From Scales to Music
Scales are the alphabet, not the poetry, of music. You need to know the alphabet, grammar, vocabulary, spelling, and so on, before you can write words, sentences, and ultimately poetry. Similarly, you need to know the scales before you can create beautiful music. Your goal is to internalize scale knowledge so completely that scales become an available pool of notes, a pool you can dip into for any note you want. These exercises will help you make the transformation from scales to music.
7th Chord Sequences
Seventh chords are the basic chord of jazz. Like triads, their presence in a solo stabilizes the harmony and imparts a sense of structure. Look at the example below, from John Coltrane's solo on Miles Davis' Milestones. Coltrane arpeggiates all of the 7th chords from the key of F downward while playing on a Gmin7 chord.
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