Musical improvising requires longer phrases that develop ideas. Once inexperienced Latin Jazz improvisers move into more melodic playing, they often loose the strength of their internal clave. Maintaining a natural sense of clave in your playing requires regular listening and practice. Challenge yourself with these two exercises while you reinforce your clave clock!

If you are starting out your clave study with these exercises, take the time to review some related articles. They will build the skills needed for longer melodic phrases that align naturally with clave. You’ll want to read about Son Clave, Fine Tuning Your Clave Clock, and Building Melodic Ideas Around Clave.

1. Emphasizing Clave Within The Context of Melodic Building Blocks
In order to bring clave deeper into your melodic consciousness, you need to practice emphasizing the attack points. Play a series of 8th notes, putting an accent upon the rhythmic points of the clave. Place your initial focus upon accenting the correct rhythmic points, so start with simple melodic material. Scales work well for this exercise, so work through a variety of modes. Pick one modality and go through all twelve keys accenting 2-3 Son clave. Once that feels comfortable, pick a different modality and play through all twelve keys accenting 3-2 Son Clave.

Once this exercise works well for you, alter the melodic material. Move through scales using a different interval – ascend and descend in thirds for example. Come up with your own variations and let me know!

2. Start & end phrases on clave attacks
Now improvise against the clave, building melodic phrases that align rhythmically. Pick two clave attacks as starting and ending points for your phrase. Create a variety of different melodic ideas using those two clave attacks. Play through one clave cycle, then extend your phrases so that you play over two or more cycles. As you do this, start and end your phrases on the same two clave attacks until you build your clave relationship. Then pick two different clave attacks and repeat the process.

You should be feeling fairly comfortable playing against Son clave at this point, so take some time to experiment. Play some of your standard licks and see how they align with clave - you may need to alter the rhythms of your melodies to maintain clave’s integrity. Integrating clave exercises into your practice time will help you build stronger Latin Jazz solos that inspire your rhythm section and thrill your audience. Good luck!

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