Diatonic Fifth Patterns Lesson

Description

A diatonic pattern is a pattern of notes that stays within a specific key or scale.  If you know a key well, then playing the diatonic pattern is just a matter of repeating the pattern as you travel through the scale.  Diatonic patterns are a must for any serious student of jazz.  They are valuable because they give you tons of melodic material you can use while improvising.  Practicing and mastering your diatonic patterns equip you with a thorough knowledge of the major scale and by working on them you improve your technique.  Also, by working on these larger intervals, you are opening up your jazz lines to more options including a more modern intervallic sound.

In this lesson I show you four common patterns using diatonic fifths.  A diatonic fifth is just an interval that spans or jumps to the fifth note away from it while staying in the same key.  An example would be if you started on C and wanted to go up a fifth you would jump to G.  If you count all the notes in the C major scale between C and G and include C and G you will see that there are 5. CDEFG. This is a diatonic fifth.  Another in the key of C would be D to A.  DEFGA.  D to A is a diatonic fifth.

In “Diatonic Fifth Patterns Lesson”,  I give you tips on how to best practice diatonic fifths and demonstrate them for you on the soprano sax with some background music.   Practicing with a play along is so much more fun and turns a boring scale exercise into a lesson in ear training.  This lesson also includes a 12 page pdf of the patterns in every key.   It is important that you master these in all 12 keys so that you have agility in any and every key you play in.  This a vital and fundamental lesson to master so you have a firm foundation on which to  build later.  Enjoy!  (25 Minute Video Lesson)