Melody Line Improvisation
Improvisation is generally thought of as spontaneously creating a single melody line. This is because historically, the primary improvisational instruments were horns – trumpet, sax, clarinet, trombone – whereas the piano was simply there to play the harmony in the rhythm section. Historically, pianists played chords or arpeggios with their right hand. This can be clearly heard in ragtime and early Jazz pianists who largely just played syncopated patterns around chord tones.
Modernity Strikes
Then in the 1920’s a pianists called Earl Hines, who is now known as the Father of Modern Jazz Piano, rather than simply playing chordal patterns started playing more direct and linear melody lines. He called it ‘trumpet-style’ because he was intentionally imitating how a trumpet might improvise. He played single melody lines (sometimes doubling them with an octave) and created a hornlike improvisation on piano.
This was considered much more ‘modern’ than playing chordal based patterns, but that doesn’t mean that you should completely neglect chordal piano soloing. In fact, all the great Jazz pianists are able to improvise both using this trumpet-like single melody line approach, and using a chordal approach.
Chordal Improvisation
The great thing about chordal improvisation is that it sounds really complex and interesting, but is actually quite simple. And that’s exactly what we want – something that sounds complex but is actually really easy to do. All you need to do is to learn to play the chords in your right hand, and then improvise around those chords, either by:
- arpeggiating them; or
- improvising with your top fingers while playing the chord with your bottom fingers on your right hand.
And you don’t have to use plain old 7th chords when using this technique. You can improvise around any other chord voicing, such as rootless voicings or quartal voicings, etc. But again, obviously you first need to learn to play the chords by themselves and only then can you create a chordal solo around that particular voicing.
This technique sounds really interesting and like there’s a lot going on, but really, you’re essentially just playing the chords. So give it a go yourself with a song you know; and don’t neglect chordal soloing! It may not be as ‘modern’ as single line soloing, but so what? It still sounds great.
Note that in the below video I play a chordal solo in my right hand and a walking bassline in my left hand. If you are playing with a band and the bass player is covering the bassline, you can play a two handed chord solo!
Have a Listen to
- Art Blakey & the Jazz Messengers – Moanin’ (from about 6:40)
- Miles Davis – Straight, No Chaser (from around 7:28)
- Oscar Peterson – Night Train (from about 3:42)
- The Three Sounds – Blue Bells (from about 2:10)
- Any other Three Sounds piano solo (the pianist, Gene Harris, used this technique extensively)