[Music] hey everyone so in today's video I want to talk about something extremely important that any jazz musician student or anyone who's learning how to improvise effectively and enhance your melodic vocabulary needs to learn and it's how to play over 251s and what I'm going to show you in this video is a very simple and effective way to extract melodic content from a 251 so it's not just about playing the most complicated Bbop phrase or you know you've probably spent a lot of time transcribing licks and things like that and when you actually improvise you feel like you're just repeating the same phrases the same scales what I'm going to show you today is a very simple method that's going to allow you to extract awesome melodic language out of simple chord inversions and I'm going to then show you how you can add chromatic approach rhythms and even chord extensions to make it more sophisticated okay so let's jump right into it i want to start by showing you one of my most amazing methods that I teach in my jazz improvisation mastery system course which is the matrix of inversions okay as you can see right here this is pretty much in 16 measures you just write the chords that you want so in this case a 251 and I've added a five of two so we got we're going to have here a D minor 7 G7 C major 7 and A7 so I'm going to be playing everything on the tenor so everything's going to be in B flat transposition okay for this video uh okay so how it works is you pretty much have one inversion per system so you can see the first system is all the chords in root position the second system is all the chords in first inversion the third system is all the chords in second inversion and the last system is all the chords in third inversion this is something so cool because a lot of sax players they just get stuck on playing the chords in root position right which you've heard them a million times and that's okay but that's very limiting there's not a lot of melodic content there but by simply playing an inversion you get automatically a much smoother sound so for for instance I'm going to play the second system right now all the chords in the first inversion sounds a lot more melodic right so and then I can play the same thing i'm going to play it uh all chords descending so the same first inversion but each chord I'm going to read it from right to left so this is pretty cool because already gives me such a such a melodic sound that the root position doesn't and you do the same for second inversion the same for third the idea with a matrix of inversions is for you to actually write the chords down so if it's four chords I recommend four chords and then you take the time to write the same inversion per system that way in the 16 measures that you see here you have visually everything you need to connect the chords right so you actually don't have to memorize the chord tones this is a much more effective way the only thing you need to do is write it and have it in front of you and then just read it so read one inversion at a time and get your ears straight to the sound of that inversion this is also an ear training it's not just for you to play cool phrases it's for you to identify the sound if I play first inversion ascending and then descending I instantly get and understand that sound [Music] right if you sing a descending it's a very characteristical sound and you see ascending you start with a third but then descending you start with a root and it's very effective and beautiful and here's a very important thing a lot of sax players we tend to stick with only ascending motion when we practice things make sure especially with this to always apply the descending version that's super super important so I'm going to go ahead and play each inversion at a time so I'm going to play the first system all ascending then I'm going to repeat that and play each one descending and I'm going to do the same thing for each system so that you get to hear the sound of how this chord progression sounds when I play all the different inversions right root [Music] position root position [Music] descending first inversion ascending [Music] first inversion [Music] descending second inversion [Music] ascending second inversion descending [Music] third inversion [Music] ascending third inversion descending [Music] so you see all the melodic possibilities there by just doing each inversion ascending and descending so once you get through that you can practice it just to get the sound of each inversion then once you're good at it you can instantly start applying the matrix by mixing and matching this is the fun part you just have this in front of you and right now I've already have it mechanized so I don't have to read it but the idea here is that you go from one inversion to the next randomly so if I pick let's say a D minor 7 first inversion I can go to G7 third inversion and then you know root position on the C maybe and then uh first or third inversion on the A7 just randomly you don't have to think about it you're going to automatically connect without having to think about it and the cool thing also is make sure that you can start only ascending then only descending but mix and match also ascending and descending so I can randomly pick oh ascending descending descending ascending ascending descending descending ascending and all of a sudden you're going to be creating this beautiful lines that sound very harmonic and very melodic over that chord progression so this is how that would sound i'm just going to randomly pick an inversion going to the next right [Music] see how beautiful that sounds you get a lot of melodic ideas and by just doing that you can start reading it your fingers are going to start getting mechanized and your fingers will remember this chord progression this is why I love the matrix of inversions because you have a visual aid which is the 16 measures you write them down and you never have to think about the inversions again that's the whole point about this i see so many students that think so much about the chords and they're stuck in their head oh what's the third what's the fifth with this you never