Songwriting & Improv
Artist
Grace Kelly & Leo P
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About This Course
This course will take you through our real-time process for writing a brand new song as we discuss song form, chord progressions, and topline melodies. Grace will teach her ear training methodology so you can connect the musical ideas you hear in your head directly to your fingers. Our beginner improvisers will learn to integrate storytelling and conversational skills to make their solos more exciting and fun!
In the later part of the section, we'll teach you how to add more complex rhythms and melodic voice-leading techniques, rap rhythms, and melodic lyricism into your solos. We've included a few video backing tracks in this section so you can put all of these improvisation techniques into play and jam with us! By the end of this section, you will have fresh ideas for approaching your improv and writing.
Course Curriculum
8 lessons • 2h 14m total
Songs
An overview of common song forms in jazz and popular music, with examples and repertoire-building tips to help you recognize structure, learn songs more intentionally, and start thinking like a songwriter.
Songwriting
In this lesson, Grace uses an early demo of “Feels Like Home” to show how melodies can evolve through different tempos, arrangements, and collaborations, while introducing core songwriting tools like common chord progressions, contrafacts, and creative collaboration techniques.
Grace & Leo Write A Song
In this lesson, “Blue M&Ms” is used as a real songwriting case study to show how collaboration grows from a simple idea into a structured song through groove, communication, experimentation, arranging, and openness to each other’s ideas.
Ear Training With Grace
In this lesson, you build ear training through interval recognition and the Air Sax method, using familiar songs, daily listening practice, and singing-to-fingering exercises to connect what you hear in your head to what you play on the sax.
Beginner Improvisation
In this lesson, you learn to approach improvisation as real-time musical conversation by starting with emotion, using space, shaping solos over time, listening actively, and even limiting yourself to one note to unlock creativity.
Phrasing
In this lesson, you’ll explore how great phrasing comes from deep listening, strong melodic shape, and rhythmic feel—learning how to make your lines sound more musical, expressive, and intentional rather than just a string of notes.
Advanced Improvisation
In this lesson, Grace and Leo show how to take improvisation from good to great by sharpening your rhythm, groove, speed, voice leading, and tonal “colors,” while learning to use advanced techniques with taste, surprise, and strong musical storytelling.
Solo House Sax with Leo
In this lesson, you dive into Leo P’s Solo House Sax approach by drawing from electronic dance music influences, building driving octave-jump basslines, and using phrygian-based exercises to develop a high-energy solo style that feels both musical and performative.
About the Artist
Grace Kelly & Leo P
Award-winning saxophonists and educators.
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