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I read through the thread and the fundamental question is lacking.
Why is he becoming a musician?
He's at the point where he is just starting, but what brought this on?
Is there a gun involved?
Sometimes it's in the family or a family member urges you to do it in your youth. Or perhaps friends want you to complete a band. Church needs? The School Band? Some people experience a physical trauma that precludes them from competing in the world and they become excellent musicians. Perhaps you were once very impressed, like I was, by an accordion player playing polkas at a wedding and long Hollywood chords to greet people as they came through the door. Maybe in a poor country, you can eke it out on tips from American terrorists... sorry, I meant tourists.
Even after all of that, chances are good that you will fall away from it as life makes its demands on you. Music is seldom a career choice for normal people... So, depending on your motivation towards music, you will jump through hoops to learn, mostly by your own sweat. And that includes key modulations.
I never paid attention to diatonic or non-diatonic chords. I just played the song, melody and changes. Eventually, I began to question what was going on. Then I read about Harmonised Scales, Degree Names and chord function. And then much later, chord subs. 99% of music is just Tonic-Dominant-Tonic. Changing keys is like changing chords or putting your boots on. Just do it. If I ever thought that deeply about diatonic chords in the beginning, I would have probably given up.
Music is a great big club, and some of us are not in it. They should admit their stupidity, say their prayers, get physically fit, get a good education, start a good career with pension prospects, work overtime, earn money, save their money, invest it, avoid credit, marry a decent woman, buy a house, have some kids, hold their nose and join some quiet church, make a will, and retire early. Forget about the music... When you're old and decrepit, you can then eat like a pig, smoke like a chimney, drink like a fish, and play diatonic chords with little consequence. Then on your bed of death, when the whole thing seems like it was five minutes, you will have no regrets about what you did or didn't do. Like non-diatonic chords...
::Last edited by StringNavigator; 07-23-2023 at 10:54 PM.
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07-23-2023 10:24 PM
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I'd like to see the OP back here. There's more to this than meets the eye, a lot more.
I disagree about the blues, by the way. Blues isn't as simple as it looks.
If this person (however old, whatever their mental capacity) can only play 'diatonic' stuff he's not going to learn much from minor pentatonics. Mainly because they're anything but diatonic. And once a starter has got into 'blues' because they think it's easy they find it harder to learn anything more demanding.
Also blues is not jazz, it's just a small part of it. No matter what the books say.
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Why do people always have to reduce blues to minor pentatonics?
Originally Posted by ragman1
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Thats what I was driving at way back when. It’s a MASSIVE part of the repertoire, but not fundamentally easier than a diatonic-ish*** standard like Autumn Leaves. Originally Posted by ragman1
The straight I IV V blues is easier, I suppose, but also a smaller part of the repertoire. Most common is probably the Billies Bounce style jazz blues with the IV bVo iii VI in m5-8.
Anyway … it’s not markedly easier to hit those blues changes than it is to hit the All of Me changes or something (though the shorter form helps). But it’s also not harder. So it’s a great place to start but I don’t know why it’d be at the expense of a simpler non-blue form.
***can we agree that by “diatonic” we are probably talking here about something tonal, functional, and with mostly diatonic root motion? Even if the OP meant truly diatonic, we have to be talking about it more broadly by necessity. Like Mr Smith said — there isn’t really in rep out there with truly 100% diatonic changes.
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I really wish people didn’t use the term diatonic to refer to tonal music. There is very little purely diatonic tonal music.
I have a feeling this has to do with soloing on changes.
Advantage of working on a blues you can stick with blues vocab and that works. You can then introduce the jazz vocab in bars 8-11. So yeah, maybe. Actually you can do similar stuff with rhythm changes, treating it as a short blues form.
And if you learn the progressions in a jazz blues and relate to a I IV V blues that will teach you the basics of jazz standards progs - ii V I, I-IV-I, turnaround.
It can be surprisingly hard to get students to play for instance major blues vocab on I and minor blues vocab on IV in the right place - which is of course a blues guitar technique for playing changes but you see it a lot in Bird too. Players get used to a ‘one scale fits all’ approach.
