The Dominant Chord: Emily Remler’s Approach

The late, great Emily Remler had a simple but very effective approach to improvising over a dominant chord.  She didn’t care which upper extensions created tension or dissonant tonalities.  Rather, she thought of a chord as either static, which didn’t go anywhere, or dynamic, meaning resolving to some major or minor chord.

Think of the second chord of the progression in the songs  “Girl From Ipanema” and “Take the A Train.”  You will notice that from a tonic chord, the next chord is a dominant chord that just stays there.  Emily would play a melodic minor scale (and of course all its related licks, intervals, sequences and arpeggios) a perfect 5th above.  So if that chord was a G7 or any of its variants, she would use a D melodic minor approach.

Now if a dominant chord was part of a II-V-I progression, say

|       Dm7    /    G7    /        |       CMaj7    /    /    /       |

– when she got to the G7 chord, she would use the melodic minor a half step above, so in this case the Ab melodic minor (again including arpeggios, et cetera).

Simple enough, I agree, but the possibilities are endless.  Go try it and have fun!