Hi. In this lesson we'll learn a few easy tricks to really spice up the Dorian Mode when playing a jazz solo. First I'll show you some basic stuff about how we can organize and play Dorian in a thrilling way by using hand grips. Then we’ll make Dorian bluesy by adding several thrilling blue notes. And finally I’ll show you the golden trick that really makes our jazz improvisation jazzy. And by the very very end, as extra material, I’ll reveal a little revelation, pure magic. So, by now I’ve promised quite a lot and I surely hope that I can make it all work. Well, we’ll see how it goes. This is C Dorian right? Almost like the natural minor scale but with a sharpened 6th step. And we can of course play Dorian stepwise up and down... but that may be a little boring and predictable, right? So, as we’ve learned in many previous lessons we can use a simple hand grip to break up Dorian into thrilling structures and patterns. So this may be old stuff to some of you but don't worry repetition is the best way to learn Music and furthermore we need to brief any newcomers, in short, about the basic stuff, so that we’re all ready to learn the thrilling little tricks that we can do to spice up Dorian. So as in all my lessons I really try to begin at the beginning and then we just go more and more crazy as we move along. Ok, here we go. If we for example do this pentatonic hand grip... and if we place the hand grip with our thumb on C D and G we actually fill out the entire C Dorian scale all the C Dorian notes are represented... A good mnemonic rule to remember the positions of the hand grip is that we can stack them in a row of 5ths from the keynote C… So now we don't have to play Dorian stepwise up and down anymore. We’ve added some structure and meaning to the mode… Please note that I've made the graphics on the keys the small dots so that they always show the entire grip I have in mind. But it's not always that I actually play all the notes. The hand grip is just a mental set of notes preloaded in my mind and hand ready to be played at any split second... So now we’ve learned some basic concepts about how we can organize the Dorian mode by using hand grips. Now it’s really straightforward to add lots of thrilling tricks so that we can really spice up Dorian. So here we go. Now, first I’ll show you some really simple tricks to blues up Dorian with lots of thrilling blue notes. Then by the end of this lesson just before the revealing extra material we’ll be ready to learn the golden trick to really jazz up Dorian. When doing the pentatonic hand grip we can occasionally move our ring finger down a half step to this tritone blue note... And the great thing is that we can use this little blue note trick on any of our 3 hand grip positions… and now we can do this thrilling bluesy Dorian sound… And if our lowered ring finger is on a black key we can also slide our ring finger in place like this… Ok, soon I'll show you the ultimate golden trick to jazz up Dorian. But before we do that let me just show you one more really thrilling blue note trick that we can do. Let's add this little 3 finger chromatic hand grip to our playground... and we can also add the pinkie here on the keynote C... Now how does that sound? Yeah, this is nice bluesy spice right? Ok, so far we’ve learned some basic concepts about how to use a simple pentatonic hand grip to add meaningful structure to the Dorian mode so that we can avoid playing the scale stepwise up and down. Then we altered the grip slightly and added blue notes... and then we added a little thrilling chromatic hand grip to our playground... And now, finally, we’re ready to learn the golden trick that I’ve been talking about throughout this entire lesson. And I'm so sorry about that by the way I'm just so excited about showing you how to really jazz up Dorian. If we want to make our solo more jazzy we should definitely visit the Locrian mode... Compared to the natural minor scale... Locrian is gifted with a lowered 2nd... and lowered 5th step... a really nice spiced up mode. And as with Dorian we'll of course not play Locrian in a boring stepwise up and down style, right? No, we’ll keep on using our pentatonic hand grip and we can play Locrian simply by placing our thumb on Eb, F and Bb. Again we can use our mnemonic rule and place our grip positions in a row of 5ths just as we did when we played the Dorian scale... So from the keynote C just go up a minor 3rd... do the row... and we have Locrian in our hand… It can be really helpful to make these small mnemonic rules. And you don't have to use my rules you can for sure make up your own. Whatever works best for you. So, now the idea is to mainly play C Dorian… and add some blue notes… and then occasionally visit Locrian to really jazz up our improvisation… And look, if we simply continue our Locrian row of 5ths... we automatically end up in our Dorian row of 5ths... Pretty smart right. And because we use the same pentatonic hand grip to do both Dorian and Locrian we can easily repeat phrases and motifs in different places on the keys. In that way we can kind of glue Dorian and Locrian together… In another lesson I show how we can use the pentatonic hand grip to play any of the 7 modes. I’ll paste a link below. So this is really great right? Now we have really spiced up our Dorian scale with both blues notes AND the Locrian mode. In this way we have added some additional color to our Dorian sound. We’ve made our jazz improvisation more organic and alive… Ok, actually our lesson should be ending by now but I just have to show you some extra material because this is going to be a revelation it’s pure magic. The thing is, that by using hand grips we can easily improvise in any key. We simply just have to learn to place our pentatonic hand grip at all 12 positions… then we can play both our Dorian and Locrian and many other modes by the way in any key. So, for example let’s play a Dorian solo in the key of A by placing our thumb on the keynote... and then do the row… And we can do blue notes by lowering our 4th finger a half step just as we did when playing Dorian in C. And if we from the keynote A go up a minor 3rd... and do the row… then we have our A Locrian mode… And yes, these grip positions are actually the exact same as when we did C Dorian... So when playing in different keys playing different modes we constantly reuse our grip positions, right? Now isn’t that fantastic. Everything just becomes so much easier now more HANDY so to speak. And playing a solo is all about making things easy and handy so that we can focus our mind on expressing feelings, creating Music. So let’s try out our spiced up Dorian solo in the key of A… And as you may know all NewJazz lessons are free, public and for everybody. I have no sponsors and I sell no merchandise. I'm just little me trying to make Music the epic center of everything. So if you want to help me keep going you are of course so much welcome to make a voluntary donation. You can also just give me a nice like. Moral support makes me very happy and it means a lot to me. Thank you so much. Many warm regards from Oliver Prehn.
