Summary
As I discussed in the first lesson of this module, Jazz Improvisation is all about Creating and Resolving Tension.
- You create tension by play ‘wrong’ notes.
- You resolve tension by playing ‘right’ notes.
But we do NOT play ‘wrong’ notes randomly, rather we play them in a structured way – either by playing them quickly on your way to a chord tone, or using patterns, or making reference to the melody, or some other logical and structured way. The various techniques we covered in the preceding lessons allow you to build tension by playing outside notes in a structured way before falling back into the ‘right’ notes by targeting chord tones and playing appropriate scales.
Perfecting all the techniques covered in this module will help you create good and strong sounding Jazz solo. But to make your solos GREAT rather than just GOOD, you need to do one more thing: listen. Listen to as much Jazz as you can. Listen to all the great soloists – Charlie, Dizzy, Herbie, Louis, Basie, and all the others whose names do not rhythm – listen and transcribe and play and steal and listen some more. All this theory is all well and good, but to create a great solo you also have to have great timing, great phrasing, great instrument control, and some great ideas. This only comes with practice, practice and more practice.
Jazz Improvisation Tips
And I’ll leave you with some final Jazz Improvisation tips:
- Pick a ‘base scale’ for a given song and pivot back and forth between improvisation ideas/concepts/techniques and that ‘base scale’. This will stop you from getting lost and give you time to think of something to play. After exploring, always return back to base.
- Practice using Melodic Continuity (constant quavers)
- For a new song, map the chord, guide tones and avoid notes (see next lesson)
- Use pentatonic scales (they’re nice and easy and consonant)
- Recover from mistakes by turning them into chromatic runs and cycled patterns
- Retreat to the closest guide tone or chord tone when in doubt
- Don’t be afraid to make mistakes and sound bad – that’s what Jazz is all about
- If you make a mistake, repeat it, and it will sound like you meant to do it
The final point brings to mind a favourite quote of mine:
Something’s Missing
So, those are some Jazz Improvisation tips that you should keep in mind when soloing. But unfortunately, just using the various Jazz improvisation tips and techniques over 7th chords is not enough. To truly master Jazz, you need to use appropriate Jazz Chord Voicings, which is the subject of our next module. But first (in the next lesson) we will discuss how to put all this Jazz Improvisation Theory into Practice with Chord Mapping.
