Voice Lead Arpeggio Changes

[AllanAllen]

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 …

The scalar part at the end reminded me of Hank Garland's All the Things You Are

[pamosmusic]

The scalar part at the end reminded me of Hank Garland's All the Things You Are

Christians used that in one of his videos too if I remember right

[Christian Miller]

Yeah that’s a really interesting distinction.

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.

Yes. I mean Stella is a particularly apposite example because it is written in a very obvious late romantic idiom. But quite a few of the Tin Pan Alley composers had more of a classical background. And it shows.

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.

Or this, by Django!

Jobim coming out of the Brazilian tradition. The first thing he published was in Chorinho form - and those guys (Pixiguinha, Nazareth etc etc) are all heavy bassline guys.

So one thing a lot of those composers have in common - GASB guys, Brazilian guys, Django, Wayne, Herbie, Kenny Wheeler etc - is that their style of music was not so much about walking the bass and the inversion etc were often specified. The bass player can add notes in, but the chords in Dolphin Dance are specific in terms of what the bottom note is. Same is true of Tears. The early stuff and Bossa has in common that the bass is in 2.

IIRC Steve Swallow advised Sco to write two staves - melody and bass, with chord symbols in the middle. This is functionally the same as figured bass, and you can see loads of examples of these charts in the more modern rep in the OG Real Book.

Working with Tuba and Sousa players, very often they don't know the changes. They simply play a good bass line, and in trad jazz there's a few classic moves that loads of tunes do. You know the type of thing - 1 3 4 #4 5, 1 b7 6 b6 5, 1 7 b7 6 etc etc. So their conception is much more counterpoint oriented and the bassline is played like a melody, by ear. Not generally improvised as much, though they can make variations. In those days, the available music for performance was generally piano score.

So for me this represents the change in organisation of the music. When bop came in bass became improvised and in 4. This because the lingua franca and along with the advent of Tunedex and Lead sheets, a lot of the inversions passed out of the charts and into oral tradition.

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.

My very favourite example is the bridge for Ain't Misbehaving - just because ,like GFI, it's a tune we play SO MUCH.

Functionally it's WTF????
Am7 F7 D7 A7

It's a chromatic contrary motion (omnibus progression) straight out of the late romanticism.

E-F-F#-G
E-Eb-D-C#

Beautiful.

Harmony is a fairy tale told about counterpoint.

[AllanAllen]

Maybe he'll post it here. Your video was cool. I think I'll work on that restricted arpeggio exercise and do my melodic cells in fourths for the next few weeks. I like the melodic cell stuff because I can just toss it into a solo and mindlessly fill a measure, then take a rest for the next measure and use the time to collect my thoughts mid-song.

[Christian Miller]

I don’t know which one it is


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[AllanAllen]

I don’t know which one it is


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You trying to tell me you don't remember what video any random thing you mentioned is in over the last decade?

[pamosmusic]

I have a photographic memory of Christian's catalog.

[Ukena]

[...]It's a chromatic contrary motion (omnibus progression) straight out of the late romanticism. [...]

Not much to do with the OP, but this is my current favorite chromatic motion. I learned Nice Work if You Can Get It on the piano from sheet music over 50 years ago, and the Gershwin-arranged chromatic descent of the first phrase of the chorus has always stayed with me. Several years ago I learned how perfectly it fits on the guitar:

[princeplanet]

I spent a long time (too long) practicing targeting 7ths and 3rds etc. Sure, it dials your ear in and trains you to "hear" it in lines, but since I have (for some time now) expanded my concept of basic guide tones to include 1 3 5 7 9, or 1 3 5 6 9, it has made me regret not doing this sooner. Too many 3rds and 7ths sound too boring, important to spend enough time on learning to do it, but no need to stay on it too long.

Even just expanding that out to also include the 9th can be revelatory. And there are ways to target 5ths and even roots to sound cool, dependent on the preceding line and ornamentation. But it's all a lot of work, so the sooner you start, the better.... I reckon...

[Christian Miller]

Not much to do with the OP, but this is my current favorite chromatic motion. I learned Nice Work if You Can Get It on the piano from sheet music over 50 years ago, and the Gershwin-arranged chromatic descent of the first phrase of the chorus has always stayed with me. Several years ago I learned how perfectly it fits on the guitar:

Yah that's a fun one

Another tune that has some fun stuff going on a dominant cycle is Yesterdays. Lots of 9ths and 13ths.

[Christian Miller]

I spent a long time (too long) practicing targeting 7ths and 3rds etc. Sure, it dials your ear in and trains you to "hear" it in lines, but since I have (for some time now) expanded my concept of basic guide tones to include 1 3 5 7 9, or 1 3 5 6 9, it has made me regret not doing this sooner. Too many 3rds and 7ths sound too boring, important to spend enough time on learning to do it, but no need to stay on it too long.

Even just expanding that out to also include the 9th can be revelatory. And there are ways to target 5ths and even roots to sound cool, dependent on the preceding line and ornamentation. But it's all a lot of work, so the sooner you start, the better.... I reckon...

I’m starting to think a blind spot in most discussions of jazz harmony is how it relates to rhetoric and form.

The different resolutions have different effects.

Resolving to the 3rd is a basic choice. It always sounds good. OTOH if you resolve to the 9th it can sound a bit cheeky, mysterious, cool or funny.

OTOH the root sounds final.

If you have a look through a line and look at how the different resolutions are used and where, it’s interesting.

At least in heads for instance, Parker tends to use a resolution to the root as an end of section thing. But he sometimes evades it with the unexpected ninth.


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[Bobby Timmons]

It's cool seeing how all the scale degrees resolve.

[jobabrinks]

The version I did probably every day for seven or eight years was from Brad Shepik, where I’d pick a range — position, string set, whatever — and ascend until I ran out of space, then descend until ran out of space, etc. The goal being always playing chord tones and voiceleading to the nearest chord tone at the chord change without breaking the direction rule.
.

Can you elaborate on this a bit or give an example?

I'm trying to come up with more of these. Thanks

[jobabrinks]

Long video, where is the actual exercise?

Having watched the first ten minutes or so, I’d say most improvisers have done some version of this quite a lot.

The version I did probably every day for seven or eight years was from Brad Shepik, where I’d pick a range — position, string set, whatever — and ascend until I ran out of space, then descend until ran out of space, etc. The goal being always playing chord tones and voiceleading to the nearest chord tone at the chord change without breaking the direction rule.

The weak spot is that there isn’t a lot of space for scalar stuff.

Something I’ve also spent tons of time doing that is probably closer to the stuff he’s pulling from the Mobley solo is where I’d find guide tones and spend a bunch of time moving through them on downbeats, then add a single note on the and of 4, then another note on 4 once I was comfortable with that, then the and of 3 and 3 and rhe and if 2, etc, and build up scale runs that way.

Youll find a lot of overlap with this in the “line building” type of practice that a lot of people do too. They’d just called it that, rather than an exercise.

Never mind, see that you posted it.