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Originally Posted by Tal_175
On one of his vids he was explaining something and hit (if I remember right) an F# well up in the register of his instrument. He wasn't sure if it was an F# or not and so searched for the sound IN THE FIRST POSITION which then confirmed his guess.
That gesture alone gave me, not only hope, but the understanding that he was not seeing notes on the guitar but hearing harmonic function and then applying intuitive melodic phrases to the movement.
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01-26-2019 01:23 PM
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To the OP, there is an online TrueFire course called “Modal Improv Survival Guide” by Fareed Haque. I highly recommend it because Fareed always does a great job in his courses stripping out the unnecessary complexity and explaining things in a way that makes them seem natural and obvious.
Modal improv is NOT traditional jazz. But if it is what you want to learn, then Fareed’s course is a good place to start.
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Originally Posted by Jazzstdnt
3rd framework
C E G Bb D F# A C
Scale
C D E F G Bb C D E F#G A Bb C
From a Jazz Life, By John Klopotowski.
Also, it's kind of obvious when you think about it. If it wasn't, we wouldn't be able to use chromatic passing tones on major chords, bebop scales wouldn't work and so on.
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Originally Posted by djg
The guy to hit up about this sort of weirdness is Jordan Klemons. It's mostly his fault I've become sensitised to this sort of thing.
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Originally Posted by Tal_175
If you analyse every note in a solo as harmonic, you are going to run into analytical problems right away.
Surely everyone knows this right?
A good guideline as to whether a note is harmonic is basically that it doesn't resolve by step either immediately or in the manner of an enclosure etc. If it doesn't, it probably is a harmonic tone.
If I'm looking at a bop line, say the first phrase of Anthropology - I see and hear 'Bb triad' - the actual notes include a couple of non chord tones, but they all fall into our 'passing tone' category.
If we then played that phrase on an Eb or Gm chord, we'd have an US triad related to the other chords via CST relationships. The non chord tones are obviously embellishing that US triad and are not important to the harmonic content of the line.
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This must be doing the OP's head in.
But keep going
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At the risk of being repetitive ...
(OP - bear in mind that most people seem to disagree with what I'm about to say).
The nomenclature strikes me as unnecessarily confusing. It's not impossible to get comfortable with it, but it doesn't strike me as helpful.
Here's why.
G7 is typically associated with G mixolydian. But, you could call it a G7 scale.
G7#11 is typically associated with G lydian dominant. But you could call it a G7#11 scale.
G7b13 is typically associated with fifth mode of C harmonic minor. But you could call it a G7b13 scale.
G7b9#11 doesn't even have a typical scale name (you have to add a note to get to dim), but you could certainly call it a G7b9#11
scale.
So, the traditional Greek names can completely change if you change one note in the G7. The chord based names, in contrast, tell you exactly what to play.
Now, I understand that the chord name system can result in some unwanted ambiguity, particularly with minor chords. For example, is Am associated with the notes of G major, F major or C major? Am6, Amb6, Am7?
That said, one of my teachers taught it exactly that way and everybody understood what to play.
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Modes are helpful for fretboard mapping. Here is G maj7 from Locrian. Note the mirrored patterns.
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Originally Posted by p1p
Although - it neatly demonstrates how you cannot learn music from the internet lol.
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Originally Posted by rpjazzguitar
Although, influenced by Barry, I tend to teach the MM modes as related to the minors... As in, you can play D minor on G7, Ab minor on G7alt, F minor on Dm7b5 and so on... II-V and tritone relationships are pretty essentially. And minor/m7b5 relationships. The common MM modes follow from that....
Later on we can worry about how G altered is not the same thing as AbMM on G7 or whatever lol.
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Mission accomplished guys, the OP has abandoned jazz guitar forever.
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I have the Jody Fischer book, got it when I was first getting into Jazz.
It didn't help me much at all really, just made me feel way out of my depth at the time, especially when he got to modes. I mean I understood the concept, but to go practice that and make it work, and remembering all the greek names
In my opinion it would do a lot of good to listen to some early bebop, and first learn to play chord tones/triads with rhythm, connecting them, learn the 'colours' of the upper structures b9, b13 etc.. and how you can use those to connect your chords with greater effect. Practice basic scales and arpeggios: major, minor, harmonic minor, melodic minor, dominant, pentatonic, blues.. I think this is way more important to master before thinking about modes. I still haven't made the effort to learn the modes like that, I'm just seeing the substitutions and chord tones with their tensions. I think if you can internalize the sounds of the basic chords with their tensions, and how to connect them you'll be flying. You'll eventually pick up the "modes" you need.
I totally empathize with you, I consider myself an intermediate player and still learning.. thanks to all the folks here.
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Originally Posted by christianm77
For minor chords, it's a little more complicated, arguably. But, almost all that nomenclature refers to which combination of 6 and 7 you're going to use. The "almost" refers to phrygian, so there's a b2 to consider.
Still, you can get there with chord names, I think. Gm13 for 6 and b7. Gminmaj7 for 6 and nat7. Gm7b6 (G aeolian? I've never seen this one, but it seems clear enough), Gmmaj7b6 (G harm min).
In practice, how much does the theory help? I think most players can hear the 6 and 7s they want.
And, that post above which points out that the scales really are two octaves -- with some extensions only in the upper octave -- is an oft-neglected but important point.
