I want to thank you for this lesson. I'm not as advanced as most of those commenting, but I found your advice very helpful for me personally. I am still solidifying my arpeggios and how to connect them, but now I have a system I can follow on how to practice. Thanks for the practice plan.
Thanks for the lesson. The biggest challenge I face is going from exercises to making music. Addressing the deficiencies in my phrasing is helping a bunch.
Glad you like it. Yes that is the challenge. Think of it as learning grammar. It is no laungage but it helps you to learn and understand a new language.
Hello Mikko, I'm extremely grateful to the musicians of your quality to share their knowledge. And so clearly despite the difficulties of jazz music. Cordialy from France.
Great lesson! Clear , methodical, and each new idea progressing and building on what came before. Tasty playing. Thanks for sharing really useful ideas.
Good lesson. As someone who has become hooked on various UA-cam, FB, jazz guitar classes what I see teachers saying is "you can use G pentatonic or B flat throughout but you won't sound very good. But if you use 1) arpeggios 2) guide tones 3) melodic harmonic lydian mixolydian etc scale 4) Bill Evans licks - then you are going to sound really good. " Of course, the more tools you have then the more you can choose to use. Teachers should emphasize that with whatever the player knows they should best utilize those tools. And the best soloing for me always comes from using the above options (much as I know them) and often mixing them together in my soloing.
@@Mikkokosmos My best lessons came from a private teacher who basically taught theory but kept repeating "Its not that hard" meaning there was a unity behind all the theory. I watch mainly Jens, Matt W. facebook, Jazz Scrapbook and also Things I Learned from Barry Harris, Jazz Scrapbook, True Fire lessons....
Many thanks for this great lesson. I realise now I was trying to progress too quickly, be too clever. I wish you had spent more time breaking down the last section but maybe you can guide me on other resources to help with this. Thanks again.
Thanks for sharing, playing the arpeggio notes is all well and good, but it’s hard to create any tension and release that way. For example over the Gminor /G7 you could play the melodic minor and finish with the diminished arpeggio just an example.
Man love this lesson! Do you go over this with your private students? If you just added rhythm it would be just killer, perhaps that rhythm aspect gets its away from an exercise
Hi there, great channel and great lesson! I´ve been practicing chord tones for a while, and it definitely changed my playing. I found that the seventh sometimes is not stable as the root, third and fifth, so I prefer to stay with the 1-3-5, what is your opinion?
hey and thanks. Yes, good point. we have to make a difference when we play in the lower registers as opposed to the higher, I think. The higher you go you can use more extension, I guess is the general idea. I once lifted a solo by Kurt Rosenwinkel and was surprised how much he used triads though. Ironically it's seems more modern to use triads these days :)
I found this interesting article that explain this problem with 7ths (specially on tonic chords) jasonlyonjazz.wordpress.com/2013/06/24/youve-been-taught-the-wrong-chord-tones/
I worked a lot on scales with four tones only with leaving out the 5th and in 6-xtoles, I wanted to sound more like a saxophone player, I haven't adapted this not totally to my playin yet although I put a incredible time in it, later on I saw some play it and told that george benson did that, now I found out recenltly that this information I was practicing came from no one less than Eef Albers and I gues he searche all horn players out so at least also all interested guitar players like George Benson...the only thing that I did differently was permutate them after each to notes, in this way over 3 octaves you cvlimb the mount off not to much, also those stuff I tried to adapt it hybrid hexatonics, sometimes that goes great top my favourite lick is E Eb Db Bb A G E(goes over F# m7 B7, how strange it may sound but sounds damn well) contains blues scale of Eminor & Bbminor and threre notes are mirroring each this I learned from a saxophone player who could play any tune just by six scales, by modality just think not in chords but in Roots so make a dominant of each chord...that way only six + THEIR paterns will do the work for any tune(of course as a way of practicing) later on adapt to your playing....but for me I never totally succeeded the way I wanted...maybe you have some interesting clues...?? main paterns: E(high) D(high) A G ELower) D(lower)the same from A G E D A(lower) G and eventually the same reversed...This over Em7 or Cmaj7 of course this is for you childs play Over D7: A G F# D C pater of vife tones permutating down words in groups of 2 and three notes so each time skipping 1 or 2 notes for Maj7 other interesting arpeggio: CHigh) - B G -E C(low)-B and than G E C B G E each lick of course to the limit of speed possible.. over D7 also of cours like E D B A G# E D etc this came from Eef Albers, to be honoust I see some characteristic with your playimng that he has also you could see that as compliment because he is my favourite player together with Al(i)an Holdsworth and Scofield..your timing ad phrasing realy does remind me alot of him, if this information is boring than realy excuse myself...for it
