check it out yesterday i practiced for four hours to go through a seven step process that i normally
take my students through in one month and in this video i'm going to show you how to go from
not knowing a jazz standard at all to being able to improvise over it on a fairly high
level let's do this thing what's up brent here from learnjazzstandards.com which is a blog of
podcasts videos and a membership geared towards helping you become a better jazz musician now
if you're like many of my students who first come to me in my lgs inner circle
membership and feel like i can't play great solos melodic creative solos over jazz standards and i
just don't know where to start this video is for you and i'm gonna help you really go from zero
to 100 so let's go ahead and start with that first step number one phase one is we're gonna learn the
melody and the chord changes of the jazz standard now in my inner circle membership we're studying
in a mellow tone by duke ellington this month so i'm gonna use that tune as an example for today's
video now of course this seems like an obvious first step of course you have to learn the melody
and the chord changes however think about it this way the melody is something that you can
use in your solos you want to know it really well and the chord changes are what we're improvising
over so you want to know them forwards and backwards so i spent a good deal of time just
working through the melody and the chord changes and here is what i came up with
do
now you may be thinking hold on brent one second you're going way too fast how do i even learn a
jazz standard especially by ear which is what i recommend well for the purpose of this video
i'm not going to go deep into this process but essentially i use my list process listen
internalize sing and transfer and at the end of this video i'm going to link to a really helpful
resource that will really help you and give you this exact process and framework to work through
so stick with me to the end on that one now if you're not a guitar player or a piano player and
you're a horn player trumpet player saxophone player then feel free just to work on the chord
changes by playing the arpeggios of the seventh chords and making sure you know where they fit in
the time now that we have that phase done let's move on to start really digging deep into what
notes we can use over this jazz standard phase two is we're gonna build a chord
tone map now this is the step in the process where we're gonna start the very basics of discovering
what notes we can play over this jazz standard and for me every single time the first place to start
is the chord tones those chord tones the roots the thirds the fifths and the sevenths are the
essential notes that we need to start mapping out to figure out how to navigate over them
with a jazz standard and what i do when i create these chord tone maps is i like to use what i call
voice leading meaning i play up one set of chord changes root third fifth seventh and then down the
next chord i connect it to the nearest chord tone now the magic of this is that means that you're
not always starting on the root of every single chord sometimes you're connecting from the seventh
of the next chord or the root or the third you know you might be starting on a weird note that
you're not used to and this really makes sure that you actually know the chord tones and where they
fit on your instrument and more importantly you're going to start hearing very deeply
the sounds of these chord tones as you go over it so after i was done practicing it
i committed it to memory and here's me playing through a chord tone map of in a mellow tone
do
do now obviously i was working from an existing chord tone map that was created for my inner
circle members but you can also create your own as long as you understand the concept that we're
going for here ascending and descending chord tones connecting them together with voice leading
and you're going to be in good hands but the most important part of this is to commit it to memory
don't just read it off a piece of sheet music you can read it off a piece of sheet music and then
memorize it or you can actually learn it by ear if you have a recording of an existing chord tone map
or again you can create your own but the important thing is committing it to memory let's move on to
phase number three in phase number three we're gonna work on a guide tone map now in case you
don't know what guy tones are those are the thirds and the sevenths of each chord and the
reason why we want to start mapping those out is because when we really look at the different
qualities of seventh chords and jazz standards major minor dominant half diminished and fully
diminished sevenths the difference between all of them that changes from each chord to each
chord is the thirds and the sevenths so we want to be resolving our lines more often than not
to these chord tones so we want to identify them on our instruments but more importantly
start really internalizing the sounds of them so with our guide tone map it's the very same concept
we're going to go up the guide tones of one chord and then down the next connecting them
with voice leading the nearest guide tone now the cool thing about jazz standards is
if they are moving in force like a two five one chord progression then that means that the third
or rather the seventh is always going to be resolving to the third doesn't always
work out that way so just use voice leading by stepwise motion to connect them together
so i practiced a guide tone map committed it to memory and here's what i came up with
do
do now in this step of the process i was really starting to internalize these sounds very strongly
of what the important chord tones were like i really started to feel connected to this tune
in a way that i wouldn't have otherwise if i didn't start going through this process and again
you can create your own if you'd like or use an existing one that's been provided for you but the
most important part is to commit it to memory it opens up that side of the brain that we're
really looking for to build on our improvisation with that being done let's move on to phase number
four now phase number four is where things get a little bit more intense and to be honest with you
this took me the longest to learn and memorize out of all of the things that i'm going to go over
today in this seven-step process and that is we're going to create a scale map now notice how scales
is the last thing i'm doing as far as the mapping because really i think of scales as simply just
the notes in between the chord tones they're really not the main focus here
