Practice This! is an educational project of Earshot Jazz with sponsorship from The Seattle Drum School. Each month in Earshot Jazz a new lesson by a different local jazz artist will appear for students to learn from and for non-musician readers to gain insight into the craft of improvising.

Practice This!
March 2007
Chris Spencer on Connecting the Dots with Chord Tones

Click here to download and listen to the audio clip of Chris playing examples of these ideas.

Playing over changes can be one of the biggest hurdles for jazz students. Often, the chord changes go by too fast and it’s hard to create lines that support the harmonic structure of the tune. Most students learn scales first, which becomes the major resource for finding notes for their solos. These exercises use only the chord tones, which puts focus on the chord at hand rather than the key center.

Chord tones are essentially a linear representation of the harmony of the tune. They are the most concise way to imply the changes when improvising. Although it can feel restrictive, it forces you out of your comfort zone which is usually a good thing. Don’t worry, the other notes haven’t gone anywhere, they are still available. Only now, you will see the others in relation to the chord tones, instead of a key center. And seen in this light, you should have more control on the Tension/Release element of your playing.

To illustrate this, let’s use a fairly common minor chord progression: E-7(5), A7, D-7, B-7(b5). Try this on smaller progressions at first, since it is time consuming, the gratification will come sooner. The first step is to familiarize yourself with the chord tones in a linear fashion throughout the range of your instrument. Once you have the notes under your belt, you must spend time working through the connections (or the seam) of the chords within the progression. These imaginary seams lie between the chords and mark the transition from one to the other. If you want a smooth seam, that is to “blur” the transition from one chord to another, you must choose a note in the second chord that is close to the last note in the first chord. In the chord progression previously mentioned we have these pairs: E-7(b5)/A7, A7/ D-7, D-7/B-7(b5), B-7(b5)/E-7(b5).

Practice each pair and try to make the last note of the 1st chord move to a tone of the 2nd chord in close proximity. Usually there are two notes in the second chord that are potential candidates, and they will be within an interval of a second or less. Naturally, you want to look for both of those notes and practice them separately.

After all of that work, you should be comfortable with the seams of each chord pair and it’s time to play the progression as it was originally intended.

Chris Spencer performs and teaches in Seattle; for more info check out www.chrisspencermusic.com.