You bring up a very important and interesting question. When you say about the mechanically memorized arpeggio exercises, "I'm not improvising", I think you mean, "I'm not expressing my own ideas"? So, what is the idea about... I think the point with those exercises should be, "how to realize a harmonization or re-harmonization of an existing melody, or just, a chord progression you want to play for some reason or purpose, by using individual notes that are played as arpeggios in order to just see them clearly"... if you were a keyboard player you could leave out the arpeggio aspect, because on a keyboard you can actually play the keys _simultaneously_ without arpeggios. :) But what if, at that point of your music studies, manipulating harmonies and improvising chord progressions, i.e. knowing and feeling how sequences of note-combinations affect the apparent roles of pitches, isn't familiar to you yet, then what will you learn by playing those arpeggios? If that's the case, then the students are doing the whole arpeggio exercise prematurely, and they should be playing around with chord progressions first. But then again, guitar as an instrument is a bit handicapped in that regard, so what can you do. ;)
What do you think, would it be better, or possible in practice, to have students understand chord choices very early on in their training? Instead of getting chord progressions as given from mystical higher superpowers, they would see the forest for the trees, so to speak. ;) Myself, I pretty much learned music by finding chord progressions to existing melodies, and developed a very strong sense and feeling of harmony and how individual tone choices affect the big picture. And that understanding lets me see melodies and harmonies as a whole, and makes my solos very "melodic" - which is of course a matter of taste. But when I listen to solos by some musicians who have sometimes spent a decade or more following a path of formal training, their solos are ugly and chaotic, and it feels that they are randomly picking notes from a scale, and it feels like they don't understand what they are doing. They are essentially creating nonsensical chord progressions, or fighting against the chords if there's an accompaniment. But how can a guitarist learn to use and manipulate chords as easily as a keyboard player can? Finding chords and many different optional chords to melodies is totally a must-have skill. And by chords I mean combinations of pitches, not just "chord symbols". How about playing chord arpeggios with a MIDI guitar system that has a "sustain pedal"? So the guitarist could simulate what any keyboard player can do naturally. The problem with playing guitar chords the conventional way is that the player tends to just associate a written chord symbol with a memorized grip or shape, but without _really_ knowing and seeing the individual notes in that grip.
I guess what you are talking about is voice leading as opposed to just using chord shapes? If someone is just using chord "grips" without any understanding of each individual voice within that grip then that person is at a very amateur level. Players like Hekselman and Goodrick have shown us that a guitar players can be just as sophisticated in that regard as a keyboard player. I always recommend my guitar students to learn scales and chords on the piano. But what is a chord? I think chord progressions are a bit overrated, all it is is a melody and root motion, right? Classical musicians don't think of harmony as chord progressions, even though you could analyze a Bach piece for example in that way. It's all voice leading/harmony. But one of the points of this video was to try to explain that you have to be able to connect the chord-tones if you wan't to be able to play over complex chord changes. That I think would be the same for any instrument?
Yes, I guess I meant voice leading, and by "chord progression" I meant how the voices in the whole harmony change and move around. In this video you tell soloists to outline the harmony instead of playing scales - which is of course the musical and "correct" thing to do. My point is, something must have gone a bit wrong if such an elementary thing has to be specifically corrected. :) However, when listening to solos of even some quite advanced players, they seem to be in need of improvement regarding that basic thing. So I'm thinking, would it be possible to introduce some kind of an exercise, preferably early on in the path of musical training, such that the student would develop a hands-on practical sense of how harmony works, so that it wouldn't even cross their mind to just "play a scale" without realizing that every note and timing they play in their solo is not just a melodic, but also a harmony-related choice. :) You cannot play any notes at all without at the same time also affecting the effective or implied overall harmony. A player should be able to play around with harmony, and make their own changes. So I was thinking out loud, because you're so experienced, do you think the general lack of skill could be corrected by something like having students familiarize themselves better with harmonic choices by finding their own changes by ear. An interesting solo should, in my opinion, say something interesting and non-trivial also harmonically, but how can a player do that if they cannot improvise their own new and different chord changes? If they cannot improvise their own chords, or not know and feel what the harmonic contribution of each note is, they're bound to play either boring or ugly solos. To put it in other words, outlining harmonies in single-note lines is more of a subtle and sophisticated thing, compared to actually playing the notes at the same time. You're only hinting at beauty and possibility of romance, only like R rated, instead of showing everything explicitly like X rated, if you know what I mean. ;) But to become a good story teller you have to know what you're leaving out, so you have to be very familiar with the "real thing". What comes to average classically trained players, I wouldn't exactly call them masters of harmony or improvisation. ;) My experience only.
