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I watched this intro to see what song he was going to dissect and the first line is Mobly playing arpeggios where the 7th of one chord leads to the 3rd of the next.
As an exercise, this has been on my to do list for years.
Anyone actually do this exercise? Do you think it’s worthwhile? Is there a prerequisite I should work on before I start slowly doing this?
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10-26-2024 05:59 PM
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Long video, where is the actual exercise?
Originally Posted by AllanAllen
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.
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You made it further into the video than I did. I just know the exercise from Aebersold’s method and what I’d call General YouTube advice.
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The exercise is outlining chords with arpeggios ending on the 7th and going to the 3rd of the next one. I guess running them 3 5 6 7 couldn’t hurt.
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Oh gotcha gotcha.
Then yeah, I think lots of people have their sort of Patented Version of this same exercise.
Ive done tons and tons and tons of what I described above. Like … every day for maybe a decade in some form. Still do it a lot. Make weird changes and stuff depending on what I’m working on.
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That works for me.
I ran through Autumn Leaves. It sounds good to leave a chord on the 7th and enter the next one on the 3rd, but any jump seems to be cromulent.
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Yes, how Peter explained the exercise. Imo, this is the foundation for soloing from scratch.
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Don't know if I'd call it an exercise, I always outline the chord changes at first when I'm improvising on an unfamiliar tune so I can understand its harmonic structure and how the chords can be connected. The melody is a key to that too, so it's good to combine its notes with the chord tones (but they are often chord tones). You want to make the practice musical or your solos may end up sounding like arpeggio exercises. Originally Posted by AllanAllen
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"OMG, how swinging is that !!! ..."
LMAO
Is humor finally coming into jazz education?
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I mean … Hank Mobley is the Swingingest
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I don't get the joke, I thought it was swinging enough to add to my practice routine.
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Man I’m not joking.
I could listen to Hank Mobley for the rest of my life and be fine with that.
Scratch that. I could listen to just Soul Station for the rest of my life and be fine …
Scratch that. I could listen to just “Remember” from Soul Station for the rest of my life and be fine with it.
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I put on Workout today, it's killer too. Originally Posted by pamosmusic
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With Grant! Originally Posted by AllanAllen
Soul Station is his masterpiece for sure, but his catalog is start to finish top shelf stuff
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Roll Call-- underrated classic.
Check it out, you'll love it.
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Honestly … you can’t beat Bird, of course, but that second generation — Hank, Dexter Gordon, Sonny Stitt — were just absolute bebop factories. Every single line. You could do a lot worse than just learning random lines from whichever one of those dudes you vibe with
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I like the way Dexter Gordon plays Bird heads better than how Bird did em. His tone is beefy and powerful and his phrasing is very confident.
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... and the 9 #5 9 thing (melodically targeting the 9th of the ii, #5 of the V, 9th of the I)
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Resolving 7ths into 3rds is very much something you should practice. Originally Posted by AllanAllen
This is the classic way to voice lead chords moving around the cycle. It’s highly conventional, it’s been a feature of western music for a few hundred years, but it’s worth learning the conventional stuff so you know what it is.
Have a look at melodies that use this principles. Autumn leaves and ATTYA are obvious examples, but there’s some things that are a bit more disguised… here’s one
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Fly me to the moon is another one.
Not sure if Christian would agree, but have noticed guide tones for sure in melodies … and an emphasis on thirds in particular.
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Interesting, Fly Me To The Moon really sticks out as a melody to me, and I can't put my finger on the reason why. You might be onto something.
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Fly Me to the Moon brings up that exercise again. Originally Posted by AllanAllen
Connecting them with scales — however many scale notes away depending on the rhythmic placement
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Seventh to third is super common in the middle of tunes Originally Posted by pamosmusic
Decisive cadences at the end of sections most often resolve to the root
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I just mean when you look at the melodies you posted … Autumn Leaves, All the Things, and I added Fly Me to the Moon … the melodies follow the third, and not so much the seventh. I guess Autumn Leaves is kind of both, but way more obviously the third. Originally Posted by Christian Miller
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Yes I mean this is true in many cases. What I specially mean is resolving the seventh into the third of the next chord by step. Originally Posted by pamosmusic
So for example in FTM you play the scale from the third down to the seventh and then it resolve into the third of the next chord. The seventh is very much a harmonic tone in the archetypal voice leading whether the voice leading is implied via melodic leaps or through direct stepwise resolution. (A bit less so with ATTYA which doesn’t do it on every chord)
All those examples include both guide tones on at least some of the chords.
You can have the 3rd and 7th in each chord or alternate between chords. That works two.
In all these cases you end up with a descending melodic sequence. (This is not how this is generally interpreted in bird heads or improvisation.)
The funny thing is this is 90% of what I’ve been practicing lately with the classical stuff.
In classical terms this is a suspension chain so you get the sequence of seventh chords, but each dissonance is resolved at the same time as the next one is prepared. This is how it’s used in baroque music and jazz standards etc.
The interesting thing is jazz does seem to still follow some of these inclinations.
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