Chord Tone Combinations for Cmaj7
Chord Tone Combinations – Mastering chord tone improvisation (using arpeggios) is considered essential for proficient soloing especially in jazz. Understanding the relationship between chord tones and the harmony being used will really help you navigate through your improvisation more fluidly.
Chord tones not only provide clarity to the listener regarding the harmony, but can also enhance the existing melody. As you become familiar with these tones, you’ll start to notice how they interact with the surrounding music, creating more engaging solos. All improvising musicians have studied this form of soloing and it is considered a critical area of study in jazz improvisation.
Chord tones are generated from an arpeggio and the four-note harmonies commonplace in jazz generate arpeggio combinations that can significantly elevate your improvisational abilities. This suggests that practicing these combinations can unlock new creative pathways in your playing.
In this short lesson, we’ll explore how you can produce a large series of note combinations just from a single parent chord.
In practice sessions, many musicians confine themselves to purely fundamental arpeggio patterns, such as R, 3, 5, and 7 or 7, 5, 3, R. There are however 24 possible combinations in total from any four-note chord. This can seem a daunting amount of material to learn, so to make this learning process more manageable, break down the combinations into smaller groups before trying to learn the entire set.
The table below illustrates all 24 tone patterns that could be created just from a simple Cmaj7 chord. As you learn each pattern, experiment with varying the rhythm and dynamics to make your use of them more expressive. As you can see, all this gives us a lot of melodic material to work with!
Learning all 24 patterns is of course a long term task, so my suggestion is to learn a couple of these chord tone patterns at a time and then start using them straightaway in your soloing.
You could begin by just playing them against a single chord, but you should also practice converting them to other chord types and into other keys. In some upcoming videos, I’ll provide additional exercises to help you incorporate these patterns seamlessly into your playing.
.Be sure to download the PDF above to have a handy reference while you practice.
