---
title: 'How Jazz Works: Creating Solo Phrases'
source: 'https://youtube.com/watch?v=pb7MRT25fbQ'
video_id: 'pb7MRT25fbQ'
date: 2026-06-28
duration_sec: 733
---

# How Jazz Works: Creating Solo Phrases

> Source: [How Jazz Works: Creating Solo Phrases](https://youtube.com/watch?v=pb7MRT25fbQ)

## Summary

This video explains the creator's biggest struggle learning jazz: creating interesting solo lines. He realized that knowing jazz theory is not the same as using it while soloing; true mastery comes from practice and allowing the music to flow naturally.

### Key Points

- **The Initial Struggle** [0:14] — Learning to create interesting solo lines was intimidating; listening to recordings of favorite artists made his own solos seem boring.
- **Misconception About Theory** [0:26] — The creator believed the reason solos were boring was due to a lack of jazz theory knowledge, leading him to study extensively but with no immediate impact on his soloing.
- **Epiphany About Flow State** [0:50] — Observing musicians like Oscar Peterson, he realized they are in a flow state, not actively thinking about theory. He learned that theory is practiced upfront and then let go during performance.
- **Singing Solos to Disconnect Theory** [1:58] — Learned from fellow creator Amy Nolte to sing solos, which made it impossible to think about theory simultaneously, leading to the insight that theory is not used during soloing, but prepared beforehand.
- **Breaking Down Musical Sentences** [3:38] — Constructing musical sentences (questions or statements) with clear beginnings and endings, practicing starting and ending on various beats to develop rhythmic control.
- **Melodic Concepts: Scales, Chromatics, Arpeggios** [6:17] — Introduced key melodic concepts: linear scales with aim to land on chord tones (especially 3rd, 7th, 9th), chromatic motion for target approach, scales in thirds, triads, and seventh chord arpeggios.
- **Advanced Techniques: Leading Tones, Pivoting, Enclosures** [7:44] — Covered advanced techniques: leading tone into arpeggios (chromatic half-step below), pivoting (Barry Harris' changing octave mid-arpeggio), enclosures (surrounding a target note with neighbor tones), and combining scales with enclosures.
- **Using Colorful Notes and Extensions** [9:38] — Incorporating extensions and alterations (e.g., sharp 9, flat 13) for dominant chords to add color, using arpeggios from upper intervals (e.g., starting on the 3rd of C major to include the 9th).
- **Breakthrough: Combining Rhythm and Melody** [12:01] — The challenge is not knowing the concepts but combining them with a rhythmic structure to hit target chord tones. He encourages not waiting until perfect—practice these concepts directly in tunes for immediate application.

### Conclusion

The key to jazz soloing is practicing techniques like rhythmic phrasing, scales, arpeggios, and enclosures until they become automatic, allowing the musician to enter a flow state and create interesting lines without conscious thought.