I learned it the way you teach it. That is, common applications. So, I first learned MM's by recognizing that they could be used for minmaj7, m7b5, and alt chords. Later on, Mark Levine's book showed me that all the MM chords were interchangeable and I found some additional applications. Because of that, I still tend to think like (m7b5 is MM a minor third up .. and ... alt is MM a half step up). I suspect that I'd have been better off if I focused initially on things a little differently, e.g. m7b5 is R 2 b3 4 5 b6 b7 and didn't need to think about a mode with a different root. Iirc I learned some melodic minor fingerings before I learned the notes in the MM scale in 12 keys, which made it easier (at the time) to find the notes by thinking of the related MM scale.
To sum that up, I think I'd have been better off thinking about the individual chords than getting caught up in which ones were melodic minor with some other root. But, being aware of melodic minor harmony and all the chords therein was extremely helpful for comping.
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Originally Posted by grahambop
He will thank us in the long run.
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Originally Posted by Tal_175
1. That's the point. CST IS an approach to harmony that is useful to composers, arrangers, improvisers. (No matter how many times one explains it, you just can't get some people - especially guitarists - to avoid inventing their own definition of CST, and further to have it mean something similar to "play scales not arpeggios" or "play modal tunes, no (so-called) tonal tunes". The topic belongs in Harmony/Theory, not Improvisation or Technique.
2. The Berklee Jazz Harmony book is more up to date and is a fine book. It has significant overlap/commonality with the former. I'd say stick with it.Last edited by Jazzstdnt; 01-26-2019 at 05:59 PM.
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Originally Posted by grahambop
Christian, good job with the layered tonality thing, don't know how you come up with shit like this. May be capitalize it next time.
Jazzstdnt obscure book reference comes before the post 15. It doesn't work as well when the OP is already numbed.
I was like very sloppy right off the bat.Last edited by Tal_175; 01-26-2019 at 06:17 PM.
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Originally Posted by Tal_175
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Originally Posted by orri
Essentially, to me, it's a matter of integrating modal knowledge and intervallic "feels", and going with it inside the moment.
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Originally Posted by rpjazzguitar
The argument against your chord symbol naming method is that you're going to have more degrees of separation or distinction... more accidentals etc.... depending on what scale you're using. I mean, how do you write altered that way?
There's probably not as much of a sensible argument for using Greek mode names UNTIL you get to applications of melodic minor honestly. But in THAT context, it starts to make a lot of sense, because of the SINGLE degree of separation from a source of reference... and additionally, because it references a specific CHORD TYPE as well. (With MM, that's the only aspect that matters anyway, because the scale degree associations aren't functional relationships to their parallel major/minor counterparts.)
Anyway, 7b13 is ambiguous. It needs another accidental at least, simply to distinguish between melodic and harmonic minor. Mixolydian b13 is less ambiguous than 7b13, as it references a complete 7-note scale. 7b13 could easily be scales like altered, Mixo b13 or harm minor. It goes without saying that knowing the NAMES of things doesn't help you to play it in the first place, but that's kind of beside the point. If you can't play it, it doesn't much matter what you call it .
Yet, there's a constant argument on the forum against using these Greek mode names for the scales, and it always seems to be related some myth that you can somehow understand the names quickly enough to do it on the fly, WITHOUT having practiced the crap out of them.
If you can play it, the terminology isn't that big of a deal. Greek names or otherwise.
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Originally Posted by matt.guitarteacher
If it was altered, in this system you'd have to specify the alterations. It becomes unwieldy for four alterations. So, in my view, mixo b13 and 7b13 are the exact same thing.
As a practical matter, I don't think it would make much difference to me if there was a note's worth of ambiguity on the possible alterations. In the practice room, you can try all the possibilities. On the bandstand, you don't want to be thinking that way anyway.
One last point. It's also 5th mode F MM. Confusing for the beginner. The Master soloist might or might not be aided by that knowledge. I think it can help if you have mastered all the interchangeable MM chords in 12 keys and can employ that knowledge usefully during a solo.
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Originally Posted by matt.guitarteacher
You say Alt.
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Originally Posted by tal_175
Bako could have done some more lists.
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I tried. I carefully avoided mentioning that Andres Varady was on the cover of GP and knows no theory whatsoever. I didn't provide the map of Ancient Greece with my comparison of modal flow dynamics with major Athenian causeways. I didn't tell him that all he needed to do was change his usual patterns by a single note and he could figure it all out by ear.
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Originally Posted by rpjazzguitar
Anyway, anything with multiple interpretations is ambiguous by definition. That's not a value judgment, just an observation.
I think that if you're going to write chord symbols to indicate pitch collections, you may as well be explicit:
C7b13(9,11) or C7b13(b9,11)
Originally Posted by rpjazzguitar
We were talking about your original idea of SIMPLIFYING - by using chord symbols in place of confounding Greek names. It sounds like you're saying that it's all basically loosely open to interpretation, and I agree with you. ...But that's the definition of ambiguity.
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Originally Posted by matt.guitarteacher
Alt scale would require four alterations, so doing it my way starts to break down. It would be easier just to say "alt". But for an alteration or two, it seems easier to me, and that's why my teacher did it that way. I imagine that I could grasp thinking "fifth mode C harmonic minor" to get to G Ab B C D Eb F but I can immediately grasp G7b9b13.
Consider G7b9#9. To go from G7b9b13 basically I'm changing the b13 to a #9. The rest stays the same. Must I really think "fifth mode C harmonic minor to second mode F melodic minor"? It doesn't seem easier and you get the same notes either way.
For that matter, I think it's pretty consistent with what I've heard Joe Pass say, which is that he worked from vanilla chord grips and extended them by ear.
The Unwritten Theory of Guitar Harmolodics
Yesterday, 07:33 PM in Guitar Technique