have to think about the this anymore you can stick with this four chords for an entire two weeks that's all you need to do why do you want to go to play an entire tune when you can't master four chords at a time this is much more time efficient and it's going to make your practice more effective instead of playing an entire tune grab four chords and break them down in all the ways I'm going to show you today and even more so what I show you in my jazz improvisation mastery system so um so try that just write any four chords you want this is great because it's a 251 why not add the the five of two make it a nice four chord loop right and then just play and manipulate the inversions you don't have to think about connections you just randomly move from one to the other and you're going to connect magically in all this beautiful ways so now the next thing that I love to do is add rhythm right when you add rhythm to this you instantly become more musical and you start producing more melodic phrases so I'm going to do the same thing i'm going to look at the at the matrix and I'm going to add and just sing one basic four note rhythm why four notes because they're simple and we have a four note structure so four note rhythms are very easy to start with so I can do like one two three four sing it like a thousand times until you don't have to think about the rhythm anymore what I'm going to do is I'm going to attach that rhythm to whatever notes I pick so once you're fluent with mixing and matching the inversions ascending and descending you can actually now do it with a rhythm so I'm going to do it with Papa right this is how that would [Music] sound see how that instantly becomes a very simple but super nice phrase just by sticking one simple rhythm it just it transforms because rhythm is the how i always say that without rhythm you're lost doesn't matter how many scales doesn't matter how many chords doesn't matter how many licks you learn if you don't have a good rhythmic vocabulary then you'll never be able to sound comfortable and musical and create beautiful phrases on the spot with good rhythm you can transform the same stuff you already know and make more music out of it and this is an example of that just you see what happened when I applied that rhythm how about another rhythm let's do one that starts on the upbeat 1 2 3 4a right a three [Music] on really beautiful well now how about once you get good at two rhythms combine it i'm going to do one rhythm one rhythm two rhythm one rhythm two right well that means that on the D minor 7 and C major 7 I'm going to do that same rhythm and on the G7 and A7 I'm going to do the rhythm two so it's going to be a three four make sure you sing the rhythms right a lot of people underestimate the power of singing you just want to go and play don't play sing sing sing it once you're in that moment where you don't have to think about the rhythm and it's just there then you play okay so now I want to do the same thing with the matrix but with these two rhythms right here we go [Music] see now the phrase becomes a little more expressive and even more musical since you're combining the two rhythms and you can do that you know we can stay for like an hour just talking about all the rhythmic things you can do to it you can manipulate the rhythms add a third rhythm or have them more asymmetric like rhythm one rhythm two rhythm two rhythm one you know which would sound like this right so when you do that it's actually really beautiful because you play the same rhythm at the beginning and the end and you have the same rhythm in the middle as well so rhythm one rhythm two rhythm two rhythm one that's something I also talk about in my course Jazz Improvisation Mastery System which is really all the things you can manipulate and do with rhythm rhythm can allow you to extract so much musicality from the same musical resources that you already know like the same scale the same C major scale that you've played a thousand times how often have you taken the time to just stop and try to play rhythms with that scale and see how musical you can become with that okay so I have three phrases here that I want to show you how you can actually construct and build your own phrases um using this method only so here's a very simple thing i just wrote the rhythm first that's number one i always do this and as a composer this for me has been the most amazing thing i just write the rhythm make sure I sing it if it's good then I build the phrase okay because the rhythm is just if you're especially if you're going to write is what's going to produce the actual phrase and rhythm can actually tell you the things to do so let's check out this first song one two three four sounds very musical already just by singing the rhythm right the next one three four then the next one three four well more sophisticated more notes so let's see how we can just apply only the chord inversions and manipulate them repeat a few notes and stuff like that to actually uh create really cool phrases so check this out just using cord tones rhythm the first rhythm the next one [Music] next [Music] one really beautiful phrases just using chord tones and rhythm basing it on the matrix of inversions isn't that fun already sounds great you can do this on any style i'm doing it kind of at a medium swing this will allow you to create phrases for horn lines uh sala bosanova funk just anything is just the same concept the rhythms is what's going to make it different and more tasty right so okay going on to the next one adding a few scale uh so what I'm going to do now is I'm just going to add a few scale tones i'm going to grab those same phrases and I'm going to use notes from the C major scale to decorate a little more and once you have the phrases I just copy and paste it and see what notes I can change maybe to add a scale note and get a little more tension release kind of a sound and a little more fluent sound scale tones will um kind of be serve me as passing tones right so let's check this out the orange notes are the passing tones that I've included [Music] so you see it adds a little nice kind of more melodic