How to Improvise Chord by Chord

I have been teaching for 33 years in a row, and finally I’ve arrived to a step to step lesson that could help to my students to learn how to improvise chord by chord.

This is one of the biggest obstacles in Jazz and Fusion, ’cause in other styles there is no improvisation at all (players compose the solo in advance) or just exist improvisation over one static chord using a blues scale.

Jazz’s harmony involves a lot of chords, from simple to complex, from diatonic triads to exotic clusters.  And is almost mandatory that the soloist has to describe the song’s harmony, and for it the improviser has to develop a big vocabulary that involves scales, arpeggios, triads, passing notes and modes.

In this video lesson, student will learn how to improvise first with thirds, the most important note of the chord, then with triads, then arpeggios, and so on, because in Jazz scales are no so much in use, so the student needs another kind of technique for playing with one or two note per string patterns. I start with major blues and minor blues, then I moved to II V I, talking about swing, blues bebop and post bebop.

Utilizing this method, I saw how many students became confidents in Jazz’s improv, so I hope you too.

Juampy Juarez
May 2021

37 Pages PDF Included (Text in Spanish, but goes along with video instruction)