goal while improvising is to be able to think about each phrase in the same way as we just analysed the above licks. If you are asked to improvise over a ii-V7-I in Bb, rather than just noodling on the Bb Major scale (which is theoretically correct but sounds quite boring) you really should be trying to outline each chord using arpeggios, targeting/end on chord tones or available tensions, and linking these arpeggios with scale runs or chromatic passing notes. On top of this you want to use the appropriate rhythm and phrasing typically found in Jazz. To do this, of course, you need to know the form of the song perfectly and have practiced it enough to feel confident moving from one chord to the next. If you play something enough times you eventually internalise the form and thus always know exactly where you are at any given point in the song – both what chord you are currently on and what chord comes next. Every note you play should be intentional and purposeful. Ultimately, your thought process during and improvisation should be something like: “Ok, I’m currently on a Cm7 chord which means I can arpeggiate the chord up to the 9th (Eb, G, Bb, D). Ok, I’m now on the D and the next chord is an F7 which mean I can play a little chromatic run down to the 3rd (A) and end the phrase there.”
Needless to say, this kind of thought process takes months if not years of practice. Good luck!