Ways to Play a Scale

[bluejaybill]

To actually attempt an answer to the OP, scale practice has taken a number of forms for me. I primarily focus on 3 scales and their modes: major, melodic minor, and diminished/octatonic. I think most jazz vocabulary can be played with those pitch sets.

Practice of them includes:
-scales up and down (3nps and caged)
-diatonic triads (chords and arpeggios, root position and inversions) within the scale positions.
-diatonic 7th arpeggios within the scale positions.
-diatonic shell voicings within the scale position (ie, roots following the scale position).
-scales in 3rds, 4ths, 5ths, 6ths, 7ths
-Scales sequences (1234, 1235, 1342, 271, 1321, etc)
-adding chromatic passing tones to make them 8 note "bebop" scales. For this I use either 3 nps fingerings or a fun fingering that alternates 3nps and 5nps, which gives you 3 octaves and covers a lot of fretboard ground (but is difficult to use).

When I was in my late teens/early 20's, I studied with one of the best jazz guitarists in New Jersey named Harry Leahey. He played with Phil Woods and others, but he was a family man and didn't go on the road much, so he was not that widely known. Harry studied with the famous pedagogue in Philadelphia, Dennis Sandole, who also taught Coltrane and Pat Martino, as well as I'm sure many other Philly area players.

I'm responding to this post to save myself some time, as what's written here is pretty much the program that Harry taught: one week on each of the modes of the major, harmonic, melodic minor scales, diminished and whole tone scales. With these, we played on the 6th and 5th strings starting on every finger (some not so useful). 2 octave scales, two octave 7th chords, arpeggios that went to the 13th. Oh, and pentatonic scales, many types.

Then he had me work on intervals to the 9th. Then the various scale patterns (1234, 1324 etc). Plus he would write an 8 bar phrase in the scale, referenced with a chord, like Joe Pass suggests. And I would write some of those.

Then we worked on a new tune each lesson out of the jazz catalog. These we worked on playing chords alone, melody alone, and then chord melody. I also worked on a lot of soloes, transcribed quite a few. I learned as much or more doing horn players as guitarists.

He had me work on various technique, like strict alternate picking, sweep picking (especially arpeggios), tremolo technique etc.

For reading, besides jazz, he had me doing flute and clarinet books.

OP, I don't know where you are in your journey, but this is a good systematic way to approach scales, I believe. And yes, it takes a lot of time, I practiced 5 hours a day for years in addition to playing professionally and teaching at the same time.

FWIW, I was never taught the Segovia three octave scales, and I have never seen them used in a jazz idiom (I messed around with them later). I have seen three octave arpeggios used (Julian Lage, but I think he was just showing off). Not that they are not worth working on, I just have never used them or seen them used.

Regarding scales, I have read that other jazz instrumentalists tend to think that guitarists run too many scales and don't play melodies enough. I don't know if it's true, but I have spent a lot of time trying to make that change in my own playing. We love Wes because he played wonderful melodies, even though for sure he knew scales as well. I now think that melody is intervals, even if they come out of scales. I like this idea of shells, I never learned that, I had to come up with them on my own.

Good luck with you journey!

[sully75]

Hello All

I updated my scale thingy, still filling in some dots but I like it. I try to make these 1 page cheat sheets that distill a lot of info onto one page. There's a 2nd page that has @breckerfan and Guy Boden's Bebop scale stuff. I stole liberally from everyone else also. And just copied two pages from a post by Harry Likas which probably was what I was trying to make in the first place.

Thanks to everyone who provided some info.

Perhaps it will be handy to you:
Scale Method - Google Docs

[Tal_175]

These exercises are from the guitarist Joey Goldstein's educational website. These are great for ears, vocabulary and technique. They are based on the simple concepts of playing intervals, triads and 7ths in up, down, up-down and down-up patterns written out in C major. They are some of the most common jazz calisthenics. But of course intended to be practiced in other keys and also applied to melodic minor and harmonic minor also.

Intervals:
http://www.joeygoldstein.com/TechEx/xIntervalsPg1.pdf
http://www.joeygoldstein.com/TechEx/xIntervalsPg2.pdf

Triads:
http://www.joeygoldstein.com/TechEx/xTriads.pdf

7ths:
http://www.joeygoldstein.com/TechEx/x7ths.pdf

This is the page they are described in:
Technical Exercises

[pamosmusic]

Hello All

I updated my scale thingy, still filling in some dots but I like it. I try to make these 1 page cheat sheets that distill a lot of info onto one page. There's a 2nd page that has @breckerfan and Guy Boden's Bebop scale stuff. I stole liberally from everyone else also. And just copied two pages from a post by Harry Likas which probably was what I was trying to make in the first place.

Thanks to everyone who provided some info.

Perhaps it will be handy to you:
Scale Method - Google Docs

here’s my scribbled version of the same. This lives in my scary red practice binder.

