Appogiatura and Escape Tone Video

Well, here's the promised video demonstrating/explaining appogiaturas and escape tones. It's pretty self-explanatory, but if you have questions, leave a comment and I'll reply as soon as I can.

Quoting Songs in Your Improv

Hey Everyone,

I just wanted to make a real quick post concerning quotes. We've all heard a phenomenal solo from a top-notch player who, in the middle of making sense of musical chaos, finds a way to insert a popular melody into their solo without breaking any kind of sweat. I always used to wonder, "How do they do that and make it look so easy?" Well, some people have different methods for incorporating this technique, but the one I've found that works best for me is the number system.

In my opinion, the number system is the most efficient way to work quotes or any other type of pre-determined lick into an improv solo. The reason I say that is because numbers are not constrained by key signatures. Let me demonstrate:

Let's say for instance, we're in the key of C, so our C scale looks like:
C D E F G A B C

Now if we want to play "Mary Had a Little Lamb" in the key of C, we need to start on E to make to melody sound right. It would look like this:
E-D-C-D-E-E-E
D-D-D E-G-G
E-D-C-D-E-E-E D-D-E-D-C

But what if we take Mary and turn her into numbers? If we think in numbers, we have to keep in mind the scale/key we're working in. In other words, in the key of C, 3=E. So Mary would look like:

3-2-1-2-3-3-3
2-2-2 3-5-5
3-2-1-2-3-3-3 2-2-3-2-1

Now if you know all 12 scales and key signatures, you can take Mary and put her in any key as long as you can quickly figure out which letter is #3 in the scale.

As you progress, you'll be able to learn more sophisticated and/or obscure melodies and incorporate them into a solo.

I've listed below some popular folk tunes as well as a jazz standard. See if you can figure out which melodies they are. Post a comment with your guess and I might have a prize for the person who gets more correct.

1)1-1-5-5-6-6-5 4-4-3-3-2-2-1
5-5-4-4-3-3-2 5-5-4-4-3-3-2
1-1-5-5-6-6-5 4-4-3-3-2-2-1

2)1-1-5-5-6-6-5 3-3-2-2-1

3)5-1 8-6-5-1 5-4-3-3-4-5-1-2-3

4)5-1-7-6-5-6-3-4-5-1-7-1 (jazz standard)

Review of John Armstrong's Visit

Hey there,


Sorry I didn't get this up earlier, but now is better than never. Firstly, John said that what we're doing is the right thing. I take that more as a testament to your progress and work ethic than anything else. If we don't take the concepts and ideas home and try to improve them in our own personal playing, then there will be no progress. With this group, though, that is not the case. Both John and I are very impressed with your musical display. I'm very proud of the progress and John was pleased with your creativity.


That being said, there were a few things that John suggested that I think are good for everyone (myself especially) to keep in mind:

1. experiment in practice, so your experiments become conservative during performance


2. if you find yourself playing the same thing 3 times, stop immediately


3. good style goes a long way


4. improvise from ear sometimes and not always sight

That last item about playing from ear is something I plan to take to heart in our improv classes. So be prepared to enagage in more playing exercises where you won't know what the changes are. We will still do some exercises where we study and analyze chords and changes. Like John said, having theory knowledge is never a bad thing, but now we must temper that with stretching our ears. I take that as my own personal charge. Practicing at home by playing with recordings will help you during the rest of the week.


One thing that John mentioned to me after you had left was the importance of listening to quality recording. previously, I posted a list of suggested listening by instrument, but I might start to make "listening" assignments from time to time.


If you run into John, please thank him for coming and sharing his insight. He got up early in the morning when he didn't have to just to help us out. Please let him know how much you appreciate his efforts. And know that I appreciate your effort and work to make this successful.

Chord tones and non-chord tones

Ok, we’ve developed our rhythms, started reading chord changes, learned about major and minor chords, major and dominant 7ths, so let’s start creating some bridges. Every pitch that you can possibly play on your instrument falls into one of two categories: a chord tone or a non-chord tone.

A chord tone is a pitch that is part of the particular chord being played, and a non-chord tone, surprisingly enough, isn’t part of the chord.
Let’s go to our “C dominant 7” chord:

Remember, the notes of this chord are:

So, the “C” “E” ”G” and “Bb” are all considered to be chord tones. So any other pitch you play, by definition, will be a non-chord tone. When you move to the next chord, the pitches used for that chord will be the chord tones.

Now, we can actually categorize non-chord tones based on how we use them. Context determines how we categorize non-chord tones.

The first type of non-chord tone is the passing tone. A passing tone is a non-chord tone that acts as a bridge between two different chord tones. Usually passing tones are used in a melodic line that moves in a single direction. Passing tones give the melody a scalar quality. Here’s an example of passing tones:

In this case, the “C” “E” “G” are the chord tones while the pitches in between, the “D” and “F” are the passing tones. As you progress, you’ll find that you can start to use chromatic passing tones as well.

The next type of non-chord tone is the neighbor tone. A neighbor tone is a non-chord tone that you play in between two notes of the same chord tone. For example:

There are more examples of non-chord tones, but we’ll cover those later.