10 Jazz Improvisation Patterns for a Great Sounding Solo 

As a clarinetist who’s recently gotten into jazz improvisation, I absolutely love this video. It’s given me confidence and a solid vocabulary to be inspired and create my own solos. Thanks so much for sharing this.

Awesome melodic lyrical vocabulary, very vital info for all musicians, this helps to train my ear to hear the intervals, thanks for sharing

I read and wrote music as a preteen .This has REALLY shaken the cobwebs and dust off .Thanks for SHOWING me .I'm a kinetic and visual learner, and this was all i needed .Thank you sir!

Many thanks for this video! I am a bassist and I found value in this video. Great stuff.

This video just changed my life. Thanks.

Excellent Lesson! Simple, Straightforward and Practical. Some of the patterns remind me of Willie Thomas "Pentatonic Pairs".

The 9th pattern sounds like it’s a part of Miles Davis’ repertoire. Great info!

Great video thanks

Great content! I‘m sitting with my violin here to use your concept. ❤

BRO THANK YOU I GOTTA IMPROV A 16 BAR SOLO IN LIKE 4 DAYS AND WAS PANICKING. Eternally grateful, thank you

This is such good information - and I'm a guitarist so it really speaks to music not just an instrument

Love it, I play guitar but this is great! Loved your playing at the end. Subscribed.

super helpful--thank you!

Thanks Jason, great lesson!

Thank you very much

Very useful. If only guitarists could think like this:)

Great tips! Thank you. 🎺

Cool 👍 and made easy!

Good stuff, thanks!!

good basic tips which sound tasty

Nice sound 😎 👍🏻

Great lesson 👍

Awesome tutorial 🔥🔥

This is fantastic

An so my time has come to excel on the trombone😈😈😈 Thank you very much so kindly.

Useful and straightforward. Might be better if the background music was not playing during the played patterns.

Do have a PDF of these patterns would be helpful for my students! Great Video!

nice!

Well shoot this is pretty sweet

As you play over the blues are you changing key with the chords or is everything approached as Bb is 1. I'm confused

I put these tone patterns through my trombone.

Can I start these patterns from any note in the scale or is 1 always the root, unless otherwise specified?

Please Wich trumpet model it is

whats your mean from numbers ?

Just an FYI involving patterns...pattern recognition is primarily associated with the right hemisphere of the brain. The right hemisphere is often regarded as being more involved in creative and intuitive processes, including recognizing patterns, interpreting spatial relationships, and understanding visual and musical information.

Another clarinetist here who is eternally grateful for this video.

This is the best use of my 15 break on a Saturday afternoon at work🎺😎😃

1st pattern: 2:07 2nd pattern: 2:32 3rd pattern: 3:28 4th pattern: 4:00 5th pattern: 4:26 6th pattern: 4:46 7th pattern: 5:10 8th pattern: 5:25 9th pattern: 5:40 10th pattern: 6:14

Nice video Jason, thank you. I play piano, not trumpet, but your inputs are all still valid for right hand soloing on piano. Well done!

I am a guitarist and found this video so useful. Help me to visualise things. Your method is amazing

I second the other commenters here - I play guitar but I have some horn students, and I find this can be very useful for both myself and my students. I just subscribed and I will check out your other material.

Also, sometimes you can repeat and “slide” these patterns chromatically in your solos so that even if the notes themselves don’t fit with the current chord, the relationship of the repeated notes gives the listener’s ears a sense of connection, tension, and resolution when your sliding pattern does end in its home key.

done subscribe. thx sir

Excellent tutorial. I'm just about ready to start to memorise these as I have the basic pentatonic scales internalised now! Trumpet Jazz iprov here I come! Thanks Jason !

The perfect lesson, Jason, for me where I am currently at. Thank you! It will help me get out of this funk of being disenchanted with my playing for months which has led to going days without playing at all. I have scoffed at the idea of practicing patterns for years, thinking it would be impossible to think of them when improvising. I don't think much when improvising beyond where to start the next idea and which direction to go. I have been stuck thinking I'm not smart enough to think and improvise simultaneously like others appear to do. The saying, "Forget what you have learned," in the context of improvisation, has been a mystery to me, but finally, I realize patterns are for the shed. I'm telling myself to work them, in time and within a harmonic context, and trust they will eventually become part of what comes to me in the moment without much thought, like all the junk I play already!. The deliberate practice of patterns is the process of getting there.

