Have you ever been asking yourself: "How can I improve my improvisation building up ideas in a more, thematic way?"
In many jazz improvisation books you can read about the "call and response" technique however, in my experience, little or no time is spent on how to practically teach your brain to do that step by step.
So here there are 3 main techniques you can use to develop your solos thematically:
1) Imitation
2) Extension
3) Fragmentation
In this short article, I'll introduce the concept of imitation.
Step 1: Choose a very easy rhythmic and harmonic setting (e.g., 4/4 , G7)
Step 2: Choose a very short melody (3-4 notes) and play it again and again.
Step 3: Create a variation of the primary melody using the same rhythm and melodic curve (if you don’t know what a melodic curve is, just write down the notes of your melody and then join them. You’ll immediately see what your curve is).
Step 4: Play the new melody 4 times, then play a new set of notes (still same melodic curve)
Step 5: Now choose a chord progression (e.g., II V I or an easy standard) and practice imitation all over the harmonic progression. You can play the same group of notes thoughout or choose to replace notes in different areas of the tune (e.g., AABA)
There you have 5 easy steps to start working on your thematic soloing.
Author Resource:-
Francesco Amico is a jazz guitarist with over 20 years of performing experience. If you found this article helpful, subscribe to his newsletter and get instant access to a FREE guitar video lesson: http://www.topguitarlessonsreviewed.com
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