The Practice Hack That Works Better Than Scales
- Jazz Lesson Videos
- 8 minutes ago
- 9 min read
So many people think that the way to get to better lines and better technique is scales, and the reality is, of course, Chad practiced scales as he was developing a basic core foundation of technique. But largely, what he’s practiced over the years for better lines and better technique is definitely not scales. In fact, he hasn’t really practiced scales much in years!
What he practices is essentially groupings of notes, something that a lot of people call melodic cells. Melodic cells are just groupings of notes, and so when you start thinking in terms of cells, you'll find that you have a limitless potential for technique and hip lines. If you want to get into more advanced ideas, then you're not going to get there through scales. It's going to take practicing these groupings of notes—what we call melodic cells.
The way that Chad recommends getting fluid in this concept is going to be through a few different steps. First, you want to get good at playing single cell groupings. So what we mean by that is that usually four-note groupings are going to be the best way to go. It's a really strong symmetrical sound. When you're working on these four note groupings, there are two categories that we can think about: diatonic melodic cells or chromatic melodic cells.
Then from there you can put together two back-to-back cells, which gets you into compound cells, which can sound really hip.
Once you get into compound cells, it starts to sound really cool and it starts to sound like real lines. It's like the exercises start to sound like actual phrases and actual language. Then from there you want to start to integrate these cells into your playing.
From there, you want to start thinking about starting points, anchor points, and creating harmonic tension or harmonic release. As you start to get more comfortable with that, you can start to get into melodic cell streams. That's when you play these consistent melodic cells in a continuous stream. Melodic cells can sound really cool when you're playing on funk vamps, one chord vamps, or vamps that sit in a single tonality. And then from there, as you start to get more and more comfortable with melodic cells, you can start to integrate them into jazz standards or common chord progressions.
All of these techniques we get into in a new course called Melodic Cells Bootcamp. It's like the ultimate crash course in getting really deep into melodic cells. For any of you who want to get really deep into this, our course gets into exercises and integration of all these concepts step by step. You'll have over 50 videos and two hours of content in this course to help you really immerse yourself into this new concept.
And before we get started, if you want to follow along with anything we talk about today, check out our accompanying YouTube video “The Practice Hack That Works Better Than Scales”.
Now let’s get playing!
Contents
Diatonic 1, 2, 3, 5 cell
The first cell that we’ll start off with is a basic 1, 2, 3, 5 cell. We're just talking about the degrees of a major scale, and so 1, 2, 3, 5 in C concert would just be C, D, E, G.
There is so much that you can do just with this 1, 2, 3, 5 shape. You might think of “Giant Steps,” for instance.
You know, Coltrane was clearly practicing a lot of 1, 2, 3, 5 shapes over those changes. But it can also just be sort of the basis or the core of a typical melodic line.
That is a harmonically inside sound on a Cmaj7, where we did 1, 2, 3, 5 and then played 7, and did a chromatic closure around the root at the top, and then we just ended a line with a 6.
And so that type of straightforward harmonically strong sound. A lot of times, these things will just come from this 1, 2, 3, 5 shape.
Let’s play 1, 2, 3, 5 going up in half steps—try it at slow, medium, and fast tempos. With all these exercises we do, feel free to start and stop, pause, and work it out at a tempo that feels really good for you.
Now down in half steps.
And with all these exercises, of course, you can play them full range. But it’s important to not get too bogged down practicing in the extreme areas of your range.
Of course, we want to be able to play this nice and low and we want to play it nice and high—and to get fluid up there is great, but as you get to faster tempos, you don't want to spend your whole life working out the most extreme part of your range when you can actually get into playing faster and consistent in the sweet spot of your range.
A lot of the fast Charlie Parker and John Coltrane riffs that we would hear would be in the sweet part of the range. So whether you're a saxophonist, a trumpet player, or a pianist, don't necessarily worry about getting those extreme ranges when you're first getting fluent with this stuff. That's the type of thing that Chad works on now after years and years of practicing this sort of thing. But as you develop your language with these types of exercises and you start to get melodic cells worked into your playing, you want to do it more in the sweet part of your range.
Now when we do it chromatically, the great thing is we've already gone through all 12 keys. With melodic cells, it's really cool because you have these little bite-sized pieces, so you can go through all 12 keys pretty quickly. Just going through a chromatic exercise, using these cells going up and down in half steps will take you through the keys. But we also want to practice going up in whole steps, and you can even do minor thirds. You can technically do whatever you want. You can go through fourths, fifths, all that stuff.
Let's do it with this 1, 2, 3, 5 melodic cell blocks, because again it's the backbone of so many phrases and it's such a melodic piece of content and a well-structured core. Let’s start by doing whole steps.
And then down.
Starting Points
Let's get into some concepts from the second section of this course, which gets into anchor points, starting points, and creating harmonic tension and release.
So with starting points, that's going to be when you just think about your starting note in relation to a chord, and you launch into some melodic cells from there. So one of Chad’s favorite things to do is to just pick a compound cell from a starting point in a chord, and then play up a half step, and then come back down. It's a great way to start to get into some melodic cells, and it's a great way to get into tension and release.
Starting with an A minor chord, let's play a compound cell.
