5 Ways to Play Better Up-Tempo Solos
- Jazz Lesson Videos
- Mar 31
- 9 min read
When you’re playing up-tempo material, it helps to have strong jazz vocabulary that you can rely on, instead of having to think too much about each (quickly!) passing chord.
Today we’re going to look at 5 ways you can play better up-tempo solos, and all of the excerpts in this video come from Cecil’s latest resource with Jazz Lesson Videos, 25 Up-Tempo Jazz Etudes. Check that out if you’d like to dive deeper into any of these topics, as well as our accompanying YouTube video, 5 Ways to Play Better Up-Tempo Solos.
Contents
Using bebop scales
Our first tip for improving your up tempo soloing is going to be the use of bebop scales. Bebop scales can be really useful for extending your lines, especially over fast tempos when you don't really have as much time to hear what you're going to do or think about what you're about to do. Cecil’s approach to bebop scales is that there are three main bebop scales.
The most common one is going to be the dominant bebop scale. So if we're in the key of C, playing a G7 chord, dominant bebop scale would just be a Mixolydian scale with an F sharp added.
The next bebop scale is going to be the major bebop scale. We'll do that off of C. So it'll be the same as the major scale, but with an A flat added.
The last bebop scale we'll take a look at is going to be the Phrygian dominant bebop scale. We'll do that off of E. It's going to be a dominant scale with the flat nine and a flat 13, as well as the natural seven passing tone added in there.
So the bebop scales are not only useful for extending your lines, but they also give your lines great harmonic clarity, especially when you're trying to outline chord changes over fast tempos—so you want to gain fluency with bebop scales descending from every chromatic note. This will just ensure that wherever you end up within the harmony, you'll be able to find a way out by using a chromatic enclosure or chromatic approach.
When we descend the bebop scale from, say, the ninth degree, what's going to happen is the chord tones of the scale are now not going to be on strong beats anymore, so you’ll notice the natural seven fell on a strong beat, the six fell on a strong beat, and the fourth. We want to keep the chord tones of that G7 falling on strong beats. So we’ll add in an extra chromatic approach to land on the root of the scale, and then we can just continue to descend for as long as we want, or for as long as the instrument allows. You can do the same thing with any non-chord tone or any non-scale tone, just connect back into the scale using a simple chromatic approach or chromatic enclosure. You can even take melodic ideas that you have and extend them using the bebop scale. So if we start off a line something like this, let’s say that's over G7—we land on the fourth degree and resolve it back into the scale on the third, and then continue down the scale from the third.
So that's an easy way to extend the line using the dominant bebop scale, and the same thing can be applied to the major bebop scale and the Phrygian dominant bebop scale as well. Here's an example of bebop scales, as well as a couple other concepts being applied over a standard.
Arpeggios and variations
The next concept that we're going to take a look at that will help your up tempo playing is going to be the use of arpeggios and arpeggio variations.
We can relate arpeggios to the bebop scales we just checked out, especially the dominant bebop scale—you have arpeggios that exist off of each chord tone. So off of the root, you have G7; off of the third, Bm7b5; off the fifth, we have Dm7; and off the flat seven, we have Fmaj7.
You already have cool extended lines that you can use just by connecting those arpeggios to the scale. So if we do Fmaj7 ascending, land on the fifth and then descend the scale from there, do the same thing from all the other chord tones as well. On Dm7, we ascend the arpeggio, land on the third and then continue down the scale. With the Bm7b5 and G7 where we land on E natural, we resolve that down the scale to D using chromatic approach and continue down.
Another thing that you can do to add a little bit more interest to those lines is land on a non-scale tone after playing the arpeggio. We can go up Fmaj7, land on E flat, resolve it to D using a chromatic enclosure, and then continue down the scale from there.
Same thing with Bm7b5, use the Ab on a strong beat, resolve to the root, and then continue down the scale from there.
Another thing that you can do with your arpeggios to add a little bit more forward motion is to use a pivot arpeggio. We're going to take a look at a pivot arpeggio with a rhythmic variation. If you're not familiar, a pivot arpeggio is when you take, say, an Fmaj7 arpeggio, F, A, C, E, and then you drop the top three notes down one octave—so you end up with A, C, and E down the octave. We can add one more step to this by doing a chromatic approach before the second note of that arpeggio, and doing the remaining three notes as part of an eighth note triplet.
So there we did the Fmaj7 arpeggio, landed on E flat, resolved it to the fifth, then continued down the scale from there. We did that little cell into the fourth, resolved it to the third, and then maybe we could do a pivot arpeggio off of B, land on A flat and continue down the scale from there. So we have the phrase, land on the fourth, resolve to the third, pivot arpeggio, non-scale tone, resolve and continue down the scale.
Here's an example of pivot arpeggios and some other melodic concepts over a jazz standard “Caravan.”
Chromatic enclosures and approaches
Another concept that you can add into your playing to improve your up-tempo playing is chromatic enclosures and approaches. Now you already have some chromaticism within the bebop scales through the use of resolving non-scale tones and non-chord tones that fall on strong beats. But you can also add in chromaticism outside of the scale.
