Learn to Solo (ePub)

Preface

This handbook offers a different approach toward achieving a wider variety of jazz technique. It presents an alternative to what is currently being taught in jazz curriculums (such as the over-used "chord-scale" system). Building upon the original work of Arnold Schõnberg in his Structural Functions of Harmony (1954; 1969) this work takes Schõnberg's "monotonality" approach and broadens it for use in the jazz medium.

To Schõnberg, the concept of "monotonality" held that every digression from the tonic chord would still be considered related--whether directly or indirectly. With the central chord becoming the primary tonal "personality" of a work, all melodic and chordal deviations from that prime become but related "regions" branching off from, but controlled or dominated by, the established tonality. In this handbook the concept of the sixth degree of the scale, and other substitute intervals, is given emphasis as a starting point of melodic improvisation.

This handbook offers an expanded system of progressive alternatives for the performer, thus widening both the harmonic and melodic possibilities of creative improvisation. Commercial jazz is the music of the future, and the techniques offered here utilize scientific principles of universal and fundamental implication. Volume I discovers different intervals to play while improvising, using specially outlined solo techniques.

The preparation of this handbook has been a most exciting undertaking. It is hoped that you will find it likewise rewarding, while expanding your own creative horizons.

Derrick Coles, Author