There is a common myth that "playing what you hear" is an advanced skill — something only the greats can do. The reality is that there are different levels of hearing, and melodic contour is one of the most accessible and immediately useful entry points into that skill.
What you'll get out of this lesson
You will learn to think about melody in terms of contour — simply, whether the next note goes up, down, or stays the same — and use that as a framework for building solos with genuine shape and coherence. This is a strategy you can implement right now, at whatever level your playing is at.
What contour is and why it matters
Contour is the shape of a melody — its movement up or down over time. If you strip away all the note choices, rhythms, and technical details, what remains is a series of directions: higher, lower, or the same. The insight here is that great improvisers think about this intuitively. A player like Chris Potter will spend time on just two-note phrases — going up, going down — and those tiny directional decisions create coherence and momentum. The approach was taught through a mix of influences including Jamie Glazer, Hal Crook, Jerry Bergonzi, and Joel Pernell, who made clear the importance of thinking about shape before thinking about notes.
Just play this scale and hear if you want to go up or down. That's it. You just be in this scale and focus on your contour.
Starting with two-note contours
The practical starting point is two-note phrases. Pick a starting note. Then decide: do you want to go up, stay the same, or go down? Play just those two notes, then leave space, then do it again. Do this for 15 minutes over a backing track. You will discover that even this simple constraint produces more purposeful, musical-sounding phrases than open-ended noodling. Listen to Chris Potter playing "Lingus" with Snarky Puppy — he builds entire sections of a solo around two-note ascending and descending clusters, because he is thinking about contour.
Building three-note and longer shapes
Once you are comfortable with two-note contours, move to three notes. Now each note has a direction: up, down, or the same. A contour of up-down gives you a peak; down-up gives you a valley. Replicate that shape over and over, and the solo starts to have an architectural logic to it. From there, you can work with longer shapes — think of the contour as a graph or a skyline, and play the shape. Hal Crook approaches it this way: draw a shape, then play it. Jerry Bergonzi and Joel Pernell are more intuitive — just hear up or down in real time and commit to it.
Practical ways to practise contours
There are several creative methods for feeding yourself contour ideas. Listen to a solo and transcribe only the contour — not the notes, just the ups and downs — then play that contour yourself using your own note choices. Look at the silhouette of the room around you and play that shape. Use a deck of cards: if the next card is higher than the previous one, go up; if lower, go down. The diagram below shows a set of contour shapes to work through systematically.
Here is the solo referenced in the video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cx9NaCk_e1I
Taking it further
Contour thinking applies at every level of experience. As your hearing develops, you will find yourself making contour decisions faster and more instinctively — but the conscious practice of it accelerates that process enormously. Try transcribing the contour of solos by players known for strong phrasing shapes, and then apply what you find to your own playing.
Your homework
Spend at least one hour this week on two-note contour practice over a backing track. Set a specific contour for each 15-minute block — ascending only, then descending only, then alternating ascending and descending — and stick to it. The goal is not to play interesting notes; it is to play interesting shapes. Let the direction lead, and let the note choices follow.