Tag: Solo

Posted in The Jazzy stuff (but good for every style!)

Melodic Development – How to make your solos more interesting

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In this video I quickly explain how to take a basic idea and try to develop it to make your solos more interesting and memorable. Remember to leave lots of space!!

Recommended reading:

Hal Crook: An analysis of his core improvisational style: An analysis of trombonist Hal Crooks’ improvisational style from 1994-96, through the examination of core material

Posted in The Jazzy stuff (but good for every style!)

Playing in Fourths

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I really like this style of phrasing, take some great examples like McCoy Tyner, and a lot of the ‘hard bop’ jazz cats. The basic idea is this: take a scale, in this example I will use a C major scale.

Now  play all the diatonic fourths contained in C major:

In the video I am playing on a Dm (Dorian) vamp, but you can use this phrasing technique on any scale, mode…have fun.

Posted in The Jazzy stuff (but good for every style!)

Tips: play Giant Steps on guitar

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Giant Steps has always been a challenging standard to play, in this video I give a few tips on how to approach this famous tune.

The Chords (from the fake book-as far as I know it is not copyrighted material so I am posting the original):

One good ‘pattern’ to start familiarising with the progression in playing 1235 for every chord (meaning the 1st,2nd,3nd and 5th of every chord). For the original key it would be B,C#,D#,F#(Bmaj7) then D,E,F#,A (D7), G,A,B,D (G)and so on…

It’s all about getting used to keep your brain engaged at any time. A great exercise!