The Jazz Guitar Chord Dictionary
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  1. #26

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    Quote Originally Posted by princeplanet
    Stop! Before you dive into years of scale practice, you absolutely must be sure about what they will achieve. If you want to sound remotely "Jazzy", then please understand that scales will not do that. Not without several more years of learning to modify those scales.
    .
    Great post.

    I'm guessing that a pianist who wants C Ionian is thinking "all white keys", not C D E F G A B C.

    That is, the pianist is thinking about those notes, but not in any particular order.

    And while I'm on the subject, I've never understood so-called "bebop scales", where an extra note is inserted into a 7 note scale. I've read that that's because you need the extra note so that you land on chord tones on all the downbeats. But, does anybody actually improvise by running a scale that way?

    I think it would be more effective to think of scales as unordered pools of notes and practice them by soloing against backing tracks, while thinking mainly of melody. Then try to extend the harmonic content of the melodies by adding tensions.

    I think the reason guitarists tend not to do it this way is because many of us tend to think in geometric patterns. I think it's hard to internalize a scale as an unordered note pool if you're pattern based. Not impossible -- many have done it. Just hard.

    How do horn players do it?

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  3. #27

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    Quote Originally Posted by henryrobinett
    Yeah, well kind of. I think you HAVE TO inundate yourself in scales and scale indoctrination. You can and SHOULD step away and do patterns, but you HAVE to know your fretboard as a piece. The best way of understanding all the nooks and crannies of the fretboard is scale study. But they won't give you the musical language. They're the canvas you paint the language on. In my opinion, you have to know it down cold.


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    I agree. Over in the Howard Roberts tune-based study group, we are working through tunes in different keys 6 days a week for 20 weeks. It didn't take very long at all for this approach to reveal massive gaps in my fretboard knowledge.

    I'm not going to say scales are more or less important than, say, arpeggios, because it's all important. Even if your focus is on chord-tone and embellishments, you have to know which diatonic scale you're pulling your approaches from. And you have to have it down cold, especially if you want or need to play tunes in more than one key. I am nowhere this level of fretboard mastery, but I keep on chipping away.

  4. #28

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    Quote Originally Posted by rpjazzguitar

    How do horn players do it?

  5. #29

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    Quote Originally Posted by wzpgsr

    I'm not going to say scales are more or less important than, say, arpeggios, because it's all important. Even if your focus is on chord-tone and embellishments, you have to know which diatonic scale you're pulling your approaches from. And you have to have it down cold, especially if you want or need to play tunes in more than one key. I am nowhere this level of fretboard mastery, but I keep on chipping away.
    Yes. To me they're all the same. My arpeggios derive directly from the scale patterns. Like piano. They're all one in the same thing.

  6. #30
    Sheesh. Always this conversation.

    "Scales as the answer" is a very REAL problem with guitarists. I'm not going to deny that, but honestly, it's no MORE of a problem than the "scales as the problem" argument.

    Sure. Maybe keyboardists and horn players don't talk so much about "learning your scales" when they start jazz study, but that's because they've known them since EIGHTH GRADE! Guitarists are the only ones who don't have this basic stuff together, and if anyone is telling you you don't need to know scales, you can bet your money that they're a guitarist . Scales aren't THE answer, but they're an important part of basic musicianship on every OTHER instrument. Period.
    Last edited by matt.guitarteacher; 08-05-2017 at 05:54 PM.

  7. #31

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    Well you certainly need to practice the jazz language and jazz patterns, like Clifford Brown demonstrated.

    But

    Every serious, trained, western, master musician practiced scales at some point. Self taught? Well maybe not.


    So what is it with developing jazz guitar players and the question of scales anyway?

    It would seem that the problem with such players is that they either believe:

    A. there is a magic musical answer in scales,
    or
    B. because scales are not the music itself, they have no value whatsoever


    IMO, there are many practical reasons to master scales. Here is but one of them:

    You may not frequently encounter single direction 8-note scale passages when you listen to jazz solos, but you will encounter some. And you will encounter many 4-note scale fragments.

    So, if you are a developing musician (not a master be-bop practitioner like Clifford Brown) and you need to be able to rip off effortless 4-note scale patterns at will from any scale/mode, from any tone, at any pitch level, and from any location on the instrument, how would you devise a common sense, efficient and effective practice routine to ensure that you are able to do that?

    Would you devise a massive number of 4-note scale pattern practice routines, or perhaps would you practice scales/modes in 1 and 2 octaves, plus some type of full-range/3-octave pattern? Remember, life is short, time is at a premium.

    The same question goes for arpeggios. Will you only practice 1-octave forms?
    Last edited by Jazzstdnt; 08-05-2017 at 09:45 PM.

  8. #32

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    Of course learn and memorise them, all of them in every position. Just don't keep practicing them! I used to think practicing all my scales and arps at warp speed would make me a better musician somehow.

    I wish someone had told me to practice devices instead...

  9. #33

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    Alright.

    You guys have me rummaging through my old Jody Fisher books so I can find his two octave scales patterns.

    I learn the major scale in two positions vertically, then I would play the two-octave horizontal pattern to shift back and forth between the two.

    I wish I had stuck with it, but you know something, 7 years later they are still in my head my strongly.