Best way to see major scale around triads?

[Christian Miller]

How do I start swinging?

My best advice atm is copy things that swing by ear. Then play along with them.

I've looked at some of Barry Harris's teachings, very inspiring and the sounds that come out are wonderful. I do however think I'm not at a level where I can make use of his method right now...

What would you say are the prerequisites before starting with the BH stuff?

My experience teaching it has been that most guitar students don’t have anything like the level of fretboard knowledge required to get much out of it. It’s a piano approach, which means you have to know the neck like a piano.

OTOH I’m loathe to suggest that students have to grind through years of scales and fretboard mapping before they are allowed to try to play music. Seems a bit miserable and also there are other things that are more essential for jazz than learning the guitar like a piano.

So I don’t think it’s the most accessible approach for guitarist. I think learning licks around shapes is a good way to get started. Charlie Christian is a good model.

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[geezer]

My best advice atm is copy things that swing by ear. Then play along with them.


My experience teaching it has been that most guitar students don’t have anything like the level of fretboard knowledge required to get much out of it. It’s a piano approach, which means you have to know the neck like a piano.

OTOH I’m loathe to suggest that students have to grind through years of scales and fretboard mapping before they are allowed to try to play music. Seems a bit miserable and also there are other things that are more essential for jazz than learning the guitar like a piano.

So I don’t think it’s the most accessible approach for guitarist. I think learning licks around shapes is a good way to get started. Charlie Christian is a good model.

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Thanks Christian, I have plenty to work on now! Might get in touch for a lesson down the line.

All the best, John

[Christian Miller]

Thanks Christian, I have plenty to work on now! Might get in touch for a lesson down the line.

All the best, John

Cheers John


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[rpjazzguitar]

Improving "feel" can be elusive. Christian's advice is the same as I've heard from other experts: play along with recordings.

One thing I've found is that my "feel" may deteriorate if I don't focus on it.

You can practice feel while playing a Cmajor scale over a Cmaj7, or anything else. Scat singing may help. Listening to hat-years Sinatra may help.

As far as the triad stuff, you've already gotten a bunch of good advice. I'll add mine with an apology to those who have read this in other threads.

I'm not sure about this, but it seems like players who rely on patterns may not know the notes in the chords, arps and scales they use.

If you do know the notes in, say, a chord you're trying to solo over, and you know where they are on the fretboard, then you can instantly improvise using chord tones. You can imagine extending 7th chords to be 13th chords, at which point you've got 7 notes you can play over the current chord. Or, you can track the current tonal center and use the notes in that, which is usually about the same thing.

There are 5 notes left over and lots of ways to find them. Too much info for this post.

But, if you don't know the notes in the chords and scales you want to use, you can rely on patterns. Some fine players do that, or so I think. I think it's harder, but I admit to some kind of dot disability. I can't learn much from dots on grids.

If you go the pattern route you need to work on multiple places in the neck, usually 5, and you have to learn the patterns well enough that you can start on any note and play whichever notes you want. You don't want to run a scale bottom to top or the reverse and, if you practice that way, you're at risk for building that into muscle memory. You have to do it for scales, arps and whatever else. Eventually, you have to connect them. It's a lot of work.

Learning the notes in 12 keys is a lot of work too. I believe that a player would be well served by learning the notes in the context of learning to read music. You learn to read and you get the fretboard for for free.

But, a lot of this is advice for a forum participant named Interested Teenager, not Geezer. For the older player, I'd suggest picking tunes, starting simple, and working out, one chord at a time, where the chord tones are. Soloing with those while focusing on swing feel.

[Mick-7]

I use these type of patterns, I shift positions (up/down a semi-tone), see below:
Attachment 125801

This illustrates what I was referring to when I said divide the neck into 2-3 sections so that your hand covers a range of 5-6 frets, shifting to move from one position to another.

[pamosmusic]

Jordan’s stuff is hip.


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Yeah Jordan is for folks who want their triads bearded and with a porkpie hat.

[AllAboutMusic]

Highly recommend (forum contributor) Jordan Klemons’s stuff.

