In this 37-minute video, pianist Jeff Colella shares his thoughts and concepts for approaching improvisation from a horizontal perspective. He offers this as a contrast to chord scale thinking. In the first part of the video, he demonstrates how using chord tones as the basis for melodic playing that allows you to improvise phrases that are more musical than a “station to station” way of soloing.
Jeff explains the importance of melody, motives, how to create lines that resolve as well as how to use rhythm in a way that supports the melodies you improvise. Jeff also goes into hearing the harmony move and also the relationship between chords moving from one chord to another.
In conclusion, this video is a different experience to a typical jazz improvisation lesson video. I certainly got a lot out of this. The only thing is I wish Jeff could have shared some written examples to demonstrate what he means for certain concepts. That would have been a real plus point. That being said, for more experienced improvisors you probably would be able to get the ideas directly from Jeff’s examples in the video.
Pros: Interesting explanation of how to improvise melodically.
Cons: No accompanying written materials to support the concepts explained in the video. Very concept driven video.
TLDR: If you’ve been stuck in chord scale thinking, this video might be a good way out of that.
You can get this video here: https://www.mymusicmasterclass.com/premiumvideos/jeff-colella-piano-masterclass-horizontal-improvisation/
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