Scalic or Model Improvisation
Which one? What's the difference?

Modal
This whole book is based around Modal improvisation, it is the hard route but will give you the best start and give you the largest poor of notes to play form. Modal improvisation uses scales (Lots and Lots of different scales) as a pool of notes for you to dip into and create you solos.

Scalic
I will touch on Scalic improvisation but not in any great detail there are some many books that provide pages and pages of exercise`s for Scalic improvisation. The best definition is 1 scale fits all! You can uses one scale to improvise over an entire progression (a sequence of chords) I.e. blues scale and pentatonic scale. (Don't worry I will explain these shortly!)

Scalic improvisation is a great way to practice your rhythms.

The Blues Scale
Is 6 notes which general fit over any of the chords in the 12 bar blues.

The 12 bar blues can be very complicated but in its purist form is made up of 3 chords.  Firstly you need to decide on a Key (how many sharps or flats you want to play in!) My recordings are based on a blues in Bb (so the key signature has 2 flats Bb and Eb)

Which are the three chords?
1st chord (Bb)
4th Chord (Eb)
5th Chord (F)

Because this is a blues we change these chords into 7th Chords So they will read as Bb7, Eb7 and F7

And the 12 bar progression will read like this (each chord fills 1 bar of 4 beats)

Bb7 Bb7 Bb7 Bb7
Eb7 Eb7 Bb7 Bb7
F7  Eb7 Bb7 Bb7

I have recorded a simple 12 bar progression this has been simplified so you can here the changes clearly between each chord, listen out and see if you can predict the next change.

Play Audio 5...



Now listen to a rhythm section playing a 12 bar blues this is harder to hear the changes but they are there listen really carefully!

Play Audio 6



Once you are happy with listening to the progression without following the chords on the paper and you can find the beginning of the progression then you are ready to improvise over the progression with the blues scale.

Again based on the key of Bb the scale is made up using the following formula
1st b3rd 4th #4th 5th b7th