Students should experiment with altering the rhythm, then adding or subtracting notes to their melodic ornamentation. When adding notes, short segments of the related diatonic or chromatic scale can function as passing tones. Be sure that the melody’s natural arrival points are presented with clar- ity. I recommend starting with mostly diatonic tunes such as the popular standard “Mack the Knife” or the tunes listed in Strategy 1. Stimulate the students’ aural imaginations by playing reference recordings that demonstrate a range of individualized melody statements. (For “Mack The Knife”, choose from renditions by Bobby Darin, Louis Armstrong, Ella Fitzgerald, Sonny Rollins [“Moritat”], Oscar Peterson, Clark Terry, Kenny Dorham, and Wayne Shorter).


Strategy 3: Practice Scales By Making Melodies


We know that scale practice is a crucial part of learning to improvise. Beyond the technical exercise of scale patterns, students should attempt to create their own melodies using a scale they know well (e.g. major, minor, or blues). Create limitations in which students improvise a melody using only parts of a given scale (1, 2, 3, 4, 5 or 5, 7, 1, 2, 3, or even smaller segments). This allows the improviser to better focus their attention on developing clear two and four bar phrases. Simplicity works best.


Once phrasing and melodic contour are established, the delivery of the melody can be refined. Practice call and re- sponse in which students mimic a two bar riff modeled by the instructor (start with three notes or less). Ensure that stu- dents copy articulation, pulse, swing feeling, and expressive tone, then have them apply these characteristics to their own improvisations.


Strategy 4: Learning Harmony


While melodic improvisation is effective, improvisers ul- timately need to develop harmonic control—the ability to outline or acknowledge a tune’s chord progression at will. A good first step is to learn standards that feature strong chord tones in the melody, such as “Second Line” (a blues form) or “When The Saints Go Marching In”. Embellishing these melodies, the student begins to hear vertical sonority as well as linear development in their improvisation.


rhythmic pattern such as the one in Figure 1 (the down-stems highlight the root and third sonority, while the up-stems can be introduced later to outline the entire chord). This pattern can be altered to highlight a variety of chord tone arrivals (the third on beat one for example). Improvise by embellish- ing this “melody” or use this pattern as an accompaniment for the group to play behind a soloist. Only after the melody, form, and harmony are memorized should you introduce a lead sheet and teach students how to read chord symbols.


Strategy 5: Voice Leading


Another strategy for learning harmonic improvisation is to use voice leading melodies. These melodies are char- acterized by stepwise motion (often descending), flowing smoothly from one chord tone to the next. See Figure 2 for two examples that express the harmony for the last eight bars of “When The Saints Go Marching In”. You can develop voice leading lines for any standard tune or chord progres- sion. Figure 3 depicts a number of voice leading patterns used over the ii-V-I progression. Have students embellish these melodies using arpeggios, scale segments, chromati- cism, and blues figures. (Burt Ligon’s Connecting Chords with Linear Harmony is an excellent resource for more in- formation on voice leading and embellishment.) Voice lead- ing study allows students to clearly state the connections between chord changes in a way that is obvious to the ear. Reinforce this concept by learning standards that have ample ii-V harmony and strong voice leading already present in the melody, such as “Autumn Leaves”, “How High the Moon”, “Just Friends”, “Solar”, and “All The Things You Are”.


Figure 2


Figure 1


Next, have students internalize the form and harmonic pro- gression by playing the roots and then building the basic ar- peggios (1-3-5-7) of each chord using a steady pulse and a


30


Figure 3


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