The Jazz Guitar Chord Dictionary
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  1. #1

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    The vast majority of my playing is classical stuff on a classical guitar. But scales are useful just from the perspective of technique, and have at least incremental value WRT playing jazz (if it comes to that for me - probably will at some point).

    I stopped on the "Segovia Scales" as they seemed to not be so useful in the context of jazz. So I kind of 'built my own" 2 octave CAGED based) scales (five of them). I now have them (mostly as 'root based shapes') under my fingers and was trying to decide what is next. One reasonable next step was to start improvising over those scales, and I realized that adding the Mixolydian and Dorian modes to Ionian would be useful if I went down this informal improvising path.

    So now a question. I can view these as


    1. Just 2 more scale shapes to learn.
    2. Small changes to the Ionian shapes
    3. Same shapes as Ionian but with a different root note (play the C Ionian scales starting on D and you have D Dorian)


    I guess if/when you know these well they become the same thing. But as a place to start ????

    Thanks.

    dave

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  3. #2

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    #3 is the really sensible one, from my perspective; it's what Bill Leavitt taught me. In fact, I would highly recommend Leavitt's books, from Modern Method for Guitar to the Rhythmic Studies and his Sight-reading and Classical studies books. If you're happy with your 5 major-scale "shapes", you'll be amazed at what Leavitt turns them into. As far as modes go, they are only scales starting on all the different degrees.

  4. #3

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    Actually I've been going back to Segovia scales in my practice after years... decades of the various common scale approaches. Adam Rogers tutorial got me back to Segovia awhile back and see the value in both improv up and down the neck versus across, and more even timbre of the notes.

    Another interesting thing about Adam Rogers I've discovered he's the guy the big name guitarist will go to for a lesson once in awhile. I the past month or so I've heard in interview or talks three big name player say they went to Adam for a lesson. So if Adam is into Segovia scale then I wouldn't completely toss them out.

  5. #4

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    Quote Originally Posted by DaveLeeNC
    I stopped on the "Segovia Scales" as they seemed to not be so useful in the context of jazz.
    Segovia scales are GREAT for improvisational jazz, I dare say if they're learned for melodic fluidity and not as a rote reading exercise, they can be just as useful or even more so than learning just a CAGED system.
    But that depends on where you're coming from, for a lot of people, you included I guess, they might be useless.
    Segovia's scales showed me how to think of a scale melodically, the shifts being crucial to gaining proficiency in the seamless position shift. This one aspect alone is very underemphasized in jazz pedagogy, and it leads to phrasing being very linear but not incorporating shifts in position and phrasing mid-line. For me at least, a position shift will be like a page turning: many melodic possibilities are inherent in the strengths of any particular position. THe Segovia scales assure so many ways to shift to new "zones" within the strengths of the line and after assimilated, very fluidly.
    But each person's take is different. Best of luck with the course you follow.

    David

  6. #5

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    Quote Originally Posted by docbop
    Actually I've been going back to Segovia scales in my practice after years... decades of the various common scale approaches. Adam Rogers tutorial got me back to Segovia awhile back and see the value in both improv up and down the neck versus across, and more even timbre of the notes.

    Another interesting thing about Adam Rogers I've discovered he's the guy the big name guitarist will go to for a lesson once in awhile. I the past month or so I've heard in interview or talks three big name player say they went to Adam for a lesson. So if Adam is into Segovia scale then I wouldn't completely toss them out.
    I was working in Philly a while back, teaching at a classical guitar store there. One of the joys of that job is listening to customers as they'd come through; that tiny place was a sort of Mecca for classical players.
    I'd just finished a lesson and I came downstairs for a break. As I descended the tiny staircase I heard a most amazing player, playing classical etudes with a facility rarely heard. Then there was something he began playing, not a piece I'd ever heard, modern, mind bogglingly complex and an impromptu vibe to it. I was speechless. I HAD to know who this was.
    Well of course it was Adam. I'd never known how good he was on classical but he applies every ounce of his discipline and control he uses in jazz to his classical playing and his improvisations are a revelation.
    He was with Chris Potter that night down the street. Always a joy to see mastery on the guitar.

