How to Construct Modern Lines feat. Ryan Devlin
- Jazz Lesson Videos
- Sep 8
- 7 min read
A common challenge for players as they progress is the integration of fundamental language and modern concepts. There's an abundance of information on what modern concepts are, and a ton of exercises on how to practice them, but it can be very overwhelming, and a lot of people don't know how to combine these modern techniques with things that they're learning about—the foundational language of jazz music. It can be really overwhelming hearing how to practice chromatic cells, intervallic shifting, pentatonic shifting, chord substitutions, and more.
So today we're going to address a really straightforward and effective formula to enable the application of modern concepts to traditional harmonic phrases. All these concepts and lines that we're going to discuss today are available in Ryan’s resource with Jazz Lesson Videos, 100 Modern Bebop Phrases.
This resource has 100 lines in all 12 keys, accompanied by recordings and backing tracks to go alongside each of them. And if you want to hear how Ryan plays through any of the concepts that we discuss today, make sure to check out our accompanying YouTube video, “How to Construct Modern Lines feat. Ryan Devlin”
But now let’s get playing!
Contents
ii-V-I with chromatic cells
The first line that we're going to look at combines a traditional harmonic foundational phrase with some chromatic cells over a ii-V-I progression. Let's take a look!
As you can see, the first two bars of our ii-V-I, we’re using a combination of a lot of chromatic cells in 16th notes. Let's analyze some of these cells.
On our minor chord, we have E, G, F#, E—kind of a diatonic cell in E minor. Then we do a cell F, E, Eb, F. That would be an F7 cell. Then Gb, Ab, G, F. A chromatic cell in Gb/F#. Then Gb, F, E, D, or a diatonic cell in D major. Then Eb, F, Bb, F, which is Eb or Eb7. Ab, Bb, B (or Cb), Eb—that's an A flat minor phrase. Then we have F, Eb, B (or Cb), Ab, Bb, Ab, Gb, F. In that entire measure of G7, we’re thinking about the tonality of Ab minor, because that's the tonality of the altered scale.
A way to think about the altered scale is to play the melodic minor scale up a half set from whatever dominant chord you're playing on. So in this case, Ab melodic minor over top of G7. And then when we get to our C major chord, our tonic chord, we play a traditional Charlie Parker bebop phrase, arpeggiating from the 3 and targeting the major 7, arpeggiating off the major 7 and playing to the top major seven, and chromatically down to the fifth. This kind of line is super iconic to Charlie Parker solos. In all, we're playing two bars of chromatic cells and then a bar of a traditional jazz harmony to round it out. This is a great technique for practicing modern concepts fused with Bebop, and is a bit of a theme for what we’re talking about today—you're going to see half a line of modern phrasing and half a line of traditional phrasing, and you can twist it and turn it however you want.
In other examples in the resource, on the ii we play a traditional harmonic phrase, on the V we alter, and then we resolve on the tonic. Sometimes we play the ii and the V traditionally and then add this concept on the I chord.
It's really good to split these techniques up in different amounts over several measures. That said, practicing chromatic cells with your scales as a technique exercise is great. Something Ryan recommends trying is a chromatic cell exercise ascending the C major scale—going 1, 7, b7, 1. Then after practicing that with the metronome nice and evenly for a couple days, you’ll feel confident enough to play that cell over ii and V, and then you can target a resolution phrase or traditional phrase, like in the Charlie Parker phrase. Again—by mixing and matching chromatic and traditional phrases, you’re able to mix the familiar with the unfamiliar and make really satisfying resolutions.
iii-vi-ii-V-I with large intervals
Next up, let's take a look at our second concept, which is adding large intervals on a traditional harmonic phrase. Here’s a line over a iii-vi-ii-V-I.
The theme at the beginning of this line was fourths or larger—A to D, D to B, B to E. Then F# to B, Ab to Db, all large intervals, and then to our ii-V back to I.
