Exercise that will develop the use of Diminished Arpeggios in your Jazz solos
Here is a fairly simple exercise that will help you develop and incorporate the use of diminished arpeggios into your Jazz trumpet solos. Diminished arpeggios, whether you use them in full or partially, are a great pattern to have under your belt as they kind of go hand in hand with the bebop scale in keeping your Jazz lines going.
Here is a sound sample of the diminished exercise on trumpet:
How to work this diminished exercise in 12 keys:
I find it best to think in stacked minor 3rds. It really doesn’t matter what note you start on. It’s best to get in the full comfortable range of your horn. All you are doing is going down 4, half step down, up 4, half step down, down 4, etc…
To get every key both up and down you’ll just want to go up or down a half step from where you started in the first exercise and do the same thing over. Now you are alternating the diminished arpeggio both up and down.
Make sure to use a metronome on this exercise, I apologize for not doing so myself. Once you got the pattern down, try to start incorporating it into your Jazz playing. A good start is on the V7 to I chord. Start on the 3rd of the V7 chord and land on the 5th of the I chord. You’ll get the b9 involved and it sounds really hip.
I wanted to share this YouTube video of an iPhone application called Trumpet Pro. Pretty cool, the developer did a quick sample of the above Jazz exercise.
Check it out at:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QfbxXR2w5UE
Sounds really cool, I also like to use diminished arpeggios when playing my guitar… but most of all I like to use diminished chords, they add something unusual to my songs!
Very Nice! I’ll have to try it out on the piano
Funny, been working on that lately, Arbans pages 144-47. Use different artics are also helpful. Great stuff to work on.
Thanks man.
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