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As far as I remember, I started practicing scales as was asked. I had no second thoughts or any other questions like "why" or "how". Just did it. Sometimes the outcome was crap, sometimes musical. It got better when mixed the whole practice time with various things. But still, practicing scales as just plain zigzags and up'n'downs was like practicing a very bad melody. It started to make sense when I started to see the scale as a whole pattern and "glued" stuff on that pattern. Seeing it as a "map" not as a thing to play by itself. That was a big change. Instantly the melodies were easy to remember, chords stuck on it. I see scales now as big maps that tie everything together, not as something to play. Just a map, a tool for the memory. Not using it for soloing(goal is "ears-->fingers" only) but for pretty much anything else, absolutely.
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12-30-2017 09:19 PM
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I would add from my own personal experience that learning scales thoroughly is really a way of making the guitar more like the keyboard conceptually.
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I had about a year of actual jazz guitar lessons in college (I was not a music major), with someone who was an excellent pro player and serious teacher. At the time, I didn't give the lessons and practice as much attention as I should have because I was a full time student in a demanding university, working part time, and gigging regularly with two different rock bands. As a result, I didn't advance much as a jazz player at the time. Most of the theory and method I've acquired and the improvements I've made since starting to take jazz more seriously a bit later have been through self-teaching and osmosis from others.
Originally Posted by christianm77
Nevertheless, stuff this teacher had me do served me very well, and I still use some of it. In retrospect I recognize its value and purpose better than I did at the time. Specifically, he gave me a scale routine: Starting with G, second position, play two octaves of the major scale and each mode of the major scale, up and down; play 4-note arpeggios on every step of the scale, two octaves, up and down; take this through all 12 keys via the circle of 4ths. I've subsequently extended this to natural minor and melodic minor. He also had me play 8th note arpeggios over tunes to get the chord tones burned into my brain.
This is a good routine for developing fretboard awareness, being able to find any given note anywhere on the fretboard, hearing intervals and arpeggios. It's also a useful warm-up routine and technique exercise if you integrate it with whatever picking method you use [this teacher stressed alternate picking, which he tried to enforce on me, with limited success]. In fewer words, it gives one material for developing an overall competency on the the instrument and absorbing some of the sounds one needs to absorb in order to play jazz.
However it specifically is not a tool for practicing jazz solos/improv/comping. The only real tool for that is playing tunes. You can do that on your own, with others, with backing tracks, along with records, transcribing others' playing, slowing things down, speeding them up, transposing, playing fragments, playing entire chorus, playing the same thing over and over again, playing different things over and over again, etc. But if you want to play tunes and improvise on them, you have to play tunes and improvise on them.
I think as long as you keep that distinction in mind, scales routines are helpful.
John
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for example in C
The major scale , yes deffo learn it inside out , really know it cold
.... three blind mice etc etc etc
but also many standards 'Mack the Knife' is great and is totally diatonic I believe
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the relative minor type songs,
Amin with the secondary dom E7 (or Bmin7b5 , E7 with altered notes etc , maybe get into the mm sounds )
whatever sounds good
eg Autumn Leaves , Beautiful Love etc etc
The sound of the II maj chord , A train , Isn't she lovely , Ipanima ... etc
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Anyway what I really mean is I think where the juice really is
for me
is in the songs themselves , how do they work ?
for example
I mean eg 'All of me' in C
the first chord C , ok fine see above .... cool
the second chord Emaj triad or E7
why is it E7 sound as opposed to Emin (diatonic) ?
i mean the diatonic G note is definatelly now G# innit ?
one can hear that it sounds right ...... but why is that ?
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cos its going to the third chord Amin
Getting that harmonic 'change' into your ears / soul whatever is where its at for me
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I think the approach of learning lists of scales is ok if you're mind works that way
mine does not , I've found .....
I'm a reductionist , simple minded fellow , I've discovered
In the above case , the simplist analysis of whats going on is
You're in C , play stuff in C
you're in C but you raise the G note to G#
You could think of many many scales to play on the E7 going to the Amin
5th mode hm
7th mode of mm
HW dim
but man you GOTTA have the G# there !
thats where the juice is at innit ?
gotta go
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The line (not mine) which sums up the issue of scales for me is this ...
