2,3, Bopdoodle-ooo

In the last doodle, I began talking about jazz improvisation as its own language and conversation. It is just that, but of course there has to be more than questions and answers. As ‘jazzheads’ we need to be able to make statements, sentences and paragraphs. A statement can be thought of as any ‘phrase’ that is longer than two bars.

The ability to ‘track,’ while learning to develop our phrases is of utmost importance. I encouraged you all to practice developing one bar phrases, and resting a bar in between those thoughts. Although I didn’t instruct you to move on from one bar phrases, I’m certain you all did anyway. That’s ok, because I want you now to focus on two bar phrases. After you think you have that down, move on to three bar phrases, or statements. Now in practicing building your phrases as statements, however, I want you to be strict in stopping at the end of the third bar. This will help your mental discipline in planning and developing phrasing abilities while keeping track of where you are within a chart.

Meaningful conversations can be emotional, and I hope they are. In order to express the thoughts and emotions you may think and feel, you will need to be able to draw on your jazz vocabulary.

To develop our jazz vocabulary, we must begin to become fluent on our instruments. What do I mean by becoming fluent? Just that – ‘fluent’, like you verbally speak your native language or other speaking languages that you have mastered and become ‘fluent’ in. My exposure to this concept came from the late great Oscar Peterson. In his words, in order to truly play jazz you had to be ‘fluent’ on your instrument. As instrumentalists that means we have to have committed all of the scales and their chord relationships to complete and utter memory. To begin we must master all twelve of the major scales and two of their basic modifications.

MAJOR- C Scale C D E F G A B C Chord Relationships CMaj., CMaj.7, CMaj.9

Practice these stopping on the seventh, eighth and ninth note of the scale. Know your Major scales and the rest is a snap!!

DOMINANT- C Scale C D E F G A Bb C Chord Relationships C7, C7/9, C13

Practice this scale pattern in all twelve keys. Think of this scale as a major scale with the 7th note lowered a half step.

Minor C Scale C D Eb F G A Bb C Chord Relationships Cmin., Cmin.7, Cmin.9

Again practice in all twelve keys and play the scale to the eleventh note of the scale to sound the ninth of the chord. Think of this VERY popular scale as a major scale with the 3rd and 7th note down one half step.

Now although I want you to work at practicing these scales so they can become ingrained where you can play them in your sleep, I recommend that you conduct your improvisation sessions as a separate time period of your practice.

Finally, have fun, begin to spend time each day simply ‘doodling’ on your horn, playing whatever you can think of and whatever note sequences you decide to string together. Don’t worry about the rules when you’re doing this, just play and listen. You’ll discover some things that sound really cool and begin to develop ‘licks’ that you really like. When you come across something you dig, transpose it to the other keys.

Keep jamming!!