## Transcript

in this video i'm going to tell you
about my biggest struggle learning how
to play jazz and that's creating solo
lines
learning how to create interesting solo
lines was so intimidating for me i would
listen to recordings of my favorite
artists and the lines they played were
just so hip but when i listen back to my
own solos they're so boring i thought
that the reason i sounded boring was
because i just didn't know enough jazz
theory i thought i needed to spend more
time studying and so i read every book
that i could find i studied
transcriptions i filled my brain full of
chords voicings scales modes extensions
alterations everything else now that was
time well spent it absolutely made me a
better musician but
it didn't really have an immediate
impact on my soloing while i was
listening to my favorite recordings you
know like oscar peterson i had this
terrible misconception about what he was
thinking about while he was soloing but
i thought one of the reasons that his
solos were so much more interesting than
mine was because he had more music
theories stuffed in his head and where
he had more experience recalling that
music theory and composing a solo with
it on the fly now as i've gotten to be a
better player i've realized that this
isn't entirely true
what's actually happening is that
oscar's putting himself in kind of a
flow state while he's performing i don't
think oscar's thinking much about music
theory at all actually he's already done
that and i don't think he's worried too
much about his technique either he spent
a ton of time in the wood jet
but i think he's at a point where he can
just take a breath
let it out and just play the solo that
comes to him in his head
this guy ben patterson has a great album
in the style of oscar peterson
watch him play does he look tense does
it look like he's computing his solo in
his head
no way he's totally chill the music is
just flowing out of him
one of my fellow youtube jazz creators
amy nolte she taught me that i should
sing my solos
[Music]
when i started doing that i realized
that i cannot think about theory and
sing at the same time it's just
impossible for me and to think that i
thought i could do all that and play the
piano too i mean come on there's just no
way
so i realized that while you need to
know jazz theory in order to solo well
you don't use jazz theory while you solo
this epiphany changed everything for me
and i realized it was the reason that i
wasn't soloing well even though i could
use music theory to describe basically
any solo you put in front of me i could
not spontaneously create a solo that
sounded anything like it
i'm not the brightest guy in the room
and so when i had this epiphany it took
me a little while to figure out what i
needed to change
i want to show you what i did to get
over it that way someone smart like you
can get over this much faster than i did
so here's the heart of the problem if
you want to play a hip solo you have to
consider rhythm
notes articulation phrasing and more and
you have to have solid ear training to
get what's in your head out and into
your hands and you got to do that
fluently over a set of changes while
you're trying to keep up with two other
people in your trio this is all kind of
like driving a car if you go back to
when you were 15 years old and you were
learning how to drive for the first time
you might remember you spent time
learning how to accelerate how to brake
smoothly you were learning how to corner
gently but after a while all this became
automatic
you could really just focus on your
destination or the song you're listening
to on the radio you did all the thinking
and practicing up front it was not part
of you and you didn't really have to be
conscious of all the individual
mechanics to drive this is the same way
we need to spend time practicing we are
going to intensely focus on the
mechanics of our practice and then we're
going to let them go when we perform so
we're going to go through this by
constructing musical sentences and let's
just do a few of them together
so a musical sentence could be a
question
[Music]
or it could be a statement
we just want to be careful we don't want
run on sentences
[Music]
we want clear beginnings and clear
endings
[Music]
we need to practice making these
rhythmic sentences starting from
anywhere in the measure if we wanted to
start on the end of one
and two and three and four and one
or maybe we want to start on b3
one
three and four and one and
or maybe on the end of two
one and three and four and one two three
four and
so in the same way we want to be
intentional about where our lines end so
if we want to end our line on the end of
one
one and two three and four and one and
or maybe we want to end it on three
one and two and three and four and one
and two and three
you should go through a bunch of
variations of this where you pick a
specific starting point and you pick a
specific ending point in the next
measure and you connect the two
you can do this using simple eighth note
lines like we just did one and two and
three and four and one
you could do this using syncopated
quarter notes
and and and and one
you could put eighth note triplets in
there
and triple it three four and
if you really want to impart a swing
field then you need to make sure your
lines end off the beat i spent a ton of
time transcribing other solos and this
is one of the things you notice right
away is that the great musicians they
end off the beat way more than they do
on the beat
i started with rhythm with a reason
because rhythm is just way more
important than notes you would be
surprised how many wrong notes you can
get away with if you play them
confidently and with cool rhythm
but let's talk about the notes i'm
getting ready to throw a bunch of
melodic concepts at you that you can use
to solo i'm going to do this super fast
not because these are easy or
unimportant actually quite the contrary
i just want to give you plenty of things
