If you've ever felt overwhelmed by Jazz improvisation and unsure of where to get
started today I'm going to show you exactly how it works make it simple so that you get headed in
the right direction coming up okay so if you're a beginner or someone who's been looking on the
sidelines on getting into jazz it can seem a little bit overwhelming frustrating overly
complicated so what I want to do for you today is break things down into simple terms and give you
essential building blocks that will help you start improvising today so in order to do that let's
look at this chord progression which is D Minor 7 G7 C Major seven and it sounds like this foreign
in the key of C major okay a two five one in the key of C major and even if you don't
entirely understand what that means right now what you do need to know is that this
is the most common chord progression that will come up in jazz standards Jazz standards being
the vehicles in which Jazz musicians use to improvise so 251 is a really important chord
progression you need to master so we're going to look at how to start improvising over top of the
two five one because this is going to get you so far when it comes to Jazz improvisation in
general so the natural first question is what notes do I play over top of this two five one
to make things really simple what you do need to understand is that D minor and G7 all share
the same notes that are within C Major seven so C Major seven is what we call the parent key Center
and the parent key Center has a scale and in this case it's the c major scale which sounds like this
and a lot of us know our major scales pretty well so I'm feeling confident that this is a
very simple way for you to understand just how we can get started the most basic level
of what notes we can choose over this chord progression so essentially because D Minor
ng7 all share notes within the c major scale they're from the same key that means we can
play the c major scale over top of the 251 chord progression so it would sound like this foreign
okay now listening to that obviously nothing sounds wrong right so D minor seven
right the G7
and then of course the C Major seven those are all what we would call right notes right there's
nothing that's actually wrong however listening to that there's really nothing that makes the chord
changes come out and something that you understand about jazz improvisation is that what makes great
jazz musicians sound so great is they're able to start making those chords come out so in order to
differentiate a little bit let's go on to the next step of our note choices here and in comes what we
call the modes of the major scale and in this case the mode for the D Minor 7 is Dorian for
G7 is mixolydian and then for C Major seven is ionian now if those names sound foreign to you
don't worry about that because it's very simple remember that D minor and G7 all share the same
notes as the c major scale so all we're going to do now is essentially say let's play this
C major scale but starting on the D note over top of the D minor seven so it would sound like this
okay so it's the c major scale starting and ending on D natural and we just call that Dorian
it's just a fancy name for the second mode of the major scale in other words starting and ending the
major scale on the second tone all right and then when we get to mixolydian all that means is we're
going to start and end on the fifth tone of the c major scale which is G so it'll sound like this
okay and then ionian is really just a fancy name for a major scale the one
major scale so the c major scale so when we start and end each on
their perspective root of each chord we're going to get a sound like this
so already immediately we have some improvement here right we
can actually hear the chords a little bit better
coming out and differentiating each other even though we're still just playing the
c major scale and another thing to notice is that we're actually playing eighth notes here
and that's because eighth notes is a really common subdivision that you'll find in jazz
so we want to get really good at playing swung eighth notes if we're playing a swing tune of
course because that is very common for us to see okay now what hopefully is obvious to you though
is that this still isn't the best solution for actually sounding like we're hearing the D minor
seven the G7 and the C Major seven it's still kind of just all sounds like the same stuff
so what we have to start doing when we're given all these note choices like the scale we need to
start breaking it down a little bit for further asking ourselves the question what are the most
important notes and the most important notes are the chord tones now for jazz we use seventh chord
so in our case D minor seven and then g seven that's a dominant seven and then C Major seven
that's a Major Seventh right and the formula for all these for the minor seventh is root
flat three five flat seven and for the dominant seven it's root third fifth
flat seven and for the major seven it's root third fifth Major Seventh now again all we're really
doing to get these chord tones is simply looking back at our Dorian scale and asking ourselves what
is every other note in this scale and that is where you find your chord tones right so every
other note in the scale is the chord tones the root the third the fifths and the seventh so
when we're playing just the chord tones over top of this chord progression it sounds like this
so I want to emphasize one more time chord tones are really important in fact I always go to chord
tones first before I talk about scales in general as far as where should you start with improvising
it's not that we don't want to know what the scales are because as you can see that helped
us get the chord tones and also it does give us more information that's going to be important
like what other notes can we play outside of the chord tones but the chord tones are structurally
important to the chord so we want to really know those forwards and backwards especially
in the case of this two five one now here's the problem though we know from what we've heard so
far that this doesn't really sound sound like jazz and that's because Jazz musicians have a
couple of Secrets and the first secret is that they actually aren't just using the c major scale
not even close in fact the scale that they're actually using is the chromatic scale now this
might sound controversial at first especially if you are already a seasoned jazz musician but bear
with me really quick essentially a chromatic scale all it really is is every single note
in western music that you can play in this case we're just going to start on the C so it's c c
sharp D D sharp E F F sharp G G sharp a a sharp B and then we're back at C again right and if