It's a very good question: how we can teach kids to learn harmony in a playful way. We usually learn scales first I guess. When I think of an "advanced" player I think of somebody who can reharm and play around with the harmony/changes as he or she fits. And yes classical players are often unable to improvise, that's why I stopped playing classical and turned to Jazz when I was in high school. I wanted to be able to improvise like the older students. It seemed more fun. btw speaking of classical and Jazz and playing around with harmony: check out guitarist Antoine Boyer!
Hi, Thank you so much for this, lesson. I am a total beginner when it comes to theory and sight reading. At about 3:06 you play the D7 arpeggio the F is sharpened which makes sense for the major third but why is that out of the scale? why is it not a minor 3rd as this would fit with the key? Thank you!
GuitarGeek oRama thank you for your question 😁 I'm not sure I understand what you are asking. The excersise is to play chord tones and D F# A and C are the chord tones of D7. I'm not conserned with scales at that point but the tune is in G minor and if you play an G harmonic minor scale you get the F# that is the leading note in that key. 🤓
Mikko Hilden thank you for the reply. I had been working through writing out the notes of the arpeggios of the chords presuming they were all from the key of G minor like the key of the song. So I just wondered where that # had come from as there was already an F in the key. I guess I need some more basic foundations in theory! But thank you for replying :)
I want to thank you for this lesson. I'm not as advanced as most of those commenting, but I found your advice very helpful for me personally. I am still solidifying my arpeggios and how to connect them, but now I have a system I can follow on how to practice. Thanks for the practice plan.
Glad you like it :D
Love your stuff . Always Always My Fav channel
This is exactly where I am right now! Thanks for the confirmation that I'm on the right path and thanks for the tips.
Thanks for the lesson. The biggest challenge I face is going from exercises to making music. Addressing the deficiencies in my phrasing is helping a bunch.
Glad you like it. Yes that is the challenge. Think of it as learning grammar. It is no laungage but it helps you to learn and understand a new language.
issac Hernandez your not alone
I agree leaning this does not teach language it is the a challenge to turn that into vocabulary
Great lesson
Hello Mikko,
I'm extremely grateful to the musicians of your quality to share their knowledge. And so clearly despite the difficulties of jazz music.
Cordialy from France.
So cool! thank you for lesson!
Great lesson! Clear , methodical, and each new idea progressing and building on what came before. Tasty playing. Thanks for sharing really useful ideas.
Good lesson. As someone who has become hooked on various UA-cam, FB, jazz guitar classes what I see teachers saying is "you can use G pentatonic or B flat throughout but you won't sound very good. But if you use 1) arpeggios 2) guide tones 3) melodic harmonic lydian mixolydian etc scale 4) Bill Evans licks - then you are going to sound really good. " Of course, the more tools you have then the more you can choose to use. Teachers should emphasize that with whatever the player knows they should best utilize those tools. And the best soloing for me always comes from using the above options (much as I know them) and often mixing them together in my soloing.
Thanks. I would love to know which UA-cam channels you're following. 🙂
@@Mikkokosmos My best lessons came from a private teacher who basically taught theory but kept repeating "Its not that hard" meaning there was a unity behind all the theory. I watch mainly Jens, Matt W. facebook, Jazz Scrapbook and also Things I Learned from Barry Harris, Jazz Scrapbook, True Fire lessons....
@@EagleHerbs2015 cool, thanks. I also follow the Barry Harris channel. Very good stuff.
You definitely deserve way more subscribers! Very clean explanation and playing the examples in a simple way works well
Another congratulations from France. Very clear and helpful. Thanks for sharing this.
Mikko, thank you for a great lesson.
Many thanks for this great lesson. I realise now I was trying to progress too quickly, be too clever. I wish you had spent more time breaking down the last section but maybe you can guide me on other resources to help with this. Thanks again.
Thanks for sharing, playing the arpeggio notes is all well and good, but it’s hard to create any tension and release that way. For example over the Gminor /G7 you could play the melodic minor and finish with the diminished arpeggio just an example.
"don't dismiss something because it is a basic concept" - hear hear!!!
Great advice thanks
Man love this lesson! Do you go over this with your private students? If you just added rhythm it would be just killer, perhaps that rhythm aspect gets its away from an exercise
Awesome video Mikko! I would like to know how you can take this approach to something more complex like Thelonious Monk songs, thanks a lot!
