Horizontal & Vertical Improvisation

[leadbird]

Hi all

I'm a little confused about Horizontal and Vertical improvisation. If I understand correctly vertcial improvisation means that you use the scale of the chord you are playing? So say we play the first bar in C we play the C-scale and if we go to F in the second bar we play the F-scale?

Horizontal improv would be staying on 1 scale over the chord changes? Like when you say use the C Blues scale over the 12 bar blues, you are doing horizontal improvisation?

Assuming I understand this correctly, you are pretty safe doing Vertical imporvisation?

When it comes to Horizontal improvisation are there some general rules to follow? Say the song is in C Major, you should be somewhat ok withe the C scale aslong as you the chords are part of the C major scale. Atleast here you only have to think about one scale? Is there a scale in addition to the Blues scale that are good for horizontal improvisation?

Is the point of Horizontal improvisation so that you can play a melody line over several bars? I guess that would be harder with vertical improvisation?

Lot's of questions here :)

Frank

[leadbird]

Thanks for nice explanation on the radio show :) As always you gave me more than I asked for. I liked what you said about how it's best to start out with vertical improv and later in the song it fits better to do horizontal. Makes sense when you think about it.

Frank