"It may not be art, but at least I'll play the right f*** scale."
You end up playing what you practice, so you have to take some care not to introduce mindless scale running into your playing. If you are restricted to playing your scales/modes/arps from the same starting note every time, it might be worth finding a different way to practice them.
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So don't practice them from the same starting note every time Originally Posted by rpjazzguitar
Is it me, or do some people assume practicing scales = playing scales? I don't practice scales to play them 'scale running'..
Probably important to understand the reason for practicing scales to begin with.
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Speaking only from my own experience, I learned scales by running them in order. Later, I learned to start on each note, in turn. Even JBGI (Jimmy Bruno's on line school) taught it that way, at least for beginning players. Originally Posted by p1p
So don't practice them from the same starting note every time
Is it me, or do some people assume practicing scales = playing scales? I don't practice scales to play them 'scale running'..
Probably important to understand the reason for practicing scales to begin with.
Later, I read that I should play them in broken thirds, fourths and fifths. But, always, it seemed in order.
No teacher ever mentioned the notion of practicing them starting at a random string, finger and fret.
At the time, I couldn't see the goal (much easier in hindsight) so I practiced them in what I now see as a rather mindless way. I didn't see it that way then. And, there are some benefits with regard to technique and clam avoidance.
I continue to work to avoid falling into those ruts. I no longer practice scales in any mechanical way. Rather, I put on a backing track, decide which note pools I'm going to use, and I try to make melody with them, thinking, when I need to, of note names, but not patterns, for the most part. I have had to compromise in order to have some stuff I can play fast.
I think the old school guys who learned by copying solos from records and didn't know any theory probably had it easier on this particular issue.
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Are you saying scales = theory? I gonna go out on a limb and guess that the 'old school guys that didn't know any theory' knew their basic scales quite well. Am I wrong? Just trying to figure it all out for myself so I can spend the appropriate amount of time on every different thing to learn on the guitar. Cheers Originally Posted by rpjazzguitar
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I can’t really speak for the guitar which is weird and kind of self taught but I’m pretty positive that horn players and pianists had their scales down.
The guitarist perspective is an odd one though. You can be a really good shaped player. This is what I understand by Jim’s comment to me all those years ago (**** scales) - it’s possible to get by without. I don’t think Jim plays scales like a horn player would, and his approach is often very guitaristic, as well as lifting a few lines from Parker etc. And Jim maybe my favourite player in the UK for sure.
So I don’t know. I’m pretty sure Joe Pass practiced his scales. Wes, maybe not.
Again there is a huge confusion here between scales and CST. It’s possible to be an adept CST player and never play a straight scale in your life. OTOH it’s possible to practice scales and never learn anything about the theory of music. Classical performers for instance.
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Having gone through all eight Berry Harris videos now, It’s been completely liberating for me when I realized I could play basically any tune With two scales ( mixolydian and melodic minor ) and one basic fundamental concept of tonal music ( subdominant into tonic) or practically play all day with these same two scales with lots of possibilities, provided I knew how to play one into the other or even one into another other version of itself.
Scales
Mixolydian as associated with the subdominant —- G7 into Bb7 into Db7 into E7
Melodic minor as Associated with tonic——-C mm, D mm, F mm, Ab mm
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You don’t need the melodic minor either, but it’s nice to have
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True. Actually I pick that up from a John stowell lesson. So you can say I stole it from Stowell. Originally Posted by christianm77
His basic point was that instead of learning all the separate modes of mm, you can just play the melodic minor scale A whole tone from the dominant (V7) , a semi tone above the dominant, a perfect fourth above the dominant, or a perfect fifth above the dominant.
I just transposed those intervallic relations from the V7 into being measured against the tonic. Less stuff to remember, easier to think about and play on the fly.
in a way, these melodic minor scales correlate to the diminished chords of Barry Harris’ major minor sixth diminished scale.