[sully75]

here’s my scribbled version of the same. This lives in my scary red practice binder.

Damnit that's better than mine!

[GuyBoden]

That's a lot of stuff.

[GuyBoden]

I understand and can appreciate the fact that scales can unlock technique and creativity, but...

Didn't Louis Armstrong prove that we didn't need so many notes (let alone scales) to play this music?

Didn't Charlie Christian show that us guitarists could play really far out advanced stuff (even bebop) from chord shapes?

I feel that guitarists are meant to play 'reduced' versions of scales, licks. Let the pianists and horn players play and rip thru the full versions. We'll stick with the 'reduced' versions... 3 note stuff, 4 note stuff - the essential stuff. And if we wanted to add chromatics, we could do it like CC did it in his solo on "I Can't Give You Anything But Love" (the last bit where he starts his double time run). So guitaristic yet swinging. Stuff that's not 'reduced' is just so difficult on the guitar. It feels unnatural to play. Trying to play full scales, various exercises, etc. and long complex lines feels to me like we're going 'against the nature of the guitar'. The price to pay in terms of time, attention, and effort is inordinately high to receive the benefits.

--------

On the wikipedia entry for Minton's Playhouse, there's a section, Charlie Christian and the house band, that states:

"One of the pioneers of the new style, which would eventually become known as bebop, was the young electric guitarist from Benny Goodman's band, Charlie Christian. He played nightly at Minton's and was one of its stars. Christian was in his mid-twenties in 1941; his time at Minton's was significant, but brief; he would die the following March suffering from tuberculosis in a sanatorium. As evidenced by recordings made by Columbia University student Jerry Newman in 1941, Christian's playing was breaking new ground. Gunther Schuller's assessment of Christian's playing on those recordings is as follows:


His work here seems to me relentlessly creative, endlessly fertile, and is so in a way that marks a new stylistic departure. Indeed, it signals the birth of a new language in jazz, which even [Charlie] Parker did not have as clearly in focus at that time.


Kenny Clarke and the band at Minton's would look forward with anticipation to Christian's arrival after finishing his set with Goodman. Christian was admired by his peers at Minton's, including Thelonious Monk who "loved listening to Charlie play solos with fluid lines and interesting harmonies". Hill bought Christian an amplifier to use so he would not have to bring his along. Hill retained it up until his death in 1978. Soon after Charlie Christian's death, alto saxophonist Charlie Parker emerged as a new leader of the bebop movement. Parker's collaboration with Dizzy Gillespie, Thelonious Monk and Kenny Clarke, at sessions at Minton's, would build on the earlier experiments of Christian."

If what CC did was good enough for the beboppers, then it's good enough for me.

(Scales intimidate the crap out of me anyway.)

Charlie Christian's playing is great at Minton's, but it's more Swing than Bebop to my ears. Jerry Newman who recorded the Minton sessions didn't understand or like Charlie Parker's playing, so he didn't record him.

Ways to play a Scale.
Charlie Christian didn't obviously play scales?

[sully75]

I don't want to go out on a limb here, but I feel like MAYBE in the intervening 82 years, jazz, the guitar and like, every single thing has changed a little bit since the time Charlie Christian died.

[pamosmusic]

I mean sure … I get that scales are not necessary. But there a few things here:

1. Is it okay for folks to not really want to sound exactly like Charlie Christian? And even those that did — Say, early Jim Hall — there is some incredible imagination there.

2. I love Charlie Christian and have transcribed a dozen or so of his solos. You can a lot of great sounds by taking his ideas and transposing and translating them through scales.

3. I think the idea that CC wasn’t preoccupied with or even particularly interested in or familiar with scales as practice tools is probably pretty reasonable. But also CC plays some ideas that are insanely modern — one of my favorite solos is from Gone With What Wind and there are lines in there that are from outer space. I think when you limit the tools you’re using to try and manipulate and learn from his lines, you’re limiting yourself a little more than you might think.

4. Guitar players may be meant to play less crazy stuff than pianists or whatever, but you can still come up with cool and interesting ideas if they’re not sheets of sound.

[pcjazz]

C E G B

The Yardbird suite figure isn't technically a BH pivot. Pivot is the 4 note arp only, in the same order as going up, but with the last 3 notes down an octave from the first note.

For BH any scalar sequence can be played as a pivot, with the octave leap up or down on any of the notes in the sequence. For examples see the Workshop workbook vol.1 in the “Basics” section.

Also, for BH an arpeggio is three notes followed by the first note an octave away, while a chord is four notes. C E G C’ is an arp; C E G A is a chord.

If you’re going to cite BH please use his terms as he explained them.

[emanresu]

Yep, there is no end in how you could practice scales. But last 20% of such workout should be something musical for sure.
Either figure out cool phrase(s) and get it groovy.. or (my favorite, when "practicing a scale") -
Get a nice litle "hooky" melody, the more you like it, the better, and play that melody in your scale in every thinkable position, fingering, octave.
You may even try to play it in harmonic 3rds, or even in triads. But then it becomes more "technical" again.

