Spy Versus Spy

Blowing over a single chord is harder than it might seem. Without the movement or inspiration of a chord progression, you’re responsible for generating more of the musical interest yourself.

This track comes from an Improvisation Savvy lesson called Phrase Rhythm Pt. 2. It demonstrates how to build musical ideas by varying the length and rhythmic placement of phrases—not just the notes themselves, but the shape and timing of your musical statements.

The harmony for this track is a C (concert) minor chord. Use the C ‘natural’ minor scale as notated below.

Notice in the example solo, how much I played around with the time. That’s another ‘color’ you can add as long as  you are able to return to lock back into the time.

This is a great track for practicing your C natural minor scale. Run it up, down, and in patterns until it becomes second nature. This is the time when drilling scales is useful—during focused practice. Of course when it comes time to improvise, think story-telling phrases.

The concert notation is below. Click here for Bb instruments and here for Eb instruments. Once open on a desktop computer, click the pop-up and second time to expand the image.