[Music Playing]
I also believe in practicing a progression, a couple of chords at a time. Since your job is to switch scale sounds at the appropriate time. It makes sense to practice each scale changed separately.
For example, let us say you had a chord progression made up of C Major, Bb 7, Am and F#m, one bar a piece. See that?
Now, the way I would practice this would be to go back and forth between the first two chords like this.
[Demonstration]
Okay, next I group the second and third chords together.
[Demonstration]
Finally I will go back and forth between the third and the fourth chords.
[Demonstration]
We are going through this pretty quickly. In reality, you should spend quite awhile on each combination. For the purposes of demonstration, let us just say I have done that. My next step would be to play through the whole chord progression like this.
[Demonstration]
Now, changing scale sounds quickly is always going to be a challenge. What you have to do is slow everything down and practice one or two scale changes at a time. Remember, everything yields to practice, everything.
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At this point, we have established the concept to switching scale sounds to match the underlying chord changes. Next, I think we need to look at the most common ways in which chords move. This is called root motion.
You need to be familiar with the most common directions and intervals by which the roots of the chords change. You also want to know what chord quality are usually linked together.
For example you commonly find consecutive Minor chords with the root motion going down in half steps like this.
[Demonstration]
Okay, now the most common type of root motion now and one you should learn first is one that moves up at fourth or down at fifth. You see?
Now, going up at fourth or down at fifth produces the same note sequence. This motion is called going around the cycle. It is called the cycle because if you start on any pitch and keep moving up at fourth or down at fifth after twelve moves you wind up where you started. Take a look.
[Demonstration]
There you go, it is like magic right? There is something cosmic about that but I don’t know what. Maybe if you just keep going around the cycle long enough you will go back in time or something, I do not know.
The first thing you need to do is memorize this note sequence. There is no shortcut to this. I like to start on B then simply go B, E, A, D, G, C, F, B, E, A, D, G, C, F. Then you start with B, again and add the word flat, B flat, E flat, A flat, D flat, G flat.
You do not go through the whole sequence but stop after saying G flat. Now, B, E, A, D, G, C, F, B flat, E flat, A flat, D flat, G flat. One more time, B, E, A, D, G, C, F, B flat, E flat, A flat, D flat, G flat. After G flat, you start over with B.
It does not matter how you learn this sequence, you just have to learn it. Go over this section of the video as many times as necessary, this is very important. In order to begin to use this knowledge of root motion.
We have to find a way to practice going smoothly and quickly from one chord to the next. Let us start by playing Dominant 7 chords around the cycle.
[Demonstration]
When this happens, the seventh of each chords sounds like it must to move down a half step to the third or the next chord. Then the seventh of that chord wants to move on to the third of the next one and so on.
[Demonstration]
Do you remember how I said that when you improvise, you either point out what is different between chords or what they have in common. Well, the main difference between two dominants moving around the cycle can be pointed out just by playing the seventh of one and moving to the third of the next one, check this out.
[Demonstration]
If you can immediately identify the third or the seventh of every chord, you need to work on it until you can.
Obviously, if you just played the notes that Bill played and nothing else, it would be so not interesting that you would die. You want to preserve the seven to three resolutions between the chords but to make it more mus
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