Pat Martino's Parental Forms?

[Shadow of the Sun]

Hey, folks, it's me again, with my annoying questions about chords.

Today, I'm asking: has anyone here seen, or utilized Pat Martino's 'parental forms' method for learning the fretboard and chords? I'm just curious; I like looking at all the various ways people learned their craft, because it's all interesting.

If you haven't seen his idea about this, you can get the brunt of it here: Master Class

I find the concept very interesting; it looks interesting and if you used all the various forms he gave you you'd have a veritable monster of a chord vocabulary. Oh, and his stuff about voice leading is really interesting too; it seems really cool.

So, I'm just wondering- has anyone used this? If so, did they like it, and how did they use it? If they used it and didn't like it, why not? And so on, the basic questions.

[JohnW400]

Most teachers go the opposite way. Starting on Maj7 as the parent and working their way down to diminshed. His is a novel approach and probably helpful to those that aren't that familiar with the entire fretboard.

One other thing is that it sort of deals with symmetrical scale theory (diminshed or whole tone) which comes in handy later on.

There's nothing wrong with it. It's just a way to learn chords as oppesed to sitting down with one of those 10,000 + chord books and memorizing them.

One thing to do to help you remember them is to apply them to patterns such as ii-V-I, iii-vi-ii-V-I. But rather than move all over the neck, restrict yourself to playing all the chords in a limited number of frets.

For example, starting closest to the nut, and in C, play ii V I.

It would be Dmi7/A (or Dmi7/F) to G7 to Cma7/G (on strings 6432). Then you move up to the next inverion of the ii and so on. Of course doing this in all keys is a must.

[derek]

Like John suggests, I learned based on major chords so Pat's method, while having merit, is backward from what I have learned and teach. I do understand the basic concept though. It is pretty guitarcentric though.

[Goofsus4]

Interesting. I looked this stuff over a couple of years ago and it made no sense to me. It reminded me of the guitar grimoire or something - looked way too geeky. Now I see what he's doing. That's the irony. His system could have helped me to organize the fretboard, but I couldn't understand the system until I organized the fretboard so now it's not so much help to me.

I do use that moveable dim7 shape thing all the time, though - the one you can just move up every three frets and it's the same chord. That is totally sweet. A tutorial on gypsy jazz hipped me to that, and I've seen others on this forum talk about it.

Too much to learn! Maybe I'll study this a bit more. It might be easy to pick up now that understand the concepts he's relating better.

[Shadow of the Sun]

I suppose it's like a zen kind of thing- you spend ages looking at it in futility until you 'get it'.

I'm supposing that to get the maj7 chords you take the augmented shape, drop one of the notes, and then add the seventh? Same with the minor seventh- start with the augmented triad, modify it to the minor triad, and add the seventh.

It's a very interesting system.

[JohnW400]

Actually .....

You start with the diminshed form and:

Raise the 7th a 1/2 step to get mi7b5 then
Raise the 5th a 1/2 to get the minor 7th followed by
Raise the third a 1/2 to get to Dominant 7th and finally,
Raise the 7th a 1/2 to get to Ma7

[Shadow of the Sun]

Heh; that's pretty complicated, more complicated than I'd have expected, to be honest. Oh well; it's still useful!

And STILL easier than learning a bunch of chord forms.

[voelker]

This is my favorite thing to study. So I’ve combined a few things I’ve already posted about this concept into a crash coarse on symmetrical theory.

One octave can be symmetrically divided 5 different ways.

Half-steps = 12 notes = chromatic scale
Whole-steps = 6 notes = wholetone scale
Minor 3rds = 4 notes = dim7
Major 3rds = 3 notes = aug (part of wholetone scale)
Tritones = 2 notes = (1,b5) or (3,b7) or (b3,bb7) etc. (part of Dim7)

It’s all about reference points.

Traditional theory is based on the piano. By using the same fingering on the seven white keys; a piano player can get 7 different triads (3 major, 3 minor, 1 dim) and they know how to alter each of these by moving a half-step up or down to a black key. Could you imagine playing a piano with all white keys? You’d be lost. But that’s kind of what playing guitar is like. We have some dots for reference but each dot represents 6 strings/notes. We end up using the dots as a fret number, not as a note name like the black keys of a piano.

The blessing/curse of the guitar; you can learn a lot from shapes before you know anything about the theory behind it.

Ultimately the dim7 and aug chords are the white keys on the guitar and you learn how to alter them by a half-step (black keys) to find different chords.

So you already know that you can move a diminished chord in minor thirds or an augmented chord in major thirds. Meaning each note in these chords could be the root depending on inversion. But the beauty is in how these chords can lead to or be part of many other chords. (FYI: there are many more applications than the ones I mention below.)

