About this Video

• Video Title: Jazz Guitar Students: Stop Practicing Improvisation! Learn licks!
• Channel: Denis Chang
• Speakers: Denis Chang
• Duration: 00:36:59

Introduction

This video addresses how to approach learning jazz guitar improvisation, particularly for beginners. Denis Chang argues against the common advice to improvise freely from the start and instead advocates for a vocabulary-building approach focused on mastering licks and phrases from admired musicians before moving towards free improvisation.

Key Takeaways

• Focus on Vocabulary Building: Instead of directly practicing improvisation, beginners should prioritize building a vocabulary of licks and phrases from their favorite jazz musicians. This provides a foundation for later improvisation.
• Importance of Deep Listening: Active, analytical listening is crucial. This involves listening with your instrument, identifying and playing phrases, and understanding how they function within the chord progressions. This is more valuable than simply transcribing solos.
• Muscle Memory and Repetition: Practicing chosen phrases repeatedly develops muscle memory, making improvisation more fluid and less reliant on conscious thought. This is likened to language acquisition, where repetition is essential for fluency.
• Deconstructing Melodic Cells: Advanced players break down complex solos into smaller melodic cells (the most basic components of a phrase), understanding how these individual cells interact. This allows for creative manipulation and authentic improvisation.
• Individual Learning Styles: There’s no one-size-fits-all approach. While some might improvise freely, many benefit from structured practice of specific phrases and patterns before developing a personal style.

To understand "melodic cells" as explained by Denis Chang, let's look at the transcript excerpts where he discusses this concept. He doesn't explicitly define "melodic cells" with a rigid definition, but rather illustrates the concept through examples and explanations.

Citations:

• [15:20-15:35]: "...these guys are such geniuses that they are able to turn lines also into their tiniest cellular fragments I call these melodic cells..." This indicates that melodic cells are the smallest, most fundamental building blocks of a musical phrase or line.

• [25:28-26:21]: "...this is where we get into the topic of quote-unquote real improvisation... you'll have to practice to a certain point where you're able to understand a long line and deconstruct it to its most basic component... let's take that line that I played earlier... let's just say it was that... let's deconstruct this... that's one little fragment it's an arpeggio... [Music]... so I took a little fragment and I played around with it..." Here, Denis Chang demonstrates deconstruction of a longer phrase into smaller, more manageable fragments, which are the melodic cells. He shows how these smaller components can be re-arranged and manipulated.

• [26:39-27:49]: "...let's look at the next fragment... [Music]... let's look at the next fragment... oh cool [Music]... what else do we have [Music]... can we deconstruct this even more [Music]..." This further emphasizes the process of dissecting a longer solo or phrase into these basic melodic building blocks.

In essence, Denis Chang uses "melodic cells" to describe the smallest, recognizable musical ideas within a larger improvisation. Mastering these cells allows for greater control and creativity when improvising, as they can be recombined and varied to create new phrases. The process of identifying and manipulating these cells comes from extensive listening, practice, and internalizing musical phrases.