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Ok, this one's rougher than Nobody Else But Me. But you guys made me feel really good about that one, so I thought I'd share this as well. I filmed it on the same day. I had just started working on both of these tunes. I think I got a little thrown off more on this one than NEBM. I didn't let myself have the chart in front of me. I was trying to use my ears and go for it to see if I could get through.
Anyways... enough excuses.
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01-24-2016 09:24 PM
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It's refreshing to hear solo guitar playing time throughout without having some rubato section drag on. It seems whenever I hear solo guitar, someone always tries to pull some rubato thing even if it's not appropriate. Another thing I should work on, balancing in time with rubato when playing solo.
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Just caught this one Jordan. Great stuff.........also checking out your Body and Soul. Looks like you are using a lot of dyads in that one? Any particular organization to those, or are they internalized and you are going by ear?
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Cool playing, great time feel, and no hokey walking bass or thumb slapping to keep it. Love it.
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that last thing reminds me of how that guy paul castelluzzo from jam of the week comps, but man he is so groovy.
Originally Posted by mr. beaumont
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Yeah... rubato can be cool when used effectively. But I try not to overdo it. Which isn't always easy. Maybe a quick intro, maybe. Usually I'll go to rubato at the end for some type of cadenza. I feel like that works pretty well. Helps wind the tune down and gives listeners a heads up that the end is near. Originally Posted by nick1994
Thanks SR. The dyads are both internalized and ear. So about a year ago I started studying with a vibraphonist who kind of turned my musical world upside down. He had me approaching things in a very new and different way than I was used to doing. I've talked about it a ton on the forum. I'll link to a post showing an application of it. His ideas are VERY organized. I filmed this, NEBM, and B&S all in the same day a few months after things started to click for me with this new method. Originally Posted by srlank
About 75ish% of my single note lines and chord voicings, and probably 100% of the dyad ideas stem directly from that system. It's all based on triads, and it can create some great sounds that I love messing with. It was a little claustrophobic at 1st, as it requires minimizing down to 4 notes, but once I spent a little time working at it, I actually found it to be unbelievably freeing and it opened a lot of doors. The dyads will change depending on what kind of tonality one wants to create, but it's essentially just taking the 4 notes for that chord and stacking them together every other.
Here's an example of how I might approach an altered dominant chord... specifically a 7b9b5 chord.
Thanks Jeff. I used to do a lot of that type of stuff. I've been wanting to head more towards the Frisell and Hall approach. Letting the melody be the centerpiece, finding the best harmonic voicings and movement to accompany that... and then to play all of it with a strong sense of time. I used to feel like I needed to start with the time and groove, relying on the bass and chords to set that up, and then try to squeeze melody in somehow on top of all of that. I think I just failed at it and finally gave up! Originally Posted by mr. beaumont
hahaha
Melody by necessity. Works better for me. Some guys can pull off that stuff so well, some of us... not so much.
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Thx Jordan. So if you were playing 4 on 6 for example and took the first chord, Gm6. You might play a D triad on top. Then the 4th note....Would you choose the note C because it is part of the melody. Or would you choose another note, based on what sounded best, or?
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I actually like the note E for the 4th note.
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Originally Posted by srlank
Well I probably wouldn't chose the D triad. It definitely works, but it's a heavy, dark, intense sound. I might utilize it when I want to create that heavier more intense vibe. If I did use it, I wouldn't add the C note. The problem with adding the C is that it creates a D7 arpeggio that you're working with. So the goal is to play REALLY inside the quality of a minor chord, but the melodies (and dyads, and anything else you do with this stuff) will make it sound like you're playing a dominant7 chord. It will be theoretically 'correct'... but it loses the clarity that I'm after with this stuff of really accentuating the harmony using the melodic progression.
Interesting enough, the melody is actually just dancing around a G minor triad. Yes, he's using the C note in there also, and a quick neighboring tone (Eb I think? Haven't played this tune in a while... Eb over a G-6??? that's kind of odd). But he goes almost 3 full measures before really laying into anything outside the Gmin triad. Just goes to show how little we really need to make something hip. So I would just use the Gmin triad.
The 4th note would depend on if I wanted to make it a G-6, a G-7, a straight G-, or some other beast. And all can be mixed and matched. But only once each has been explored. If it were a G-6 for real (even though the melody doesn't tell us that with the Eb note), I'd add the E for the 4th note. If it were just about any other type of G- chord, I would probably add the A note. And again, the system does eventually leave room for a 5th, 6th, 7th, and potentially 8th note to be added if we want. For instance, if it were a G-6 chord, you could create a pentatonic scale based on the Gmin triad plus the A and the E.
G-A-Bb-D-E
An interesting sound. When you start developing pentatonics this way around a triad, you end up with the stable triad plus 2 tension notes. The movement you can create there is sooooo great. You can almost treat it like the Barry Harris type of thing except instead of 6 chords and diminished chords, you get a triad and a tension dyad. Great for comping. Or maybe arpeggiate through the triad then run chromatically up or down to the closest dyad note, jump to the other dyad note than run chromatically in any direction back into the triad. I mean... that's the thing with getting away from scales and minimizing down in this way, it opens the door to base all of our lines on the sweetest sounding notes and to move around with an incredible amount of freedom, but without ever sounding disconnected from the harmony and melody.