we're gonna play the chromatic scale over top of a two five one it sounds like this foreign
so if you're really paying attention here basically you're understanding that I just
said you can play any note that you want over top of any chord now that might sound mind-boggling
and it really can be in fact this is what kind of non-educated musicians who come and listen
to Jazz sometimes they think that it's just random notes or that it's all playing chromatics kind of
like we just played here however like I said Jazz musicians have a second secret and that
second secret is they do not play the chromatic scale like a scale and they also don't play the
major scale like a scale instead we go back to chord tones again and we remember the root the
third and the seventh of each chord and instead we start asking a different question altogether
and that question is how can I use notes that resolve melodically to those chord tones okay
how do I find the right notes that can resolve melodically to those chord tones because again
the chord tones are structural they'll make the chord changes pop out in our solos but the major
scale and every single note in between and the modes those are the different note choices that we
actually have however when we stop thinking about scales as we play scales over chords instead we
think of what notes can we use to resolve to chord tones it changes the narrative altogether so to
better understand this let's use an example of how a jazz musician might resolve to a chord tone and
what we'll do first is we'll look at resolving to the third of every single chord okay now the third
for D Minor is f the third for G7 is B natural and the third for C Major seven is e natural so
I want to resolve to those and a simple way we can do that is simply by just starting a note above
of and resolving by a half step to that third okay remember we can play any note that we want
technically the key is we're trying to resolve it so if we're playing this D minor seven and we want
to resolve to the third let's just say we start with an e natural which comes from the c major
scale or the D Dorian mode and arrive to that F note which is the third okay so that's one way we
could do it now taking a look at the G7 let's move a half step into that third the B natural but this
time what we're going to do is use a note from the chromatic scale which is a sharp so we're going
to go a sharp to B is the third okay and then looking ahead of the c major we're arriving at
the e natural which is the third but we're going to get there also through the chromatic scale
with a D sharp so if we're going to play this line this is what it sounds like over the two five one
oh but this is a legitimate starting place for us to start understanding what Jazz musicians
are doing again how are we resolving to those chord tones we're using the chromatic scale and
the major scale so let's look at another way and let's add another note into the mix now
in this particular case what we're going to do is we're going to still approach the thirds of
each chord but what we're going to do instead is start from a half step below in pitch and
a half Step Above So if we're encircling the third of the D minor seven the F let's go e
natural F sharp which is above and Pitch to F natural now e again is from the c major scale
F sharp is not in the c major scale it is from the chromatic scale so we have this kind of a
movement and then let's do the same thing on the G7 with a B flat a c going into our B natural
and then on the c major we have
an E flat an F natural to an e natural okay now another thing that we like to call this
is called enclosure we call it an enclosure because again we're approaching from above
and below our Target note which is again a chord tone so here's what it sounds like
now there's many other ways to approach a Target tone a chord tone and of course you don't have
to just use the third and indeed sometimes you can actually Target scale tones like the
ninth as we would call it and you can use more notes to approach it as well and that's where
Jazz musicians really become an expert is they figured out a bunch of different ways to resolve
to these chord tones so take a listen to this actual Jazz lick and then we'll talk about it
okay and here it is slowly
let's identify where the chord tones are so in this particular line starting on the D minor
seven we have an F natural okay the F natural is the third then we have an a the a is the fifth
we have a d natural which is of course the root and then we also have a c natural which is the
seven and then on the G7 we have a B natural which is the third we have a d which is the fifth we
have another B natural we have G which is the root G is the root here and then we also have F that is
the flat seven and then over the C Major seven we have an e natural which is the third and we have
a g natural which is the fifth so every other note in this line is going to be a non-chord tone that
we're using to resolve to the chord tone so over top of the D minor seven we start with a G natural
okay so that g natural again is a note from the c major scale the G flat that we use is part of the
chromatic scale which resolves to the F natural which is the third so it's then we go up to the
fifth then we go to an e natural which is part of the c major scale so and then we have our D
note which is the root to a c which is the flat seven then B flat which is in the chromatic scale
resolving to be natural now we're on our G7 B natural is the third then we do all chord
tones so we go B natural g b to G which is basically a g Triad right so we're just flat
out playing chord tones now we're gonna do notes from the chromatic scale B flat and
a flat and then chord tones G to F that's the root to the seven and then we end on
the C Major seven with a third that's the e to the G so in totality sounds like this
so the next natural question is how do I start creating my own lines like this well you have
the notes that you can use and you understand that you can use them to resolve to chord tones so you
can start experimenting and composing your own melodic lines and see what you come up with but
also it's really important that you learn the Jazz as language by learning licks and even solos by
great jazz musicians that you love only if you've heard something can you start to replicate it and
understand it so I have a video on the screen right now that will help you learn a jazz solo
by ear I give you very simple steps on how to do that even if you've never done that before so go
ahead and click that video on the screen right now if you found this video helpful make sure you hit
that like button make sure you subscribe to the channel and we'll see you in the next video cheers