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Stowell it. Originally Posted by NSJ
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It’s more important to get one relationship burned into your playing than half learn several. There’s a lot you can do with just the front door dominant scale for instance, if you are really good at constructing lines with that scale.
Then it’s an easier thing to learn how to resolve those dominant lines into different target chords.
Different people prioritise differently, but a lot of people don’t prioritise at all.
Learn one thing really thoroughly and you are on your way. Could be dominant, could be mm.Last edited by christianm77; 01-01-2018 at 05:08 PM.
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That's a good point. I didn't mean to equate scales and theory. The point I was trying to make is that running scales creates some habits that may need to be broken later -- speaking here from my own experience. Originally Posted by p1p
When I studied with Sid Margolis in the 60's, he taught me the basics up through chord melody on standards and reading clarinet books. I don't recall Sid teaching scales.
I then studied with Carl Barry who taught me some of Chuck Wayne's approach -- and we focused on both arps and scales.
A reed man I played with years ago who might be 75 now said that everybody he came up with was taught to solo entirely by ear. I don't know if he'd ever practiced scales, but I do know that he didn't know the notes of a C major triad.
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I feel there's something getting a little confused here - inherent musicality and craft.
Inherent musicality - the natural learning of language if you like by ear, the way we might learn our mother tongues as children - is not threatened by craft but rather enhanced by it.
OTOH, no amount of craft will develop musicality - only dealing with music directly can do that.
The guitar, on the other hand, is a tough and non-linear instrument. Its relationship to conventional musical notation is not clear like it is with the piano, or even perhaps with the saxophone where at least there is (in general) a one-to-one relationship to the notes on the page.
The guitarist as a result has a different relationship to craft than other musicians, perhaps less so today as more and more players are academically qualified.
The jazz guitarist is usually thought as a guitarist with a lot of craft and knowledge by other guitarists. A rock guitar player might aspire to 'jazz chops' (basically knowledge of their instrument and music theory - nothing per se to do with jazz). This fits hand in glove with the popular notion that jazz is a technical music, or involves needless complexity for the sake of it.
It's fun to discover this was not always the case historically, but I feel discussing whether or not guitarists should learn scales is a bit like someone worrying that learning to sight read will make them a less interesting musician. I think most of us here would disagree with that (unless we wanted to argue from a position of devil's advocate.)
However, the flip-side is that students of music shouldn't become over concerned with the craft and technicalities without getting into the music directly.
So, no, you might not need to know scales, but they won't do you any harm provided you are always dealing with music.
Lastly - scales are musical objects. They should be played musically and understood as musical phrases. There's a lot you can do with a simple stepwise scale in jazz.
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I generally agree.
However, I do see some similarity with the reading issue. I learned to read from my first guitar lesson. Now, decades later, every situation I play in involves reading. Frankly, if they didn't, a better player would probably have the gig.
So, during my formative teenage years, I spent a lot of time reading. In retrospect, I wish I had spent more time with ear training, either formally, or through transcription. Reading came more easily to me, so it was more comfortable reading than struggling with trying to copy things from vinyl at full speed.
In that narrow sense, reading hurt a bit, by providing an avenue that made me feel like I was progressing (which was true), even though I was neglecting something - which was also true.
I think scales can be like that too.
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Not disagreeing with anything you say. I personally don't have a problem working with both separately and together. I just think of it as two scales moving in an out and surrounding each other. Originally Posted by rpjazzguitar
The one thing I do want to emphasize is that it takes a lot of time to fully internalize it all. A lot of time. Constant practice, repetition, etc. Hundreds of hours. The benefit is that working with both scales helps one navigate the instrument better in such a way such that one knows exactly where one is going up and down the instrument as when when goes across the instrument.
I can even see how both elegantly alternate throughout a given major scale.
i- mm
b9-mixo
ii-mm
III-mixo
iv-mm
V-mixo
bvi-mm
bVII-mixo
As you say and as we know, the guitar is a bear of an instrument, non-linear, and so forth. Something like this is at one hand, very simple, and yet has infinite possibilities in terms of application, is a practical way of getting playing right away, and helps one really learn the fingerboard.
