In today's podcast, we're going to talk about an Improvisational method by Lee Kronitz, the famous saxophone player. Welcome to jazz guitar lessons, where we help guitarists learn jazz faster, express themselves more fluently, and have fun along the way. My name is Mark, and if you're looking to learn jazz, form better practice habits, and especially if you enjoy French accent, make sure to subscribe! Lee Konitz was perhaps, one of the best jazz improvisers of the 20th century and still in the 21st century. So here's a backstory about this podcast. There is a blog post. There's a page on jazz Guitar Lessons dot net that you can find at this URL. Jazz Guitar Lessons dot net Lee Kronitz, that's K on it. Z dot HTML where I took a method that was first published in a with a magazine and was probably downbeat, where he describes ten steps or as he's saying, ten gradients of improvization how to start from the melody and then wind up playing pure solo, pure and your own improvizational ideas, right? So I wrote this blog post probably about five years ago. it's really interesting. What happens is I was listening to a Kenny Wheeler album that I highly recommend called Angel song, and there was a saxophone solo that just it took me, to a very interesting, emotional place. It's very well done. It sounds great. It's very, thorough. It's very thoughtful and it's very beautiful. And I say, who's that? You. Who's playing the saxophone? And it's okay. Lee Konitz, born in 1927, is an American jazz composer. he's from Chicago, and he had he's one of the few guys that was a contemporary to, you know, the other bebop guys such as Charlie Parker. And that didn't sound like bebop. They didn't sound the same. So, there's other players like him, such as Paul Desmond, Art Pepper, they were strongly influenced by a leak on his approach. so what can we learn from this is really what you can find the PDF, the examples, on the page are transcribed directly from Lee's writing. of course they were. It was written for the saxophone at first, so I took the liberty of doing it for, for guitar. Right. So it's on All the Things you are. It's a tune that I take as an example. A lot of the blog posts on the website, on the videos, or during my private lessons, because it's a timeless progression. Everybody knows that tune in, everybody's still playing it to improvise. So recently, about a week ago, I received an email on jazz guitar lessons on that, and somebody asked me to maybe do a podcast and specify the steps that are found on the page on the blog post, because the page is, I guess, as I'm looking at it right now, is, I guess, 800 words or so, maybe a thousand words. And, this is, you know, really what's happening. I don't have enough space when I'm writing a blog post to, to be very specific in the exercise. So here we go. We're going to cover the first, the ten gradients of improvization. But first I have this other idea. I read interviews and stuff about Lee Konitz, and if you're a total beginner, you might want to just try that. It's going to be enough for you. For now, take a tune that's before the ten steps are Improvization just first you look at the tune, you're like, what's happening? Take a separate sheet of paper, write the chord progression on it, only then play whole notes. So we'll so tunes in for for like all the things you are, you're only allowed. You're only allowed to play notes within the chord. So you are only you're allowed to play one, three, five and seven. And then you run through the chord progression in this way by tapping your foot or with the metronome at a slow tempo. You do this playing only one note per bar until you've memorized the chord progression, until you don't have to look at the chord symbols anymore. It will happen automatically if you just don't have your eyes on the piece of paper. All the time, that's going to happen that that's what happens to me anyways. So then after you can do that with one note per bar, the second step is to do it with two notes. You're playing half notes and still you're only allowed to play chord tones one, three, five and seven. And the third step, you've guessed it. You play quarter notes like you're walking base hitting the the, the, but only on the good or arpeggio notes. Then only you allow yourself to improvise for real with eight notes and triplets and whatnot. So that's, a little decoded secret. That's not part of the blog post, part of the ten gradients that I brought. But I think it makes a lot of sense. All right. So let's get going into the gradients for Improvization. that was as I'm looking at this right now, the blog post on my computer, I think it was published in the publish in the mid 90s or so, in downbeat. And the first gradient is basically played, the melody. so there's nothing around it. You're not adding, you're not subtracting. So no brainer. Second gradient is where you want to, you want to identify the target notes. So what you can do is to ornaments a little bit. But you don't ornament too much, meaning that you would play the melody and you would not. You would displace it a little bit, you know, a little bit before, a little bit after. So it would be likely that second gradient is how you would play the melody to all the things you are on a gig. You would not just play it barebone as it's written because it's the, the, Da da da da da da da. So this board. Right. So you would modify it, that's kind of, second gradient. You can move the melody around. That's really what I meant when I wrote down. You can shorten the duration or elongate the duration to fit different things in between, but always play, the most important notes of the melody. Keep playing them. Hey, everyone, just a quick break here. If you're loving this episode and you want to elevate your own jazz star skills, reach out to us. We've gathered thousands of guitarists and becoming accomplished jazzers beyond their wildest dreams. So check the link in the description or visit Jazz Guitar Lessons dot net to get started today. Okay, now back to the episode. Now third step. And that's probably where your nose is going to start to bleed. you can start to use different devices to add neighbor tones. And as I wrote in the blog post, mostly diatonic, but there's so it's almost like step two, but you have more way more ornaments. But we still hear the melody, but you allow yourself to go in and add notes in between. More so than in second step. In the second step, it's like, as I told you, you played the melody on a gig. You play around it a little bit, but not too much. But third step would be like if you play like that on a gig, when it's the time to play the melody, you would be pushing your luck. Imagine what would be too much ornaments so that people cannot think it's a solo, but yet you still hear the melody in the middle of it. That's third gradient. Really? Now step four. I wrote in the blog post, you can maybe follow along or look at the PDF while you listen to this podcast. step two and three are hard to differentiate. Differentiate. Not