Reader,
Last week I showed you how a bebop dominant scale keeps chord tones landing on strong beats automatically. It's built right into the scale. As long as you keep the 8th notes going, the harmony takes care of itself.
So this week we practiced using these bebop dominant scales to create continuous lines over the blues progressions, switching between chords seamlessly.
But, if you're anything like me when I first learned this, it didn't sound like a real jazz line. It just sounded like a scale exercise.
Lets fix that.
The Missing Ingredient
Great bebop phrasing is built on perpetual motion. Constant 8th notes and triplets over long unbroken phrases. The line flows from chord to chord to chord, and that rhythmic engine is the foundation of everything.
But inside that stream of notes, two things are constantly happening.
- Sometimes you're landing: you've arrived on a chord tone and you're establishing where you are.
- Sometimes you're moving toward: you're in motion, aimed at the next landing spot.
Scales are landing points.
The bebop dominant scale is great at creating that rhythmic swing feel. The 8th notes flow naturally, the line moves through the chord smoothly, outlining the harmony nicely.
But harmonically, the scale is smooth all the way through. Without aiming for a target, scales can feel ... well ... aimless.
Arpeggio's create motion.
When we play through a scale by skipping every other note, we're playing arpeggio motion. This motion moves faster across the keyboard, and lets us cover more ground. We can use this motion as a gesture... a gesture towards a target.
I want to be clear about the distinction here. When I say arpeggio motion, I don't mean "play the G7 chord arpeggio." We can play arpeggio motion from any note of the scale, not just using the notes of the chords.
For our first steps today, we're going to use arpeggios with the 1-3-5-7-9 of the chord. But, that's definitely not a hard and fast rule. As we get more comfortable setting up our target notes, we can get even more creative with our arpeggios.
Here are four simple examples targeting each chord tone of G7:
Motion Into Landing
Now lets combine these together. Start with arpeggio motion going up, targeting on your chord tone on the beat, then drop into the scale coming down.
Notice how we're still keeping chord tones on the downbeat as much as possible.
Motion in the Middle
This is a bit trickier to puzzle through, but it's essential as we learn to solo seamlessly.
Start on the scale, then on any downbeat launch into arpeggio motion going the other direction. That motion lands on a chord tone. Then pick the scale back up and keep moving.
Practice This:
- The four arpeggio gestures. Learn all four arpeggios targeting G7 notes. Up and down.
- Motion into landing. Arpeggio motion up, scale down. Get it fluid from all four positions.
- Motion in the middle. Start a scale, launch the arpeggio motion from anywhere, land on the chord tone, keep going.
- Free play. Put on a blues backing track. Keep the 8th notes continuous and try to use scales + arpeggios to navigate through the harmony. No judgement on your sound, just put in a few reps.