When I Started Practicing THIS, Everything Changed

ii V I Chord Progression

Learning jazz improvisation can be really intimidating. I hear students say over and over again how will I ever learn to do this?  I even said that myself when starting out. It seems as though the more you learn the more you realize how little you know.

The good news is that everyone can learn to improvise and play over chord changes you just need a disciplined practice approach and the right material to practice. I have found that playing melodic lines over the  ii V I chord progression to be one of the most  effective things you can do to work on and develop your improvisation skills. I’ll give you an example of an easy line to get you started.

Mix & Match Using One Simple Line

Believe it or not this one simple line has several elements that we can reuse in countless ways to make endless lines which become material to improvise with. If we break this line down into four groups of notes we get short patterns that we can mix and match. Let me show you how.

The first four notes are just the Dorian scale going up from the root. 1 2 3 4. The next group of four notes is a  very common pattern where we skip one note in the scale going down. 5 3 2 1. The  next group has a chromatic passing tone and comes out of the bebop scale. And the last group is what we refer to as an enclosure.

Our final note is the C the root of the one chord and  we enclose it with a note below and a note above. Also note that each measure starts out on the root of the chord D G C. Let’s try swapping out one of these groups of notes to get a variation on this line.

See what we did there? The first three groups are the same but the last one is different. We actually reused the first group of notes here  1 2 3 4 of the D Dorian scale. We also ended on a different chord tone the E which is the third of C major 7. Next, let’s make a new variation.

Listen to the example in the video. Can you hear what we did there? The first two groups are still the same but this  time we repeated them but with different starting notes.

It’s the exact same eight note pattern played up the interval of a tritone. What do you think of that sound? There’s a lot more tension right? But it all resolves nicely on the last note.

TriTone Substitution

This is a simple yet very effective example of using the tritone substitution on a ii V I chord progression and we are using very basic scale patterns to do it. This time our final note in the phrase is the five of our one chord. Listen to all three of these patterns  back to back.

Because we’re only changing part of the line each time and we’re recycling groups of notes, you can see how quickly we could learn these three lines. Let me show you one more variation.

This one is just like 1B but instead of transcribing the first two groups of notes up a tritone we transpose them up a minor third. That’s another sound with some cool tension in it that once again gets resolved nicely to the third of the one chord.

Backdoor Dominant Substitution

This is a simple example of playing the backdoor dominant substitution. Fancy name but it’s easy to do and it sounds familiar if you’ve ever listened to Jazz. And just like that we have four great lines built using a minimum amount  of material arranged in slightly different ways.

When you learn lines with different options like this it sets you up to be able to improvise more fluidly. Once you realize that all these complex lines are just built out of simple groupings and those groupings can be interchanged in countless ways, the whole thing suddenly seems not quite as intimidating.

Learn in All 12 Keys

The next step is to learn these in all 12 keys and I know what you’re thinking, that’s going to be so hard. The first time you take a line through all 12 keys yes, it will take some time. But it will get significantly easier each time you repeat the process.

If you do this daily it won’t be long before the process only takes a matter of minutes to get through. And it is at that point that you begin to have some fluency when it comes to improvising over chord changes.

Two, Five, Win!

What we’ve just learned is the first four patterns in my Two, Five, Win! improvisation course. Songs are made up of chord progressions and the ii V I chord progression is by far the most common in jazz music. It is so common that many jazz standards are almost entirely made up out of ii V I’s. If we master playing over the ii V I chord progression in all 12 keys, we will be able to play great solos on any tune.

But the patterns you choose to learn are important. There are certain phrases in the Jazz language that everyone needs to know and be familiar with. Lines that are part of the tradition and make up the essential vocabulary we communicate with.

Learning the Language

Improvising is not just making new random material up. It is  the art of communicating in an established language that’s been evolving across generations. That’s why I created the Two, Five, Win! course for you. It’s a collection of dozens of great lines that come directly out of the tradition of jazz improvisation.

I’ve organized them in sections starting on each note of the scale so you maximize your options and learn to play with variety. Just like we did earlier, I give you variations on each line again, increasing your options.

Practicing  this way leads to greater fluency and instead of just handing you a PDF with a bunch of notes on it for you to practice, I have recorded a lesson video for each line where I explain exactly what is happening, why each note choice works, and how good lines are built.

What You Gain from Two, Five, Win!

I teach you through examples of what a tritone substitution is. If you’ve ever struggled to understand that concept it will be clear to you once you’ve gone through this course. I teach you about the back door dominant, the altered scale, the diminished scale, and how all these things can be used in the context of the ii V I chord progression.

Two, Five, Win! is exactly the sort of stuff I practice daily because it is extremely effective, efficient, and gets measurable results quickly. Click the link here to enroll and let’s get you started right now.