I think this has as much to do with the ability to keep track of a form when improvising as it does the pitch choices over a given chord. I do feel a lot of people try to start off improv from a theoretical approach instead of an aural one which is a mistake.
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Actually I think purely diatonic tunes (if you can find really pure ones) are more difficult to improvize in jazz styles for a beginner (unless the biginne is naturally very creative).
At least the way I see it.
I refer to key and I would advise a student to refer to key either.
Reference to key does not mean a scale - it does not mean you play C major scale if the key is C major.
The key refers to functions and tension/release relations. So you play some improvized tune by ear hearing those functional references.
And then non-diatonic chords create more tensions on local level - contrasting extentions/alterations/dissonances to the melodic impro one plays.
It brings in colours.
He is still within the same key but his ear hears those colours and he has to work with them finding the path to key centers.
If one plays within purely diatonic song he will have to create those colours himself - basically throwing in some presumed non-diatonic chords behind the tune (either conciously using some approach or just by ear).
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+1 Originally Posted by Christian Miller
This is true.
Some people don't hear what they play as a whole.
Theoreticla approach limits the part of hearing in solo playing to some extent.
A jazz musician must have the ability to cooperate and listen to what is going on around him.
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Because that's what 'green' people do. Unless you're suggesting the OP's piano player dives headlong into some sort of ultra-bop blues tune which he'll never play. Originally Posted by Bop Head
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This is what happens when an OP deserts their own thread. All he wanted was a very simple standard that a beginner piano player could get round.
But the whole thing is decidedly weird as well so I don't suppose it matters.
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I think there is something in between playing only minor pentatonic and ultra-bop blues, e.g. boogie-woogie which is pianistic and chord-tone oriented. Originally Posted by ragman1
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It would be easier. But people use the vocabulary they have. And in defense of the OP, there isn’t really a good word to describe what we’re talking about here. Vivaldi is tonal. So is Wagner. Music theory should be so understanding as to give us a nice one-word term to understand the difference. Originally Posted by Christian Miller
Alas.
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What is more concerning than a student who can't handle an occasional non-diatonic chord is a teacher who doesn't know enough tunes to recommend to his student.
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Don’t think that’s the relationship here. Sounds more like a friend who wants to introduce another friend to tunes they can both play over. Originally Posted by Tal_175
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Whats wrong with being green? Everyone started green, and nobody wishes they started with Stella By Starlight instead of Twinkle Twinkle Little Star. Originally Posted by ragman1
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Easy to say, hard to do. You still don't seem to get we're talking about a seriously inexperienced piano beginner! Originally Posted by Bop Head
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Where did I say there was something wrong with being a beginner? Originally Posted by AllanAllen
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What I meant was is there is nothing wrong with starting on minor pentatonic shapes. Then you add more as the years go by. The great thing about the pentatonic is you can get people playing something that sounds like music pretty quickly.
It's why I like the blues so much, room full of guys from pro to "I just bought this sax" play a Bb blues, pro guy can substitute all he wants and the Sax guy can randomly pluck from their 5 notes and they both get along fine.
You can make blues as complex as you want and nobody else has to follow. You can jazz it up in bars 8-11 like Christian said, or you can plow through with Chicago box changes.
At our level, it certainly sparks more creativity than staring at a chart.
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Because: Originally Posted by Bop Head
a) In modern music education blues is below the people who do the teaching
b) In modern music education other scales are assigned much greater importance so pentatonics are glossed over
I hope the people at the university don't change course to be honest. I make the better part of my income playing major pentatonics and mixing it up. I'd probably get hosed if people woke up to major pentatonics and the possibilities in there. But mixolydian mode somehow holds more prestige, lol, Maybe cause it's a mode and not "just a blues scale".
I love when I hear people say "blues is easy" at a jam. Time to fire up my grill and watch you eat what I'm cooking.
I hate it when I hear people say blues is easy in my band. Why yes it is. You're fired.