Hi there, great channel and great lesson! I´ve been practicing chord tones for a while, and it definitely changed my playing. I found that the seventh sometimes is not stable as the root, third and fifth, so I prefer to stay with the 1-3-5, what is your opinion?
hey and thanks. Yes, good point. we have to make a difference when we play in the lower registers as opposed to the higher, I think. The higher you go you can use more extension, I guess is the general idea. I once lifted a solo by Kurt Rosenwinkel and was surprised how much he used triads though. Ironically it's seems more modern to use triads these days :)
I found this interesting article that explain this problem with 7ths (specially on tonic chords) jasonlyonjazz.wordpress.com/2013/06/24/youve-been-taught-the-wrong-chord-tones/
Vey Useful tip. Thanks
Great lesson! Thank you! 👍
Great lesson, really helped me. Where could I get the backing track that you used in this video?
Thanks! It'd just something I found on UA-cam 🤓 should be easy to find.
I worked a lot on scales with four tones only with leaving out the 5th and in 6-xtoles, I wanted to sound more like a saxophone player, I haven't adapted this not totally to my playin yet although I put a incredible time in it, later on I saw some play it and told that george benson did that, now I found out recenltly that this information I was practicing came from no one less than Eef Albers and I gues he searche all horn players out so at least also all interested guitar players like George Benson...the only thing that I did differently was permutate them after each to notes, in this way over 3 octaves you cvlimb the mount off not to much, also those stuff I tried to adapt it hybrid hexatonics, sometimes that goes great top my favourite lick is E Eb Db Bb A G E(goes over F# m7 B7, how strange it may sound but sounds damn well) contains blues scale of Eminor & Bbminor and threre notes are mirroring each this I learned from a saxophone player who could play any tune just by six scales, by modality just think not in chords but in Roots so make a dominant of each chord...that way only six + THEIR paterns will do the work for any tune(of course as a way of practicing) later on adapt to your playing....but for me I never totally succeeded the way I wanted...maybe you have some interesting clues...?? main paterns: E(high) D(high) A G ELower) D(lower)the same from A G E D A(lower) G and eventually the same reversed...This over Em7 or Cmaj7 of course this is for you childs play Over D7: A G F# D C pater of vife tones permutating down words in groups of 2 and three notes so each time skipping 1 or 2 notes for Maj7 other interesting arpeggio: CHigh) - B G -E C(low)-B and than G E C B G E each lick of course to the limit of speed possible.. over D7 also of cours like E D B A G# E D etc this came from Eef Albers, to be honoust I see some characteristic with your playimng that he has also you could see that as compliment because he is my favourite player together with Al(i)an Holdsworth and Scofield..your timing ad phrasing realy does remind me alot of him, if this information is boring than realy excuse myself...for it
tremendo viejo gracias por la pasión
You bring up a very important and interesting question. When you say about the mechanically memorized arpeggio exercises, "I'm not improvising", I think you mean, "I'm not expressing my own ideas"? So, what is the idea about... I think the point with those exercises should be, "how to realize a harmonization or re-harmonization of an existing melody, or just, a chord progression you want to play for some reason or purpose, by using individual notes that are played as arpeggios in order to just see them clearly"... if you were a keyboard player you could leave out the arpeggio aspect, because on a keyboard you can actually play the keys _simultaneously_ without arpeggios. :) But what if, at that point of your music studies, manipulating harmonies and improvising chord progressions, i.e. knowing and feeling how sequences of note-combinations affect the apparent roles of pitches, isn't familiar to you yet, then what will you learn by playing those arpeggios? If that's the case, then the students are doing the whole arpeggio exercise prematurely, and they should be playing around with chord progressions first. But then again, guitar as an instrument is a bit handicapped in that regard, so what can you do. ;)
Interesting points and well said!
What do you think, would it be better, or possible in practice, to have students understand chord choices very early on in their training? Instead of getting chord progressions as given from mystical higher superpowers, they would see the forest for the trees, so to speak. ;) Myself, I pretty much learned music by finding chord progressions to existing melodies, and developed a very strong sense and feeling of harmony and how individual tone choices affect the big picture. And that understanding lets me see melodies and harmonies as a whole, and makes my solos very "melodic" - which is of course a matter of taste. But when I listen to solos by some musicians who have sometimes spent a decade or more following a path of formal training, their solos are ugly and chaotic, and it feels that they are randomly picking notes from a scale, and it feels like they don't understand what they are doing. They are essentially creating nonsensical chord progressions, or fighting against the chords if there's an accompaniment. But how can a guitarist learn to use and manipulate chords as easily as a keyboard player can? Finding chords and many different optional chords to melodies is totally a must-have skill. And by chords I mean combinations of pitches, not just "chord symbols". How about playing chord arpeggios with a MIDI guitar system that has a "sustain pedal"? So the guitarist could simulate what any keyboard player can do naturally. The problem with playing guitar chords the conventional way is that the player tends to just associate a written chord symbol with a memorized grip or shape, but without _really_ knowing and seeing the individual notes in that grip.