(ex.) Caug=Eaug=G#aug
--This augmented chord is the upper structure of 3 different minor/Major7 chords: (FmM7, AmM7, DbmM7) and 3 different susb9 chords: (Bsusb9, Ebsusb9, Gsusb9)
--Slide any note down a half-step to get 3 different major triads or the upper structure of 3 different m7 chords or maj9 chords
--Slide any note up a half-step to get 3 different minor triads or the upper structure of 3 different maj7 chords or m9 chords

(ex.) Bdim7=Ddim7=Fdim7=Abdim7
--This diminished 7 chord is the upper structure of 4 different dom7b9 chords: (Bb7b9, Db7b9, E7b9, G7b9)
--Slide any note down a half-step to get 4 different dom7 chords or the upper structure of 4 different dom7b5b9 chords (aka tritone sub).
--Slide any note up a half-step to get 4 different m7b5 chords or the upper structure of 4 different dom9 chords or dom7#5b9 chords
--Sliding two notes up or down a half-step gives you a bunch of different dom9#5, dom7b5, m7, major6, and sus chords.

So by utilizing these 2 basic structures you are able to find tons of other chords without moving too much, not to mention all the cool passing notes you'll find. Nice work if you can get it. Hope this all makes sense. I suggest making some web diagrams. (Ex.) write (B D F Ab) in the middle of a piece of paper, put one shifted note above or below the original chord tone, draw a line into open space on the paper, and write down the chords it creates. Do this for each chord tone. Good luck

[Shadow of the Sun]

Tausend dank, my friend! You have done me a great service.

I think I've got the web diagram idea down, but there is one thing that seems difficult; what if I want to raise two notes, or raise one and lower another? That seems rather difficult to link to a specific chord (on paper, that is).

Also, I suppose that another way to 'get' this would be to take the basic diminished forms or arpeggios, run them all the way across the fretboard, and then modify them to get the chords your looking for, correct?

[voelker]

I've drawn diagrams for moving notes in opposite direction, it can be done, but i can't say i've mastered single note movements yet. understanding is different from doing.

run them all the way across the fretboard? do you mean play them or draw diagrams and modify them. i think you get the concept, but the most important thing is to learn how to spell them. these chords all start to look the same and you need to know which note needs to be shifted.

[voelker]

also, although johnw400 is correct in saying

Raise the 7th a 1/2 step to get mi7b5 then
Raise the 5th a 1/2 to get the minor 7th followed by
Raise the third a 1/2 to get to Dominant 7th and finally,
Raise the 7th a 1/2 to get to Ma7

I think john would agree that this concept should not be used as the base of a number system. Like he said earlier; learning this way would be a backward approach. It would take a lot of studying before a beginner was able to play songs if the first chords he learned were dim and aug. You saw how intricate it got when I was just altering one note. The last thing I want to do is think about a new number system were,

Cm7b5 = Cdim #7
Cm7 = Cdim #5,#7
C7 = Cdim #3,#5,#7
Cmaj7 = Cdim #3,#5,##7

This is just more shape shifting. Plus no one would know what I was talking about.

Guitarists can learn tons of inversions by shape and never learn the note names.Pianists have visual/linear reference points that automatically tell them the note names. So the reason this idea is so guitar-centric is because it teaches us to memorize note names in a uniform interval sequence of 3rds or m3rds. It’s more of an in between approach since the most common chords are built using a combination of 3rds and m3rds. Learning how to spell the 4 aug and 3 dim7 chords breaks down the barrier of 100 chord symbols and a million shapes and allows you to see how chord tones and intervals overlap. With 12 chords you’re never more than a half-step away from a resolving note. But you gotta be a good speller.

[JohnW400]

I think Pat's method is ok , but I think it's something you discover after the fact. It's probably more suited to players with a limited knowledge of basic jazz concepts but don't quite have the inversions down yet

Most people start with the major scale system. No diminished chord there. You don't see the diminshed 7 until you get to the harmonic minor. And once you get to the symmetrical scales , well, there are better harmonic things to learn other than the dim7 chord.

Still Pat Martinos method is an interesting read and there are concepts that he presents that are relevant

[C.A.JO.]

I use this system with chords.

When I learned it, I was shown dominant 7th, minor 7th, and major 7th chords in 12 position derived from altering diminished chords. Then I used it to learn many, many, many voicings for these chords in all keys. Then I learned ii-V-I's in all keys in many, many positions.

I find the system very logic. There are so many chords in this and very interesting sounds, too. A great way to study chords rather than memorizing a chord dictionary.

The best thing about this system is the study of it itself IMO. When you "get it", a whole new world is open to you. You learn a bunch from analyzing chords shapes, notes, inversions, fingerings up and down the neck. I literally wrote my own book of chords this way.