Converting to minor

[Christian Miller]

Not a newbie in terms of guitar, i've been playing for decades. But jazz had always eluded me,until I read an interview with John Etheridge where he talked about how all the old classic players "basically played off chord shapes". That was a light bulb moment for me. Hasn't made me a jazz player but I can do cartoon approximations of Charlie Christian . I know I need to spend way more times studying standards.

I think you may have read the same interview as me (late 90s!). It had big effect.

He is right to some extent (I think) to say Charlie Christian and George Benson aren't primarily scale based improvisers but work more from chord shapes. Wes - maybe too. They do play scales from time to time though.

I don't think playing off the chord tones in the end was enough to get me there. You have to go to the music itself, and copy what you hear.

(Which often happens to fit around the chord shapes :-))

Holdsworth had some very strange concepts, like he'd mention writing out hundreds of permutations of scales using mathematics. I guess that's one of the things that threw me off the whole 'converting to minor' stuff - how did that fit with his system?

Holdsworth playing an old school standard like Nuages is really not that out there. There's three main scales he uses almost exclusively in this solo - the Dorian, the Melodic Minor and the half-whole Diminished, and he applies those in similar ways to those I mentioned above. (you can use the half-whole diminished like a minor scale.)

[olliehalsall]

The guitar is not a naturally diatonic instrument - the piano is. So to understand bebop, classical music etc, it's kind of important to get into that. Which I think is often best done at the piano.

I read somewhere that Django used to experiment with harmonies on the piano. And there's a photo of Wes mucking around on a piano with his brothers. I'd love to have heard what those guys sounded like on piano...

[Christian Miller]

I read somewhere that Django used to experiment with harmonies on the piano. And there's a photo of Wes mucking around on a piano with his brothers. I'd love to have heard what those guys sounded like on piano...

Quite a few top jazz guitarists also play piano.

[Strat-itis]

Conversion to minor isn't only to make applying shapes easier, it's also for the mellow sound.. I use some conversion to minor to impart a bluesy sound, but I don't use it exclusively.

[Tal_175]

Conversion to minor isn't only to make applying shapes easier, it's also for the mellow sound.. I use some conversion to minor to impart a bluesy sound, but I don't use it exclusively.

That's a good point. There is a more understated quality to cadences and turnarounds when the lines are based on minor conversion. Not as much in-your-face V-I V-I thing.

[luk_luk_guy]

The guitar is not a naturally diatonic instrument - the piano is. So to understand bebop, classical music etc, it's kind of important to get into that. Which I think is often best done at the piano.

I definitely agree that putting things onto piano makes everything way easier, but could you elaborate on what makes piano a "naturally diatonic instrument" vs guitar?

[Cunamara]

Not a newbie in terms of guitar, i've been playing for decades. But jazz had always eluded me,until I read an interview with John Etheridge where he talked about how all the old classic players "basically played off chord shapes". That was a light bulb moment for me. Hasn't made me a jazz player but I can do cartoon approximations of Charlie Christian . I know I need to spend way more times studying standards.

I had a Tal Farlow cassette instructional tape (Hot Licks, about 45 years ago before videotapes and the interwebs) and Tal talked about that. He learned all of Charlie's solos from records and figured out that CC based his lines on chord shapes. Herb Ellis did the same and has instructional videos about this, I think.

In an interview on YouTube, Peter Bernstein noted the same thing about pianists: "you can put your hand down on the keyboard, play a chord- then wiggle your fingers and there's a line." Why does that work for pianists? Because on the keyboard the relationship between chords and scales is instantly obvious. For guitarists, we often see chords and scales as almost separate things; playing scales implies melodic movement but playing chords implies a static grip that is played only until the next grip is called for. That cognitive separation between chords and scales is a huge handicap on the guitar and if we can avoid falling into it we will help ourselves a lot. Otherwise we sort of divide ourselves into playing two instruments: a saxophone when we we're soloing and a piano when we're comping instead of playing a guitar all the time.

In another thread I referenced my defective learning strategies for jazz over a few decades. One of those defective strategies was treating chords and scales as things that are studied separately and that are used differently: chords for comping, scales for soloing. Then I stopped being quite that stupid (well, I remain stupid, but I improved a little bit on this point) figured out that this is just plain incorrect.

Getting into Ed Bickert was really my first clue that I wasn't thinking correctly about this; Ed's soloing and comping does not differentiate between chords and scales. He uses both all the time. If you ever want proof that the guitar is not an inferior instrument in jazz, I think Ed Bickert is one of the greatest exemplars of that. Then I was listening to a fair amount of Bill Frisell and how he will sometimes comp behind people with single note line instead of chords or maybe a double stop implying a chord. It's more of a counterpoint strategy that he uses often. In an odd way it is related to Freddie Green style playing, who often only comped with one or two notes.