scaly sound to it but I'm still basing it on the chord inversion not on the scale that's why it still sounds very harmonic right so how about I add a little chromatic approach the same thing i copied and pasteed it's pretty much the same phrase the same rhythm but now you're going to see the orange notes are the diietonic scale passing tones and then the red notes are the chromatic approach just one single chromatic or you know I have a chromatic approach um exercises ebook is pretty amazing you can see the link right below in the description that's going to allow you to really infuse chromatic approach to your playing and enhance your lines but right now you're going to see the red notes are this chromatic approaches that act as this little spicy elements that are going to lead to the notes a lot smoother and more interestingly sometimes on the weak beat sometimes on the strong beat so let's see how this sounds [Music] you see how chromatic approach has a lot spice and you can use it in so many different ways that chromatic approach can enhance your playing and make everything so much more sophisticated but before you apply it you need to know what to target because chromatic approach it's a target device it's not a standalone device chord tones are a standalone device you can totally improvise using just chord tones but you can't improvise using just chromatic approach because they won't make sense chromatic approach notes by themselves make no sense like why would you put a D sharp on a D minor 7 chord but if you target something else then it makes total sense so it's always about what are you targeting that's why a lot of times you see all this bebop and complicated solos you see a lot of chromatic approach but then when you take them out you basically see chord tones most of it it's just chord tones and chord inversions are 80% of jazz language as much as that when you remove all the other complicated stuff but chromatic approach is a great device to add later on now for the next part here's a fun thing i'm going to apply the same matrix of inversions what I'm going to do is a a super fun arranging technique i'm going to replace the root for the ninth on every single chord and I'm gonna be it's just going to become a rootless voicing a rootless shape i love this you remove the root i still the root position first inversion second and third but now that root where wherever that root was now it's going to be a ninth right natural ninth right now [Music] Then you can do the same thing with the rhythms and you see how more interesting already sounds i removed the root i put a piano there so you can hear the context and it just makes it a little more colorful i love tensions and this is a great way to actually apply tensions and start understanding how to use them replace the root put the knife and you instantly get this beautiful rootless shape right um now by the way another thing you can do that I also teach in my course um just visually looking at this you can uh change apply what I call a octave displacement change order and actually create melodic cells now that's something a little more advanced that I teach on my course but uh the easy way to do it is just visually look at it and see if you can randomly change the order of some of these notes right to create more interesting melodic shapes on what I would call a melodic cell based on simple chords right so you would just do that if I use this with a ninth right here you know instead [Music] of that's first inversion with a ninth right so I could change the order of maybe the last two notes here and there and now I would [Music] be so you see if I play ascending or descending the only thing I did there is I changed the order of the last two notes that's a lot easier to do once you have the pure inversion very well in your fingers don't try to do this if you don't have that because it's going to be confusing but it's the same fingerings you just basically you're changing the order or you can change the octave as well right so instead of that's first inversion on the D minor 7 right with the ninth I can [Music] do you see how like even repeating a few notes omitting a few notes you can start manipulating this in all sorts of ways you don't even have to play the four notes on each chord right you can use the rhythm repeat a note octave displays change order and start doing all of these manipulations that I really teach and go in depth in my jazz improvisation mastery system but I wanted to let you know that that's an amazing possibility really underestimate it as well all right great to finish up I want to also show you how you can apply now alter tensions just use the same matrix copy and paste it and now only for the dominance I want to change the ninth for flat N and you see how instantly it darkens the sound [Music] now if I play around with the matrix like I showed you at the beginning just mix and matching applying rhythm and maybe a few octave displacements and changing order randomly here and there you can get this beautiful sound check this out instant phrases on the spot just by using this not even chromatic approach or anything else [Music] look right you can get beautiful phrases now I might have added one or two chromatic approaches there is inevitable for me but you can get a beautiful sound now much more sophisticated and now the same thing goes for this other matrix you can you can keep doing as many matrixes and copy and paste and have four pages of matrixes with different variations this one I'm kind of mixing it up and adding flat 9 or sharp nine instead of the root and now check this out i'm going to replace the fifth for a flat 13th or a natural 13th for major chords I want to use a natural 13s um and then for the dominance I might use flat 9 and always flat 13 to get that really spicy sound now you can always do a natural 13s at least for the G7 there's a lot of like more intricacies on what tensions to use in what chords uh I'll save that for another video right now I'm just keeping it simple so that you can really understand how to use this properly this way you can start getting this beautiful sophisticated