    David

  7. #6

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    #3.

    The same applies to Melodic and Harmonic Minor, and their modes. Play all 7 modes of each diatonic scale. Some of the fingerings may vary a little bit when playing different modes, depending on your fingering system and fingering preferences. (CAGED vs. other)

    You should know how to play all scales and modes in both 1 and 2 octaves.

    Generally speaking, you should be able to play at least:
    • seven (7) one-octave fingerings for every scale/mode (2 fingerings each from strings 6,5,4 and 1 fingering from string 3)
    • three (3) two-octave fingerings for every scale or mode (2 fingerings from string 6, and 1 fingering from string 5 - which requires a position shift)


    I don't put much stock in 3-octave fingerings, but it wouldn't hurt to learn them for the most common scales/modes.

  8. #7

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    You are on the right track looking at things in terms of mental organization. When actually playing and improvising, a good deal of your playing will not be so much in terms of particular scales, but more in the relationships between scales - because a lot of the focus is not so much on the chord of the moment but the changes from one chord to another.

    You can think of what you play as not scales over chords but more like phrases over chord changes where a phrase might be composed of something like four notes from a scale followed by four notes of another scale, for example. This is not necessarily a correspondence between the two chords of the change and the two scales of the phrase. Some scales have substitutions; for example you might be in a common place where a bVI9 - V#9 - i7 is the change.

    You might play something from Lydian Dominant rooted on the bVI9, then LD rooted on the bII for the V#9.
    Or, for the bVI9 play diminished HW rooted from the bV, switching to augmented rooted on the V#9.
    Or, play four notes from bVI9 including its b5 followed by four notes of bVI13/7, then slipping to LD or aug for the V#9.

    Or many other possibilities - the idea being to avoid any sense of lock down in the relationship between scales and chords; you don't want to be limited in knowing just one scale for a chord. Depending on the chord's role in the tune, some ideas will sound better than others and you want your vocabulary to be freely comprised of options, not single known good sounding answers, especially "book answers", which tend to sound like it.

    From a mental organization perspective, this means learning to hear how these options will sound in context and becoming familiar with which ones enhance the functional path through the progression. For example, there are lots of pairs that make nice "two scale phrases", but the order of the two scales in the phrase makes a big difference in how they relate to various progressions. If you know the sound of the two, then when one of them seems right in a situation you can test with your mental ear if the other might sound good too, or if it would sound best coming first or second.

    I don't really like any of the three numbered approaches to scales you asked about, because you rarely play more than a couple of notes from a scale before moving on... (same thing with chords). Switching scales conceptually may still play some or all of the previous notes, but with respect to the tune's progression and function changes I think one needs to keep up with "the way the song goes" and not just which notes are fingered... so, a more conceptual than mechanical approach to the tune.

    When these things accumulate, you may have half a dozen phrase ideas all contending in your mind's ear as candidates to be selected and ordered and turned into expressed music... in that moment... so you do need some kind of mental organization to avoid congestion. Conception of music takes different forms so some people name everything and apply simple verbal rules, others think in terms of shapes and patterns of fingerings, some are bound to the lead sheets. I play by ear, name nothing, and just hear it. To my mind, named chords and scales carry a lot of musically prejudicial baggage (hard to explain), whereas the sounds themselves reveal their qualities and potentials naturally.

  9. #8
    Quote Originally Posted by DaveLeeNC
    I guess if/when you know these well they become the same thing. But as a place to start ????
    Yeah, most musicians of all instruments start with #3, but if you eventually want to be able to relate in the other ways you're talking about, you might have to go at it differently.

    Guitar is very difficult to relate to conceptually from CAGED this way because the patterns are referenced in different ways in terms of fingers, especially so because of the shifts. If you want the long term goal of being able to PHYSICALLY relate mixo to Ionian like you would with 5-finger patterns on piano, you first have to take out shifts. That's what William Leavitt does. His starting 5 positions allow for mixo and Ionian to start from the same finger and basically just alter the changed scale degree.

