Your First Jazz Improv Lesson

[00:00] Hi, it's Tito again from Jazz Mine. You know, I've gotten a lot of requests to do a video

[00:18] that would be more of an introduction to Jazz Improvisation. I really think there are a ton of people out there who would love to get into improvisation more, but don't really know where to start and often can get overwhelmed by the amount of topics that you could be

[00:37] practicing. To be perfectly honest, when I was coming up in middle school and high school, I love Jazz, but I also felt this feeling of overwhelmed, like not knowing where to begin,

[00:49] where to start. In this video, I'm going to walk you through your first Jazz Improvisation lesson. So, grab your instrument and be ready to practice right along with me as I guide you step by step

[01:04] in your first improvisation lesson. Now, before we get into the lesson, there are a few important tips that I want to share with you about practicing improvisation in general. They are, number one,

[01:19] limit what you practice so that you can track improvement. When I started actually getting better in improvisation is when I decided to really focus in and learn one or two topics at a time,

[01:33] and that was really the only way that I could start to hear improvement from day to day. If you're dabbling in a hundred topics, you're only going to learn those topics on a surface level. You're never really going to develop the necessary muscle memory that is required. Number two, always play with

[01:53] your best sound. Now, that's easier said than done, right? Because oftentimes, when we're improvising, it's easy to just freak out at, oh no, there's no written notes here, and now I've got to make up

[02:05] something. So, we're thinking so much about the notes that we tend to lose our good habits of tone production and breathing and all of that. I want you to go in and play ideas that are basic

[02:19] enough that will allow you to make a good sound on your instrument. That's way more important than trying to start off playing a whole bunch of notes like you hear your favorite jazz artist play, but losing your technique in the process. Number three, your rhythmic feel is as important as your sound.

[02:40] I really treat sound and feel as one and one A. So, if it's a swing tune, it's making sure that your swing feel is locking in with that rhythm section. If it's a Latin tune, funk, or any other type of tune,

[02:57] it's also important that you're able to play rhythmically. This is what's going to make your solos sound confident and convincing, even if you don't know what you're about to play. And number four,

[03:11] the more familiar you are with the material, the more fun you're going to have improvising. You need to be practicing the same type of material over an extended amount of time,

[03:24] whether it be a week or two weeks or sometimes even longer than that a month, to give that material time to manifest in your ears, in your hearing, and to develop the muscle memory that goes along

[03:40] with whatever that is. It's really easy to think, okay, well there's this one little thing I'm working on, but that's just one thing. How good is that going to allow me to sound? I've got to work on all of these other things. No, no, no, no, no, no, no. You need to become really comfortable with one or two

[03:56] or maybe three things and do those every day until they become muscle memory. You don't even have to think about it anymore. And then you start adding another two or three things. As far as I'm concerned,

[04:11] this is the only path towards improvement and improvisation. When I started really focusing my practice sessions and I had teachers who told me you got to learn how to do this one or two things,

[04:24] that's when the improvement started happening. And that's what kind of lit my fire to be honest with you to pursue this even more. So in this first lesson, I'm going to start really basic, really simple.

[04:38] We're going to start by playing over a 12 bar B flat blues progression. And I have one goal for you to create ideas and melodies using the B flat blues scale. Now this scale is often called the

[04:53] minor blues scale or the dominant blues scale. And that's because there are actually other blues scales and sounds associated with the blues that I will get into in a different video. But for

[05:05] this video, we're going to do one sound and we're going to apply it over the 12 bar blues progression. Now here's the thing about learning harmony for jazz improvisation. We don't just learn one pattern

[05:19] or one scale up and down so that we play that scale the same way every single time. Every note of a scale is an option. You don't have to use every single note of a scale

[05:33] to improvise with. You could use one note or two notes or three. And then keep changing the rhythm on those notes and you could create a compelling solo just using those three notes. But we do have to

[05:47] learn the scale so that we know where those options are on our instrument and we can also train our ear to be able to hear them. What do I mean by that? I mean that you should actually eventually be

[06:01] able to sing every note of this solo and even improvise using the notes of this solo because you know the notes of the scale so well. So I'm going to show you how to build this scale. We're doing the B flat

[06:15] concert blues scale but since most of my audience are trumpet players we're going to focus on C blues scale which is B flat concert. And I'm going to do something a little different. I'm going to teach you the scale by ear. So I'll teach you the first two notes. They are C and E flat.

[06:31] Now we're going to add the third note C E flat to F.

[06:45] Play those first three notes and come right back down.

[07:01] Now we're going to add one more note. The next note is F sharp. Second bow.

[07:21] Now let's go up and come back down. Playing those four notes. C E flat, F and F sharp. We come back

[07:38] down.

[07:55] Now G is the next note. We're going to play five notes of this scale.

[08:20] So let's go up from C and play the five notes. C E flat, F sharp, G and then back down.

[08:50] The next note skips up to a B flat. So we skip up from G to B flat. Let's play those notes all

[09:03] the way up from from low C up to B flat.

[09:20] Now we're going to play every note C E flat F sharp B flat and then come right back down.

[09:50] Now let's just add the root on top. So we're going to go from low C all the way up to middle C

[10:04] in the blue scale. These are all the notes of the blue scale. C E flat F F sharp G B flat C.

[10:20] Now we'll go up from low C up to middle C and then all the way back down. We'll play the over one

[10:40] octave the entire C blue scale.

