The best jazz musicians in the world can play a solo unaccompanied and you know exactly what
tune they were playing you can do that too let's talk about it so the secret to playing the changes
is to really make strategic choices about what notes you're going to play specifically the
notes they're going to make the chords pop out when you're improvising so let's take a listen
to a great jazz blues solo that really plays the changes and then we'll talk about it
all right so we start the solo off on an a flat seven chord we're playing an
a flat blues and we're really just starting off some pentatonic ideas here so
but when we get to the d flat seven
which is the iv chord that's where our note choices really start coming out right so we go
right now the note that we're targeting here on the d flat seventh chord at the end of the line
is a c flat now a c flat is really the flat 7 of the d flat now this is really
important the notes that we resolve to with the chords are really going to help us start
playing the changes even though we're just playing pentatonic lines here so
right because that flat 7 is what we call a guide tone a guy tone is
the third or the seventh and those are the notes within the chord that are most often
defining the quality of the chord whether it be major or minor or diminished you know
so on and so forth so we really want to be targeting those notes so we go
and it automatically is helping us play the changes now let's take it a little step
further though we get back to the a flat seven one chord let's go up the arpeggio
right so we're basically playing the root we're playing the third we're playing the
fifth that's basically an a flat triad so we're basically spelling out that chord right there
now we're actually going down an e flat minor triad there which totally works right because
it's actually in the key of a flat so it still sounds good but we're defining that chord
really with that first triad there now we're gonna do this again over top of the d-flat seven
the four chord when we get back to the four chord again we're gonna kind of
repeat that same rhythmic and musical line we call this motific development by the way
when you take a musical idea and then you sort of morph it and it sounds like this
now this is magic right here because basically over the d flat seven we're going root fifth
root flat seven that's our guide tone third that's our guide tone so basically
we're playing strictly chord tones all of the chord tones
over that d flat seven to really spell it out but we're not just going up and down the arpeggio
right we're really doing something creative with it we land on the nine there so
now we get to the d diminished seven this is the sharp four diminished and with the line we go
right down the arpeggio but the line is still going this direction right we go
up and then we head in this downward direction
that's why it makes such great musical sense so yes we're playing chord tones but we're playing
chord tones in such a way that we're connecting them together and we're making the musical line
resolve in the direction it's going then we have this little ornamental line to get from this d
diminished to the a flat again it sounds like this right again but what note are we resolving
to we're resolving to this e flat note of the a flat seven so on the downbeat of that measure
it's this e flat which is the five it's the fifth so the fifth is a chord tone it's not
a strong chord tone but the notes that we play after that are really going to help so
right
basically going up the arpeggio there of the a flat seven
right so all of that is just chord tones or the a flat seven
now the next thing we do is really really cool this is an entirely different way
to play the changes without actually focusing so much on chord tones and that is
tension in resolution so we have this f7 which is the six chord it's the dominant six chord
that's resolving to our two chord the b flat minor seven right but we had this cool line
then we land on the g note here now g is actually the ninth of f7 right so it's the ninth
but what we're gonna do next is play a c natural that's the fifth and then play a g flat so it goes
now the g flat is the flat nine of the f7 so this flat 9 sounds really good
over top of a dominant seventh chord that is going to be resolving to some kind of
two chord or one chord right sounds really really good so in this line we're playing
the changes even without chord tones by adding that tension note the flat nine to the f7 so
right sounds so good okay then we have this b-flat minor seventh chord that's the two chord we're at
now we're gonna kind of walk up the b-flat dorian scale but again also focusing on hitting those
important chord tones right so that right there is the flat seven that's the important guy tone
right then we hit the ninth and the root so we're not just playing a scale we're playing
chord tones and we're playing extensions but again being very strategic about what note
choices we're playing now we have this f sharp lead tone that goes into a g natural when we get
to the e flat seven the v chord now this g natural is the third that's another one of
our guide tones so if we're constantly targeting these thirds it's going to sound really good
right so that was really just targeting that third at the beginning of the chord and going
up the arpeggio to end it we just simply end on some pentatonic stuff it sounds really good
right so in general we always want to be targeting those guy tones playing the chord tones if we're
focusing more on that our jazz solos are gonna really sound amazing hey by the way i always like
to mention that the best way to actually practice this kind of stuff is to learn jazz standards and
actually compose your own solos over top of this so the more jazz standards you learn the easier
this gets to understand so check out my free guide to learn jazz standards the smart way
at learnjazzstandardsthesmartway.com and that gives you a great five-step process
for learning jazz standards by ear so that you can learn more of them and do more stuff
just like this now if you're someone who's really struggling in general with
playing chord tones and identifying chord tones then let's strip things back a little bit i have
a video on the screen right now that's going to help you get some of the basics of playing
chord tones and connecting them together over top of chord changes so check out that
video on the screen right now hope you found this video helpful if you did make sure you
like it and of course subscribe to the channel and we'll see you in the next video cheers