sound right away now check it out so for some chords as you can see here I've added you know the flat 9 flat 13 um sometimes a sharp nine and sometimes a natural 13 on the C major 7 chord not all the time though for example in the first system I just kept the fifth but you can play around and do your customized um matrix here's the thing the matrix is for you to actually start building your own sound how do you do that pick the sounds you like from all the resources you've learned today try to see what is it that you like for example in my case oh I like this one without the replacement i like this inversion like the inversions are triggers for ideas so I like to I like the matrix cuz by starting on all of the all of the notes and by applying the same thing to each inversion you basically get all the sounds that you can get from that variation right so try to see which ones you like and you can do your customized inversions so for for example for the C major 7 in root position I like only replacing it with the ninth but maybe for first inversion I like the 13s so just customize it so that you can actually build a matrix that it becomes a matrix of melodic cells that you personally like and this is the trick this is the hack on how you can start sounding like yourself instead of copying everybody if I I used to do this all the time and then all of a sudden I was just building random phrases all the time if you attach rhythms and you start improving with chromatic approach and start adding other devices to the matrix you can start gaining so much fluency on any chords not just a 251 right so check check this sound out i'm going to improvise now using some of the sounds first let me play the matrix so that you can hear each inversion at a time right with all the manipulations I've I've had and all the tensions [Music] [Applause] Now it gets a little weird too which I love like this is if you want to start getting a more sophisticated thicker sound because tensions add a lot of expression and like a thicker sound to to your playing you can do this right if I start improvising using just this and rhythms right okay let's go back to the rhythms now these are the same rhythms as we used at the beginning of this video so you can recognize them and now I'm going to build phrases using all the devices you've learned in this video um basically you know chromatic chord inversions chromatic approach diatonic approach and I'm going to use some of these new tensions that you've now learned how to apply it and you'll see how the same rhythms and here's the magical thing about Here's the magical thing about rhythm you can use the exact same rhythm and create a hundred different phrases with that that's why rhythm is so generous and all those phrases will sound different but yet still connected so rhythm can be such a very strong musical power and I'm showing you right now i'm basically I copied and pasted those phrases and I manipulated them and changed it and transformed it with the new devices [Music] you see how we added so much expression by this step-by-step system on using the matrix first mechanizing all the inversions put them in your fingers and train your ears to listen to the beautiful melodies that are already packed inside the chords then manipulate them change the octaves change order uh ascending descending mess around with this that's why you can say two weeks every day you practice a matrix of inversions on a specific chord progression that could be the only thing you do then add simple rhythms then enhance those rhythms right then take the time to write a rhythmic phrase right i actually teach you my step-by-step process on how to build phrases on my jazz improvisation mastery system course so you can do that and then see if you can put the notes then copy and paste that same rhythm and transform it add more things you can actually create uh 10 variations of the same phrase by copying and pasting the same phrase rhythmically manipulating it change it change order add more chromatic approach add more notes like you can see here my last the last phrase I played that's a completely new rhythm right completely different phrase um more sophisticated i just added more notes but of course when you use more resources a lot of times you need more notes to actually get the resources in so that kind of thing you can do this and drastically expand your musical language and this is not only for performers if you're a composer this is magical when I write my sax solies my big band charts horn lines whatever I'm doing this is so useful i always start with rhythm but now try to see if you can do your own matrix of inversions over any set of chords and you can drastically boost your improvisation skills and gain fluency over that now I have a very special invitation for you to join my jazz improvisation mastery system if you've enjoyed this video first of all please subscribe to my channel because I'm going to be posting a lot of more video tutorials performances and more things like that um so it's going to be great and uh next I want to invite you to join my course okay you're going to see a link in the description to join the course and now I also want to offer you if you because you watch this video until right now that means you've stayed until the end i want to offer you a free bonus strategy session with me when you enroll in the course so just go to the link below enroll in the course and you'll automatically get an email to book a strategy session with me free of charge i'm only doing this because I really want to help you understand the materials of the course and I want to help you build a strategy i want to understand your goals and help you develop a practice routine that's going to help you get there a lot faster so I don't really do this very often but you stay until the end of this video so you're going to get the chance if you enroll in the course today you'll get a free 60-minute strategy session with me so go ahead and enroll on the course and I would love to meet you and help you get your plane to the next level subscribe to my channel and I will see you on the next video [Music]