Miles-Davis-eBook.pdf

5 Miles Davis ii V I licks. BASS CLEF

Matt Lawton WWW.MATTLAWTONBASS.COM | [email protected]

About The Author Thanks for downloading my eBook! If you don’t know who I am allow me to introduce myself; my name is Matt Lawton and I’m a bassist from Liverpool, England. I gig up and down the country playing anything from pop and rock to soul, folk and of course jazz! I also teach at music schools around the North West of England as well as privately and over Skype. Alongside this I like to fit in as many sessions as I can get my mitts on and run a blog dedicated to all things bass but specialising in jazz transcriptions and lessons. Onto the book! I am a huge Miles Davis fan and after spending the last few years working with his material I really wanted to collate some of my favourite licks of his into one easy to use resource. In this book you’ll find key points about each lick as well as a couple of ideas to start off your practice routine to try and integrate some of these ideas into your playing. This last part I find most important in terms of ‘finding your own voice’. The way I think licks should be used isn’t to jam them into every ii V I progression you see (although that is one way you can use them!) but more to analyse the techniques used and incorporate these into your own playing.

About The Book All licks, ideas, concepts in the pages following should be practiced in all 12 keys. I have not notated this for the same reason I have not included TAB. The more playing you do by reading from a book the less the information will sink in! If you really want to be able to integrate these ideas into your playing then reciting the lick in 12 keys by reading them from the page will not help you! Practice singing the intervals in the licks to help you move them through the keys. The benefit of not including TAB is that it will force you to try each lick in various positions on the neck, exploring different ways of playing the scales and arpeggios used that you would not get by using my recommended fingering in the TAB. That being said, I have enclosed a video of each of the licks so you have a guide for fingering and also for the way these parts sound. The more work you put into learning these phrases the more you will get out of this short eBook! As always, any questions on this material just drop me a line over at my website and I’ll be happy to help!

All material produced by Matt Lawton. www.mattlawtonbass.com

1

What is a ii V I? If we take each note from the C major scale in turn and build a chord from that note by stacking 3rds on top of it, we make a chord for each of these notes. These are the building blocks for the modes and is what all chord progressions refer to, for example the 12 bar blues is a I7 - IV7 - V7.

If we look at the ii chord, V chord and I chord, this is where we get the chords from for a ii V I progression. In the key of C this would be;

Dmi7 - G7 - CMa7 Video Of The Five Licks


2

Lick #1

Key Points ● ● ●

Scale lines. Common Tones over bar lines. Starts on the offbeat.

This lick starts on the offbeat with a run up the C Dorian mode, starting from the 13th, passing the root and landing on the 9th. A similar ascending phrase is played over the F7 chord but this time starting from the 5th before hitting the 13th and ascending right up to the 3rd this time rather than the 9th. The 3rd is held across the bar line to become the 7th of the I chord, finished with a descending arpeggio of 7th, 5th, 3rd.

Practice Tips ● ●

Play repeating patterns from scales over chord changes. E.g. 13, 7, R, 9. Learn the common tones between chords and practice holding these over bar lines, this is a great way to make your lines flow as well as avoiding start a phrase on beat 1.


3

Lick #2

Key Points ● ● ● ●

Extended arpeggios. Full bar of quarter notes. End on root. Starts on the offbeat.

This lick also starts on the offbeat using a turn around the 3rd of the chord. This is a great way to accent chord tones without playing a straight arpeggio. By combining the eighth note rest with the turn it also lands the chord tone on a strong beat, following this is an arpeggio for a C-11. The second bar in this lick breaks the usual 8th note rhythm that we find in jazz improvisation, four quarter notes directly on the beat can make for a welcome change in the middle of a solo. This is all finished with a two root notes on the I chord which functions as a nice big full stop to bring this lick to an end.

Practice Tips ● ● ● ●

Practice extended arpeggios. C-11, F13 etc. Target chord tones using a scale note either above or below. Use a mix of eighth notes and quarter note rhythms. End your lick with the root of the I chord.


4

Lick #3

Key Points ● ● ●

Bb Major Pentatonic used as blanket scale. Starts on the offbeat. Ascending - descending shape.

After working through licks 1 and 2 this example above should look quite familiar. It starts on the offbeat, mixes quarter notes with eighth notes and ends with two chord tones from the I chord. This lick can be viewed with each note in relation to the chord it is played over, as the numbers underneath the notes show, but can also be viewed as Bb Major Pentatonic. The only note not from this scale is Eb, the b7 played on beat 1 over the F7. Another reason this lick works so well is the shape, what goes up must come down! This gives a nice rounded and complete feel to the lick.

Practice Tips ●

●

Experiment using one scale to cover the full ii V I progression, in the key of Bb these could include C Dorian, F Mixolydian, Bb Ionian, Bb Major Pentatonic. Experiment with other scales to see what sounds they create too. Concentrate on the shape of your lines, play along to standards you know well and try to control the shape of your lines. Everything ascending, everything descending, up then down like the example above, and finally down then up.


5

Lick #4


Starts on a strong beat with a chord tone. Uses an altered note over the G7. Triplets to break up the eighth note rhythm. Using ‘outside’ notes.

This lick was originally performed at break neck speed, around 280bm, so doubles up as a killer speed building exercise. If you want to check out the original, this lick came from ‘Tune Up’ from the album ‘Four’. You can hear the lick around the 1:00 mark. On this lick Miles takes a much more scalar approach than we have previously seen, this could be due to the ferocious speed that the lick was pulled off at! Miles also uses some notes from outside the key in this lick. The first is over the G7 in the shape of a #9. This comes from the altered scale but could also be viewed as a passing tone to the chord tone beginning the next bar. Using altered notes over a dominant 7 chord is a brilliant way to create tension in a line. In the second half of the third bar, Miles also uses another outside note. This one is a chromatic passing note between two scale notes over C Major.

Practice Tips ● ● ● ● ●

Trying to get this lick up to speed is TOUGH! Start slowly making sure you can play the lick cleanly and slowly increase the tempo. Instead of starting on a weak beat, start on a strong beat but make it a chord tone. Mix triplets in with eighth note runs. Use the altered scale to bring tension over dominant 7 chords. Do this one or two notes at a time rather than trying to run the whole scale over the V chord. Use chromatic passing notes in scalar runs.


6

Lick #5


Simple rhythm but make it swing! Repeated phrase using common tones. End with a simple phrase on the root of the I chord. Starts on a strong beat with a strong note.

The final lick in this eBook is what I think of when I think of Miles. A really simple idea but executed to perfection. Check this one out from Miles’ first chorus of ‘Bye Bye Blackbird’. It swings so hard, I probably should have notated this all as quarter notes but I have tried to bring some of the feel to the written lick. Just using two notes for the first two bars, these notes start as a 9th and 11th and change to a 13th and root over the V chord. This lick is finished off with an almost identical phrase to lick #2, two root notes from the I chord.

Practice Tips ● ● ●

Use common tones to sequence a melody through the chord changes. Use simple rhythms but really make them swing. End licks with a short statement using just the root note.


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Miles-Davis-eBook.pdf

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