that you can take to practice if you
want me to go deeper on any of these
concepts let me know down in the
comments most of the video ideas for
this channel come directly from that
little community we have going in the
comments and i would really love it if
you would chime in all right let's get
down to it everything i'm about to show
you is going to be in the key of c but
you know this by now you've got to
practice these things in every key
you've got to do all major and all minor
keys sorry i'm not letting you off the
hook this time in order to internalize
these so well that you can play them
when you're not thinking about them
you've got to learn how to do it in all
12 keys
first thing we're going to do is play
linear scales you can go up
you can come down
you can start on different notes
you can make a short line
you can make a long line
when you do this i want you to focus on
aiming your line to end on a chord tone
you might be aiming on the one of the
five but really the third the seventh
and the ninth are the most interesting
places to land
okay the next one is chromatic motion so
we can go up chromatically
we can come down grammatically chromatic
motion is especially useful when you're
aiming for a specific note so if we're
aiming for the third of c you can
approach it with a chromatic motion from
the bottom
or you can aim at it from the
top so the next thing we're going to do
is play our scale in thirds we can do it
up
or we can do it down
then we do the same thing with triads up
and down
and then we're gonna do it again with
seventh chords
once you've got those arpeggio things
down you're going to lead into them with
a chromatic leading tone like this
just use a half step below the arpeggio
and if we're going to come down we're
going to do the same thing we're going
to start with the leading tone below the
top note and then come down
and do the same thing with with triads
and with seventh chords
[Music]
the next thing we're going to do is what
barry harris calls pivoting and that's
where we take one of these seventh chord
arpeggios but we're going to change the
octave halfway through so we might take
the seventh chord with the leading tone
but then drop the last few notes to the
octave below
this is useful for all musicians but
it's especially useful for horn players
who are trying to stay within their
playable range the next thing we're
going to do are enclosures and that just
means we're going to pick a note we want
to land on and we're going to lead into
it with the note above from the scale
and a note below by a half step so if
we're aiming for c
and then go up the
[Music]
scale the next thing we're going to do
is combine scales with these enclosures
so we're going to play a linear line up
and we're going to aim for a specific
note but instead of playing that note
right away we're going to surround it
with that enclosure
make sure you do this up and down
so now just like we did with scales
we're going to do this with arpeggios
we're going to do an arpeggio up and
we're going to end on an enclosure
and do it down
the last of these melodic concepts i
want to show you is just bringing in
colorful notes and so that just means
we're going to add extensions and
alterations to our chord and we're going
to include those in our lines or our
arpeggios so for playing c major we
might want to play the seventh chord
that starts on the three on the e
because that arpeggio will include d
which is the ninth of the chord that's
one of our colorful notes
[Music]
over playing a dominant seventh chord we
might want to give it an altered sound
by bringing in a sharp 9 and a flat 13.
[Music]
now that is a lot to practice and when
you think about major and minor and all
12 different keys boy it's a lot and
you're going to discover when you do
this that that's not even the hard part
that hard part happens when you use
these concepts to make musical ideas
so here's what i mean let's invent a
rhythmic sentence
and we got to call our shot and pick the
note we want to end our sentence on so
i'm going to pick the third of c
but here's the hard part how are you
going to choose the notes to fill out
the rhythm in a way that gets you to
land on that third at exactly the right
time
[Music]
so this is your breakthrough moment and
this is hard once you get here and you
end up in the pit of despair unable to
do this confidently but you decide to
plow through and keep moving anyway once
you get to that point your brain has
learned how to think about solos in a
different way you are just going to
think arpeggio up and close your landing
on the third of the next chord pick your
target and trust your training to figure
out how to get you there this stuff is
so much fun don't get yourself in a
hurry i know we all want to sound like
oscar peterson right now but this this
is the fun part this is where you become
a professional soloist this is where you
discover your own sound have fun this is
the journey please don't feel like you
have to wait until you can do all these
exercises before you try to put them in
a solo this stuff is a lifetime of work
so you've got to take these ideas as you
practice them and put them into tunes
right away there's a whole world for you
to explore here how do you move from one
chord to the next chord smoothly can you
make a single line that covers two or
more chords can you invent some kind of
a line and then use variations of that
line to make an entire solo out of it
and spend time practicing by listening
sing along with recorded solos what are
these techniques are they using where do
they start and they end their phrases
how do they articulate their phrases are
there musical sentences statements or
are they questions are you excited yet
i know i am in fact i'm gonna get back
to practicing these myself and while i
do that you're gonna check out this next
video on spicy dominant chords that
every pianist needs to know and i will
see you next week bye