One of my favorite quotes: "Simple music is the hardest to play, and blues is simple music"-Albert Collins
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Allan, I hear what you say but in a way you've justified it. Originally Posted by AllanAllen
See, I've had a lot of things going round my mind about this thread, which is unusual for me. There are a lot of things I'd like to ask RickyHolden about it.
Who is this 'friend' of his? How old is he? What's his mental capacity? Frankly, it could be anybody. Why does he want to go from 'green diatonic' to jazz which is undoubtedly complex?
Is he asking Ricky or is Ricky asking him? Is Ricky a pianist that he can show him stuff? Or only a guitarist?
If this person hasn't even grasped the basics yet and is still asking 'what is a chord', etc (see post #7), what's going on here?
And it also looks like Ricky has disappeared...
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Then we come to pentatonics. Sounds so easy, just learn a pentatonic. Yes, if he can do it, he could possibly find his way round a simple blues. Yes, he's started to play music. Which apparently he can do already at a simple level.
Then what? Personally, I've met so many players of all varieties who can play pentatonic blues. And the trouble is that's basically where they remain. You need a helluva lot more knowledge to go byond a pentatonic. You need even more knowledge, skill and practice to be able to mix pentatonics.
And even then you still need to learn the basics of ordinary music to play tunes. There are only a few jazz tunes that can be played with a pentatonic. That's a fact. And even then it's not really jazz at all. And, according to the thread, he wants to play standards.
The last thing Ricky said was that they were going to try out Blue Bossa. Blue Bossa is NOT a blues! There's that one Bb note in the middle of the G7, that's all. The rest is in C minor. Can this pianist handle C minor? And can he do a Latin beat?
Anyway, it goes on like that. So I repeat, there's a danger in relying on pentatonics. But I dare say they'll find out for themselves.
Interestingly, I never started with pentatonics. I found out about them eventually, of course, and got bored just as quick. Five notes (and maybe the blue note), up and down, up and down... that's kid's stuff. Unless it's in the hands of an expert.
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I agree with you right until the end
This isn't music, playing any scale up and down isn't going to lead you anywhere. There is a danger in relying on any one thing though, it can get boring.Five notes (and maybe the blue note), up and down, up and down... that's kid's stuff. Unless it's in the hands of an expert.
Then we go back to agreeing that it is kids stuff, beginner stuff, a common place to start. There's a lot to master in the blues though, I've never heard an Herb Ellis solo and thought he needed more scales.
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My teacher kills with predominantly blues vocab but dressed up a little bit. Here, the changes he plays in the solo are the standard jazz blues chord changes in the left hand.
G7 / C7 / G7 / D-7 G7b9
C7 / C7 / G7 / B-7 E7b9
A-7 / D7 / G7 E7 / A-7 D7
However, he predominantly uses blues/mix vocab for the right hand. Then he adds some jazz vocab to spice it up color wise by following the changes, usually targeting bar 4.
So mostly blues vocab, but very high level playing. He plays the jazz blues chords in his bass line, and follows the changes in the right hand only sometimes to deviate from the blues/mix vocab and add color.
This is not easy to do.
Last edited by Jimmy Smith; 07-24-2023 at 05:32 PM.
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No, you don't, I just contradicted what you said before! Originally Posted by AllanAllen
I was being figurative, I didn't mean literally up and down. Though a lot of people do nevertheless. And not just pentatonics.This isn't music, playing any scale up and down isn't going to lead you anywhere. There is a danger in relying on any one thing though, it can get boring.
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Originally Posted by ragman1
maybe we aren’t having the same conversation.
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Playing pentatonics doesn't make it blues any more than playing major scales or modes makes it jazz. You're talking about random rock guitarists, not anyone serious about blues. Also, you don't need much knowledge at all to experiment beyond pentatonics. I also know a ton of guys who can play pentatonics and maybe hang in for a blues song or two. It's kind of expected from an average rock guitar player. That's a long way from playing a 3 hour blues set. Maybe I"m repeating what you already know, but your post was kind of contradictory and also kind of cliche guitar forum with the"got bored with pentatonics". That's mostly on you and your own lack of creativity, not the scale(s) itself. Originally Posted by ragman1
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