Jazz Guitar Improvisation

Play what you hear and be sure that what you hear is worth playing.

You want to be creative and spontaneous, not just mechanically playing patterns and
licks.

How to learn to play what you hear

Strike any chord on the chord without trying to name it or analyze it and savor the
harmonic flavor of it. Let a melody of 6 to 9 notes well up inside of you that you feel goes
with that chord. If it’s less than 6 notes it’s not challenging enough and if it’s more than 9
and you don’t find it right away on the guitar you might get lost. You want it to be
melodic, not a scale or arpeggio. After you hear it in your mind, vocalize it (singing,
humming, or whistling) and then try to find it on the guitar. Start with one key and one
position. Eventually you want to find melodies in all position. Closing your eyes can help
you to hear your musical thoughts better.

If you don’t find every note right away, don’t get discouraged. He only way to get good at
something is to keep doing it. Eventually you’ll get so good at it vocalizing and player will
seem simultaneous.

As you improve, do it more often, try to find every position you can play a melody in and
try different keys.

Develop Interval Sense

By this, Barney doesn’t mean hearing fifths or thirds or whatever. Any time that you’re
playing, you feel how far it is from the note your on to the next one you want to play. You
develop this ability by practicing it and observing the kinds of mistakes you make (do you
tend to overshoot or undershoot your targets?)

Think of folk melodies and nursery rhymes and play them. Since you know them so well,
you’ll know if you got them wrong or not. Keep practicing this until you can immediately
play the with no mistakes. Don’t embellish or decorate the melodies for this exercise, just
play them plain.

Barney suggests starting in the key of C in each position, then F and G, then Bb and D,
then 3 flats and 3 sharps, 4 flats and 4 sharps, etc.

Phrasing the melody

After you’ve learned to play what you hear, practice phrasing melodies—you don’t
change the notes and you always start and end at the same place in the bars.

You just add syncopation, change the time values of the notes to make the melody less
square. “Square” means with no syncopation. Melodies in sheet music are written square
because more people will be able to read them and have the hope of playing them, which
therefore sells more sheet music.

Ornamentation of the melody

Fingered glissando: quick chromatic hammers or pulls between two notes

Portamento: a quick slide between two notes

Smear/fall-off: sliding down or up as decoration, for the sound of it, not to land on a
specific note

Bending

Grace notes: preceding a target note by a quick note a half step above or below using a
slur (hammer, pull, or slide)

Turn: Play the target note, hammer on to the next note in the scale and return back
quickly to the target note [like Charlie Parker does in Donna Lee].

There are many more besides these.

Combining ornamentation with phrasing, opens up lots of expressive possibilities without

leaving the melody.

Be one of the few to develop the art of playing a melody and making it interesting.

Use these techniques sparingly and with good taste—you don’t want to overpower or
disguise the melody.

Fills
These are bits of improvisation that you can add at points in the music when the melody
sustains on a whole note or longer or rests for one measure or more.

Types of fills:

Scale-based

Arpeggio-based

Free improvised, as long as it fits in with the chords

Turnarounds
A turnaround is a specific place in a song where you can play a fill.

Most pop songs are based on a 32 bar AABA form, each section taking up 8 bars. The B
section is different from the others and is called “the bridge.”

Turnarounds usually occurs at the 7th and 8th measures (to turn back into the second A)
and the 15th and 16th measures (to lead into the bridge). There can be a turnaround at
the 31st and 32nd bars if it’s going into another chorus.

At the turnarounds, the melody will often sustain or rest and it’s a place where we can
play a fill.

Analyzing Songs
The more songs you learn, the more commonalities you’ll see between parts of songs,
and sometimes even entire songs as far as their harmonic structures.

Analyze each song for the form (including the number of bars in each part of the form)
and the harmonic content. Notice which parts of the songs are reminiscent of other songs
you know. Notice similarities between the bridges. Barney says there might be just 8
different bridges that have been used in the majority of pop songs.

Play and think about a song out of tempo and listen to what is harmonically involved in
the song and try to hear in your inner ear scales or arpeggios you can play against it. Also
arpeggiate and play scales through the progression. Get to know the song inside and it.

It gets you inside the harmony of the song and gives you feeling for it which then allows
you to think of melodic ideas that convey the harmony of the song.

Use motivic development in your solos.

Building Blocks of Improvisation

The building blocks are melody, harmony, and rhythm.

Work on developing each area, starting with the one you’re weakest at. Be strong in all
three, don’t be lopsided.

Don’t be too predictable in your melodic lines, and don’t play overtly scaley or
arpeggiated lines, listen for melodies.

[Barney can play through changes with scalar and arpeggiated lines, however, and that’s
one of the exercises he recommends to get inside the changes of a song, but I think he
means that the place for that is when you’re doing exercises, not when you’re being
creative and melodic].