But honestly, I haven't even scratched the surface yet with pentatonics. I find it really powerful and enjoyable to minimize my options and learn to find those 4 sweet spot notes. Really helps me become more aware of how all of my notes affect the sound and the movement of the melody and to be really specific with my lines. I figure in a few years, once I've seriously owned the 4 note groupings and can play over any chord type I want with them, and can play through a bunch of tunes with them... then I'll spend the next few years after that developing the pentatonic approach. And then maybe the hextatonic. Etc.
Hope that makes sense and answers your question. The 4th note question is probably the trickiest to answer. There is a method to the madness, but it's also sort of an art. You have to learn to see things like the C note turning the D triad into a 7 chord. Those types of relationships are problems that we want to avoid in this way of approaching things. It actually becomes pretty quick and easy and intuitive once you get the hang of it. But it's not based on the notes in the melody... though it often does correlate with them. It comes from the harmony itself. The triad we use is based on what the melody is telling us. The tension note comes from the harmony and acts not only as a tension note against the triad, but in some ways as the glue that holds the triad inside the chord. Especially when we start using upper structure triads... like the D.
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Fantastic playing, Jordan... I really, really dig these videos.
I quite like that style of weaving little chord fragment punctuations into single lines. I'd love to work on it, but of course that would require actual awareness of what I'm playing over as opposed to aimless noodling. So it's all yours.
(And not to drag this playing-focused thread into the muck and mire, but I also love that guitar! Nicely done, dude.)
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"The triad we use is based on what the melody is telling us. The tension note comes from the harmony and acts not only as a tension note against the triad, but in some ways as the glue that holds the triad inside the chord. Especially when we start using upper structure triads... like the D."
Okay, thx. I think I might have had this backwards. Also, the chord I think is actually Gm7, not Gm6.
So in this case, would the 4th note work pretty well with an A?
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Thanks so much Jehu. I appreciate you taking the time to check them out and comment. Originally Posted by Jehu
Fantastic playing, Jordan... I really, really dig these videos.
I quite like that style of weaving little chord fragment punctuations into single lines. I'd love to work on it, but of course that would require actual awareness of what I'm playing over as opposed to aimless noodling. So it's all yours.
(And not to drag this playing-focused thread into the muck and mire, but I also love that guitar! Nicely done, dude.)
The guitar is a bit of a tender nerve for me at the moment. She's my sweet girl... and she's not doing so well at the moment. When winter hit we kept having crazy temperature changes hot cold hot cold. The neck started reacting. Terrible fret buzz. To the point that some notes were basically just dead. I did several big truss rod adjustments, but with no luck. She's been in her case for a few weeks now. I'm thinking of waiting another month or 2 and then taking her to someone to take a look. I'm nervous if I get her fixed now that when the weather starts changing again, she'll start to move again.
:/
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Ah ok. Yeah I thought I remembered it being a -7 but it's been so long I didn't want to assume. In that case, yeah, I would start with a Gmin triad + A. Again, I might branch out. There are other options for min7 chords. But the melody is very clearly based on the root triad. So that would be where I start. I prefer to give priority to whatever the composer was hearing when they wrote it... which manifests in the melody. Originally Posted by srlank
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Thx for being generous with your knowledge. I've been slowly getting some of these dyads together. It's a great way to find new pathways, as well generate these sounds.
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Word. Well please share what you find if you dig it. Maybe a quick video? Or some tab? Might make for a cool thread??
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Yeah, definitely will keep that in mind. Btw, these chords also match-up with Summertime, except maybe Summertime would use a Gm6. So then the 4th note I guess could be an E natural for the the first chord.
Last edited by srlank; 01-25-2016 at 03:18 AM.
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Ah man, sorry to hear that. Friggin' wood. Definitely good to take a cautious approach until things start to stabilise and then see a pro. It's likely solvable, but I hope it's not an expensive problem. Originally Posted by jordanklemons
Anyway, I don't mean to derail... but I hope for the best.
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Originally Posted by jordanklemons
Thanks Jeff. I used to do a lot of that type of stuff. I've been wanting to head more towards the Frisell and Hall approach. Letting the melody be the centerpiece, finding the best harmonic voicings and movement to accompany that... and then to play all of it with a strong sense of time. I used to feel like I needed to start with the time and groove, relying on the bass and chords to set that up, and then try to squeeze melody in somehow on top of all of that. I think I just failed at it and finally gave up! hahaha
Melody by necessity. Works better for me. Some guys can pull off that stuff so well, some of us... not so much.
Yeah, and I should be less harsh--walking bass and self accompanyment can sound very cool, too. It's when they overtake the melody as a point of interest...it sounds very contrived to me.
Anyway, I dig this style you're exploring, post more.
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Agreed. I think it takes a lot of virtuosity to really pull off that style of solo guitar. I think I always wanted to play that way just to prove to myself I could... but I think musically I always felt out of place even when I was pulling it off. Originally Posted by mr. beaumont
But I think deep down I've always been a closet Melo(dy)sexual. Just took me a while to realize it, and a little while longer to come out. Thanks again Jeff.
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