Bass Player & Arranger

Here is a nifty little finger-twister that can be used as a springboard for further exploration. The theory behind diminished scales is fascinating and the naming of the notes and intervals contained therein is a contentious issue among musicologists - 13/6/bb7 anyone? Therefore, purely to keep things simple, I have used the above description of the scale to highlight the available tensions that can be found when the scale is used this way. Diminished scales can be confusing

Jaco Pastorius was a big fan of practising turnaround lines (they tend to round off a chorus of jazz or blues) and making up lines that imposed extended chords on simple harmony so I thought I’d have a go at putting one of my own together. Practice this in all 12 keys and get some of your own together. And for those of you who like to know the theory… This ‘lick’ is in the key of C. It opens with a scale containing two target tones of the chord (3 & 5). The F# creates a m

This week, I started working through some ideas for jazz improvisation with VERY BASIC ii V I arpeggio-based lines and I have posted three o

I’ve been shedding a lot of blues recently and I’ve been exploring new ways of playing over a ‘jazz 12′. I recorded one of my practice sessions and found this chorus that I played and so I transcribed it to analyse and pick apart my new approach… It’s a solo mainly based on arpeggios whereas I would have mainly played blues scale or pentatonics over these changes before. I like skipping onto the ‘blue notes’ such as the b5, b3, b7, and b9 too! The line over the ‘G7 altered