by Richie Zellon | Jazz Improvisation, Playing "Outside" The Changes
Using Quartal Harmony To Improvise In this lesson, I break down how to build melodic lines with a quartal, non-tertian sound. Instead of using the usual 7-note scales or pentatonics, I teach you a great but lesser-known approach using a hexatonic (6-note) scale...
by Richie Zellon | Jazz Improvisation, Pat Metheny
Pat Metheny’s Hybrid Tapping Lick Pat Metheny wove a hybrid-picking and tapping lick through many of his solos in the nineties, and in this lesson I trace exactly where that sound came from. It turns out to go back further than jazz itself, rooted in the...
by Richie Zellon | Bill Evans, Jazz Improvisation
Bill Evans Frameworks over “Autumn Leaves” In this lesson, I take a close look at how Bill Evans actually prepared to improvise — and what I found challenges the idea that jazz masters simply make it all up on the spot. At the center of it all are...
by Richie Zellon | Jazz Improvisation, John Coltrane
Take The Coltrane-7 Motivic Types When we think of John Coltrane, we usually jump straight to the harmonic minefield of Giant Steps or the spiritual heights of A Love Supreme. But if you want to understand how he actually built his language, you have to look at John...
by Richie Zellon | Jazz Improvisation, Pat Martino
Pat Martino’s Pet Licks What are Pat Martino’s most played licks — and what makes them so hard to detect? In this lesson, I dig into Pat Martino’s solo over Along Came Betty using data from the Dig That Lick project, a collaboration between...
by Richie Zellon | Jazz Improvisation
Wes Montgomery- Bebop Reverse Engineered This lesson constitutes the second installment of Bebop Reverse Engineered, a series devoted to the analytical study and systematic reconstruction of bebop vocabulary. Whereas the first installment examined phrases drawn from...
