Follow these guidelines and start making sense of your soloing.

INTRODUCTION – “Carving your Path”

Why do you play jazz? Do you dream of playing like a particular up-and-comer or a legend from decades past? Do you aspire to play through challenging pieces of repertoire, perhaps equating mastery with Coltrane’s “Giant Steps”? Are you trying to develop your own concept and become a lick-free innovator? Regardless of your ultimate goal, you can reach it more easily by keeping in mind three dimensions of jazz fluency. Each is essential to developing a deeper and more meaningful improvisational concept.

DIMENSION 1 – “Coloring inside the lines”

Dimension 1, “Coloring inside the lines,” should sound familiar. It is quite often the only technique that improvisers learn. It involves understanding your scales and chord tones so fluently that you can play a matching scale/chord within each measure of the composition. A basic approach to chord/scale matching looks something like this (Ex. 1):

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(Continue to http://www.javierarau.com/lessons-blog/three-dimensions-jazz to view the rest of this lesson, including the complete lesson as a free PDF download and fully interactive musical examples with audio playback.)