TOTM - My Romance - Lesson 3 - Lines - pt 2 by Tony Miceli

Here's the next part of lesson three. This takes the chord from soloists to the next level, which we could call scale tone solos. :-)

For me when I look back over it with jazz, the further I go back I sort of see the system that we're talking about here in reverse. When I check out Dixieland music or any other style of improvised music back in the beginning of the century, I hear a lot of cord tones. Then as jazz progresses forward in time, I see those intervals getting smaller. That is the intervals between the notes in the solo. I'm not sure who else sees it this way, but for me this was an eye-opener and I learned a lot from this observation.

So with part three of our Tune Of The Month (My Romance), we began in my mind playing a sort of Dixieland solo. This is just how I think of it, you don't have to. At least this was a chord tone solo.

Now with the way I see it were beginning to narrow that gap between the notes by adding scales. To me this is a very important step because when we play were giving the audience information. If the information we are handing them is a Bb major chord then we can either play the chord tones or play a scale. Both of those things convey the same sort of idea. I do realize that there are some exceptions and contradictions to this, but that is not the focus of this lesson.

So your job is to learn all the scales of this tune, that is the accepted scale to go along with each chord. Your next step would be in this lesson to play all those scales so that we hear the tune. Why? Because then you know or rather have a lot of information to use in your improvisation.

There are certainly many advanced places to go from here, and that part is up to you.