Advanced  Jazz Improvisation

Video Transcript

In my Jazz Guitar Courses, you will learn how to develop melody and harmony of a given song, to the limit of your creative abilities.

You will learn to choose what sounds good or bad, and there fore, maintain  the flow of your creative dialogue.  This is an extremely rewarding  experience.

I love to improvise, to flow, and create constant variations of a motif a song of any musical idea. It feels great. 

It did not feel good

At first, in the 80s, when I started playing professionally,  I was not  comfortable improvising, since  even though I was playing the correct notes, I did not like what I was doing.  It did not feel good. 

I knew I needed more information on how to choose, how to be aware of what sounds good or bad. I needed more options to express those feelings, I had an urge to scream out. 

Berklee College of Music

So, I went to Berklee College of Music, Boston, U.S.A  for 3 years, and I was bombarded with practical good and evil. I loved it.

While at Berklee, I came across Jon Damian,  who taught one of my  favourite guitar players, ( Bill Frisell ). I soon discovered an amazing pathway, to harmonic and melodic variation, to cover, for the rest of my life, all my creative and artists needs.

Guitar Scales and chords: The 1-4-2 Combination

Did you know there are 24 ways of creating chords on the go and you can combine them,  play them any way you wish as long as it sounds good for you.

Listen to the guitar scales

In the intro of the video on this page, I used a combination of sounds based upon the 142 pattern of a scale but, applied only to one chord. There fore, imagine the colours that can pop up, in a song with many chords and with all guitar scales for jazz improvisation.

But, more magic occurs when you apply the 1-4-2 sound to a more complex harmonic structure.

Since this combination creates a lot of tension, we can then use it, when we need tension on a note, or area of a chord in relation to the guitar scale.

The 142 scale sound in a more complex harmonic setting 

This is the melody of the Standard: All the things you are. 

The red lines are the places I have decided to play with more tension, than what the chord will give me.  If I play without the red feeling I produce a  static sound, boring.

When I play, and apply the 1-4-2 scale pattern to the red section, I get more movement, more excitement and it just feel great.    

You can apply this sound also to a jazz improvisation or to any other styles of music.