Improv Study for Beginners/Intermediates

[Jakeweiser]

Lots of questions get asked around here, and it's always fun. I posted this before my site died, now I've rehosted

http://www.freejazzinstitute.org/showposts.php?dept=analysis&topic=20070630221600_Jake_Hanlon

Just how I view teaching people how to improvise from a non-chordscale background and how to learn to encorporate it along with other ideas. Nothing special, just thought I'd put it back up

[pianarchist]

thankyou

[Stackabones]

~pimp:

[pianarchist]

i'm intrigued by the set of notes derived from combining the arps of D7 and Ab7 (I think you missed a couple of accidentals in approach no1?). I get D,Eb,F#(Gb),G#(Ab),A,C...if you add the #9 of each chord you get the D 1/2W diminished(?). Interesting!

[Jakeweiser]

key signature :)

[pianarchist]

a Gnat on the Ab7...not sure if the Ab would confuse some people with the Anat that follows in the D7 too. specifically im talkin bout the 6th bar pg11...but anyway, thanks for posting this. ive printed out those last four pages and have been applying the approaches to some of the other tunes i'm doing

[pianarchist]

just a quick question (and feel free to point me in the direction of a post where this has been discussed)...in the second approach you say we can start using the bebop dominant, but i am yet to really understand how that one passing note makes much of a difference at all to a mixolydian based phrase. how would it be used in this case?

[Jakeweiser]

typically the device is used to create an 8 note line, all 8th notes where by adding the natural 7th degree, all the chord tones will fall on the beat. It's a pretty common Bebop device, find it in the lines of Parker, Dizzy, Miles etc etc. It creates forward motion, with more flavor then Mixolydian, note in the lesson I never suggest Mixolydian as a scale to use.

As for that G yeah, this is an older unrevised version of the lesson. I have one without the error and a few other things fixed as well, and extra information. Oh well.

[pianarchist]

my thinking is that the F bebop dominant is just an F mixolydian with the added Bnat passing tone and if you played a phrase based on notes from the F bebop dominant but didnt play the Bnat then it would be the same as playing F mixolydian.

for that Bnat to function as you suggest does that mean that the Bebop dominant scales are only played up and down as scales?

[Jakeweiser]

It seems to me that you are missing some of the points that are trying to be made. In Method One and Two we're trying to eleminate the rooted need for scales, and to realize that an approach using melodic material based off the melody and chord tones can create jazz lines just as easily as running scales and in many ways is much more authentic.

A Bebop scale would be called a synthetic scale, meaning it doesn't have a parent scale that naturally comes out of the overtone seriese or something like that. Bird and Dizzy came up with this added chromatic note to give forward motion to a scalar idea. Note that there are also Major and Minor Bebop scales :). Now, the point of adding them now is to start to introduce a more linear option in your soloing by adding these 8 note scales. Of course, you don't have to play them up and down straight, you don't have to start them on the downbeats. Theoretically it was their purpose, to create a scale that hit all the chord tones on strong beats and lead easily into a resolution chord. This was something you could do if you started anywhere in the bar, even just lead into bebop scale ideas, flirt with it and go somewhere else.

So relating everything back to a chordscale, saying F Bebop is F Mixo with an added E natural may be theoretically accurate... but missing the point a bit