If we were to take something like this approach, which goes from the sixth up to the root of, say, the dominant bebop scale, that's going to be an example of an approach that exists outside of the scale, even though it kind of clearly outlines the six moving to the root. From there, we could continue down the scale from the root, but instead of just descending from the fifth to the third, we’ll do that same approach, but descending, because we can see that minor third distance that we can fill in chromatically. From there, we’ll just descend the scale from the third.
So basically, anywhere you see a minor third distance, you can fill it in with that little rhythmic and chromatic approach. And you can also do it to highlight notes that are outside of the scale. You can highlight non-chord tones, really, anything that you choose, as long as you like the sound of it.
Another example of a chromatic enclosure that exists outside of the bebop scale is going to be one of Cecil’s favorites. This is a decorated chromatic enclosure with some rhythmic variation added into it, and it's very ornate. Again, it kind of takes the space of a minor third, but it's going to approach a note that's a half step above the note that you started on. So if we start on E, our target is going to be F. And this one's pretty cool, because you can throw it in anywhere, really. So we might do it going from the third to the fourth, and then resolve the fourth to the third, continue down the scale from there. And then once we get down to the fifth there, we might do that same descending minor third approach that we did before and continue through the scale from there.
So here’s an example of using some extended chromatic approaches and enclosures over the jazz standard “How High the Moon.”
Using melodic cells
The next concept that we can use to improve your up tempo playing is the use of melodic cells. There are a lot of different types of melodic cells. Basically, cells are short melodic phrases that you can transpose through a scale. Usually you want to look for a four-note or five-note phrase. Four notes are best, probably because the fastest harmonic motion or rhythm that you'll come across in a jazz standard is going to be two beats per chord, typically. And if you have four-note phrases that outline each of those, you can play really long, ornate lines over fast moving chord changes—especially over something like Giant Steps, where you have two chords per measure, typically.
The most common type of melodic cell that we're going to come across is the 1, 2, 3, 5. If we take that over a G7, 1, 2, 3, 5, would just be G, A, B, D. We can transpose that through the scale, and do basically 1, 2, 3, 5, cells off the different modes within C major or G Mixolydian.
Now you might pick and choose which of those melodic cells you like the sound of the most, especially over that G7. For Cecil, he prefers the sound of the one off the root, off the fourth, off the fifth and off the flat seven. And again, we can use those to extend our line. So we might go up the melodic cell from the flat seven, land on the third, and then go down the scale from there. We can do the same thing even down the octave after that, so you end up with this long multi-octave line.
Here's an example of how you can use melodic cells over Giant Steps.
Right hand and picking technique
This last tip for improving your up-tempo playing is going to be a little bit more guitar specific.
The main thing that Cecil likes to keep in mind, especially when he’s playing faster tempos, is to try to emphasize what's called the rest stroke technique. This is something that's borrowed from classical guitar technique. The idea is that your down strokes are going to sort of be buried in the strings. So when you play a downstroke, say, on the low E string, the pick is going to rest on the A string, and then your up strokes are going to escape the strings. Then you’ll take this technique and apply it to all of the strings. By the time you get to the high E string, even though there's not a string to rest on, you kind of have that motion ingrained at that point, and you feel like you can feel how much distance you need in order to come back up with the upstroke.
Rest strokes are going to be really useful for accuracy and staying relaxed while you're playing fast, and Cecil recommends to kind of get the motion together, to try practicing tremolo picking on one string, and really feel like you're emphasizing each of those down strokes as you do that.
Another thing that's going to work in conjunction with the rest stroke, especially downward rest strokes, is to have an even number of pick strokes per string. So typically Cecil starts each string with a downstroke and ends each string with an upstroke. So if we play four notes on one string, down, up, down, up, that upstroke allows us to freely cross to any of the other strings from there. So we could go: D string, B string, D string, down to the E string, D string, E string. But if we end the string on a down stroke, we can't quickly move to any lower strings from there. In this case you have to change the pick angle to move to say the D string, or the A string, or the E string from there.
So when we put this into practice and incorporate our left hand into a phrase, we can use the G dominant bebop scale for an example. We’ll start with an upstroke on G on the first string, and then we’ll incorporate four notes of the scale on the B string. So again you see that upstroke escape on the G string. We’re going to do C and B. So far, we have one with an upstroke, 1, 2, 3, 4, 1, 2, and then on the D string, we’re going to have A, G, Gb, and F on the A string, that's E, D, C, B, and then A and G on the E string.
You first want to get it slowly and get it to feel like muscle memory, and then you’ll want to speed it up. Once you speed it up, you'll be able to feel where those inconsistencies are in your right hand left hand techniques. Here's an example of rest strokes over a jazz standard.
That’s all for today, but if you’re interested in seeing how Cecil tackles anything from here, check out our accompanying YouTube video, 5 Ways to Play Better Up-Tempo Solos, as well as Cecil’s resource with JLV, 25 Up-Tempo Jazz Etudes.
We’ll see you next time!
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