"Five-Note Morphing: a Path to Improv Success"

Improvisation by key centers, by blues scale, or via the ability to play any note convincingly over any chord are always options. Here I explore a fourth avenue: being literal with each chord change, responding with chromatic decisions that conform to the symbol of the moment.

If you’re a more experienced improvisor, questions may arise in your head: “Can I really play on the chord changes? Or do my lines stop every time I play a color-tone?” If you’re less-experienced: “Am I ready to go beyond scale-steps 1, 3, 5, and 7 and hear 9, 11, and 13? Or do I run from them?”

Jazz education for less-experienced improvisation-levels tends to focus on requiring mastery of full scales. Yet:

Students learning entire scales tend to gravitate to the root of every new chord as they improvise, not exploring the rest of the scale as much.
Many of the lyrical melody lines of “standard tune” composers—and even the improvisational solo lines of the jazz masters—aren’t built of eight or nine pitches: many have only four or five notes.

So if great, lyrical lines can be constructed from just a few notes, why not focus for a while on mastering half-scales that originate from a single pitch-name throughout the piece, adjusting chromatically as needed to address the shifting harmonies? I call this “Five-Note Morphing” and have found it to be the single best indicator as to whether a student—or I—can successfully “make the changes” while improvising over a given tune.

This approach is as effective or more so for vocal improvisers and for developed classical musicians, yet it is very different from learning scales from each chord-root. And it’s just as relevant for advanced improvisors on very challenging chord changes: you’ll be forced to address the chords and related scale-steps in ways you might otherwise avoid. I call it “the great lie-detector” because if you’ve been faking your way through the chord changes, you’ll hit a full-stop quickly in this exercise.

Variables

Recognition of a given chord’s third and seventh is critical. But decisions as to whether to proceed through a natural ninth or a flatted one, or a natural fifth or a raised one, are up to you. What does the flavor of the melody of the tune at that point suggest? Do you wish to reinforce or defy that? An initial approach can often be to shift as little as possible from the preceding or following chord’s key-center, as that will minimize mental interruption to the improvisor and thus potentially maximize your lyricism as the chords move by (as in my book Cutting the Changes: Jazz Improvisation via Key Centers).

Where you start your five-note pattern is also up to you. Regardless, you’ll end up covering all the letter-names of the scale, as part one of the exercise is to perform a five-note scale up and down; part two is to start on the fifth note of that exercise and begin a new five-note pattern from there, thus covering a total of a ninth.

You can then explore starting the exercise from any scale-step of your choice; and you’ll never lose one of the most important elements of the drill: whereas in improv-practice it’s easy to avoid certain tones, in Five-Note Morphing you have to address every letter-name. By doing so, you’ll get your ear attuned to 11ths, 13ths, and altered 5ths and 9ths that you likely would otherwise have avoided for as long as possible—and which would have caused you to doubt your solo-line even when hitting a very “tasty,” correct note!

If you’re new to swing, first perform these in even-eighth bossa nova style. But eventually you have to perform them in swing; do so at as slow a tempo as you need to be accurate. You’ll find repeats here to “vamp” the drill, plus the occasional passing-tone to facilitate a repeat. If you’re an instrumentalist, singing these exercises will benefit you greatly, placing the sounds in your mind’s ear before you reach them on your instrument.

My final advice: though I am providing you written examples for pedagogical purposes, I strongly encourage you to teach this approach strictly by ear, at least for blues and simpler chord progressions. You and your students will then develop aural recognition of the darker and lighter tonal colors associated with shifting chords—invaluable!

(For your own ease of study off-line,
click here to download a printable PDF collection of all of the following musical examples in C Treble, C Bass, Bb, Eb, and F;
and click here to download an mp3 file of the audio for the examples. You can, however, see and hear all the examples below on this web page.)

A Minor Blues

I have great results starting with A minor blues: see why in Ex. 1A! (Click on any musical example to hear the related audio.)

Comping aside, this path of Ex. 1A is so easy for middle-school soloists that often I’ll teach measures 1 and 9, then simply tell them to watch for my “thumbs-down” signal in bar 9 and “thumbs-up” in bar 10 as they either play the exercise or solo within the five notes.

Ex. 1B is a bit more challenging in mm. 10 and 12—but doable with just a bit of practice!

You can still teach it by ear, then remind students in real-time by calling out or using flash cards. Remember: the final V-chord is optional!

F Basic Blues

Comping aside, for a basic F blues the first 8 bars of Ex. 2A are identical; so I can even use a “thumbs-up” in mm. 9 and 12, plus a “thumbs-down” in mm. 11 and 1, to cue the E natural or Eb.

I can point out later our use of C minor and major scales. And now we have Lydian-Mixolydian in a different measure!

Ex. 2B is of similar difficulty. And I can point out later our use of F major and F minor scales—perhaps even E half-diminished (still F major), if that won’t confuse the participant(s).

Bb Rhythm Changes

Comping aside, you can solo over the A sections of “rhythm changes” (based on the chords to Gershwin’s “I Got Rhythm”) entirely with the Bb major (Ionian) or Bb dominant (Mixolydian) scale, as well as the blues scale. So let’s focus on the bridge, which changes to three other keys before returning in its last two bars to the home key of Bb. Ex. 3A shows minimal pitch-shifts are needed.

Again, you can hold two, one, or no fingers up to signal the number of accidentals needed at a given point. Sometimes I use flash-cards that simultaneously show the number of accidentals needed in the keys of most band instrumentation: C, Bb, Eb, and F concert!

Ex. 3B requires a shift every two bars, from G, C, F, to Bb, also possible with flash-cards.

Standard Tune: “Satin Doll”

Let’s look at a “standard tune,” which can be more complex. Ex. 4A addresses the four key centers that appear in the initial A section of “Satin Doll”: C, D, G, and Gb (or in part, Db).

This illustrates how important it is across the two iterations of the exercise to negotiate each pitch (that you might otherwise easily avoid if only improvising during practice)

Both Ex. 4A and Ex. 4B require a small leap from the end of m. 6 to the beginning of m. 7—but to either the fifth or first scale-degree of the key; so they’re quite doable with a little practice.

After the drills, invite the students to solo using just half-scales with the same letter names.

Variations on Morphing

The preceding examples carry the same five notes throughout a measure. But you can adapt Five-Note Morphing to a harmonic rhythm of half-notes (shifting to the new scale in the second half of the bar) or of quarter notes (changing the scale every beat). It’s as relevant for practicing a John Coltrane or Wayne Shorter tune as it is for blues and standards: as long as you proceed up five notes and down five notes (if in 4/4), you’ll be forced to address the chords and related scales in ways you might otherwise avoid. Once achieved, you’ll be confident that you can play any pitch-name over any chord.

Again, for offline practice you can download C Treble, C Bass, Bb, Eb, and F versions of these musical examples here, plus mp3 rhythm-section play-along accompaniment here.

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