Jazz musicians excel in the art of exploring the arpeggio. Because the notes of the arpeggio are played incrementally, it can have incredibly diverse acoustical references. It is, in fact, the facility one has with the arpeggio that that lays the groundwork for improvisation. The arpeggio is the touchstone for all tablature. One's depth of concept and spontaneity will flow from having facility with the arpeggio. It's the truth behind the saying: "he plays well because of his classical training." The classics can be measured with the facility using the arpeggio. Which came first: the classic or the arpeggio? The arpeggio came first, of course. Master the arpeggio and you will master technique. It is not critical to say that scales and reading are useless in mastering the art of improvisational playing but it is necessary to inspire and focus on the facility of an ear trained performance.


I believe with each generation there are conceptual observations critical to the execution of newer ideas in performance. The tradition of a memorized bag of tricks is the main tool of players who are frozen in time because they're not on to a few basic concepts cognitive to performance. Most who are from this ilk know there is something missing from their effort, either from themselves or from what they've been told, even from the big time players.

If you can hear a jazz figure or a bee bop line over a well-established melody, you probably are a candidate for exploring the arpeggio. You may have aged, like most of us in this profession, to realize that the "hunt and peck, now you make it now you don't" method of memorization and chord patterns is pretty much a dead end for really creative musicology. The truth behind the absence of the unexplained, yet explainable concepts that are the foundations for good playing may lie in the fact that, perhaps only a few have become proficient in the performance as well as the ability to communicate the process. A few of my favorite players have come up short in interviews when it came to the "how-tos" of the instrument. Well, perhaps they are content not to pass it on or they want phenomenon to add mystique to their talent. At any rate, the fact remains that these simple elements are conspicuously absent from the broad range of upstarts as well as experienced players in this business.