[11:10] All right. So those are the notes that we're going to deal with. And those are the notes I want you to play. I really don't want you to play any other notes for now. Now why is that? You might actually

[11:23] already know some other notes that sound good over the blues. But I want you to get really good at accessing these notes. I want you to know how they feel on your instrument. And I want you to

[11:38] know what they sound like. And if I were to ask you to actually sing a solo using only these notes. I'd want you to be able to do it. You see our ears can't learn anything unless we expose our ears

[11:53] to what we want them to learn. So before we start improvising over the backing track, what I want to do right now is just freely improvise out of time in order to help get comfortable with these notes.

[12:11] So what I'm going to do is I'm going to play a phrase and then you answer me. Now you can play what I play or you could answer me using the same scale but doing it your way. I'm going to build up the scale

[12:25] slowly. Now keep in mind that the blues is about feeling and soul and emotion. It is the emotional powerhouse of jazz. So we can't play these notes in a very bland way. We've got to put some feeling behind each

[12:43] note. It's about how you play the notes just as much as what notes you play. So I'll play a phrase and leave some space for you to play back to me and then I'll play another phrase and you play

[12:55] back to me.

[13:55] Good. I feel this is the part that a lot

[14:25] of people skip over when they want to improvise. They learn the scale and then they immediately turn on the backing track and start trying to create melodies. When you think about it, this scale has six notes in it. That's actually quite a few options and it's really easy to make mistakes when the tempo starts

[14:42] and all of a sudden things are moving way faster than what we're accustomed to. So the idea is to slow it down. Don't start with a tempo but just start with familiarising yourself with these notes and trying

[14:55] to make them sound really good. Now before we start the backing track, I want you to understand that any note in this scale works in any octave. So that means notes that you can play below low C

[15:13] that are in the scale like low B flat, low G, low F sharp even, all of that works and then of course notes above middle C as well. So I want you to spend time and understand that all of those notes

[15:27] are available to you to create with.

[15:44] Spend the time. Take the time to learn where all those notes are and you notice I started going a little bit faster. That's because I'm at a point now where I've been playing this scale for literally 40 years. Did I say that online? So when I play this now, I don't even really have to think

[16:04] that much. That's how well I know it. And I got really, really good news for you that learning jazz theory like this isn't like learning math formulas. When I was in school, I'd learn these formulas for the

[16:19] test and then I'd take the test and then like never deal with that formula again and go on to learn new stuff, right? No, no, no, no. In jazz, whenever you learn something, you're going to be building on

[16:32] that foundation for as long as you keep playing. So it's not like, okay, I need to learn something better to play than the blue scale. No, you need to learn how to really play the blue scale and

[16:45] be as creative as you can with it and make it sound really fresh and good. Because let me tell you something when the blues is played well, it never gets old. All right, so now we're going to go ahead and play along with the backing track. And for right now, we're going to play over a more basic

[17:03] chord progression. This progression only has three chords. It has the one chord, which is our C7, Bb7 concert. And that's going to last for four measures. And then it goes to the four chord,

[17:16] which is F7 for two measures. We come back down to the one chord, which is C7 for two measures. And then we have one measure of the five seven chord, which is our G7, then one measure of F7,

[17:34] the four chord, and then back to the one chord for one measure, C7. And then on the end, it just kind of gives us a turnaround so it gives us that five chord again, the G7. Now what's a C7?

[17:49] What's an F7? These are all dominant seventh chords, which are built off of the chord tones, one, three, five, and flat seven of a given key. So as C7, the first scale degree is C,

[18:04] then the third scale degree is E, that's the three. The five is G, and the lowered seven is a B flat. Now, if this information is new to you, remember, right now, we're not even going to be practicing

[18:19] chord tones yet. That's a different video. Today, we're just going to be focusing on the C blue scale because we know that the C blue scale actually sounds good over pretty much this entire progression.

[18:32] You can create a very soulful and swinging and confidence solo using just this one sound. So I'm going to demonstrate for you how to apply the blue scale sound to an actual 12-bar blues.

[18:47] I'm going to try to start really simple, and then gradually I'll start adding notes, adding different rhythms, and trying to kind of really challenge myself to stay creative with this one sound. Keep in mind that you don't have to play all the time. In fact,

[19:05] playing a solo should be a lot like talking, and so when we talk, we say a statement followed by rest, right? We don't just keep talking and talking, hopefully we don't just keep talking and talking

[19:17] and babbling endlessly, right? What happens when we do that to people? They start tuning out because they don't really feel they can have a conversation with you. Well, in a jazz solo, you're having a conversation but with the audience, you're having a conversation with your bandmates.

[19:32] So I'm going to start with kind of some short phrases, but I'm really going to do my best fingers crossed to stay playing just in the sea blue scale, which is hard for me now because I can do a lot of

[19:46] other things, but here we go.

[23:46] So hopefully you got a sense there of what can be done just using this one sound. And you know, it's going to take some time if you're new to this, but take the time to familiarize, have fun with it.

[23:59] Try to put your own personality and your own sound, you know, just because you play the blue scale, which everybody who plays the blues is basically going to play this sound as well. That doesn't mean

[24:11] you can't be your own creative self with it and put your own stamp on it, but take the time to familiarize yourself with the sound. This should keep you busy for a little while. I hope you enjoyed

[24:23] this video. If you did, please like the video that really helps me with the YouTube algorithm. And if this is the first time you've ever tried improvising, tell me how it went in the comments.

[24:36] If you got value out of this video, please consider subscribing to my channel. And until the next video, I will see you then. Peace.