I’m in a bunch of honors bands, and I still can’t improvise. This’ll help a lot. I’m 12 btw. Thanks

I just appled these patterns (in conjunction with guitar specifics) to Green Dolpnie Street standard and sounds amaizingly. This lesson (and your channel activities) is one of the most awesome education and practice tips source which lead straight to the point. Thank you for your input into jazz education. Of course it'll take a while to master all these 10 patterns (which you put into 9 min video) but it's awesome and it's absolutely worth it. Actually this is the only way to start improvising sounding like a jazz ))) Thank you, subscribed.

OMG! I can't even measure how much work this saves someone who is just starting out like me. I am playing Clarinet.

Very straightforward and solid. Thanks! (You might have titled this "After 1-2-5").

Thanks for this piece maestro 🙌🤲🌹

Jason, thank you. It's a nice and simple way to communicate this idea, or these 10 ideas. So many students have trouble understanding the concept of a jazz vocabulary at first, and play scales instead of phrases in their attempts to improvise. I blame the modal system, which is so often misunderstood for a "shortcut" to the eternal beginner's problem of "what do I play?"

Just love how the jazz rhythm section is playing under your teaching,Kool dude😎👍🏾YEAH!!!!!!

im a newes trumpet player on jazz, and im eternal lly grateful with you

Denver Colorado where the water boils faster!

very interesting approach!

I love the concept of using these patterns as starting points for improvising. Very good lesson. Thanks!

A music tutorial with random background music 👎👎👎👎👎👎👎

Gracias amigo soy guitarrista y me sirvió de mucho

Jason I admire your jazz-playing ability and your knowledge of the theory behind it. My whole life, I've been so focused on mastering the upper register of the horn and playing lead, that I never spent any time of learning how to improvise. In spite of that, in the local big bands in which I play, I am given many opportunities to play jazz solos because I can do a halfway decent job of it, and know how to play with expression and emotion and my upper register ability allows me to add some real fire to the solo when I want to. But here are my weaknesses: I do all of my jazz soloing by ear. Putting the chord progressions in front of me is meaningless. You might as well put Asian writing on the page, because I won't know what to do with it anyway. 😆 Sometimes I have the advantage of being familiar with the tune and what the chord progressions sound like and I can do OK, but in cases in which I've never heard the tune before and I don't know where it's going, I have to listen to the chords and play accordingly, which is essentially "reacting" to what I hear, which obviously puts me at a disadvantage and doesn't allow me to do as well. But here's another obstacle I'd like to lay down for anyone who would attempt to help me. I don't want to learn how to be able to look at the chord symbols in order to know how to play. I think I'm a little to old to start doing that and I think having to look at a bunch of symbols and then figuring out what to play would take more of my focus away from just relaxing and making music. Another weakness of mine is that I'm not able to spontaneously play fast licks, you know, with 16th and 32nd notes or a lot of quick triplets in succession. Most of what I play doesn't get faster than eighth notes with some turns here and there, kind of like "booby da bah doo-wop da diddly ah ba dee-bop. But every time I try to play a fast run, I might start out OK, but then get hamstrung the further along I get and have trouble connecting to the next phrase - I get kinda tangled up, so I just avoid playing fast licks, but I'd love to be able to play them. What I think would help me (and a lot of players whose situation is similar to mine) is to have a book of GREAT fast jazz and bebop licks that can be applied to a lot of chord progression scenarios that come up in a lot of the popular jazz standards to practice in all of the keys. I think if I could learn those licks by rote, I could then rely upon my ears to know when to apply them over the music that I encounter and let them just roll off of my fingers without actually figuring them out on the spot. I remember Joe Magnarelli asking the question in an interview once "are we ever really improvising?" - Which is basically an admission that when jazz players play jazz, they're not really inventing or creating on the fly. What they're really doing is just stringing together scales, patterns, and licks that they've practiced thousands of times before. I don't do that, I actually create everything on the fly, and that's why my playing is limited. If I could learn all of these great licks, that would be a tremendous help to me. Do you know of such a book that contains a lot of great licks like that? Sometimes people come up to me and say "hey, I like the way you used the mixo-phrygian-locrian mode combo to transition into the bridge on that tune." And I'm like, "what the heck are you talking about?" I don't want to learn the theory. I just want to learn the licks and I'll let my ears do the rest. Any suggestions would be appreciated. Keep on blowin', you sound great.

