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Oh a VERY GOOD one to practice is to do a pivot (octave displacement) on the 2, so you go from the third up a diatonic seventh to the ninth of the chord and then step down to the seventh before resolving to the third on the next.
Classic stuff, especially on 7b9s in bebop, but works for all cycle stuff.
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10-28-2024 02:36 PM
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So something like this? This example is diatonic C major, then I'd apply them to a tune?
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For C7 you go from E up to Db, down to C then Bb, resolve to A on an Fmaj chord
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Probably something like this, arp up scale down always seems to sound nice.
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Arp up scale down is a classic move.
Arp up chromatic down sounds great too...
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Should this pivot be confined to dominant chords? If I'm going to run them I'll run them through the major diatonics so I can hit Maj, Min, Dom and m7b5 all in one exercise.
Originally Posted by pamosmusic
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You can do whatever you want as long as it sounds good and you can mold it into melodies. Scales, arps, intervals, chromatics. Noone listens to me tho. Originally Posted by AllanAllen
So something like this? This example is diatonic C major, then I'd apply them to a tune?
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Nope! So keep going around the cycle (I suppose I put us in F) … Originally Posted by AllanAllen
For F major … A skip up to G, walk down F E and then you land on D for the Bb
skip up to C, walk down Bb and A and you land on G for the Em7b5
And so on
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You can also do this with any cycle, it’s just that the skip will be different.
So in thirds …
E skip up to C, walk down B and A, then land on G for the third of Em.
skip up to E, walk down D and C, land on B for the third of G7 etc
Or in sixths …
E step up to F walk down E D and land on C for the third of Am7 etc
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This type of thing (syncopate the rhythm)
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Uh oh, I'm in grad school now. Christian expects I can apply something directly from discussion to a tune.
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Thanks everyone, this has given me plenty to work on.
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IIRC Bert Ligon deals with these kind of ideas in his book Comprehensive Technique For Jazz Musicians (amongst other books, probably). He calls them Outline Exercises.
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Weren't you doing something like this a year ago? Endless arpeggios? Originally Posted by James W
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The endless arpeggios are literally just playing the arpeggios of the chords of a tune, changing direction when you get to the top or bottom of the particular position you're in, in the particular chord. Originally Posted by AllanAllen
Whereas the Outline Exercises as per Bert Ligon focus specifically on connecting the chords through melodic voice leading, for example starting on the third of say D minor - F - and descending by step to the third of the V chord, G7 - B. You can vary it, but the movement (tendency tone) of the seventh of the ii chord to the third of the V chord remains. Which is what this thread is about, no?
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I should really look at the Ligon stuff at some point. I think there’s a lot of overlap with the way I’m tending to think these days.
This is a very traditional way to do things. At the moment I’m boning up on c18 style sequences for “Project Mad Dad in a Shed” and there’s a million ways to decorate stuff like this and it’s all very sequential.
Jazz includes that but there are much more modern ways, not to mention the rhythmic irregularity that allows you to be more free with it. But the guide tone stuff is a really good example of classical voice leading that’s been inherited by jazz.
One thing I’d note is the rhythmic effect of the top note. If you octave displace the top note on and ‘and’ or a weak beat the effect is a syncopated accent. This is used a lot in bop and Bach (well all baroque music.)
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Ah yeah that’s the “Connecting Chords with Linear Harmony” book
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Yeah the endless arpeggios thing is what I was describing early. Love that one. Originally Posted by James W
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I would think endless arp would eventually lead to voice leading as you play around with it. Kind of like how I'm running the C major scale arpeggio up scale down.
Which is why I thought the next thing I'll do is post 30. Add a pivot to the arpeggio.
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Yeah the endless arpeggio exercise should necessarily contain voice-leading. Anyway … I had a student asking about this exercise last week and I use it all the time so …
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Yep. Originally Posted by AllanAllen
I would think endless arp would eventually lead to voice leading as you play around with it. Kind of like how I'm running the C major scale arpeggio up scale down.
Which is why I thought the next thing I'll do is post 30. Add a pivot to the arpeggio.
This is an ascending melodic sequence by the way - usually circle progression have descending melodic sequences. But you do get tunes that do this - Mean to Me, Bewitched, Ain't Misbehaving, It Could Happen to You.
What is the voice leading this sequence is suggesting?
Off the bat, a turnaround
Cmaj7 A-7 | D-7 G7
The guidetones are in the second bar.
If you changed the F natural for an F# in the second bar, this would also work very well for
Cmaj7 A-7 | D-7 B7 | E-7 etc
Cmaj7 C#o7 | D-7 D#o7 | E-7
As there's nothing that contradicts those secondary dominants
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This is just diatonic chords through the C major scale. Cmaj7, D-7 then on through the other 5 chords. Technical skills and ear training, not voice leading. Seems like it might be time to break away from this into something else. Something musical like the R.C. bridge or a I VI II V turnaround. Originally Posted by Christian Miller
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No that anyone asked ... but if I had to put my finger on the differences between classical and jazz conceptions of voice leading...
Jazz is interested in pre-existing chord progressions. So we have to learn how to play through the changes of whatever standards. So we have patterns that work over static chords, strategies for playing through a II V I and so on and so for. The chord symbols are defined and we create music outward from them.
Baroque and classical musicians improvised or composed the harmony as part of the form as they are going. You may have a preset bassline for example in ground bass variations, but by and large the chords come out of the counterpoint, which might mean the same bass has multiple alternative harmonies.
This is more like having a pattern and then asking what chords are coming out of the pattern.
This is a little simplified - there are some cross overs. For example, I do feel Bach had a conception of chord as entities - you can see it in the way he'll write variations on a bass. OTOH Ethan Iverson has suggested swing era musicians tended to improvise more on the bass than on chords in the modern Real Book way (this seems true to me) but that's basically the way.
Chords --> voiceleading (jazz)
Voiceleading --> chords (baroque/classical)
There are commonalities, and some shared stuff, but I feel the difference in approach comes principally through the way the improvisation/composition is organised.
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Yeah that’s a really interesting distinction. Originally Posted by Christian Miller
I think you see less of this difference when you look at certain capital-C composers.
A lot of these American Songbook tunes make more sense when you think of them that way. It’s always fun to argue about things like the first eight of Stella, but when you start with Bbo(maj7) and sort of voicelead from there, it makes so much sense that they weren’t thinking about Chord-chord-chord, but were more thinking of like … the singer is on the melody and let’s play this pad and then have the Viola descend, and now maybe the cello, and the chords are sort of incidental to that movement.
Then you get to some later composers like Jobim, Shorter, Herbie, etc and that’s kind of the only way some of their chord progressions make sense.
Like if you take the bridge to Ipanema, and start with like a Bbm as the upper structure for that Gbmaj7, then you change one note and get to A+ over the B7, then you drop one note and get to A for the F#m, then you drop one note and get Am for the D7, etc.
And you’re like …. oh.
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This is also an incredibly useful application of Mick Goodrick style cycles. He does this just with chords. But instead of thinking of this as diatonic chords, think of it as diatonic seconds. Try it with “sevenths.” Originally Posted by AllanAllen
C Bo Am G F etc
thirds:
C Em G Bo etc
sixths:
C Am F Dm Bo etc
fourths:
C F Bo Em etc
fifths:
C G Dm Am Em etc.
So actually maybe trying the exact same exercise with fourths is a good next step.
Then maybe thirds and sixths?
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