Lesson 3: Chord Transitions

Chord tones are the most important notes in improvisation. Chord tones define the tonal center of your melodic lines. The best and most straightforward manner to play with logic is to place your chord tones on the downbeat and non chord tones on the upbeat. This leads us to the problem of changing keys or making the transition from one chord to the next chord as you play over a chord progression of a tune. What you are aiming for is to make the transition as smooth as possible. In order to do this make the transition using a chord tone from one chord to a chord tone of the next chord with a half step or a whole step. In this lesson I will give you an exercise that will help you to develop this skill. It goes without saying that you need to know your chords by heart. The types of chords you will need to memorize are:

Major chords (Triads, Major 6, Major7)

minor chords (Triads, minor 6, minor 7)

minor +7 chords

dominant 7 chords

dominant 7+5 chords

dominant 7b5 chords

half diminished chords

diminished chords

I will be discussing scales later but for now you should be able to play these chords over the entire range of your instrument without struggling for the notes.

To get you started with using chord tones if you look below at figure 2 you will see an example of an exercise. Notice the repeating rhythmic figure of 6 eighth notes ending with a quarter note. The idea here is to become familiar with chord tones as well as crossing from one chord to the next with either a half or a whole step using chord tones.

Begin by writing a solo over a chord progression, you may want to use the same tune you chose to work on your swing feel in Lesson 2, using the same rhythmic pattern shown in figure 2. On Major and minor chords use only the first, third, and fifth chord tones but on dominant 7 chords you can also use the lowered seventh as that is an important chord tone for dominant 7 chords, Hint; the seventh wants to resolve down. Write it in a manner that you think will sound musical and then play it to see if it sounds as you expected which will help you develop your ear. Change any part that you do not like. Now since you are using only chord tones it is not going to sound like a masterpiece but this is just an exercise to get you accustomed to chord tones and changing keys. After you have done that practice improvising over the chord progression in the same manner, you may wish to break the tune up into smaller pieces but eventually you need to get to the point where you can do this over the entire tune. The next step is do the same thing but this time using only eighth notes. This is a lot like lifting weights but if you have the patience for it the benefits will be great.