How to Apply Phrases to Improvisation

Today we’re going to look at how to apply jazz vocabulary that you are learning from solos into your own improvisation. Jazz vocabulary consists of identifiable melodic phrases that have been passed down and played by many different jazz musicians. Having a large repertoire of jazz vocabulary is a great way to branch off from playing scales and arpeggios in your improvisation to really participate in the jazz language. 

All the tips and methods we’ll share today come from our brand new jazz vocabulary course with JazzLessonVideos.com. In it, we show you how to extract vocabulary from various masterpieces throughout jazz history and dozens of tips to actually apply them and fit them in your own improvisation. 

We also share a concrete method to practice these lines and go over several drilling exercises to play along so you can internalize the vocabulary deeply. All this material comes with a PDF workbook for all instrument types. Also, if you’d like to hear how Nathan plays through any of the examples, make sure to check out our accompanying YouTube video, How to Apply Phrases to Improvisation.

Now let’s get playing!

Contents

Practice lines through cycles

Playing the line on every chord of a tune

Using substitutions

Improvising the second half

Practice lines through cycles

So the first tip in applying jazz vocabulary is to take just one line at a time and practice it in all of the cycles—fourths, whole steps, minor thirds, major thirds, and half steps. The goal is to make sure this line is automatic in all 12 keys. 

The line we’ll look at, we’ll consider an Eb7 line.

Our Bb7 lick that we'll be focusing on.

Now what we want to do is look at this cycle sheet and practice that line, in tempo, in every single key here. 

Try practicing your material through these cycles.

Now, if you can't do this yet, what is the best way to get there? The answer is not to learn it in another key, and then play it over and over again. It's actually to break it down in small chunks and take that chunk in all of the keys through the cycle sheet. 

Using the two notes of a dominant seventh chord as a practice through the cycles

So for example, in that particular line, how about we just start off with the first two notes. When thinking of your chord as a dominant seventh chord, you just play the root and the flat seven. Let's go ahead and take that two-note cell through the cycle sheet together. You're going to take all these notes on the sheet while looking at it, and imagine them all as dominant seventh chords. So you have a C7 chord, then you have an F7 chord, then you have a Bb7, and so on, and you're going to play its root and then the flat seven. 

Playing the line on every chord of a tune

Once you've got your line feeling super automatic in all 12 keys, go ahead and take that line and play it in a tune, placing it over every single chord where it fits. “Cherokee” is a great playground for this.

Using our phrase over "Cherokee"

Substitutions

After those two pieces are feeling good, take your line and consider other possible substitutions with it. 

How to use substitutions

We had checked out that Honeysuckle Rose lick, which works over dominant seventh chords. Now what if you thought of any ii7 chord as a V7, and then you thought of any V7 as instead a tritone substitution? 

Adding the substitution over the ii and V chords

For example, in the third bar, instead of thinking Fm7, go ahead and imply a Bb7, and you’ll want to think of that shape. And then for the actual Bb7, go ahead and play the tritone sub. So take your root B-flat and move it up a tritone, which is going to be an E. Now do the Honeysuckle Rose lick in E and check out how that sounds.

Honeysuckle Rose lick substitution

So go ahead and try this. Anytime you have a ii7, switch it to its functioning V7 and play it diatonic. And anytime you have a V7, go ahead and switch it to the tritone sub. if you're having trouble, where to quickly find that tritone substitution. You can check back on that cycle sheet exercise and just break it down. You could think of every single note on that sheet as a dominant seventh chord, and just on the down beat every four measures, find the tritone sub. As you get more and more fluent with that and you make it all the way down this sheet, you’ll feel much more comfortable.

There are many other substitutions and possible applications that Nathan covers through the full course. There are also several other improvisation techniques that you can do with any piece of vocabulary that you're working on.

Improvising the second half

Another exercise that you can do to get these lines into your playing is to improvise the second half of a phrase. Let’s take a phrase from the Sonny Stitt solo from “On The Sunny Side of the Street” in measure 15. Then we’re just going to make our own second half of the phrase by improvising our own line and try to resolve ourselves. 

Adding a second half to "On the Sunny Side of the Street"

There are an infinite amount of results that are possible with this exercise. Let's try it with a Bird phrase. This one comes from the solo in “Body and Soul.”

Adding a second half to "Body and Soul"

Well that’s all for today, but if you’re interested in learning more about how you can apply phrases to improve your improvisation, make sure to check out our new Jazz Vocabulary course, as well as our accompanying YouTube video “How to Apply Phrases to Improvisation.”

See you next time!