    If you want the same thing between mixo and Dorian and the other modes, you have to use a couple of extra positions. The following, from a forum member - Reg, utilizes one scale fingering per scale degree beginning of the second finger, and results in scale fingering being mostly uniform. Very easy to quickly see scales as variations of each other like a piano etc. See PDF in this post:
    Quote Originally Posted by Reg
    Put these basics into a practice routine....
    The way that these relate to arpeggios is compelling as well. See PDF in this post:
    Quote Originally Posted by Reg
    here are some basics
    I've been plugging away at this and its melodic/harmonic counterparts for about a year and a half and found it immensely helpful in understanding the fretboard. Once you relate this way, things like melodic and harmonic minor are exponentially easier to develop, because they relate PHYSICALLY in terms of what what they are MUSICALLY: a very basic variation of major.

    EDIT: sorry. Trouble with posting links from mobile today...
    Last edited by matt.guitarteacher; 01-13-2018 at 10:06 AM.

  10. #9

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    Quote Originally Posted by matt.guitarteacher
    Yeah, most musicians of all instruments start with #3, but if you eventually want to be able to relate in the other ways you're talking about, you might have to go at it differently.

    Guitar is very difficult to relate to conceptually from CAGED this way because the patterns are referenced in different ways in terms of fingers, especially so because of the shifts. If you want the long term goal of being able to PHYSICALLY relate mixo to Ionian like you would with 5-finger patterns on piano, you first have to take out shifts. That's what William Leavitt does. His starting 5 positions allow for mixo and Ionian to start from the same finger and basically just alter the changed scale degree.

    If you want the same thing between mixo and Dorian and the other modes, you have to use a couple of extra positions. The following, from a forum member - Reg, utilizes one scale fingering per scale degree beginning of the second finger, and results in scale fingering being mostly uniform. Very easy to quickly see scales as variations of each other like a piano etc. See PDF in this post:

    The way that these relate to arpeggios is compelling as well. See PDF in this post:


    I've been plugging away at this and its melodic/harmonic counterparts for about a year and a half and found it immensely helpful in understanding the fretboard. Once you relate this way, things like melodic and harmonic minor are exponentially easier to develop, because they relate PHYSICALLY in terms of what what they are MUSICALLY: a very basic variation of major.

    EDIT: sorry. Trouble with posting links from mobile today...
    The Leavitt stretch fingerings present a friendlier "minds eye" map in some cases, no doubt.

    Beyond that however, is the implied supposition that stretch fingerings are as effective as non-stretch fingerings.

    That's far from established. Many great players, both improvisers and non-improvisers did not/do not use them.

  11. #10
    Quote Originally Posted by Jazzstdnt
    Beyond that however, is the implied supposition that stretch fingerings are as effective as non-stretch fingerings.

    That's far from established. Many great players, both improvisers and non-improvisers did not/do not use them.
    How is that supposition implied, and who implied it? It should be obvious to anyone that you trade one thing for another. Maybe I should more readily assume that everyone is an idiot? Sorry.

  12. #11

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    For OP- to each their own. Just wanted to say that it is very possible to learn to switch to proper scale only by ear without having to rely on shape/position. For example, you have your finger on the 1. scale degree at some point. The chord changes, the key changes - now that 1. becomes 5. ... and the fingers just know what to do next. It's completely possible to learn that way and the "organization" problem is not.. it's a pseudo-problem. That case, the more scales&fingerings you have been practiced, the better.

  13. #12

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    Quote Originally Posted by emanresu
    For OP- to each their own. Just wanted to say that it is very possible to learn to switch to proper scale only by ear without having to rely on shape/position. For example, you have your finger on the 1. scale degree at some point. The chord changes, the key changes - now that 1. becomes 5. ... and the fingers just know what to do next. It's completely possible to learn that way and the "organization" problem is not.. it's a pseudo-problem. That case, the more scales&fingerings you have been practiced, the better.
    That's why you hear about Ted Dunbar and others started students first learning a scale on one string. You learn the sound of the scale and the formula it is built with. After that moving the scale to two or more strings is easy. I've said it before one of the best things to happen to me was going back to playing bass after a musical hiatus my teacher started me with learning major scale on one string, then two strings, after two strings had enough down to create any scale fingering I needed on the fly. I find learning little pieces of the guitar (like an octave or less) helps you see more of the big picture of the guitar neck.

