-
Something occurring more often on Wikipedia or other sites isn't proof of anything per se. Proofs aren't required for this kind of conversation honestly.
"Harmonized scales" are going to be found more often , as you say, on Wikipedia etc. that doesn't change the fact that everyone can understand what was meant in the original post where someone talked about "harmonizing scale". Bako's post made a lot of sense in outlining different ways, including the one that you're mostly talking about.
You should know how to create harmonized scales in the traditional sense , and you should also learn to harmonize all scales degrees in similar ways using other harmony , including static chords, chord pairs etc., the way Bako laid out. At the end of the day, it doesn't matter what you collect , but a great many of us learned to harmonize individual chords this way by practicing them in ascending and descending melodic fashion , in actual melodic scales.
The fact that there is no codified, agreed-upon and standard term for this that you can find on Wikipedia , doesn't mean that you can't use the term. In as much as you can harmonize melodies in different ways, you can also harmonize scales in different ways and practice them that way.
Call it "Chordy McChord Face" if you like, but this is ridiculous derail of a good topic into nitpicking semantics .
-
11-09-2019 11:43 AM
-
I didn't draw the distinction because I'm a nitpicker, Matt, I did it because that seemed to be, or was, the OP's confusion.
And, as I keep asking, where has he gone?!!
-
See, the thing is that I think he'll now have a problem. If it was simply a matter of harmonising each melody note in, say, 3rds, according to the scale, he could probably work it out for himself.
But if, as we're saying, it's about applying whatever chord voicings sound good/cool/whatever then he won't really know what to do. But that's the problem that besets all chord melody players. The answer to that, of course, is experience and study, but it takes a long time to master.
-
sigh...you're talking about harmonizing the scale from the bottom
I said that was the traditional way chords are derived and that was the way the OP appeared to be understanding it.
I pointed out that Pearson, although he said he was 'harmonising the scale', wasn't doing that, whether from the top, bottom, or anywhere else. Some of his chords were based on 3rds, like the Fm7. Others, like the 69 voicings, weren't. Hence the OP's confusion.
This conversation is over, really. If you want to go on with it, address yourself to the OP's original question. That would be better. But he may not hear you :-)
-
for me this is the use of the term "harmonized scale"
as stated by most here..the traditional way is stacking 3rds (triads and four note chords) now using a different voicing of the chord (inversion) does not change the term harmonized scale just the way the chords are voiced within the scale..stacked 3rds in this sence are replaced with inversion voicings..
What Jack is doing in not in a "scale" harmonized but changing the voicings of a given chord..Ab triad AbMA7 MA9 11 etc..now if he moved those voicings to the next chord in the scale Bbmi and altered the various voicings of Bbmi Bbmin7 9 11.. then I would begin to see/hear the Ab SCALE being harmonized in a non traditional( stacked 3rds) way..ie CM7 C G B E becomes E B C G and the rest of the scale has the same voicing intervals..thus harmonized..
true some of the fingerings are far more difficult..but the results are a harmonized scale...and at any given point in this you can change voicings from a MA7 and make it a MA9th and use that config for the remaining chords in the scale CMa9 Dmi9 Emi9 etc...which would be the starting point of what I think Jack was doing
-
Ok it’s not a systematised harmonisation, on the other hand it is a harmonisation in the sense of adding harmony to a melody line.
In practice I think most guitarists do what sits easily under the fingers for speed and ease of access rather than something textbook. This is certainly true of Wes, joe pass etc.... even Kurt from what I have transcribed.
Players who spend a lot of time playing advanced voicings tend to have a very developed left hand technique for that.... look at Lage Lund, Ben Monder, Pasquale Grasso. Lots of advanced fingerings and non parallel motion....
OTOH proper jazzers like Kurt, Reiner Baas and Wes grab the neck with their thumb over the top. They tend to use more parallel voicings like the above? Often parallel fifths, sevenths and seconds for modernism?
Just a theory....Last edited by christianm77; 11-10-2019 at 05:02 AM.
-
The example also shows the very guitaristic sounds - basically it’s 4ths and major thirds that are easiest to play in guitar voicings, so most traditional jazz guitar sounds like that. Think Wes, and so on.
To get away from that requires in general, stretches, string skips and/or open strings....
It’s a bit of a problem in some ways. Am I the only one who thinks contemporary classical guitar pieces have a tendency to sound like standard tuning?
