Improvising With Triads

Are you tired of learning licks from friends and off of recordings? Have you ever wondered where all these licks come from? Who makes them up and what secret formula do they use? I would like to share with you some ideas for developing your own licks.

Let me introduce you to triadic improvisation. A triad is a chord consisting of three notes. A C Major chord and a C Minor chord are examples of triads.

One way of using triads is with arpeggios as explained in "Improvising With Arpeggios” . In "Improvising With Arpeggios” we implied using triads that are part of the chord being played. In this article we will discuss triads that are related in other ways. To be more precise, triads are either formed with notes directly from the chord, notes from the scale the chord belongs to, or notes totally unrelated to the notes in the chord or the scale the chord belongs to.

Let's begin with triads that belong to the scale from which the chord is derived. Take, for example, a C Major 7 which is derived either from the key of C Major or G Major. (To learn how to determine the key/s a chord belongs to, read "Major Scale Harmony And Chords” ) If you are in the key of C Major, then you will most likely choose triads from the C Major scale. The basic triads in the key of C Major are C Major, D Minor, E Minor, F Major, G Major, A Minor and B Diminished. Here are some ways that you can utilize these triads for deveoping licks:

• Arpeggiate them one after another. Use all of them or just a few. Try arpeggiating them in different inversions. Try forward and reverse arpeggiations. Alternate forward and reverse arpeggiations from one chord to the next.

• Pick only two triads and combine their notes to form a scale. This will create four, five and six note scales to use.

• Improvisation isn't always single notes! At least for keyboardists. Using two or more of these triads, play the chord in the left hand and the triads in the right hand up or down the keyboard.

So what if I want a more dissonant improvisation? I'm glad you asked, because this is my favorite topic! Remember how we chose triads from the C Major scale because we were in the key of C Major playing a C Major 7? Why not break the rules? So what if you're in the key of C Major playing a C Major 7! Let's use the basic G Major scale triads. After all, C Major 7 belongs to the key of G Major too. It's a stretch, but not all the way. So now try the above suggestions, but this time with the following triads: G Major, A Minor, B minor, C Major, D Major, E Minor and F# Diminished.

You want more dissonance? Ok, but you asked for it! Because Dominant chords are flexible to alteration and abundant enough, they should begin to satisy your desire for dissonance that is generally reserved for the Jazz masters – Thelonius Monk, Miles Davis and Chick Corea to name a few. Grab your list of altered Dominant scales and start building traids! I recommend Jamey Aebersold's Free Scale Syllabus .

And yes, there is even more dissonance available for your listening pleasure. Try applying the concept presented in "Improvising With Sequences" to what you have learned in this article.