Basically exactly what you’re describing and he knows his stuff and has put years into organizing it into a pedagogy.

Can echo that, awesome material … he developed also a Hierarchie of tension notes which means what are the prime notes to expand triads to quattrotonics. Love the stuff, just awful lot to learn

[Christian Miller]

Jordan’s stuff is about harmony and melody though. You kind of need a developed sense of rhythm, swing and flow to make it sing. That’s something you get from learning stuff by ear, the old fashioned way.


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[Bob_Ross]

However, I was quite disappointed when this didnt improve my solo playing much, it only made me sound "scaly".

Apologies for being kinda dick-ish, but, sorry, ^^^that made me LOL.

[Tal_175]

Building positions out of octaves is a good approach. That's how I got out of seeing positions as patterns of black dots.

In a way, piano and horn players have to practice in 12 keys, guitar players have to practice in 10 octaves. That's about as many octave areas in different positions and string groups on the fretboard.

[pauln]

"cheeky and bejumpered"... nailed it.

[Christian Miller]

"cheeky and bejumpered"... nailed it.

I’ll take it!

Jumper season coming up.


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[AllanAllen]

OP: I did something like CAGED and I honestly only use 2-3 of them. E shape, C shape, and A shape. C is basically the same as D shape so you can drop that. I use G as a minor, but don't really play major with that shape.

Modal jazz is about more choices, not rigid scale outlines. In my opinion, playing So What using strictly Dorian isn't doing it right. It's just one choice, and one that Cannonball and Coltrane didn't choose on the original recording.

I'm trying to say, modes are overblown and shouldn't be much of a focus for a non-academic musician. So what are you trying to do? Play some music you love with a little group, or complete a doctorate degree?

We have both types here, figure out what your goal is and weigh the responses accordingly.

[Aiq]

Yeah Jordan is for folks who want their triads bearded and with a porkpie hat.

Not allowed in the US military.

[acoustic_archtop]

I spent a good part of last year learning the major scale in 7 positions, like so:

Diagram is from Jens Larsen but I learnt it from another teacher. It was from the perspective of different modes so first shape would be F-lydian, followed by G-mixo, A-aeolian etc. I got to a point where I could play each mode/shape up and down, play the scale as 4-note chords and also play 4-note arpeggios up and down all within the same "box".

However, I was quite disappointed when this didnt improve my solo playing much, it only made me sound "scaly".

I since spent some time learning simple triads, major/minor/dim, and Im now very happy to be able to voice lead simple chord tone solos. It´s not much but the sound is sweet, I can play around with rhythm and melodic ideas/motifs and Im not just running scales up and down. Win!

However, once I started to get the triads down I felt like I want to be able to play some scale notes to connect the chord tones and make melodies more interesting.

My question is what is the best way to visualize the major(and other) scale?

I feel a strong aversion to the 7 positions as I felt they got me very little in terms of musicality. Triads are hard to spot, as they dont follow common chord shapes. Also, I find the positions very awkward to play, all those stretches dont sit well with my hand, I dont feel relaxed and thus play worse.

Now this 5 positions system(caged) seems very tempting to get into:


No stretches! Oh, joy!

I appreciate that 7 pos makes sense in terms of seeing the modes, is caged more difficult when it comes to modes?

Should I switch to caged or would that be a waste of time? Or do they complement each other? I could really use some guidance before commiting more time/energy to learning another system.

Or is there another way to go? Keep building on the triads? Tom Quayle has a system of intervals that also seems interesting. And there´s the approach where you learn scales in one octave shapes, seem good to keep away form just running long scales. Smaller chunks good, big chunks bad.

So many questions! Any input would be appreciated.

I find that the next best step after learning chord tones for common chords (maj6, min6, dom7...) is to use your ear and 'hear' the phrase or line. Might as well do it now. You have to do it at some point right?? Maybe the next step is to add a few enclosures and play the chord tones from a couple different inversions on the neck?

Stop thinking the next step is a scale or mode or something. Just jump in with play along tracks. THAT is the only way you're going to get good at improvising now. It's NOT learning more scales, modes, etc.