Holdsworth had some very strange concepts, like he'd mention writing out hundreds of permutations of scales using mathematics. I guess that's one of the things that threw me off the whole 'converting to minor' stuff - how did that fit with his system?

There is a video on YouTube of Allan trying to explain his system and the way he thought about it was so peculiar to himself that the video is not particularly useful in understanding how to play his music. For one thing, many of his scale forms had multiple repeated and overlapping notes in them, because with his enormous reach he could fluidly play up 6 half-steps on each string without moving his hand. I have large hands and I would injure myself trying to play the spreads he tossed off effortlessly. Allan created a musical universe of his own. There is a guy on YouTube, I can't remember his name, who basically has transcribed all of Allan's solos and has posted hours of video information about Allan's playing. I have all of Allan's recordings as a leader and love listening to them, but have found little of use in trying to mimic how he played.

[rpjazzguitar]

I am not sure if I would consider some of the above to be the most obvious choices. For example Bm7b5 to minorize Cmaj? I mean that's a cool sound but not a good way to outline the chord's function. I listed what I consider to be more inside options in post #12.

Quite right about Bm7b5. That one would be a minorization of the G7, not the Cmaj.

But, returning to the second chord of All of Me, E7.

In Post #12 there is only one 7th chord, and one minor listed. They are C7 and Gm7. It would seem from this post that the way to minorize a 7th chord is to play as if it was Gm7. Transpose for E7 and you get Bm7. You then have to decide which function of Bm7 to use, e.g., iim? iiim? vim? other? When Pat Martino said "I minorize everything", which usages was he referencing? (And yes, I'd rather get an easy answer than buy and study the book - apologies for that, but I've already got plenty I'm working on).

Or, if Pat meant Dorian, then. if E7 is treated as a V7 in Amajor, B dorian would apply. But B dorian has a C#. So maybe E7 is a V7 in A minor. But then, how to you get to the G#? 5th mode A harmonic minor? Is that what Pat was talking about?

EDIT: I just asked Chatgpt. It came back with relative minor, iim for V7 kinds of ideas and different minor scales for 7th chords depending on function, eg, either Dm or Cm over G7, depending on the sound you want. It also quoted Pat as saying something to the effect that he adjusts "tension" by ear, rather than thinking about different scale names.

[AllanAllen]

Getting into Ed Bickert was really my first clue that I wasn't thinking correctly about this; Ed's soloing and comping does not differentiate between chords and scales. He uses both all the time. If you ever want proof that the guitar is not an inferior instrument in jazz, I think Ed Bickert is one of the greatest exemplars of that.

I think Kenny Burrell is another good example of this. You don’t even miss the piano on this album.

[Tal_175]

Quite right about Bm7b5. That one would be a minorization of the G7, not the Cmaj.

But, returning to the second chord of All of Me, E7.

In Post #12 there is only one 7th chord, and one minor listed. They are C7 and Gm7. It would seem from this post that the way to minorize a 7th chord is to play as if it was Gm7. Transpose for E7 and you get Bm7. You then have to decide which function of Bm7 to use, e.g., iim? iiim? vim? When Pat Martino said "I minorize everything", which usages was he referencing. (And yes, I'd rather get an easy answer than buy and study the book - apologies for that, but I've already got plenty I'm working on).

Now, I understand that each of the chords on the same line in post #12 can be substituted for each other. Mostly those substitutions are not "minorization". My impression was that Pat was describing a significant simplification.

These are the chords listed in post #12 that are relevant to dominant.
Gmin7, C7, Emin7b5, Bbmaj7#4, F#7alt and A7alt


Let's take C7. Gmin7 is the minorization of the vanilla C7. It's not the only option. Consider the last dominant in the list (A7alt). Now that means if you want C7alt, you play Bbmin7. Another dominant is F#7alt. So in that case your minor for C7alt is Dbminor7. Get it?

In these cases, the minors are generally dorian but they could also be melodic minor as his lines in the book occasionally come from MM.

[Christian Miller]

I definitely agree that putting things onto piano makes everything way easier, but could you elaborate on what makes piano a "naturally diatonic instrument" vs guitar?

How long does it take you to work out where the notes of C major are in every octave of the piano?
How long does it take you to work out where the notes of C major are in every position of the guitar?

Do you have to use a different shape for Em7 and Fm7 on the piano?
Do you have to use a different shape for Em7 and Fm7 on the guitar?

[Christian Miller]

EDIT: I just asked Chatgpt. It came back with relative minor, iim for V7 kinds of ideas and different minor scales for 7th chords depending on function, eg, either Dm or Cm over G7, depending on the sound you want. It also quoted Pat as saying something to the effect that he adjusts "tension" by ear, rather than thinking about different scale names.

