Little Jazz Workshop Lesson 2 - Scales & Arpeggios

Click images for videos - green are free

	1	2
3	4	5
6	7	8

Bookmark this

Backing Tracks

Tab

Guitar pro tab (?)

Members practicing this lesson:
William Reaper
Anastasio123

Hi GMC! Welcome to the second-in-line lesson about jazz called "Little Jazz Workshop"!

Today we're gonna learn some scales and arpeggios used for the soloing in the third lesson. Now bare in mind that this lesson is very important step, so I suggest going trough lesson 1 and lesson 2 before continuing to lesson three in order to fully understand the concept of jazz composing used for these lessons. Hopefully this concept that I've made can serve to you as a guide to make your own jazz work if you just began to dwelve in jazz waters :)

This exercise is good for the fingers, but also very useful for warming up your mind and ear for jazz soloing. I've been around a few times with Jazz Big Band Orchestra of our national TV in studio and noticed their brass section always making similar warm-ups together. You would think that these exercises are simple, but they are great for quick warming up the ear just before you start to improvise, since they build a relative connections to different scales and chords.

This lesson is not made to make your left hand better, it is made to make you right hand better. The majority of us can play fast with our left hand, but in order to play jazz, you have to have a very smooth and developed right arm as well. When doing scales we will use two basic techniques that we need when playing jazz economy and alternate picking styles, combining three-note-per-string with 2/4 note-per string patterns.

Note that the lesson requiers some theory knowledge about scales, modes and chords, so if you have troubles following please check out Andrew's theory board on the forum or check my own theory topic in my board for specific questions.

This lesson involves:

- right hand dexterity
- warming up for jazz improvisations
- ear developing
- scales and arpeggios of jazzy chords
- economy and alternate picking styles

Sound: Humbucker Bridge, Tone rolled off, Gipsy Jazz Line 6 preset, high bass and middle.

Here are links to the first and third lesson in series:

Little Jazz Workshop Lesson 1 - Chords
Little Jazz Workshop Lesson 3 - Solo

  A minor blues scale                                   
  |--3--|  |--3--|  |--3--|  |--3--|   
  E  E  E  E  E  E  E  E  E  E  E  E   
--------------------------------------|
--------------------------------------|
--------------------------5--7--8--9--|
--------------------5--7--------------|
--------3--5--6--7--------------------|
--3--5--------------------------------|


  |---3--|   |---3---|               |---3---|  |---3--|  |--3--|  |--3--|   
  E   E  E   E   E   E  H            E   E   E  E   E  E  E  E  E  E  E  E   
---------8--10--11--12-----------|--12--11--10--8---------------------------|
--8--10--------------------------|-----------------10--8--------------------|
---------------------------------|------------------------9--8--7--5--------|
---------------------------------|------------------------------------7--5--|
---------------------------------|------------------------------------------|
---------------------------------|------------------------------------------|


  |--3--|  |--3--|             
  E  E  E  E  E  E  Q    Q     
------------------------------|
------------------------------|
------------------------------|
------------------------------|
--7--6--5--3------------------|
--------------5--3------------|

Here we have our first scale example. This pattern is very common, and since this is only an exercise very convenient to really get the feel for the minor blues. I'm sure everyone knows the scale, it is A minor blues scale. We are doing 2 note/4 note per string pattern here, and using economy picking.

Economy picking is a way of picking where we don't do up/down all the time, but when we transfer onto adjacent string we do the same move like we did on the last note of the string before. For example if we do down on one string and move to the other, we don't do up, we do DOWN again. This helps to diminish the moves of the right hand and can sound very fluid and natural if played properly.

   D Beebop Scale                                           
   |--3--|   |---3--|   |---3---|   |---3---|   
   E  E  E   E   E  E   E   E   E   E   E   E   
-----------------------------------------------|
-----------------------------------------------|
-----------------------------------11--12--14--|
--------------------9--10--11--12--------------|
---------9--10--12-----------------------------|
--10-12----------------------------------------|


   |---3---|   |---3---|               
   E   E   E   E   E   E   E  Q    E   
------------------12--14--15----------|
--12--13--14--15----------------------|
--------------------------------------|
--------------------------------------|
--------------------------------------|
--------------------------------------|


   |---3---|   |---3---|   |---3---|   |---3---|   
   E   E   E   E   E   E   E   E   E   E   E   E   
--15--14--12--------------------------------------|
--------------15--14--13--12----------------------|
------------------------------14--12--11----------|
------------------------------------------12--11--|
--------------------------------------------------|
--------------------------------------------------|


   |---3--|   |---3--|                
   E  E   E   E  E   E   Q     Q      
------------------------------------||
------------------------------------||
------------------------------------||
--10--9-----------------------------||
---------12--10--9------------------||
--------------------12--10~---------||