they're just all the notes in between now when creating your scale tone map it's the very exact
same thing as the chord tone map and the geito map same concept of voice leading and going up
and down connecting to the nearest one but i just pick really basic scales for the sake
of in a mellow tone i'm just using mixolydian for dominant seventh chords dorian minor for
minor seventh chords the major scale for major seventh chords and the whole half diminished
scale for the diminished chords i do throw in one altered scale for one of the dominant seventh
chords just to add a little bit of flavor but in general i recommend keeping it really really
simple
do
now after i went through this process i felt this entirely new connection
to the chord changes of this tune the really difficult thing was that really the scales
were all blurring together because i was starting and ending on completely different
notes other than the root it really forced me to truly understand what the difference between
each scale was even if it was just one note so i can't even hardly explain it to you what actually
happens the transformation when you go through this process but really like almost just opens
up this area of your brain that you didn't know could be opened up so this was incredibly powerful
to work through this scale map after going through the chord tones and the guide tones now
these last three steps are what i call mapping phases they have nothing to do with music they
have everything to do with the technicalities of playing the stuff on your instrument and opening
up your ears to the different note choices you may have but with all that being said now it's
time to go into the more musical portion of these seven steps and now let's move in to phase five
phase five we're going to start learning jazz language now when i think about learning jazz
language over a jazz standard i highly recommend learning one chorus of a jazz solo by ear on that
jazz standard you're working on in this case in a mellow tone or using an etude just one chorus
not more than that you could even do half a chorus which is what i do here i just
learned half a chorus of this etude that we had composed for us for our inner circle members
and then i go and i take that information but we need to learn jazz language to get a sense of
what kind of musical ideas can we play over this what kind of inspiration can we draw for our later
steps that we're actually going to go through all right so i learned this etude and learned a
bunch of jazz language and after i memorized it put it to practice here's what it sounded like
this
now listening to that etude that first half chorus you probably realized like wow there's a lot of
really awesome bebop lines and cool chromaticism and even some great rhythmic ideas in there and
now i know these things right i committed it to memory and it just opened up the floodgates like
sure there's the chord tones and the guide tones and all that stuff in there but this was actual
music and now i just learned some actual language to play over it now this is really powerful stuff
so i always would suggest going through this process of learning language however it's not
near as important as this next step step number six that we're about to go through that really
opens up the doors for creativity phase number six is i'm going to compose my own solo over top of in
a mellow tone now this part is really important creating something of your own because yes it's
helpful to learn someone else's stuff in their own language but the stuff that you actually
write yourself is much more likely to come out organically in your improvisation and by composing
and slowing the improvisation process down we can really start to understand the stuff that we
actually would want to play and internalize those ideas now the key here is i'm actually going to
be using concepts and ideas that i learned from the etude as well as all the mapping exercises
it doesn't have to be perfect and after spending a little bit of time i decided to compose the second
half of in a mellow tone since i learned the first half of the etude and this is what i came up with
so
now you may have noticed i stole a few ideas from the etude i learned i stole some you know quarter
note triplet ideas there i still at the very end an altered lick that literally came exactly from
the a2 i learned so i tried to take what i had learned and applied it for myself over the tune
now if you're thinking yourself brent you know i don't think i could write that good of a solo or
play that good of a solo don't worry about that like you just have to start doing it and the more
you do this stuff the better and better you'll get the more language you'll learn the more you
learn how to translate it for yourself finally we move on to phase number seven the last step
which is where we actually just practice improvising because at the end of the day
we have to just step out there and just start taking risks and trying things
and messing around so i would recommend spending quite a bit of time just improvising over the tune
given all the amazing stuff you just learned you're essentially set up for max success here
and you'll have some tools ready to go to start improvising so just start practicing improvising
now on purpose i decided i'd only do a couple takes of my improv and this is what i came up with
do
now even though i practiced everything i would normally have my students do in one month in only
four hours even just after these four hours i just felt like i was completely encompassed by
this tune like i knew it so well and i couldn't even imagine like what if i had actually properly
done this over the course of a month like i would really feel incredibly confident in
this jazz standard so i want to challenge you to take this seven step process and apply it over a
jazz standard yourself of course by the way if you ever want to join my lgs inner circle membership
we literally learn a new jazz standard every single month i'll leave a link in the description
down below now i mentioned at the beginning of the video that i have a really cool handout called the
list process for learning jazz standards by ear and that's linked right up here
and i would highly encourage you to check that out to get my exact framework for doing that
and if you got lost into the music theory at any point in time here's some essential
music theory this video that will really help you out in case chord tones guide tones and
all that went way over your head make sure you like this video if you found it useful
and of course subscribe to the channel hope to see you in some future videos