As usual on this video we are going to answer  some of  questions posted by you guys

in our comments section.

I’ve got requests for a video  on how to improvise jazz piano.

Fravier Sckeiser  wants to know about piano broken chords.

and Eliezer Perez  wants to know about piano improvisation

in minor chords.

First of all is very important that we understand that improvisation is different in every music style

rock, jazz, country, blues,

they are all different languages  they might have their similarities,

but even within 1 style  there are different improvisation dialects.

On this video we are going to talk about how to improvise jazz piano

using the bebop scale and the jazz melodic minor scale

and we’ll also include how to use broken chords in jazz improvisation.

Jazz improvisation is the big elephant  and it would obviously take

way more than one video to go deep in the subject.

but let’s take the most common chord progression in jazz

which is the II-V-I and use it to illustrate the concept.

Let’s take it from the F Major key.

The II-V-I on the F major scale consists of a IIm7 chord

In this case Gm7 followed by dominant C7

and resolving to the IMaj7

in this case FMaj7

To improvise fluently  we need to simplify,

we need to find commonalities and take advantage of them.

The first thing we’ll notice when playing the scales of this chord progression

is that the scales of these chords share the same notes.

The G minor dorian scale

Share the same notes of the C7 Mixolydian scale

Which shares the same notes of the F Major scale

Because all these scales share the same notes at their fundamental level

they are interchangeable with each other.

But here is the problem I found on a lot of piano video tutorials on youtube

attempting to answer this question.

And the problem is  that they use the mixolydian scale

as the basis of jazz improvisation.

And they mumble their way up and down this scale.

But somehow this scale doesn’t sound right it just doesn’t sound very jazzy

There is an innate Flaw to this scale

The flaw of this scale is that this scale is rhythmically uneven

because the notes of the chords do not fall on the down beat

and that’s why it doesn’t sound right.

Let me show you

1, 2, 3, 4

The downbeat notes  are the notes of D minor

And that’s why if you improvise jazz using this scale you just keep loosing your footing

Specially when trying to play 16th notes

it becomes a nightmare.

This is where the bebop scale comes into play,  the bebop scale was design to solved this inconsistency

by adding an extra half step passing tone  On the bebop scale the passing tone is B

and the notes of the chord fall on the downbeat.

1, 2, 3, 4,

1, 2, 3, 4, 1

This is why this scale works so well

Now we have a rhythmically correct basic scale

that we can use all over the chord progression  ascending and descending

and we can play those 16th notes beautifully

Our fingers just fall into place by themselves.

And then there is the minor scale. Unless you happen to be playing on the dorian mode

this scale will not be very helpful

because it also has rhythmic incosistencies

Same problem That is why the Jazz dialect

uses the melodic minor scale instead to bring more color to the progression

The melodic minor scale  has both the major 7 and the minor 7

and this is what brings about that jazzy flavor.

But there is a difference with the classical music melodic minor scale

and that is that the Jazz melodic minor scale also uses the major 3rd note

in this case B when descending

Again, the Jazz melodic minor scale

and since these scales are interchangeable we can play the bebop scale over the C7

Or over Gm7

Or we can play the melodic minor scale over Gm7

or over C7

Or we can use both scales on both chords

Let’s play the melodic minor scale ascending and the Bebop scale descending

On the minor chord

and on the dominant chord

So that’s that

We went from playing this

To this

But now we need to leave the monotony of playing only scales

so let’s use now broken chords to add to our piano improvisation

Broken chords are basically the notes of the chords arpeggiated.

But what chords should we use? Well, all the chords from the scale of chords

We need to know our scale of chords.

We are on F Major  So what is the Major scale of chords?

IMaj7 - IIm7 - IIIm7 - IVMaj7 - V7 - VIm7 - VIIm7(b5)

And this is another commonality  because the 3 chords

the IIm7 - V7 - IMaj7 all share the same scale of chords.

so we can play them from F and it would be...

from Gm they would be...

and for C7...

Let me show you an example  on how to use these broken chords on the piano

to create different motifs

Let’s start with the C7 broken chord

Dm

Dm7

Em7(b5)

FMaj7

Gm7

Am7 and BbMaj7

we can continue forever or play our scales

and use them to go down

So what happened here? at the end of this last sentence

I used extra half steps  on each of the scales

the bebop and the minor scale which is another concept we haven’t covered yet

The half step rules of the scales

The Bebop language is all about half steps

there are half step rules for all the scales which allow us even more rhythmic variety and freedom

For example the Bebop C7 dominant scale already has the B half step passing tone.

But we can also use Db and  Eb  as half step passing tones

We just have to be careful not to loose our footing.

Let me show you what I mean by that If we start from C

Everything is fine and dandy

But look what happens when we play it from D

You see? We loose our footing immediately As a rule if we start from D

we should not play the B half step

also when playing from D  we can use the Db half step passing tone

Also when playing from E we can play the B half step

Or we can play the Eb half step passing tone as well as all the others.

But let’s say for the sake or argument  that we start from D

and use the B passing tone anyway and loose our footing

This happens because the notes of the chord

are flipped to the weak part of the beat

1, 2, 3, 4 1, 2…

But even so we can get our footing back in the octave below.

and of course the minor scale has its own set of half step rules

And since the scales are interchangeable, We can use both scales

with their half steps on either chord

Let’s play it on C7

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and I’ll see you on the next video