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After fifty years of messing around and not playing well, I decided to add a little structure into my life, get a good exercise book, and just follow it. Bert Ligon is one of the most recommended here, so I got his Comprehensive Technique for Jazz Musicians.
It's a great book, but I am hitting a wall at Chapter 4, Melodic Minor Scale Exercises. All those scales! And not much to relate them to. Why do I care about a diminished 7th arpeggio over an altered dominant 7th? When the heck am I ever going to need a B superlocrian over a B7b13b5? I'm having enough trouble remembering encircling with a LNT-UNT-CT pattern over simple triads. How will I be able to remember this more esoteric stuff?
Am I making this harder than it actually is? Maybe, maybe, if I could HEAR the examples, rather than laboring thru the notation. Is there any sort of audio supplement that goes along with this book? Any other encouragement?
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06-02-2016 11:59 AM
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Sounds like the book is making it harder than it actually is ...
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That book and its "basic" stuff at the beginning is what led me back to considering reg's persistent insistence that you get basic technique/fretboard together from the start. I think we're generally pretty far behind other instrumentalists. Have to look at it when I get home...
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The book is extremely academic. And I don't mean that in an abstract derogatory sort of way ... I mean that in a literal way. He takes a lot of very practical stuff and codifies it into vocabulary and terminology and systems and things which can be super useful. But if you feel yourself being bogged down by terminology then it's time to get the nose out of the book a little, start practicing what you've got so that you really know it (per Matt) and then see if you can find places where that stuff pops up.
Example ... nowhere will you here people refer to UNT, LNT, CT and all that stuff. Find all those enclosures and idiomatic things in transcriptions and bebop tunes so you can see how practical they are. Another example ... when will you ever need "Super Locrian" over a B whatever chord? Answer: frequently. You've probably heard it referred to as an altered dominant sound but that sort of thing won't stick until you see it in context.
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The names are the scariest part. And I will only give you one perspective but yes, the melodic minor scale does indeed give you a useful and powerful harmonic and melodic tool to put in your improvisational box.
In a book, the presentation is somewhat linear by necessity and logic. Find a way to use them. Have the use in mind first. In other words, create an urgency to use a scale, then see the study of that scale as an answer.
If you're looking for a more versatile V7-I sound, taking apart that VII-7b5 chord scale can uncover lots of neat combinations. At the point where you can see its usefulness, put down the book and explore with the guitar, the ear and the rhythmicized phrase.
If you're looking for a way to get dominant ideas that resolve down a half step, forget everything else, focus on that lydian dominant scale, also derived from that scale. Read about it, then again, put the book down and teach yourself to hear it.
How do you get to know a scale? First, once you can play it, try avoiding playing it like a scale. Make a memorable combination of notes with the least amount of notes. Use the sound of the chord to keep you on track. Struggle, have faith and follow through. Use intervals. Hear the underlying chord and what each of the notes within means.
Use these micro melodies and intervallic ideas with a piece you're working on.
Remember you can overcomplicate it. A book, especially that one, is a feast. It'll always be there. Nibble and be nourished.
David
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Originally Posted by dooright
The examples are in the recordings. It sounds like you need to start listening to the great changes players.
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That's actually a really good point ... I have that book floating around somewhere. Most books (but especially that one) I've usually treated as an encyclopedia rather than a novel. ie ... reference ... pick out something when you need it. Originally Posted by TruthHertz
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+1 Originally Posted by TruthHertz
The names I have a terrible time with and find it easier to just know the sounds and from which step of the scale they come from.
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Wow. Great thread.
First of all, I'd agree with you generally. Anything on that level is basically going to be academic, by its very nature. I do have a tremendous amount of respect for Bert Ligon and what he's doing. He really tries to address a lot of the intangible, difficult-to-verbalize/write-about items in the study of jazz, from phrasing to harmonic rhythm, and other topics to which many others pay cursory attention or ignore entirely. He's also pretty respectful of the tradition and goes into a great amount of detail in laying out ways of thinking about improvisation without the use of scales etc. He's one of the most respected educators by proponents of non-CST ways of approaching traditional jazz, especially at the beginning,...but at the same time, he addresses all of the modal stuff and more harmonic applications, full-on, as well... later in his materials. Originally Posted by pamosmusic
I'd say he's very balanced, and not going for only the stuff which is easiest to sell and print. It's not all just dumbed-down, reductionist stuff, and it's definitely not one-sided, in terms of things like CST.
