When you first get started with improvisation, you learn that scales are a big part of solos. Then you learn arpeggios, and you can start moving over wider areas in a faster way. But what if we went even further?
When you think about artists like Charlie Parker and Michael Brecker, you’ll hear that there’s a lot more going on than your usual scales and arpeggios.
Today, we’re going to tackle five of these new concepts. If you want to check them out in depth, you can check out our resource 80 Intervallic Phrases, which has 80 lines written out over various chord progressions in all 12 keys along with backing tracks.
Contents
Wide intervals
Our first way we can go beyond thinking of just scales and arpeggios over chord progressions is by using intervals—specifically wide intervals, like fourths and fifths.
To find a perfect fourth, you can move up five chromatic steps. To find a perfect fifth, just move up seven chromatic steps. And when you play these intervals in random orders, it makes a pretty unique sound.
Let’s take a look at one of the phrases from our resource. You can see that we have a ii-V-I in action.
When we analyze this line, you can see there’s a lot of systemic patterns we can try out. In this pattern, we’re aiming for the major chord. So even though we start in that D minor tonality, we’ll also take this fourth/fifth cell outside of our key with Db, Gb, Ab, and Eb. This raises that tonality, almost as if we’re playing Ebm or Ab7. Then we go up to the common tone of G, and continue the shape we played before on that Dm7, but starting on F now, so F, B, F#, C#, and continuing that and taking it up the cycle another step to G#, where we’re playing this Abm tonality over G7, then resolving it to G.
Angular playing
Our second concept is something we call angular playing. This is a kind of combination of all different types of large intervals in randomized orders. This gives us a sort of vertical sound that contrasts the more traditional horizontal sound of lines. What’s cool about angular playing is that it doesn’t necessarily mean that you have to play notes outside of a chord change or tonality. A great artist who does this well is Chris Potter. If you transcribe some of his lines, you’ll realize that you can play a C major chord in a bunch of different ways.
When we say angular playing, we mean playing with intervals larger than a third—this can be diatonic or non-diatonic. Let’s check out an angular line over ii-V-I.
For this example, we have a combination of diatonic and non-diatonic. We have the first shape with a tritone at the beginning—B to F natural. We were thinking in a Dm6/9 tonality, B, F, G, and then we go to Ab, so a tritone substitution there, and play Ab to Eb. That’s another fourth, then down the Ab scale to B natural on the downbeat of the dominant chord. And then intervallically B, E, A, D, which is a combination of fourths and fifths up a chromatic shape. On Eb, off the b13 we resolve chromatically to the major seven of the C major chord and then do another wide interval arpeggio down—B, E, B, F#, G.
Just thinking about the theme of wide intervals, not giving ourselves and harmonic handcuffs—like we’re not staying away from anything or sticking strictly to something—instead we’re just sticking to intervals. You’ll see throughout 80 Intervallic Phrases, we have some different variants of patterns in fourths and fifths in random orders with wide jumps. There’s some ninths in here, as well as some octaves, which is great for technique work on saxophone to make your lines sound a little bit different. You can disguise a lot of cool harmony, or even basic harmony, with wider intervals because the ear hears fourths and fifths in its own sort of tonality.
Overtone matching
Overtone matching can be described in a lot of different ways, but the way we describe it in our resource is with the concept of false fingerings.
False fingerings are a tradition in a player’s vocabulary for many years. This allows you to play two versions of a pitch but with a different timbre.
If you want to see how this works, check out our YouTube video, 5 Ways to Go BEYOND Scales and Arpeggios in Jazz. A great example of a master who uses this is John Coltrane. He was one of the first to really start this angular style of false fingerings that people like Steve Grossman, Michael Brecker, Bob Mintzer, and Dave Liebman all took and really ran with in the 70s and beyond.
Checking out our line from the resource—we’re using false fingerings from the sixth of the minor chord, and then the third of the dominant chord, resolving to the third of the major chord. In terms of fingering, all we’re doing is playing a B natural with the octave key then laying our right hand down, and this makes what feels like a really sharp Bb on tenor, which makes it feel close to B natural. Then we do that same thing on A natural. It makes that sort of “wah” sound on guitar, but on saxophone.
A great way to start with this technique is by using lines you already like and adding in these false fingerings to spice it up.
If we just looked at the bare bones of this line, it would be 6, 1, 5, 1, 3, 5, 2, 5, 3, all over the ii-V-I. But by using something you’re already comfortable with, you can use these false fingerings to create new and interesting colors.
Melodic cells
This next concept is one we’ve talked about before—melodic cells. Now melodic and chromatic cells can be defined in a few different ways. But You can think of a group of notes with a clear starting and ending point that can vary little or greatly chromatically. It can be helpful to think of the starting and ending notes of the cell. One of Ryan’s favorite cells is 1, 7, b7, 1, or in C—C, B, Bb, C. This could be a melodic cell that you could use over C7, but if used over C#7, it would function as a chromatic cell. The words chromatic and melodic can be interchanged in some cases, depending on the context. In this example, we’ll have some chromatic cells that we’ll move around inside and outside of the chord changes.
Let’s talk about why this melodic cell line works. With this exercise, we took these different melodic cell lines and put them together to weave through the tonalities. So as you can see, we’re playing a ii-V-I in C again, and we’re starting inside of D minor with F, G, A, F. Then we go outside and play the chromatic cell we mentioned above—1, 7, b7, 1. With this cell, we can also think about using the altered scale. So over the G7 chord, we can think in terms of Ab.
We ultimately start the line inside with two different shaped melodic cells, then we go to an altered sound with two different melodic cells, resolving them to the major chord. In the context of different melodic cells, there are four different shapes here, but we’re looking at the overarching tonalities in which these cells exist. Starting from the minor pentatonic sound, we transition to Ab melodic minor for a bar and a half, then resolve to C major.
What’s cool about these melodic cells is that they’re almost like little Lego pieces. You can put them together, take them apart, and move them around. Why not take some of these cells from our resource and make your own version of a phrase over a ii-V-I?
Pentatonic shifting
The final concept we’re going to go over today is pentatonic shifting. This is what we get when we take two or more pentatonic scales, either inside or outside of the tonality, then combine them together and play them over a progression.
For example, let’s look at a minor iiº-V-i.
Here we’re thinking of a few different pentatonic concepts. Over that Dm7b5, we’re portraying the sound of Fm over Dm7b5. You’ll notice there’s no Ab in that scale, because we’re going to use that Ab tonality over the dominant chord. Then we go to G dominant pentatonic with B, D, F, and G—just those four notes.
Then we’ll go to Ab major pentatonic with Eb, C, Bb, and Ab. From there we’ll resolve to Cm7 pentatonic, G, Eb, C, G, Eb.
Pentatonic shifting can ultimately mean knowing the difference between common tones and resolving tones, as well as chromatic tones. When we go to G dominant over the G7b9, we play off the b9 for the last four bars to grow some tension by getting the dominant pentatonic then resolving to our root pentatonic on Cm7. It can be helpful to think about what tension tones you want to use. And a pentatonic phrase can just be a four-note cell. It could also be an eight-note cell, but the key is knowing where you’re going to resolve and what points you want to bring tension to. This could be the extension tones on a minor iiº-V-i, like the b5 and b9 on the minor chord and dominant chord can be good starting points. But you can really use any extension chord and play a dominant or minor pentatonic off of them. So that would be like the b9, #9, #11, and b13.
Well that’s it for today, but if you want to learn more about this concept, make sure to check out our YouTube video, 5 Ways to Go BEYOND Scales and Arpeggios in Jazz, as well as our resource, 80 Intervallic Phrases.
We’ll see you next time!
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