With that compound cell, we end up starting on 5. We're going to do that chromatic down, up, and then from there, we're going to go to 3, 1, 7, 1.
Try singing it now. And then let's take that up a half step. Then go ahead and sing that against the chord so you get in your ears. You want to be able to hear this stuff in order to play it, right?
That’s one example of a compound cell, picking a starting point where you start on 5, then you go up a half step and then back down.
Let's try some more starting point exercises, starting from different degrees of chords and doing different compound cells. So now let's go into Bbm, and instead of starting on the 3, now let's start on the 5. So Bbm on the 5, now let's pick a compound cell. We’ll start with a diatonic cell now, and then we’ll do that same chromatic shape again.
That’s our compound cell starting from 5. And now let's go up a half step. And don’t forget to sing it and embrace the clash. And there's another cool compound cell sound using a starting point of 5.
Now let's use a starting point on the root. We're going to play C minor and start from the root.
With this next cell, our last two notes are going to be chromatic notes, and we're going to use them as passing notes into the next cell, which is going to be a 1, 2, 3, 5 shape. It's going to be that 1, 2, 3, 5 shape starting on Eb, which is relative to Cm, right? Eb is relative to C minor. So putting the cell together will look like this. Now let's go up a half step. And then be sure to sing it and play it all together.
Here’s another one. Now let's resolve it back down.
Applying cells to a funk vamp
Now let's get into the third section of this course, where we get into melodic cell streams. So on this first funk vamp, we do a lot of melodic cell streams. Let's break it down so we can start to understand how some of this is integrated. Remember, so much of this comes from practicing and memorizing single cells, compound cells, and just memorizing vocabulary. So a lot of times, what's going to be more important than analyzing is going to be just memorizing what you're finding here in this course.
But it is still nice to think about this stuff and analyze to an extent so we can understand what's going on.
First off, in this funk etude, we have this shape, but we can displace it, right?
So we set it up, we displace it, we lay back on it a little bit, and we mix up the rhythm to make it a little bit more inventive and settle it into the groove.
With this, we're kind of doing melodic cells within this A major tonality, which is matching up with the center of the key, and we've got this A dominant type of sound, which ends up getting a sort of blues-type of cadence at the end of the lick, and then the same thing with this next idea, which is a combination of melodic cells and language from the blues.
In this next idea, we've got a 1, 2, 5, 3 shape. Now it's different degrees than 1, 2, 5, 3 because we're playing on a D7 right there. And as you can see, we play C, D, G, E, but it's still that shape that we tend to analyze as 1, 2, 5, 3.
When we're getting flexible with these melodic cells, a lot of times it's easier to think about something from the root. But as we were talking about earlier, with different harmonic tensions and where certain cells sit in harmony, if we do essentially a C major 1, 2, 5, 3 shape over D7 it's going to be inside of the tonality and we’ll get a sus type of vibe.
Then there's that chromatic shape that we get into all the time. And from there we've got, speaking in terms of D7, A, G, D, and E. So we're essentially hitting the 5, 4, 1, and 2, giving us that sus sound again.
Applying cells to a jazz standard
Let's get into the last section of this course where we start to integrate these ideas into jazz standards and common chord progressions. So much of applying these ideas into jazz standards comes from everything we've already worked on earlier in this course.
Getting into these bits of language and memorizing them, understanding how to create tension and release, anchor points, starting points, compound melodic cells, internalizing all of this stuff, especially when you come back to it and internalize it a second time, is really going to help you start to play this naturally.
But still, understanding and analyzing how this language gets applied to standards can really help you go the extra mile and internalize it that much further.
So let's check out one of the 15 solo etudes in this course, "Softly as in a Morning Sunrise.” We start with this melodic cell. That's a diatonic cell, and then we do that up a half step.
Then we go down and play a variation of it. We’ll rhyme that as well, going up a half step. We go back down, and then we go outside.
We're playing a diatonic cell in E major over this Ddim7 sound. Then we do a chromatic cell back into a diatonic cell that's inside.
So we do this Eb diatonic cell over Cm, which fits perfectly inside. Then we get in some blues language, and then coming up here, we have some double time language using all sorts of cells. We play a compound cell three times in a row by moving it up in half steps. Then we do another compound cell.
And then we go into some diatonic cells that fit nicely inside of the C minor sound. Then we've got another compound cell doing two chromatic cells in a row, and that brings us outside because, as you can see, we got that C#, D#, E, and F# over that Dm7b5 sound. So that's sort of creating this half step down effect, and we really embrace that when we do the diatonic cell at the end of the bar.
Then we’ll bring it back inside with this compound cell that fits much more into C minor. You'll see we have this chromatic cell that goes into this 5, 4, 3, 1 sound in Cm, and we have another compound sound that brings us outside a bit.
It embraces some chromaticism and more of a D major sound. Then we're back inside and have two compound cells back to back. The first one has that chromatic sound in the beginning.
And this is a really common compound cell here. It connects us into the minor 3 on Cm. But then we resolve this line, which brings us into the bridge.
That’s all we have for today, but if you want to dive even deeper into these concepts and more, make sure to check out our course Melodic Cells Bootcamp! And if you want to follow along with anything we talked about today, you can check out our accompanying YouTube video “The Practice Hack That Works Better Than Scales”.
We’ll see you next time!
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