Don’t always harmonize a song in the same manner. Try to find different chords, don’t
always use the same ones. Use tension and release, but don’t go overboard with the
dissonance.

Don’t just run changes. Make up melodies that infer the harmony.

As far as rhythm, strive to stay in the pocket. You can think about playing on, ahead, or
behind the beat, but you’re still in the groove, you’re not rushing or dragging. Barney
likens it to how you sit in a chair—you can sit at the edge or in the middle or leaning
back, but you’re still on the chair (i.e the beat).

If the tempo is fast, think in half time.

Use double timing sometimes.

Use different kinds of articulation: mostly legato, mostly picked, mostly down-picked
staccato (this gives a more urgent, forceful sound), etc.

Think of your solos as making a personal statement. Is not the same as what you would
ply when accompanying a horn player or a singer.

Improving Your Solos

Don’t become enchanted with a particular device and over-use it. Barney uses the
examples of overuse of rakes and glisses.

Use of a balance of contrast between simplicity and complexity. You don’t want to be
bland and predictable nor unlistenable complex.

Don’t play perpetual 8th notes with every note picked. Use space and slurs and fall offs
and bends so forth for variety.

Use dynamics.

Think of your music as containing textures. Don’t make all your music either consonant or
dissonant—use a balance between the two.

Use motivic development. (Barney calls it “sequence playing). Use motifs in a way that
isn’t too predictable, don’t just run the exact same motif through the changes.

The Blues
The single most important form in jazz (and arguably in all of American music).

Barney doesn’t explain anything about it, just gives a few playing examples.

Chord Melody Style

Getting Started
This isn’t a definitive course—learn as much as you can about harmony and arranging.

The first thing is to learn the correct melody and harmony and bass notes.

Once you’ve got the melody in single notes, play it in octaves. Then play it in “perfect
duet” form using thirds and sixths. Try each alone and then try mixing them.

Don’t just hear these things, also remember what they’re called so you can recognize
them when you hear them in your inner ear or outside yourself. Barney also likes to
remember by association—he associates 3rds with mariachi music and sixths with greek
music.

Also try harmonizing the melody in 4ths and 5ths, both separately and together. You
might hear 4ths in a modern jazz arrangement between two horns. Barney associates
5ths with “oriental” music [his term] in the higher and with bagpipe music in the lower
octave.

You can also use 2nds to add some dissonance to your melodic playing.

Then try harmonizing with triads and other 3-part chords.

4-part harmony has 4 different notes, not a triad with one note doubled.

You can also use 5 and 6 note chords.

The Next Move: Two-Part Harmony

Parallel motion: both voices move in the same direction

Oblique motion: one voice remains stationary and the other voice moves

Contrary motion: one voice moves down while the other moves up

You can also have two independent voices with different rhythms.

Lesson 3

Barney takes a song he wrote called “My Short Melody” to demonstrate the application of
the aforementioned techniques for harmonizing a melody.

You want to catalogue these sounds in your mind so you can eventually be able to hear
and use them freely.

You can’t just play a melody through all in thirds or sixths or any one color and have it
always sound great–you have to learn to discern the situations where each color is
appropriate and learn to tasteful mix them. Use your ears and experiment.

The reason 3rds and 6ths usually don’t sound good when played through a whole melody
is because in certain places they will suggest something other than the correct harmony.
(Barney demonstrates)

Sometimes when you play a melody harmonized in a certain way it can sound incorrect
on its own if it’s based on a substitute harmony but will sound great if you hear it with the
chords.

Regular three-part harmony draws on the diatonic scale.

We can still hear the underlying harmony in chords without the roots and 5ths because
our ear knows what to expect. This allows you to use 3-part chords that don’t use 5ths
and/or roots, giving you a more modern sound and also infers 4-part harmony.

Adding clusters (2nds) can give a nice flavor to a 3-part (or other) harmonic treatment.

4-part harmony is what’s used most often on the guitar.

Learn all these devices and how to identify them by sound, and then experiment with
them. Not all will sound good in every situation.

Lesson 4: Simple Songs

Start with simple folk songs or a simple melody you make up. This will give you many
more chances to use these devices and try different chord substitutions. If you use a
sophisticated song, it doesn’t leave you much room to put in your own things.

Barney and Dave Young (his guest bassist friend) demonstrate an improvised
arrangement of Jingle Bells.

Lesson 5: Blues Examples

Barney and Dave demonstrate an example of harmonize the blues. He suggests that the
listener analyze the colors and devices he’s using. Remember to learn to associate the
names with the sounds.