  14. #13

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    Mine is a minority view.

    Learn the entire fingerboard well enough that you don't have to think about what note is where.

    Then, find all the notes in Cmajor. It should be automatic. Then, learn that those are the same notes as D dorian, E phrygian etc. You don't need a fingering. You just need to know which notes and where they are.

    Similarly, learn the chord tones in the chords you use.

    After you're finished with Cmajor, do it for 11 other major keys and, after that, for melodic minor, and whatever other scales you want.

    Then you'll have to learn how to apply them in tunes, like playing Clydian against Cmaj7 or Abmelmin against G7 etc.

    It's a lot of work. But, at the end, you'll be able to play anything starting on any finger any fret. No "root bound" patterns. And it will help with voice leading in comping.

    You'll always know your chord tones and it will be easy to find the extensions.

    The negative is that you won't have well practiced patterns for when you need to play fast.

  15. #14
    Quote Originally Posted by rpjazzguitar
    The negative is that you won't have well practiced patterns for when you need to play fast.
    BS. Go to the piano forums and tell them "fingerings don't matter", or that they are only for people that want to play fast without thought. Only guitarists spew this kind of stuff.

    This kind of black-and-white, binary argument is the bane of discussion of anything on these of forums. One doesn't have to be false for the other to be true.Guitarists can be at times over focused on dots on grids etc. That doesn't make them bad in and of themselves. Anything works in balance. At least that's a discussion that we could have.

    But guitarists put forward so many flat Earth mindsets like "no theory", "no scales" Etc. etc. I think if we want to get past the prejudices of our own guitar hysteria and navelgazing, it would be helpful to ask what instrumentalists other than guitarists do? What do they think is important? Is it worth looking at those things as guitarists as well?

    Horn players, keyboardists and percussionists of all types learn basic rudiments cold. Period . they don't sit around self obsessing about whether that's "the only thing that's important". I think they would think it's silly to not understand basic balance in studying anything. Technical and performance pursuits are largely separated in all manner of music study, sports and almost any other discipline.

  16. #15

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    No scales is okay if you have triads

    3 fingers is okay if you're Bernstein or Wes

    2 is okay if you're Django

    If you're yourself, find out yourself.

    I practiced harmonic major last time I practiced scales. What should I do with it?

  17. #16

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    Guys!.. don't you see there is an obvious reason behind all this? The reason why guitarists are so black and white about the scales thing is because the instrument is not tuned like a real musician's instrument!
    Tune the guitar in its most basic state and you'll see the light shine before you!!! Instead of E A D G B E tune it in E E E E E E, you'll be thinking like a piano/horn player in no time.

    P.S. This is a half joke

  18. #17

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    Quote Originally Posted by jazznylon
    Guys!.. don't you see there is an obvious reason behind all this? The reason why guitarists are so black and white about the scales thing is because the instrument is not tuned like a real musician's instrument!
    Tune the guitar in its most basic state and you'll see the light shine before you!!! Instead of E A D G B E tune it in E E E E E E, you'll be thinking like a piano/horn player in no time.

    P.S. This is a half joke
    Brain can handle standard tuning just fine. It just needs a bit of motivation. Inspiration rather.

  19. #18

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    Quote Originally Posted by emanresu
    Brain can handle standard tuning just fine. It just needs a bit of motivation. Inspiration rather.
    I guess. But unfortunatly for me I don't have a brain. So E E E E E E is the way to go. Gotta love those crunchy minor seconds...

  20. #19

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    Quote Originally Posted by yaclaus
    No scales is okay if you have triads

    3 fingers is okay if you're Bernstein or Wes

    2 is okay if you're Django

    If you're yourself, find out yourself.

    I practiced harmonic major last time I practiced scales. What should I do with it?

    play patterns from its fifth and seventh degrees i guess...

  21. #20

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    Quote Originally Posted by matt.guitarteacher
    BS. Go to the piano forums and tell them "fingerings don't matter", or that they are only for people that want to play fast without thought. Only guitarists spew this kind of stuff.

