5 Bebop ii V I Licks I'm Practicing, And You Should Too

[@sebastianrau3485]

Great video (again), Shawn! Your videos provide some musical theory with practical examples in a very nice way, thanks! They help me to keep my motivation to improve my impro skills by learning some more theory up.

[@hipolie]

Thank you!

[@Oscaraha]

Thanks a lpt, these works great for upright bass as well❤️

[@teamleap81]

can you please make a play along of a night in tunisa and give tips on playing faster

[@tracyanmartin7694]

Thank you! 👏🏾👏🏾👏🏾

[@renepico2147]

Im a high school senior struggling to take the next step in the jazz realm. I’ve been watching many videos on mainly improv as I have already been in my high school jazz band for four years. I know a thing or two abt improv but I was never great. I would say I’m proficient at my instrument but I need that extra step, any tips?

[@ShawnBellMusic]

Thanks for the questions. I have two things for you to think about. One is a more immediate concept to take into the practice room. The other is a more long term project. The immediate concept is to take the types of ideas that I discussed in this video (licks, short phrases, etc.) and devote some significant time to them in the practice room. This could be blues ideas, ii V I licks, whatever. Transpose them into all 12 keys if you can. Start with 3-4 keys if that type of practice is new to you. Practice these types of ideas until you have internalized them. You have to know the really well if you want to be able to draw upon them during a solo. If you have already invested some time in this type of practice, keep at it. It often takes a while for this type of stuff to come out in your playing when you are soloing. A big part of being a good improvisor is having a deep reservoir of ideas you can pull from. Don't neglect applying the material as well. Play alongs are really helpful for this. The more long term concept to invest time in is listening to great players. This is really common advice and often gets heard but not acted upon by many players (myself included sometimes). It is time consuming and you may not see the results immediately, but it is the only path to really sounding great as an improvisor. Figure out a handful of players that you like on your instrument. I would try to find a mix of players that you genuinely enjoy listening to and a few that you "should" listen to because they are important to the history/development of your instrument. Both things are important. Try to choose some players that you think you would be able to play at least portions of their solos. Next choose an album or maybe just a few tunes from one of those artists. Listen to this material until you can sing the along with the album. This takes focused, repeated listening. You don't need to actually sound good as a singer. It is more about phrasing and being in the ballpark of pitch accuracy. Once you can sing through some of the material, try to learn it on your instrument. This will likely be slow going at first but it gets easier the more you do it. After you have learned a given solo on your horn, write it out and label it with the chords of the song. Look for how the ideas that attracted you to this solo fit with the chord changes. Take those ideas into the practice room and learn them in all 12 keys as outlined above. This is process in a nutshell. If that all seems kind of hard, start with something small and manageable like the first chorus of Miles Davis's solo on the tune Freddie Freeloader. That is a pretty straight forward solo to learn in this fashion and will get you started on the path.

[@renepico2147]

@@ShawnBellMusic will do magic man

[@daveknecht5252]

Shawn, I like this a lot, but am unclear about the analysis bit: For example, when you say something like, one of the patterns that has the V chord contains #5's, 13th, etc.what benefit is that? If I'm learning these licks over different ii-v-i chords, I'm not going to be thinking, what is the #5 or 13 of say, C7 or A7, am I ? Is the analysis part to just show why it sounds the way it does? This concept has alluded me for a long time when a solo or lick is described. Hope my confusion makes sense? Also, I'm hoping my question does not come off as criticism! Just want to understand....

[@ShawnBellMusic]

This is a great question. In my own practice I will typically think about the scale degrees/alterations a fair amount when I first start transposing a given idea through the different keys, but as I get more comfortable with the idea, I usually think about them less. I do often focus on the larger music theory chunks that are happening (does an idea arpeggiate a certain chord or is it connected to a specific scale) throughout my practice. The trick comes when you want to get beyond the foundational level of practice on these types of ideas to actually getting them to come out in your playing naturally. This usually happens when I have worked an idea for a few weeks, then move away from practicing in such a focused way. It generally starts to come out in my playing at that time. When this happens, I am not really thinking about the analysis when I am performing all that much. I am more thinking about playing the ideas I hear in my head. That isn't to say that I am not aware of how the notes I am playing relate to the chord, but it isn't the thing that is guiding my choices. When I was earlier on in my development as an improviser, I did rely more on my technical knowledge to help me construct solos; however, over the years I have become more connected to my ear and the ideas I am hearing in my head. For me that is the ideal place to be. I hope that helps give you some insight into how I approach this stuff.