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I explain each of the scales at about 3:00, but if you want to dig in more, I would recommend Mark Levine's Jazz piano book (after taking actual jazz piano lessons with an experienced musician, of course).
Does anybody have recommendations on where I can learn licks/phrases like this? I'm self taught so I'm not sure where I should be looking. Should I just try to pick apart small pieces of jazz standards? Bebop solos? I'm not sure how to go about it. I'm just at the point that I've got all the scales down and can decide what mode I want to use when I start playing my melodies but they're not really built from any licks, but they end up kind of basic. Whereas Kiefer is saying that the licks give him a sort of muscle memory vocabulary to work off of when he's improvising. Thanks for any help, everyone! The idea of internalizing a phrase to the point where you can hum it and play it back whenever you need to makes a lot of sense.
Melodies / licks are built around connecting chord tones, e.g. finding a way from the 3rd to the 7th, 7th to the 5th etc. Start small! Even if it's a 3 note line, they can be connected. So say you've learned a lick / melody that ENDS on the 5th of a chord, and one that STARTs on the 5th, if you play them one after another you've got a longer line. Analysing licks that you like, and seeing how they connect to the chords underneath can help get a sense for this. The cool part is, once you practice enough of these, you build up a vocabulary of melody parts and short lines. As you play them more, you'll naturally start finding ways to connect them into longer lines / solos, and feel more comfortable adjusting them on the fly. Hope that helps! In a lesson with Kiefer he said something like "it's a kind of magic trick, it looks like you just made it up, but you've practiced it all before"
Bebop solos are the secret bro. Not only transcribing them (and stealing licks from others) but also understanding the melodic 'rules' and patterns that make them work so well. And scales (modes)? Forget about all that shit... mostly. Think about the underlying harmonies. Like Isaac says here, play connect-the-dots with chord tones. Then add in the extensions and alterations.
3:09 you said "natural minor" but played a (raised seventh) harmonic minor lower encirclement. Are you implying here that Natural, harmonic and melodic are all "natural minor" scale family? That's top tier big brain right there m8!
More or less - Whenever I play a natural minor scale I'm always considering that major 7 (or whatever you want to call it). In the same way that I'm considering using ANY of the 12 notes as I'm playing ANY scale. You're never more than a half-step away from a scale tone.