[wolflen]

I had to learn the scales in 7 positions in all keys and string sets

Then All the chords triads and 4note and inversions in each of those 7 positions..then the arps of each chord from each inversion form (breath..yeah I know)

This is like military boot camp-its very mechanical..but if your serious about learning this stuff..

then..doing melodic patterns from each scale

and after what seemed like years--because it was..now play some tunes you LIKE..

and I still practice 2-3 hrs/day..Melodic patterns are the warm up

learn some new stuff too..

So the reason for the discipline..after a good amount of time getting it "under your fingers"
you feel confident that you know where Ab melodic minor is in any position..the chords in the scale and how to use them
and create a solo from it--ok..it will take some time to like what your playing but you now KNOW in time you WILL!

Thanks Ted..

[GuyBoden]

I had to learn the scales in 7 positions in all keys and string sets

Then All the chords triads and 4note and inversions in each of those 7 positions..then the arps of each chord from each inversion form (breath..yeah I know)

This is like military boot camp-its very mechanical..but if your serious about learning this stuff..

then..doing melodic patterns from each scale

and after what seemed like years--because it was..now play some tunes you LIKE..

and I still practice 2-3 hrs/day..Melodic patterns are the warm up

learn some new stuff too..

So the reason for the discipline..after a good amount of time getting it "under your fingers"
you feel confident that you know where Ab melodic minor is in any position..the chords in the scale and how to use them
and create a solo from it--ok..it will take some time to like what your playing but you now KNOW in time you WILL!

Thanks Ted..

Yes, that's how I was taught. Sax players seem to teach like this.

[Christian Miller]

Not allowed in the US military.

True. It’s just bebop scales

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[pauln]

However, I was quite disappointed when this didn't improve my solo playing much...
However, once I started to get the triads down I felt like I want to be able to play some scale notes to connect the chord tones and make melodies more interesting.
My question is what is the best way to visualize the major(and other) scale?
I could really use some guidance before committing more time/energy to learning another system.
Or is there another way to go?
So many questions! Any input would be appreciated.

There a lot of ways to approach playing the guitar. One way to look at these different systems is to examine what they expect or require a guitar player to know in order to play; these are things like:

sheet music, lead sheet
the key, key signature
names of notes, degrees, intervals, scales, modes
chord types, inversions, chord tones, extensions, accidentals
progression harmony, chord names, Roman numerals, functional analysis
positions, fingerings, shapes, patterns
or even none of the above

That is not a complete list and already you can recognize that they have "aspects" that we might call verbal, visual, mathematical, tactile, and aural (maybe more).

For the verbal aspect (names of things and names of their relationships) it helps to learn to read music - not necessarily to play by reading music. The correct definitions of the fundamental elements of music are based on how written music works. As you learn theory in the verbal path, about the time you encounter intervals things will begin to not make sense if you don't know the correct strict definitions (the informal talk among musicians is casual and generally does not hold to these definitions).

For the visual aspect it helps if you seek to internalize beyond just memorizing. This means a shift away from having to look with your eyes and letting your hand learn how to do what you intend.

For mathematical aspects, beware that the people who originated the numbering for things (like frets and intervals) did not seem to distinguish cardinal and ordinal numbers, so the closer you examine the weirder it gets... too late to fix it, we all use the wrong numbers now.

For the tactile aspects, this is the real sleeper of the bunch; it is happening with or without you knowing about it and it is intrinsically critical in and of itself. The mechanical complexity of the hands is not even fully understood - anatomists and hand surgeons freely admit that medical science has yet no clue as to the purpose and functions of some tendons and joints of the hands. The good news is that the hands are natural learning machines; have faith, trust your hands whatever other aspects are part of your path.

For the aural aspects, this is the most mysterious to discuss because of the literal fact that the sound of music is absolutely invisible, phenomenologically. The level of internal abstraction required to hear music is what makes music the queen of the arts - it transcends the sensory modalities themselves. The most important thing is to listen to everything you do on the guitar, as you are doing it, and continuously compare and evaluate what you heard to what you wanted to hear - that is the foundation for all the other aspects' development.

Maybe something here is of help.