The genesis of this idea of putting these two scales together was an off-the-cuff remark made by Julian Lage, who was asked about ii-V-I.
He responded something like: "ii-V-I? I think of it as blah-blah-blah-blah-blah.......ONE".
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Yes, there IS a trade off. But everything helps everything else. Fluency in notation, or a knowledge of scales can help with language. For instance, reading rhythms helps time feel and accurate audiation of rhythm. When I transcribe lines I recognise musical objects by ear - arps, scales, NT patterns etc. Originally Posted by rpjazzguitar
Also I know people like to seperate things off and work on sheer ear training from the bottom up (I know I do), but it's all linked. It's easier to hear what you play. It's a virtuous circle in fact, play more, hear more. When you puzzle something out as being a sound you don't know, you go away and play that sound everywhere, and then next time you hear it, you know it.
There's a finite amount of this stuff.
Also, you can have great ears and not be able to play jazz because you don't know the language. You don't know the words and sentences.
It' snot the only way to do it, but it is a way, and I think to chuck these out just because its not the way the 'masters' learned is to perhaps overlook 1) the fact that it works and 2) the fact that quite a few of the masters did also know their scales.Last edited by christianm77; 01-01-2018 at 06:55 PM.
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I've had long periods that I only listened to ambient music. For concentration. That made me think.. no, boggle - why the hell is 99.99% of ambient staying in one single key... or even on one chord. Maybe a bit exaggeration but only just a bit. There is absolutely no reason for ambient sticking in one key imo. It could flow like a river, just takes a bit of experimenting. I mean, this is stranger issue than the "complexity of jazz" which I think is just a fake superficial criticism from the strangers of the genre. Originally Posted by christianm77
That "for the sake of it" complexity - I never believed that even when I wasn't so much into jazz. Just digging into it is so much fun, some of those progressions - I know I'd never ever come up with myself just learning classical music only.
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I hope it didn't seem like I was arguing against knowing scales.
Rather, I'm arguing in favor of knowing them so well that you can start any scale on any fret/finger/string without what has been called root bias. And, knowing them so well that you don't have any bias about how to order the notes -- so you're as free as possible to make melody.
As I mentioned, I bring this up only because I feel I did it the wrong way for years and ended up with some bad habits that I continue to struggle with. The bad habits were developed by a lot of running scales in order.
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Yeah that's understandable, and probably a common mistake for beginners. Originally Posted by rpjazzguitar
I have a New Year's Resolution to really play the guitar, and not have it play me half the time. Thoroughly getting my scales down is already helping me with this. That's the reason behind my questions here - just want to make sure I'm not wasting my time
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I guess I never did much of the thing which is talked about in later thread posts of "running scales" as an approach to improv. For me it's always been kind of "Arps plus", with the scales being the "plus". Originally Posted by emanresu
Anyway, I really like this notion of maps. It describes how I view things better than simply running linear scales over changes. If you have the map, you've got the basic arp plus extensions. For me, it's kind of also "basic arp plus (arp) subs ". III-7 for me is III-7 plus Imaj7 or V7 for diatonic. From an arp standpoint , you probably don't even need the scale to get that part necessarily, but it's still the "map" to the extended harmony.
For me, where the map becomes even more crucial is altered harmony. For that, the scale map is really important to me in learning those arp subs.Last edited by matt.guitarteacher; 01-02-2018 at 08:59 AM.
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X marks the spot. Originally Posted by matt.guitarteacher
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My frustration with arpeggios -
which are a very essential tool - was that melodic contour can become very up/down and it’s very easy to simply follow the shape of the changes unless you practice opposite to that.
Stepwise scales offer a different contour, as do leaps. You can hear the elements being used together seamlessly in most soloists.
Anyway, I think people can be a bit down on stepwise scales for reasons similar to avoid notes. They’ve been given advice that’s appropriate to beginners to stop them from playing horrendous clams or just going up and down scales all the time and carried on with those guidelines for too long.
Jazz solos are full of scales, just like most music.
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