The on-screen text shows what he’s using in the example so you can learn to associate
the sounds with the names (it isn’t a straight progression, he interweaves octaves and
thirds and sixths and so-forth throughout–I’m just showing one instance of each device)

Single Notes

Octaves

Sixths and thirds

Triads

Contrary motion

Four-part harmony

Five-part harmony

Oblique motion

Lesson 6: Two Moods

Demonstration of a piece Barney wrote called Two Moods, that uses a lot of the devices
Barney discussed. As with the blues example, analyze what it is you’re hearing. This time,
the notation is shown onscreen, but the names of the devices aren’t given.

Keep in mind that it could have been harmonized in many different. ways.

Summary of the workshop

As you play through the melody using the different possibilities, you will find that at
certain points you will have more choices. It’s up to you to decide what sounds best or
what’s more appropriate.

At other places in the melody, some of these possibilities won’t work well or at all. This
limits your choices when deciding what will work best.

Experiment and have fun–make several several different arrangements of a song.

Progressive Concepts
Lesson 1: Chord Formations

You can use chords in your single note playing by playing a chord form with the notes
detached. Charlie Christian and Django Reinhardt used this technique a lot. It’s a very
important part of guitar playing.

In his demonstration, Barney doesn’t just play the notes of the chords, he adds little licks
and passages in the position where the chord is. He plays the notes of the chords in
different order and uses different rhythms.

In chord formation playing, Barney uses three terms:

What Barney calls “form playing” is when you hold a chord and you’re only playing the
notes of the chord in different orders.

What Barney calls “inter-hand movement” means within the hand. Within the range of
where your hand is in a given chord form there are other notes around it that aren’t part of
the chord form that you can also play. He counts the chromatic notes in the position as
being part of this.

Barney calls “extensions” the notes that are above and below the inter-hand range of the
chord.

What you hear may work better in one formation than another.

Eventually, you’ll have a catalogue of the sounds of different formations in your inner ear
and be able to freely choose between them.



You have many different ways to play each formation on the guitar. Don’t get locked into
just one formation.

Experiment and make your own artistic decisions about what you like.

Start with four string formations (triad formations with one string doubled): first the upper
four strings, then the inner four strings. (Barney doesn’t mention the bottom four strings).
Then the upper and lower five strings and then all six strings.

Don’t just use chord formations in your improvising. It’s just one way.

Lessons 2 & 3: Minor Magic and Sequence

Minor Magic is a song Barney wrote for the lesson to demonstrate how he uses chord
formation playing. He first plays the melody with Dave Young accompanying on bass and
then they play a track for you to play along with it.

Sequence

Dictionary definition: “A succession of repeated harmonic or melodic phrases rising or

falling usually by the regular diatonic degrees in the same scale.”

Barney then gives his definition, which I think resembles more the definition of a motif
than of a sequence.

When to use them: after a 2 or 4 measure (or longer) musical phrase (the original motif)
has been stated.

The “sequential” phrase (which is really a motif) is similar in some way (or identical) to the
original phrase in one or two or all of the following: rhythm, melody, harmony.

Lesson 4: Sequential Examples

You don’t often use “perfect sequence”–exact imitation of a previous phrase. You use
“near-perfect sequence”–it’s only the same in one or two areas. You don’t want to be too
predictable.

Motifs (“sequence”) are useful because it provides connecting tissue and continuity,
making one part of the song sound related to another, but you don’t want it sound all the
same. You don’t want to use sequence all the time.

Listening to Barney’s examples, it definitely is motifs: he takes a melody and then plays
different notes with the same rhythm, then he takes a melody and plays the same notes
with different rhythms, then he takes the same chords and changes the rhythm for every
pair of measures.

Practice these techniques one at a time: first rhythm, then melody, then harmony. Then try
to play some things where you’re using two elements to create your imitative motifs.

The turnaround is a good place to break out of a pattern you’ve been using.

Don’t use sequence so much that it’s boring, just enough that the music sounds related.

Lesson 5: How High the Blues

“How High the Blues” is a song Barney wrote that demonstrates the use of “sequence.”
The first two sections of 4 bars are sequential and the 3rd section of 4 bars is a departure
to keep it from getting boring.

Lesson 6: Sweet Jenny Green

Learning a song

Learn the melody, the chords and the baseline and play them until you become very
familiar with it.

Play through each chord out of tempo, listen to it and play some scale patterns to
familiarize yourself with the sound of the harmony (Barney never plays a straight scale, he
always plays varied patterns off of the scale).

Play through each chord out of tempo and play arpeggio-like patterns (again, Barney
never plays just a straight arpeggio)

Still out of tempo, imagine some musical phrases you could play on each chord keeping
the idea of motifs in mind. Go through the whole song and make it as “sequential” (in
Barney’s terminology) as you can, but when you’ve mastered that, then back off and
remove some of them and add variations.

Experiment with chord substitutions. Then make your motifs fit in with those
substitutions.

Barney suggests listening to his and Dave’s performance of Sweet Jenny Green and listen
for the motivic devices he’s using.

Remember that you can use formation playing along with sequential playing.

Keep exploring!