Creating Melodic Solos By Soloing Around One Scale

2 minute read

When I first started learning jazz, I was taught that for every chord, there are corresponding scales that you can use so that your playing sounds consonant. So then I got busy, trying to learn every possible scale over each chord type. I would practice soloing for songs by turning on the metrenome, going through the song and playing the scales for each chord, trying to ingrain each possible scale into my fingers.

However, my solos didn’t turn out sounding that much better. If anything, they sounded more disjointed, as I was constantly moving from scale to scale.

I looked at transcriptions of my favorite recordings, focusing specifically on the melodicity of these recordings. Something I found was that the melodic solos I enjoyed listening to mainly stayed around the same key.

• (Mostly) Stay in One Key
• It Won’t Be Bland
• An Example
• Final Note

Keep in Mind the Original Key

It’s easy to lose sight of this when you look at a jazz standard and see all the different chords, but remember that the song is based in one key. With all of the secondary dominants and non-diatonic notes, it’s easy to lose sight of this in jazz.

I found that it’s better to think of the original key as my base and use the secondary dominants and associated scales as different flavors I can add to spice up the improvisation; these secondary dominants are not destinations, but small detours.

It Won’t Be Bland

I was afraid that my playing would be more bland if I changed keys less often. However, it actually has gotten more interesting:

• You can develop more coherent melodies in one key; it’ll be easier for the listener to follow, and it’ll make more sense to them.

• Because you change scales less often, the listener is more grounded in the original key. As a result, when you do shift to another scale or use non-diatonic notes, the change in color/sound is more noticeable.

• Playing in the original key over secondary dominants will sound good because of the clash between the notes in the original key and the notes in the secondary dominant.

An Example

You can try following along with this solo (1:23). Notice how even though it mainly stays in one key, the well-developed melodic ideas make it sound interesting. Also notice how the few non-diatonic notes being used stand out compared to others (you can see in the transcription where the non-diatonic notes are being used by the added accidentals).

but-not-for-me-chet-baker.pdf

Final Note

Rather than seeing each chord in a jazz standard as a separate destination, view the entire song as one key with the secondary dominants as options for different flavors.

Written on November 25th, 2020 by Chris Cheung