It seems some here seem to feel that harmonisation requires similar or parallel motion - for instance the same melody down a third. This is bollocks.... it’s one strategy, but there is this guy, Bach, you might want to check out.
That said I think fretboard solutions are not to be sniffed at, as I already said. Life’s too fucking short haha, and loads of great players just do it and don’t spend time nerding about this or that.
-
Apart from not reading music (he admits to being able to find his way round a chord chart) Pearson has a wrist mobility problem due to an accident. He can't hold six-string bar chords with any strength or for very long so he said he's modified his fingering. So most of the stuff you see him doing is on the top four strings, etc. But most jazz players do that in any case, of course.
Everything else you said is spot on. Good players don't care as long as it sounds okay. No one's interested in sticking to rigid principles. The idea is to make nice music.
The problem, of course, is the beginner who needs some kind of structure in order to grasp how to play things. It must be very confusing when they can't just apply a blanket rule. It's what happens here, someone asks a simple question and gets twenty different answers, all viable...
-
Yeah? Well I’ve got stupid fingers. So there.
Also playing barre chords remains my least favourite thing. Besides, barre chords never sound better than playing fewer notes or adding in some open strings. I rarely use them.
Thumb fretting sounds better if you must play 6 string shapes for some reason.
-
Nice garden, tho.
Originally Posted by christianm77
-
I actually did some weeding and sweeping and wondered what I’ll plant in the spare beds this week. Originally Posted by ragman1
Nice garden, tho.
what is happening to me??????Last edited by christianm77; 11-10-2019 at 05:20 PM.
-
Wow, that’s a lot of commentaries and I would like to thank each and every one of you, for your time and participation.
So...a lot to unpack for me and a lot of good information, for me to somehow understand this little conundrum.
I've got some really good general insight from “christianm77”. Thank you for that.
It’s a really good way to explain, first of all what Mr. Pearson is doing in the video, but also how to approach these things, seen from my perspective.
I don’t naturally bounce around in the world of jazz, but are truly fascinated by the sounds, the harmonics and the texture and would like to drag some of that into my world.
But the trap I seem to fall in again and again, is to learn stuff and forget it again, because I don’t have this natural shelf to put it on.
So what really caught my ear in the video, was the sentence “That opened a lot of doors for me…”. My first thought was “what #%&! doors?” It just gave me some new chords to remember and needed to be able to put in in context somehow.
I of course know chords and how to build them, also to some degree what Mr. Pearson is doing. (I, II, III, IV, V ect.), and I also recognize most of the sounds, the m9, the 6/9ish, the m9 in some inversion, which we who plays rock calls “the one we rarely need”.
So “ragman1” raises a really interesting point. Maybe Mr. Pearson isn’t harmonizing anything, but just plays some different voicings. That sounds absolutely plausible to me and a great way for me to approach it.
He is a very skilled and experienced musician and most likely uses his ears and experience much more than a chord book. So I could do that too. “Listen up, rock band. This is a 6/9 chord and that’s the one I play from now on. Deal with it...”
But “bako” and “tal_175” goes deep. They talk about different chord names relative to each other and parallel harmonization, which gives me even more ways to hopefully find my way to understand this better and even more, what comes after.
My own experience tells me that there are always different ways to approach things and two things easily can be true at the same time. It’s just up to me to find the right way best suited for me, based on how I have approached things in the past and by all these great suggestions provided to me here.
This was my first post in this forum and I’m overwhelmed by the enthusiasm and answers from you mentioned here and just as much from you not mentioned here.
Thank you all again for your help.
Ps. I’ll post this as an answer and hope that you all will see it that way.
Last edited by Schuster7; 11-10-2019 at 04:36 PM.
-
Domestic bliss, dear boy, domestic bliss :-) Originally Posted by christianm77
-
Shuster7 -
Good, I'm glad you're back.
I think that is probably its best use.It just gave me some new chords to remember
That's right. Forget harmonising in the usual sense, he's just moving up the chords Fm7 - (Gm7b5) - AbM69 - Bbm69 - Ab6 inversion.Pearson isn’t harmonizing anything, but just plays some different voicings
As I said before, it's normally done with the scale note in the bass but here the scale notes are on top. I think that was the door that opened for him.
That's true too. He doesn't read music, he's an 'ear' player. In some ways that's probably not a bad way to be, especially if you have a good ear, which I think he has.most likely uses his ears and experience much more than a chord book
Exactly.there are always different ways to approach things and two things easily can be true at the same time
But don't forget in chord melody playing - which is not easy - most chords have the melody on top and are supported by voicings underneath them.