Bravo....

I love this ❤is possible for us to connect

Bravo 👏 Wonderful lesson and great tips!!! 😊

This is great.

The 4th be feeling so lonely 🥲 Thanks for the video! I find it very helpful since I always strugle with my solos!

Worked these patterns into my harmonica practices. The only problem is getting the minor progressions because a harmonica is not tuned to produce some of the notes unless your a Howard Levy. Great tutorial at any rate. Keep up the good work.

Nice thanks Jason. Have you ever considered enabling the thanks button on your channel? I find it a quick way to support videos like this

3:05 I know David Baker's books are super popular, but I'm sure you'd agree that the Bebop lick was first made famous by Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie back in the 50's Bebop era :) Ain't trying to be the jazz police lol Super useful video Jason thanks!

this is brilliant! exactly how my brain works. greetings from switzerland

These ideas are called “Melodic Structures” by some. As I guitarist primarily, I labored for years thinking that the pentatonic patterns were just a guitar thing, especially helpful to sounding like you might know what you’re doing when you really don’t. Then I started transcribing solos by horn players, and realized they’re all using these pentatonic ideas just about everywhere. Then I fully embraced “Pentatcism”, and I thank you for this very helpful video.

As a relative late bloomer with tuba this is exactly what I need to jump start tuba solo ideas for '20s era hot jazz and shore up remaining weak spots in my note / fingering choices?

Man you’re tone is really really nice 👌 Great video, just what i have been looking for. many thanks for sharing your knowledge 🙏

The best lesson on jazz improvisation! Thank you!

Hey champ , I have very big question, how are these patterns generated? Is there any rule guiding these patterns? Can I create my own patterns?

Jason, Question about #3. Can you not use different numbers (pitches)such as "5-b5-4-6-3-2" (sol-bsol-fa-la-mi-re) in a 2nd step m7 chord (ex: Dm)? Also, doesn't it make more musical sense to use solfeggio syllables to reinforce the making/creating of melody so that the player HEARS the pitches???

Thank you so much for your concrete video. A question : could it be used if playing a Bass guitar ?

I've always struggled with licks and improve ideas. This method seems way more accessible thank you. Subscribed.

Thank you so much for helpful information with the various patterns. I really appreciate it 🎺

Excelent video, thank you so much, best regards from Argentina!

I Just Started Following You and i am Enjoying what i am Seeing. Wow!!!

Fantastic video! Many thanks from a sax player! I will use these 🎷

I just got back into playing my trumpet after 15 years but I can’t past the D on the line .. how do you play the high notes?

Super, the best way how to explain, for us, who dont use notes, but chords, thank you.

im a saxaphone player and ive never improved before but my band teacher said i had to and i was very scared

Thanks for smiling during my struggly chorus ;)

Very useful video, thanks!

Sorry but I didn't get what the numbers stand for. Could you please explain?

Merci beaucoup 🎺

6:40 The split brain theory is a myth. The general idea doesn’t need a neural basis to be applied conceptually though

Idk anything about jazz so there's a lot for me to work through here and I am bout to put in some real time with it. Question though: with faster chord changes, would it be accurate to say you're still thinking in terms of this 1-2-3-5-2-1 (or whichever) sequence, but adapting it to the new chord as it happens? So for example if there were 3 chords in this sequence, you'd have the 1-2 of the first chord, the 3rd and 5th of the second chord, and then the 2-1 in the final chord? Surely that probably sounds good but is there a better way you'd think of it? Sorry if you answered in the video, I'm going through slowly 😅

Very lovely information 🎉

Que maneiro, obrigado! Thank you so much!!!!

You've got a really nice tone, thanks for the video

This was really fun Thank you!!!

thankyou thats a really useful aid and i like your solo a lot

great stuff. thanks

A great small, but biiiiiig lesson! Thanx!

Great Thank you Jason

Your positivity is infectious!

Terrific! Cool demo as well!

Hay algún pdf con los patrones ?