Description
In Lesson 12 of the Approach Note Freedom Series, I give you 7 II-V-I patterns to practice in all keys. These patterns utilize all of the approaches we have used so far in a variety of ways. This lesson can be a real challenge but if mastered you will gain the ability to weave through II-V-I patterns using all of the approaches so far. Being able to use approaches in this way is very important if you want to be able to use them in an improvisational setting. This lesson comes with a one page PDF sheet of the 7 II-V-I patterns. I demonstrate them all on my tenor sax and a florida link mouthpiece. (Audio & Video)
Niklas –
The material is this lesson is really great.
About a year ago I started working on simply spelling out the changes while improvising. My goal was to be able to do this in a reasonably fluent way on e.g. Confirmation. I did some little progress, but then not so much happened.
Then I stumbled on the approach note freedom series and realized that this is probably something that could put me in a better position. I put in a fair number of hours doing just two approaches in all major keys (starting with whole tone below and whole tone above target note) , and also the scale tone above, half tone below really thoroughly. Then I came up with the idea of running through the changes non-stop using the approaches just like introduced in this lesson.
It was very much fun, and very difficult. Today this is my default way of studying a tune, besides playing it on the piano.
Just running through the chords or scales on the sax simply doesn’t make the same “impact” compared to running approaches. (Of course this is subjective) The many possible combinations invites you to play e.g. 4 bars again and again in many different ways.
This lesson presents running approaches over II V I progressions which is of course a more appropriate portion to start with than a whole tune.
This method is applicable for progressions with varying chord duration and I think it helps you get a better feeling for the harmonic rhythm too.
Doing this exercise perhaps 25 hours in total on a couple of tunes has helped quite a bit already.