Urgh

[pamosmusic]

EDIT: I just asked Chatgpt. It came back with relative minor, iim for V7 kinds of ideas and different minor scales for 7th chords depending on function, eg, either Dm or Cm over G7, depending on the sound you want. It also quoted Pat as saying something to the effect that he adjusts "tension" by ear, rather than thinking about different scale names.

Well thank goodness for chat GPT. I don’t know what we’d do without it.

[Strat-itis]

^ You guys are mad at theory and you're mad at the bot.

That's a good point. There is a more understated quality to cadences and turnarounds when the lines are based on minor conversion. Not as much in-your-face V-I V-I thing.

Yep. It seems to cool out Pat's overall sound too.

[rpjazzguitar]

These are the chords listed in post #12 that are relevant to dominant.
Gmin7, C7, Emin7b5, Bbmaj7#4, F#7alt and A7alt


Let's take C7. Gmin7 is the minorization of the vanilla C7. It's not the only option. Consider the last dominant in the list (A7alt). Now that means if you want C7alt, you play Bbmin7. Another dominant is F#7alt. So in that case your minor for C7alt is Dbminor7. Get it?

In these cases, the minors are generally dorian but they could also be melodic minor as his lines in the book occasionally come from MM.

The example pertains to a vanilla E7 in All of Me. How would Pat minorize it? Dorian includes a C#. Is that what he'd do? Thinking Bm7 gives him 4 good notes, given that there are no avoid notes <g>. Which others and why?

5th mode A harmonic minor works. Is that what Pat is referring to as minorization?

One possibility is that, when he sees a non-minor chord, he picks a minor near-equivalent, maybe usually Dorian. And, then, if a note or two don't work, he doesn't try to square it with theory, rather, he just plays a better note.

[Strat-itis]

He explains his process in this clip. For a dominant chord he uses dorian a 4th down or a half step up for altered. He goes into more detail in the clip tho.

[Tal_175]

The example pertains to a vanilla E7 in All of Me. How would Pat minorize it? Dorian includes a C#. Is that what he'd do? Thinking Bm7 gives him 4 good notes, given that there are no avoid notes <g>. Which others and why?

5th mode A harmonic minor works. Is that what Pat is referring to as minorization?

One possibility is that, when he sees a non-minor chord, he picks a minor near-equivalent, maybe usually Dorian. And, then, if a note or two don't work, he doesn't try to square it with theory, rather, he just plays a better note.

In Pat Martino's approach the melodic flow is more important than always hitting the most agreeable notes. Minorization does not produce strict chord tone outlines. The idea is that you are still connecting chords in your lines by hitting most of the important notes in a fluid manner. You get a more understated chord outline with lines that have a purpose. At least that's my take on it after having analyzed his linear expressions lines quite in depth.

[pamosmusic]

^ You guys are mad at theory and you're mad at the bot.

Not mad at the bot or theory. Just seems like something we probably didn’t need a large language model to learn but I hear you.

[pamosmusic]

Conversion to minor isn't only to make applying shapes easier, it's also for the mellow sound.. I use some conversion to minor to impart a bluesy sound, but I don't use it exclusively.

Yeha it’s a killer sound and super distinctive

[Strat-itis]

[AllanAllen]

Not mad at the bot or theory. Just seems like something we probably didn’t need a large language model to learn but I hear you.

I’m mad at the bot.

[Cunamara]

Well thank goodness for chat GPT. I don’t know what we’d do without it.

I would live my life with nary a care about ChatGPT's absence.

[GuyBoden]

If you want to convert everything to minor, don't watch Pat Martino tutorial videos that are full of obfuscation and convoluted ideas.

But, I always enjoyed his tremendous playing.

He explains his process in this clip. For a dominant chord he uses dorian a 4th down or a half step up for altered. He goes into more detail in the clip tho.

Thanks for proving my point.

[rpjazzguitar]

In Pat Martino's approach the melodic flow is more important than always hitting the most agreeable notes. Minorization does not produce strict chord tone outlines. The idea is that you are still connecting chords in your lines by hitting most of the important notes in a fluid manner. You get a more understated chord outline with lines that have a purpose. At least that's my take on it after having analyzed his linear expressions lines quite in depth.

This makes sense. Pat's comment that "I minorize everything" may not equate to a 100% specific system of picking specific notes for every chord type.

[olliehalsall]

Thanks for proving my point.

I like his demonstration of the minor triad shape and how you can alter that accordingly to suit. I like running that shape up and down the fretboard myself. Also, I read somewhere that Django was fond of using this as an all-purpose shape too - the way his left hand was formed it was an easy grip for him?