Lesson #24: Major #11 Lydian Exercise

In this week's lesson we'll be covering the most common scale for improvising over Major #11 chords (aka Cmaj7#11, Fmaj7#11, etc.)

Bill Evans was known to be consistently sightreading classical scores during his practice sessions.  These sightreading sessions had a tremendous influence on his playing as both an improvisor and composer.  I was inspired by Bill to take my own classical excerpt and try to apply it in the Jazz world.  The piece (or rather "motif") that I borrowed as inspiration for this lesson comes from J.S. Bach's Invention #1 in C Major.  Using Bach's simple motif we will learn how to better sing, play and hear melodies while improvising with the Lydian mode over Major #11 chords.

The lesson this week is broken down in to two parts.  Part one's main focus is on analysis of the exercise.  Part two focuses on how to practice the exercise.

Watch the lesson on YouTube:
Part One: Analysis
Part Two:  Sing and Play (currently processing upload)

View and download .pdf of this lesson:
Lesson #24 FREE .pdf in one key
Lesson #24 in ALL 12 Keys
Free SoundCloud play-along
If you purchase the lesson in 12 keys, feel free to share with friends.  However, the download is not that expensive (the price of a couple iTunes songs) so please consider encouraging them to buy it as well.

For more free jazz piano lessons, check out the the "lessons" tab on the top of this page and you'll find a list of all my free jazz piano lessons.