And finally some jazzy scales. Here we have a 8 note scale often used in jazz called Beebop scale. This is the Beebop scale in Dmajor and it is very common to use Beebop scale in realtive to the major scale of the same note in conjunction with the mixolydian mode of that tonality. In our case this would be:
____________________________________
D major tonality:

D major
D Beebop (one note added to the major scale - D#)
____________________________________

____________________________________
C major tonality

Amixolydian (we are not using mixolydian but instead using two commonly used scales in blues)

A minor blues
A dorian
____________________________________

Now after close examination of the scale fret sheets, you can see that all these scales have some common notes. What this means is that these two tonalities are not so different from each other and they can easily make a key center shifts. For our beginner lesson it is a fine example how we can make some interesting melodies out-of-the-box with scales that we already know.

Now bare in mind that jazz can be very complicated, and we have only scratched the surface. We here have only two tonalities, but in real jazz, often many key centers are used, and a beginner player can find him lost very soon. That's why it is SO important to go through these changes and make your owns, cause practice and experience make it perfect. Enjoy Jazz! :)

Here are links to the first and third lesson in series:

Little Jazz Workshop Lesson 1 - Chords
Little Jazz Workshop Lesson 3 - Solo

Lesson Questions, Feedback & Comments

Kristofer Dahl	27th February 2008
GMC Founder & Rocker	Excellent Ivan - this will give rock guitarists a great feel for the typical jazz runs which include arpeggios and one note per string, thanks!

botoxfox	27th February 2008
Member	Sounds nice.

Tuubsu	27th February 2008
Member	Those are some jazzy scales and arpeggios, cool lesson!

Trond Vold	27th February 2008
Instructor	Nice

mattacuk	27th February 2008
Lets go fishing!	Fantastic work Ivan, you really know your stuff! Much impressed

Toni Suominen	27th February 2008
Instructor	I love these jazz lessons, great work Ivan!

Ivan Milenkovic	27th February 2008
Instructor	Thanks guys! EDIT: This lesson's main goal is to lead into the next one where we will do some soloing. The whole concept behind the series is as follow: 1. lesson - we do chords 2. lesson - we find arpeggios of those chords and scales that we wanna use and warm up 3. lesson - we do some improvisation based on previous stuff. I think this approach is very practical and use it all the time when composing something jazzy. This way we can really get into the piece correctly and really understand the changes properly.

Danilo Capezzuto	27th February 2008
Instructor	Nice lesson.

Muris Varajic	27th February 2008
Instructor	Well done Ivan!

Gabriel Leopardi	27th February 2008
GMC Coordinator & Instructor	Great job Ivan! Thanks for this lesson!

Alejandro Piñero	27th February 2008
Instructor	very nice Ivan!!

at lights end	27th February 2008
Member	nice.

Juan M. Valero	27th February 2008
Instructor	cool lesson !! love this jazz licks

Joe Kataldo	27th February 2008
Instructor	Cool Lesson

Pablo Vazquez	27th February 2008
Instructor	Nice lesson! Sounds cool!

Bogdan Radovic	27th February 2008
Bass Instructor	Cool series !! Thanks

krudtaa	27th February 2008
Member	Great jazz stuff there.

Hisham Al-Sanea	27th February 2008
Instructor	nice workshop lesson Ivan. ,,good job

Ivan Milenkovic	28th February 2008
Instructor	Thanks guys.. Another lesson left to sum up all the stuff worked in these two.

Ben N	28th February 2008
Instructor	that was great lesson!! love that jazz sound really cool Ivan this kind of stuff is just what I need to work on thanks!!!

Nemanja Filipovic	28th February 2008
Singing Instructor	great man..as always:)

Carlos Carrillo	28th February 2008
Instructor	hey ivan!!!great lesson!!!nice job and very creative!!!thanks!

Dejan Farkas	28th February 2008
Instructor	Cool

Crazyfret	3rd March 2008
Member	Great lesson Ivan. Only just discovered this one! Gonna investigate the first lesson.