Here again we have that altered scale technique, playing the tonality of Ab melodic minor resolving to C, so Bb, Ab, Eb, B, Bb, Ab, G, F, E. That's more of a traditional kind of way of getting back home. There's a famous lick called Cry Me a River, this was one of Ryan’s first lines he learned in all 12 keys when he was first learning jazz. So there’s our traditional part, and beginning on the iii and the vi we have the large intervals being played. A good way to practice this is to play diatonic large intervals on your major scales—like ascending fourths on a C major scale.
You can practice these in your major scales, doing it in all 12 keys to get really flexible with them, and then you repeat the same process that we did with our chromatic cells. Half of your phrase is going to be with the modern technique, the other half targeting a traditional harmonic phrase, just like with the Cry Me a River lick.
Modern chord substitutions
For our third topic, we're going to talk about modern chord substitutions along with some traditional harmonic phrases. We'll look at two different phrases. The first is going to be a tritone substitution, and the second is going to be another altered scale substitution. Let’s take a look.
Our traditional phrase is off the major seven. We have C#, D, F, A, C, A, F, and D, so right up and down the arpeggio of the D minor chord.
Then we have more of a modern chord substitution with a tritone sub—we're playing a chromatic cell on a tritone sub: C#, C, B, Eb, Bb. So we're playing basically right around the sixth of our tritone substitution, in this case, Db7, and then we have a little non diatonic enclosure, or chromatic enclosure: Ab, Gb, G, and then down the arpeggio of C. So we have a traditional phrase at the beginning, a chromatic cell being played as the tritone sub, but the tritone sub itself is the more modern chord substitution that then resolves to our C major.
Let's check out our second example.
The traditional phrase here is heard in a lot of earlier bebop recordings and such. So we're taking that phrase in the first measure, which is under 3 and 6 inside of the chord. Then we play the same phrase, starting on Eb on our Dm chord. Again, we're substituting the Dm in G7 with our altered scale, which is Ab melodic minor. So we’re playing the same traditional shape but in the harmonic style of the more modern substitution, which would be going up that half step and playing in A melodic minor, and then we resolve to the V of our I chord and play a traditional bebop enclosure phrase back to our root—G, F, D, D#, E, targeting the third, and then A#, B, D, C, targeting the root.
You may be sensing our theme again here—portions of the phrases are modern, portions are going to be traditional. Sometimes we can transition from the traditional phrase and keep the phrase going, but change it harmonically to be a little bit more modern—which is what we're doing here with these chord substitutions. It's a really cool way to fuse these two concepts together.
Melodic cells – one chord vamps
On to our final concept today, which is melodic cells. Here’s the phrase we’ll be looking at:
Ryan pulled this phrase from Dexter Gordon. Dexter played this melodic minor phrase on a lot of different chords. It fits really well on a Cm7.
So we have the first half of our phrase (the Dexter Gordon traditional phrase), and then we go into some melodic cells inside and outside of our key—so F, Gb, A (sort of inside, right), F, F#, B, G#. We're targeting a major third down, G#, or Ab, G#, E, Eb, D, Db, targeting up a half step, definitely a modern substitution. Db, Eb, F, A, D, Bb, G, Eb, F, Bb, G, Eb, C, getting back into our tonality of Cm.
The modern section of this line is targeting G# with that chromatic cell, with the F#, B, G#, and then targeting Db with that chromatic cell.
The Dexter Gordon line starts us off with that traditional melodic minor over our minor chord. And then we go into more of the modern substitution, melodic cells targeting notes outside of our chord, and then we come back home at the end of the phrase.
A great way to practice this is to practice melodic cells that are inside of our key center in our scales, just like I talked about with chromatic cells.
Taking those different keys on your horn, get comfortable enough in your chromatic cells to be able to improvise with them inside and outside of the key.
So the modern part of this phrase is that we're targeting notes outside of C minor. Starting with the Dexter Gordon phrase gives us context of the harmony, so we can go outside and play those melodic cells.
That’s all we have for today, but if you want to see how Ryan plays through anything we talked about today, make sure to check out our accompanying YouTube video “How to Construct Modern Lines feat. Ryan Devlin,” as well as Ryan’s resource with JLV, 100 Modern Bebop Phrases!
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