Jazz Saxophone Improvisation Lesson System

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Jazz Saxophone Improvisation Lesson System


How to Improvise to the Chord Changes of Watermelon Man by Herbie Hancock




PREP:
Start by practicing your Concert F pentatonic as well as the blues scale and play it with the track with the correct articulation. Then you need to have already learned the approach note jazz improvisation system and have practiced all the approach note pairs over the form of Watermelon Man and then you are ready to start improvising.


You will need to be aware that there are obvious differences from a slow 12 Bar blues in a triplet feel. The 1st thing is that Watermelon Man is not a 12 bar blues. It is a 16 bar blues. We’ll discuss that when we get to the bridge of the song. The main differences to distinguish are:

1. The V chord to IV chord is repeated 2 more times than the 12 bar blues (hense 16 bars)
2. The tempo is almost twice as fast
3. The eighth note is no longer a swing 8th, it’s now a straight 8th
4. So instead of the triplet being the basic unit of time with the rhythms we use, its the 8th.
5. That means that we have to make the 8ths more interesting by using more articulations.
6. We can also make them more interesting by adding anticipations to the downbeats
7. Because the tempo is twice as fast we will need to play 2 bar phrases (not just one bar), otherwise the phrasing sounds choppy and unnatural.

Now let’s start the procedure step by step:

1. Start by practicing your concert F pentatonic and blues scale in 8th notes.
2. Then after you’ve practiced all 6 pairs of approach notes, start improvising by adding just one 8th note to the approach notes. (just as we did in the Blues)
3. Next, add another 8th note and so on.
4. When you get back to beat 2 of the 2nd bar, you’ll want to keep going back even further than before, meaning you will go back to the “and” of one, on beat one, and back into the 1st bar too, all the way to beat 2 of the first bar. (because you are now doing 2 bar phrases)
5. Master this for your 1st week of practice on this new style of blues so that we can begin to add the other jazz techniques, blues bends, jazz articulations, and new melodic phrasing ideas which will completely expand on the knowledge that we learned in the “How to Improvise, Starting with the Blues” book system.

If you haven’t done Rick Rossi’s System of How to Improvise using Approach Notes, you will want to get that learned first before trying to apply it to this new song form. Jazz Improvisation on the Saxophone or any instrument is much simpler if you eliminate the intellectual side of the brain as much as possible. You can learn more about how jazz improvisers are executing the very complex tasks required to improvise jazz without thinking of what they are doing. When there is too much thought, there is a lot of interruption in the flow of the ideas. Great jazz improviser are able to let their ideas flow very naturally without great effort. THAT state is what all improvisers are trying to reach. It’s the idea of NOT TRYING that is hard to teach. And that is the basis of the success of my method. Read this article at the bottom of this page for further clarification of the system: http://www.rickrossi.com/Lessons___Contact.html

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