Originally Posted by pamosmusic
+1 to both of these, and David's similar statements. The labels are actually most difficult when you can't play the stuff. (Reg has always said similar.) That's from my personal experience, as someone who is just beginning to scratch the surface with the MM stuff, but the labels are just labels. I don't have names for everything I'm working on now. I mainly think of them as "subs for X" or "subs of the dominant of the sub of X", but again it's not even words. I think the labels will be easier when I learn to play some of it. Originally Posted by NoReply
Entire post is great as always. Originally Posted by TruthHertz
Micro melodies and linking to actual chords has been a tremendous help to me in grokking some of this. The image linked below shows one of my new favorites. I don't really know what it's called, academically. It could be be called Wilma or whatever at this point. I'm still learning to basically play it. I'm mainly just thinking "dominant of the relative iii chord" (but not so much in words).Later, when I want to be cool I'll take the 1 1/2 minutes to figure out what the best name(s) for it are. It's just a III7 altered scale over a IMaj7 and it's killer. (Reg talks about this in more of a sub way, most of the time, but pulls out the "names" from time to time as well. Like Ligon, he's conversant in multiple ways of discussing...)
Anyway, among other things, it's got a wonderfully melodic way to enclose the 7th (major 7th) of the Imaj7. Always hated targeting the major 7th chord tone. Just never spent enough time with it, and it's a lot of "messing with" to find good ways to do it. Well, this scale, provides the blue notes/chromatics/pool of "outside notes" - whatever you call them - to just kind of play over it to provide brief moments of chromatic.
Ironically, it was Ligon and Jimmy Amadie's very non-modal approaches to melodic targetting which got me hearing things in the initial way that eventually got me toward what Reg is always talking about as using MM for blue notes or targetting references. He's absolutely right about how it organizes note collections where things aren't as much hit and miss. The kind of natural melodic enclosures that I can arrive at using this one note collection would have taken a lot more work to arrive at in the "experiment with different approaches" kind of general instruction you see in other methods.Last edited by matt.guitarteacher; 06-02-2016 at 01:47 PM.
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Such a lot of good information so quickly! Thanks, everybody. Guess I should lighten up a little, and just try to work it all in with what I already know. Jumping around to the topics I'm interested in should make it easier to learn too. How many books do I have that say to get Chapter One down cold before moving on to Chapter Two?
I'm also teaching myself how to read music with this book, and have come a long way. But wish I could hear the lessons the way they're supposed to sound. I'm keying some of the exercises into my computer, but then it sounds like, you know, a computer. Has anyone made a sound track to go with the book?
BTW, I've really gotten a lot out of Ligon's UNTs, LNTs, and CTs. I've always wondered how the greats make those "wrong notes" fit.
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I'm in a similar boat, or was until recently. I like and use that Ligon book. I couldn't read well, though, and the examples were slow to work through and not always worth the effort. (That didn't really affect the exercises too much, since even slow reading is enough to figure out a pattern, and then practice that pattern off the page.) Originally Posted by dooright
Over the past year, I worked on my reading, about 15 minutes a day most days. It's now better, and, as I've returned to working on the Ligon material, I can get through the examples much better. It really is a book that requires some reading skills. Most pianists and horn players have a leg up on us guitarists, there!
But if you keep practicing your reading, I bet you'll find as I did that it really does improve. (I still have a long way to go, but a certain level of competence makes a big difference.)