for me personally, because I know I kind of practice it and I know what the big idea here, but thought gradient. There's no, no problem or anything. There's no, there's no distinction to make between the third and the fifth for gradient is the first time you're allowing yourself playing, eighth notes. So you're using the guide tones, you're using the important notes of the melody, but you're playing a stream of vague notes that use the important notes. So it's like step three where you systematically play eight notes in between. So you may have to and you're aligned on a melody note, or it may be maybe the melody will be buried inside a melodic line. So this is for me, it's really straightforward. If you know the melody well, you know the scale around it, well, it will come. So maybe, about 80 or 90% of the jazz guitarist that I teach or that I work with through jazz guitar lessons, dot net. I guess that the fourth gradient is where we have all the work to do. and as you go into the fifth, sixth and seven and eighth gradient is more for advanced players as, as you will be able to tell because just to execute a stream of eight note lines and then ornament. sorry, I have a stream of eight naught eight naught lines that's based off the melody. Requires, quite a bit of technique, and it requires also that you, you know, your instruments and it requires, you know, it's kind of a good, a good thing to do for gradient. And you should be looking and looking to improve and get your fifth grade gradient going up. So, here's the another hard to to make distinction. This gradient is like still having your your eighth note that you get that passes through all the melody, but you, you are allowed to displace the melody notes. That's really the big takeaway. They don't have to be. You know how we said step one? This is your basic melody. Step two, you kind of displace the notes. Well, same thing with step four and five. Step four you have all the ornaments around the melody. And step five you're allowed to move the melody around and you're allowed to make way more chromaticism or arpeggios to outline what you're, you're going through. this is cool because now you're starting to not hear the melody, because it's still this place where it's so buried inside your line. It would be this gradient. So think of four, and five is the same thing as one and two, but with more, more, of course with more stuff around. step six is really where you can start to think of extensions, but not necessarily alterations. So the in the first thing to note that Lea is singing in the article is you, you put more importance on the non, non-target notes. Non melody notes. It's like your own thing is becoming more important for the first time. It's like the halfway point, the fifth step, the the target note, the melody notes were still the most important in the sixth gradient. It's like well your ornaments take over, as I said in the blog post, and it can be built from higher extension. Use your ninth and your 13 six or whatever. that's a really interesting one in step seven. Just takes it further by saying we want step six, but now you're allowed to use the non like the crunchy notes, the flat nine to show off nine. You're allowed to use the notes that are outside to have even more chromaticism. So six and seven are better. As you see you probably notice those exercises. They kind of come into pairs. So you say one and two is the same at four and five and then six and seven. They're they're grouped together. There's a slight difference. But you see if you do that, you heard me do step six. And I have a melody that's kind of buried that I accord there's less importance on the melody and targeting those. And then I go to seven and I do the exact same thing, but I will pass a flat nine or flat 13 or extension or alteration. And when I'm, I'm, I have a chance to do it. You'll hear the difference. It's going to sound out out or it's going to sound more out. If you want. eight gradient. So we only have eight, nine and ten to go. the, the most, the this is the eighth grade is the step where I think you, as I wrote in the blog post, you listen to Jim Hall and those guys attempt to develop smaller ideas, and that's really where it stands. So the melody is still there, but it's not very obvious. Sometimes you hear Pat Metheny do that. Also. It's like you will tell you in an interview, I'm still using that idea. I'm still using this interval or this motif, but there's so much stuff around it that only Pat knows what he's using it as, as as his inspiration for creating lines. Right. So that's the age gradient. It's like, you know, the melody super. Well, you've been, augmenting around it and adding chromatics and scales and stuff and arpeggios and alterations. Now it's kind of it might not even be there. Or if the people will transcribe your solo, they'll be like, we don't have a lot of traces of the melody, but if we look for it, we may find it. That's, that's it. And the ninth grade ease of improv is is one. Well, I don't really get because I think there could have been 8 or 9 gradients, but, the ninth gradient is almost no reference to the original melody anymore. Just your own thing. And then step. This is kind of a where, you know, can can I distinguish if somebody is on eighth, ninth or 10th, I can't tell you. Again, I couldn't make it up unless I, I practice it and that's the big takeaway. It's, it's probably more what's happening in your mind while you're improvising. That's important. If you say I'm doing step eight, I'm doing this on purpose, then you're doing step nine. you try to do things differently instead of mindlessly running through changes or, or scales or licks that you already know. So, as I wrote in the blog post, this is mind over matter, right? And then the 10th gradient and like is just no example, and you just writes down by hand an act of pure inspiration. So I think you know where it's going. It's just what's you're in the moment you hear something, you follow it and that's what it is. So to wrap up this podcast, number 26, thank you for listening. Thank you for being part of this. I know it's been a long ride and there's a lot of me rambling. I hope that answers your question, but the person that asked about, this podcast for me to make this podcast and just to quote something I wrote on the page again, Melody is King. this this week on this exercise is just going to help you have more thoughtful, more, more better, more intense, more focused lines. Because as jazz improvisers, sometimes all we do is like, okay, here's B-flat blues, here's my usual beats to my flat minor arpeggios, this and that and that. This is a really nice opportunity to say, okay, it's my turn to take a solo. Let me take a step, a step back and not do the same old thing anymore. I want to be inspired and, you know, feel something and have the listeners feel something. So I hope, I hope this helps. I'll see you soon on Jazz Guitar Lessons dot net improve your jazz guitar playing with a real teacher. Thank you.
