Improvisation - major / minor keys

Bones

Here is an interesting vid from Robin regarding his approach to licks vs. improvisation.



This is the exact thing that Gonzalo is talking about in his books "How I Learned". Connecting lines (arps, chromatics, etc.) thru chord changes WITHOUT PAUSING.

Note that they are not saying to NECESSARILY perform this way. Just to be able to do it in practice as a way to learn to improvise.

bluetrain

I don't recommend changing the major key to a relative minor. If you start doing this you have to learn new tunes twice.. once in the original key and second on the relative minor. I think the answer is just practice, practice, practice!

Jazzaferri

Errrr........not sure what you mean by this comment

bluetrain

What I mean that if you learn to improvise over major key by changing the major chords to relative minor chord (for example over D7->G you play B7-Em) etc you end up practising the songs twice. First time you practice to play the rhythm in major key and then soloing using different chords.

dennis

That is not what is meant by "converting major to minor", at least as far as the Pat Martino school is concerned. For D7 to G, it would be Am (D7) to Em(G) or Bm(G). You basically find the corresponding minor chord that shares the most common tone/that works.

Django played this way quite a lot. Whether he was thinking about converting to the minor chord i don't know. I personally think it's good idea to understand what the substitution represents.. ie Am7 over D7 is basically Dsus4, and django did that all the time.

Django would also often play Am (usually in the form of Amadd9) over C. Rather than think it as Am, i see it as some sort of C6 (without the note G)