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Nice! Best of luck. Hey I might suggest that you be careful not to "study" this stuff too hard but instead, skim the descriptions, try to get the concept in your mind, listen to some good music, Clifford Brown, Sonny Stitt, John Jenkins or Bird for fundamental devices and embellishment vocabulary - maybe Brecker, or Josh Redmond or Coltrane and his successors for a more modern take- and wait until you have an AHA! moment. THEN go and try to internalize it. They'll give you rhythmic, developmental context (this embellishment comes after an idea is first stated in a simpler or more direct way...), and you may feel more a part of the theory in a living way. Originally Posted by dooright
It always comes stronger when the sound is in your head before the theory. It'll also make your request for examples more invested and personal.
David
I listen to this, the head is beautiful and now I pay attention to the notes I recognize as Hoagey's and which are Clifford's and I can imagine the blank slate in front of me, recognize embellishments and where they're going. This will be a more classic choice of parent scales, not so many Melodic Minor derived scales.
And then a more modern vocabulary via Brecker. The piece has a simple series of dominants going to different chords. I can hear some nice lines on basic chords and his lines show up nicely in this context.
In this piece, Brecker solos on a two chord vamp in the outro, but I can hear some nice applied dominant 7 chordal applications. I have always loved these early Steps Ahead projects. They are things that made me listen and ask questions.
So find music you like. Find passages you like. Find out what's going on with the structure of the piece at that point. Then ask "What did he just do on that chord?!!" and you'll be on your way to seeing the value of your ear, your own imagination and the answers that a good exhaustive explanation can give you.
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I have 2 of Ligon's books; "Comprehensive Technique for Jazz Musicians" is, well, comprehensive. A lot of great info, very academic - I can only take it in small doses. On the other hand, I've found that "Connecting Chords with Linear Harmony" is much more accessible, and the info/concept is really useful - I know that it has improved my knowledge of
how to play more musical solos. May be worth a look...
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Oh just go and do some transcription. Originally Posted by dooright
EDIT: I see now that this is a getting started thread, but I think you should focus on simple musical phrases before you go onto this complex stuff. Perhaps stuff in early chapters needs to be properly internalised, perhaps over the course of a several months.
In the long term, every theory question I have ever had has been answered by working out lines from records and seeing what people do. You don't have to work out whole solos - just a line here or there that doesn't sound too complicated. This will do more for your playing and musicianship than any amount of raw theory.Last edited by christianm77; 06-02-2016 at 05:55 PM.
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The experience I had with the books of Bert Ligon, especially Connecting Chords with Linear Harmony is that,
if you start from the assumption (true to a certain extent) that when you perform you play what you've practised,
practising Bert Ligon's exercises over and over you'll end up slowly absorbing the jazz language and playing fantastic lines in a jazz/bebop style.
Afterwards I found out that my next goal was getting rid of all this, meaning that those lines have to appear from time to time, as a sort of backbone of your jazz language. Instead I found it was fundamentally important to focus on other aspects such as motif development and rhythmic variety, which is what makes your playing interesting and less predictable.
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My understanding was that motif development and rhythmic variety (based on the outlines, other transcribed material, or other ideas etc) was basically 98% of Ligon's whole deal. I don't know if you got something else out of it, like the idea that those really BASIC forms of the outlines were jazz ideas unto themselves.
From everything I've read in Ligon, he's about using tools to develop your OWN ideas.Last edited by matt.guitarteacher; 06-23-2016 at 08:01 AM.
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No, of course that is not the case. Originally Posted by matt.guitarteacher
What I am saying, and I am talking basically about the book Connecting Chords with Linear Harmony,
is that I analyzed and practised for many hours those phrases that Ligon transcribed from the recordings of great improvisors like Clifford Brown, Parker, Tom Harrel etc...and that he relates to the basic outlines.
I got to the point of being able to create nice jazz lines using the tools that Bert Ligon suggests (encirclement, chromatic approach, lower and upper neighbors to the chord tones etc..).
The final result was that I became rather fluent in the bebop language, which is great, of course, but I was probably just running the changes in my solos most of the times.
What I tried to say is that, at some point, I thought I should have looked in other directions, more like, say, a Jim Hall style, who always tried not to rely on bebop cliches.
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