I guess what you are talking about is voice leading as opposed to just using chord shapes? If someone is just using chord "grips" without any understanding of each individual voice within that grip then that person is at a very amateur level. Players like Hekselman and Goodrick have shown us that a guitar players can be just as sophisticated in that regard as a keyboard player. I always recommend my guitar students to learn scales and chords on the piano. But what is a chord? I think chord progressions are a bit overrated, all it is is a melody and root motion, right? Classical musicians don't think of harmony as chord progressions, even though you could analyze a Bach piece for example in that way. It's all voice leading/harmony. But one of the points of this video was to try to explain that you have to be able to connect the chord-tones if you wan't to be able to play over complex chord changes. That I think would be the same for any instrument?
Yes, I guess I meant voice leading, and by "chord progression" I meant how the voices in the whole harmony change and move around. In this video you tell soloists to outline the harmony instead of playing scales - which is of course the musical and "correct" thing to do. My point is, something must have gone a bit wrong if such an elementary thing has to be specifically corrected. :) However, when listening to solos of even some quite advanced players, they seem to be in need of improvement regarding that basic thing. So I'm thinking, would it be possible to introduce some kind of an exercise, preferably early on in the path of musical training, such that the student would develop a hands-on practical sense of how harmony works, so that it wouldn't even cross their mind to just "play a scale" without realizing that every note and timing they play in their solo is not just a melodic, but also a harmony-related choice. :) You cannot play any notes at all without at the same time also affecting the effective or implied overall harmony. A player should be able to play around with harmony, and make their own changes. So I was thinking out loud, because you're so experienced, do you think the general lack of skill could be corrected by something like having students familiarize themselves better with harmonic choices by finding their own changes by ear. An interesting solo should, in my opinion, say something interesting and non-trivial also harmonically, but how can a player do that if they cannot improvise their own new and different chord changes? If they cannot improvise their own chords, or not know and feel what the harmonic contribution of each note is, they're bound to play either boring or ugly solos. To put it in other words, outlining harmonies in single-note lines is more of a subtle and sophisticated thing, compared to actually playing the notes at the same time. You're only hinting at beauty and possibility of romance, only like R rated, instead of showing everything explicitly like X rated, if you know what I mean. ;) But to become a good story teller you have to know what you're leaving out, so you have to be very familiar with the "real thing".
What comes to average classically trained players, I wouldn't exactly call them masters of harmony or improvisation. ;) My experience only.
It's a very good question: how we can teach kids to learn harmony in a playful way. We usually learn scales first I guess. When I think of an "advanced" player I think of somebody who can reharm and play around with the harmony/changes as he or she fits. And yes classical players are often unable to improvise, that's why I stopped playing classical and turned to Jazz when I was in high school. I wanted to be able to improvise like the older students. It seemed more fun. btw speaking of classical and Jazz and playing around with harmony: check out guitarist Antoine Boyer!
Hi, Thank you so much for this, lesson. I am a total beginner when it comes to theory and sight reading. At about 3:06 you play the D7 arpeggio the F is sharpened which makes sense for the major third but why is that out of the scale? why is it not a minor 3rd as this would fit with the key? Thank you!
GuitarGeek oRama thank you for your question 😁 I'm not sure I understand what you are asking. The excersise is to play chord tones and D F# A and C are the chord tones of D7. I'm not conserned with scales at that point but the tune is in G minor and if you play an G harmonic minor scale you get the F# that is the leading note in that key. 🤓
Mikko Hilden thank you for the reply. I had been working through writing out the notes of the arpeggios of the chords presuming they were all from the key of G minor like the key of the song. So I just wondered where that # had come from as there was already an F in the key. I guess I need some more basic foundations in theory! But thank you for replying :)
GuitarGeek oRama yeah minor is a special case. You also have to write out the harmonic and melodic minor scales to get the whole picture. 🤓🤓🤓
That right there is very useful information for me, thank you !!
thanks, this helps me
hi mikko! congratulations ! what string gauge do you use in this guitar?
I think those are tens :)
Subscribed!
Mikko's kindergarten level is your is your freshman college level. :}
14:32
great lesson