Lesson

This is a great exercise to help you really start thinking about comping through the scales.

It's the A section to Little Sunflower harmonized in block chords.

It's easy and if you know the tune you'll easily play it in D minor.

Keep it around and whenever you want do the exercise HOWEVER do it different keys. This will really help your comping as you will start moving the chords up and down the keys.

Day 3: There are additional passing tones in m2, 4, and 6. M2 and 4 have b13 passing tones. This adds some tension to the voicings. As in the other lessons, dampen and create legato transitions between the notes.

Day 2: You will notice that the voicings are the exact same as day 1, but the major difference here is the dampening. Rather than attacking each new chord, dampen the one note that changes. This will create a nice, legato transition between chords. Observe all dampening and pedal marks.

For this week of 8MAD, we'll be looking at voice leading. I like to think of comping more in terms of voice leading. Rather than just thinking about 4 note voicings, it's also good to think about where each note wants to go. For day 1, observe these simple ii-V-iii-iV voicings. Pedal each new chord.

Day 5: The two main tweaks in this lesson are the first and fourth measures. In the first measure, there's a nice surround going into the ninth of the Gm; two half steps below and two above. In the fourth measure, the line descends at the D7, which was ascending in the previous days.

Day 4: You will notice the first measure has been changed slightly. Rather than have it go up the Gm dorian as it has been, this measure has a melodic minor type sound to it. Even though it's a Gm7 chord, the F# is really just a passing tone and gives strength surrounding the root.

Day 3: The two main tweaks in this lesson are in the C7 measures. In M2, there's an Ab in the line, giving it a darker color than just having the A natural. In M6, the C augmented triad is outlined. Many bebop masters use augmented triads all the time, especially Milt Jackson!

In Day 2, you will start to notice the use of a few chromatic notes and approach tones. The line is similar and still pretty diatonic. Take notice of the surround tones in M4. You will see lines like this all the time in bebop where there's half step approaches to notes.

Turnaround lines are very important in jazz because we see progressions all the time like 2-5-3-6, 1-6-2-5 etc. The more vocabulary you learn over turnarounds, the better! Turnarounds aren't just at the ends of forms, but can be anywhere within a tune. Start off this week with this simple line I came up with. It's very diatonic, and it's supposed to be a lesson in how you can still make the changes without too much altering of chord tones.

Day 5; In this final lesson, we're sticking with closed voicings. The top note changes with each chord. I particularly like the 2nd F7 voicing which is A,D,Eb,F from bottom up. It's very crunchy and fun to groove on.