This forum has many lessons which deal with playing chordal melody. There are also study threads which many people find very useful. There are also lots of YouTube video transcriptions of good players which show you the fingerings of their solos.
You searched for | Jazz Guitar Online | Free Jazz Guitar Lessons, Licks, Tips & Tricks.
I can only wish you very good luck!
-
I don't know what all the discourse is here but @ 1:37 or so to 1:38 or so it is Ab 6 dim scale (Barry Harris)...period...end of discussion. Originally Posted by Schuster7
-
In case you insist to the thirds, then make it big: There are augmented and diminished thirds too and there we go. Harmonizing melodic minor where the fun really begins. Originally Posted by ragman1
-
It sounds similar, but it isn’t, he is not playing any diminished chords. Originally Posted by WILSON 1
-
Names are kind of bs
The second chord is clearly Abmaj7/Eb for instance not Fm9 (there is no F) but of course it does for either.
But how does that help us? Answer - it doesn’t.
-
You don’t harmonise a scale in classical harmony using consecutive stacks of thirds, you’d get consecutives. You can do it with one third, but many composers would avoid that for various reasons. Classical part writing frowns on too much parallelism. You want independent melodies in theory at least....
Stack of thirds are more of a jazz and pop thing. Block chords in big bands may have come from that practice - play the same melody down a third/fifth/sixth. That’s where the 8 note maj6 dim-scale comes in.... but that’s another thread.
-
Maybe I missing something, but majority of the posts in its reasoning automatically assumes, that the scale tone is root, then the thirds built up, and completely disregards the possibility of inversions, what are also valid triads, even in the 300+ years old classical theory.
Because the term harmonizing makes more sense on a melody, not on the bass note in the following I suppose the melody note is what progresses on the particular scale. But the very same reasoning could be true for the bass note.
- So even limiting ourself (we should not) to classical triads, for all melody note we have three triad choices. (for melody C: C Major, F Major and a minor (corrected)) This itself gives us many usable progressions.
- When going forward, but still in the triad stack (again, inversions are valid choices), and creating 7s, 9s 11s, 13s, and leaving out some notes, so got say 4 note harmonies, we got many jazz chords what we usually call completely different, like altered, or sus or / or polychord, but as Christian wrote names are not important this case, that is another topic.
What I am trying to say, for each scale position we have 7 possible chords (7 thirds stacked, and any chord note can be the melody). This gives us 7*7 = 49 chord progressions for two steps and 7*7*7*7*7*7*7 for seven steps of the scale.
All we need for all of the above is the classical third stack definition and inversions. The conclusion is that we can use practically any jazz voicing as long as we use scale notes, without violating the classical third stack definition.
When we finished with this, and still want more, then we always can go forward and violate the classical rules, nothing is wrong in that.
Last edited by Gabor; 11-11-2019 at 09:49 AM.
-
This is very true in regards to the way independent part writing is taught in schools although greaterYou don’t harmonise a scale in classical harmony using consecutive stacks of thirds, you’d get consecutives. You can do it with one third, but many composers would avoid that for various reasons. Classical part writing frowns on too much parallelism. You want independent melodies in theory at least....
leniency was allowed for parallel 1st inversion triads. Long before jazz existed as a word, classical method books have included parallel melodic presentations of scales as a basic technique exercise. Hanon style exercises are nothing but diatonic parallelism. So while independent voices was the guiding principle for part writing, diatonic parallelism was still presented as the clearest way to learn about inversions.
Further forward, some classical music composers began incorporating constant structure parallelism
into their compositions.
-
An obvious example is just harmonising a scale using one of the primary triads, I IV and V or Ab, Db and Eb
-
Absolutely. Originally Posted by Gabor
violate the classical rules, nothing is wrong in that.
-
To the OP. Don't let the ensuing discussion discourage you from learning jazz. Things tend to get abstract and philosophical really quick in this forum. It's fun to read and participate in these discussions, but they are not an indication of how one would typically approach playing jazz. Most jazz musicians, even the legends are/were a lot more pragmatic in the way they thought about their music than the discussion in this thread might imply.
Last edited by Tal_175; 11-11-2019 at 11:51 AM.
-
Lot of nerds here haha Originally Posted by Tal_175
Reply With Quote
UK jazz guitar dealers
Today, 11:28 AM in Guitar, Amps & Gizmos