    This kind of black-and-white, binary argument is the bane of discussion of anything on these of forums. One doesn't have to be false for the other to be true.Guitarists can be at times over focused on dots on grids etc. That doesn't make them bad in and of themselves. Anything works in balance. At least that's a discussion that we could have.

    But guitarists put forward so many flat Earth mindsets like "no theory", "no scales" Etc. etc. I think if we want to get past the prejudices of our own guitar hysteria and navelgazing, it would be helpful to ask what instrumentalists other than guitarists do? What do they think is important? Is it worth looking at those things as guitarists as well?

    Horn players, keyboardists and percussionists of all types learn basic rudiments cold. Period . they don't sit around self obsessing about whether that's "the only thing that's important". I think they would think it's silly to not understand basic balance in studying anything. Technical and performance pursuits are largely separated in all manner of music study, sports and almost any other discipline.
    I'm not sure what you're labeling as BS. I was describing the way I do it. And, that way has a weakness, which is I don't have many patterns that I can play really fast. I didn't say, and don't think, that patterns are only for those who want to play fast or mindlessly. You can play a pattern at any tempo. And there are players who sound great using patterns. I pointed out a different way to approach it, which is by note name and location.

  22. #21

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    Thanks for all the insightful comments. This was very helpful.

    dave

  23. #22

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    3 is the way I teach it and do it myself and just means extending your fingerings. I teach and have learned 5 scale shapes over the neck where they are purely the lowest and highest notes in position with all of the diatonic notes in between. If you learn just major scales root to root then you will 1) be limiting the amounts of notes you know for each position and 2) not be helping yourself with improv because we don’t often hear phrases that start and end on the root. So by learning 5 pitch collections rather then scales you can extrapolate the modes within the shapes easier and they become much like looking at a piano and just taking out the notes you need vs. having these scales that you have to alter to make other scales and modes. I hope that makes sense - it is easier to show than type an explanation so if it isn’t clear let me know and I can try harder and make a video if needed.


    Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk Pro

  24. #23
    Quote Originally Posted by rio
    3 is the way I teach it and do it myself and just means extending your fingerings. I teach and have learned 5 scale shapes over the neck where they are purely the lowest and highest notes in position with all of the diatonic notes in between. If you learn just major scales root to root then you will 1) be limiting the amounts of notes you know for each position and 2) not be helping yourself with improv because we don’t often hear phrases that start and end on the root. So by learning 5 pitch collections rather then scales you can extrapolate the modes within the shapes easier and they become much like looking at a piano and just taking out the notes you need vs. having these scales that you have to alter to make other scales and modes. I hope that makes sense - it is easier to show than type an explanation so if it isn’t clear let me know and I can try harder and make a video if needed.


    Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk Pro
    Great point. I kind of assumed this as a starting point, but it probably needs to be said anyway. I think of learning each position as a two-octave pattern as step one.

    Then, musical patterns like one-octave scales from given roots etc following.

  25. #24

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    Quote Originally Posted by matt.guitarteacher
    Great point. I kind of assumed this as a starting point, but it probably needs to be said anyway. I think of learning each position as a two-octave pattern as step one.

    Then, musical patterns like one-octave scales from given roots etc following.

    I would do it in the other order one octave first to develop ear, basic theory of how scales are built, and visually see the scale and the degrees within. Starting to two octaves or bigger students start viewing scales as patterns of dots and not the music they are. But that's me.

  26. #25

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    OK..... So, if I had to learn scales again from scratch Arrrrghhh

    I would learn them like this. Instead of concentrating on positions I would learn firstly the octave shapes

    ie.e
    3x5xxx
    x3x5xx
    xx3x6x
    xxx3x6
    6xx3xx
    x6xx4x
    xx6xx4

    And run scales between these notes... For Barry Harris that would 1-7 and back - but for the purpose of this discussion it doesn't matter.

    I would do the same for arpeggios.

    I would then connect them between the octave shapes.

    To truly master scale this way it's best to practice them from different degrees as well... You'd need to make sure that you not only played from 1-1 but also from 2-2 and 3-3 and so on.

    But this is how I think about scales atm and I think it is a flexible approach.