Anyway, I feel... my experience is that when doing scales only technically, the later improvisation sounds technical also.
Learning a scale in the musical way will awake something important in the brainz.. like now asking to provide something as meaningful from it like the tune was just 5 minutes ago.

This really works, I have a list of 3 pages of nice tunes to pick from.

[James W]

Who's to say what a guitar is 'meant' to do? What a ridiculous concept!

[CliffR]

Who's to say what a guitar is 'meant' to do? What a ridiculous concept!

Well, I'm pretty sure I know what my Jackson Custom Shop Soloist with Humbuckers From Hell pickups and Floyd Rose locking tremolo system is meant to do

[sully75]

My friend made me put a humbucking strat sized pickup in his shredder yahama and it sound awesome as a jazz guitar. I don't think these distinctions between guitars are helpful.

Anyway, I think anytime someone writes something super opinionated here or dismisses someone else's ideas or plan, they have to post 2 choruses of them playing over What Is This Thing called Love at 185bpm in the key of A flat within 24 hours.

[GuyBoden]

Charlie Christian's playing is great at Minton's, but it's more Swing than Bebop to my ears. Jerry Newman who recorded the Minton sessions didn't understand or like Charlie Parker's playing, so he didn't record him.

At first this is what I thought too - that it's more swing than bebop. On the surface yes, he's using the swing vocabulary and idiom. Underneath that, he is using Lester Young's asymmetrical approach to music. This plus all that chromaticism that no one was doing at that time... is almost effectively bebop.

To my ears, this recording of Charlie Parker (below) is early Bebop, it's very different from Charlie Christian's guitar Swing from around the same time (IMHO).

Below Charlie Parker in 1940:

Some people are saying this could even be 1937?

Charlie Parker 1942? (This is early Bebop?)

Charlie Parker 1943 (This is early Bebop?)

[Strat-itis]

For BH any scalar sequence can be played as a pivot, with the octave leap up or down on any of the notes in the sequence. For examples see the Workshop workbook vol.1 in the “Basics” section.

Also, for BH an arpeggio is three notes followed by the first note an octave away, while a chord is four notes. C E G C’ is an arp; C E G A is a chord.

If you’re going to cite BH please use his terms as he explained them.

I don't need your scrutiny sir. I've been studying with Chris Parks several days a week for a year and a half. I was explaining the terms to laypeople who likely will not follow BH religiously (or any advice). Why don't you go run your descending half step rules at 150.

[sully75]

lol relax im not being dismissive of your plans

it's just i saw ur google doc, and it's full of all those scales, exercises and patterns.. so im thinking, thats a lot of information but like how's that going show up in your live playing..

again im not against scales.. i do use them (3nps) for warm ups... good for practising my circular picking technique.. but that's about it for me when it comes to scales

I don't really get the question although it's been hashed about at length here. What's knowing my instrument in this very fundamental way going to do to my live playing? Probably the things that knowing an instrument fundamentally in many permutations would do.

I dunno, why don't you ask Kurt Rosenwinkel or Adam Rogers what being able to cleanly rip scales all over the guitar does for their playing? It doesn't make sense to me to ask it.

I never suggested that I was going to do all of that at once on one day or one year or anything. It's just a sheet of things you could do.

But I think the challenge still stands: is your question coming from an experienced player? I mean, I might hear you and think you need more scales. My playing sucks in various ways and I'm addressing it in various ways, scales is one of them. Seems deeply reasonable.

[sully75]

But I think that is ultimately a bit discouraging, so I challenge you to post 2 choruses of What Is This Thing Called Love at 180bpm.

[sully75]

I don't need your scrutiny sir. I've been studying with Chris Parks several days a week for a year and a half. I was explaining the terms to laypeople who likely will not follow BH religiously (or any advice). Why don't you go run your descending half step rules at 150.

You should offer him a real challenge.

[Strat-itis]

Like a shred-off! I didn't offer him a real challenge because I'm not really mad, just obligatorily defending myself.

[sully75]

Like a shred-off! I didn't offer him a real challenge because I'm not really mad, just obligatorily defending myself.

I mean everyone here has a very strong opinion of how jazz should be practiced and played, and I'm wondering who is a shredder and who is a keyboard warrior. My playing is what it is, but you can click below and hear it. I'm not telling other people what they shouldn't do but if you tell me what I shouldn't do, I want to hear your playing.

I did tell someone who self described as a newb that working through the Mick G almanac might not be a great thing to do starting out, but if they are super into that, knock yourself out. Whatever you practice, do it well and a lot.

Anyway, I think given the amount of people here who are saying don't practice this fundamental musical idea, a shred off is kind of a fun idea.

Btw I am a huge fan of Christian Van Hemert who is not a scale advocate in order to learn jazz and could shred me into little baby shreds. So I will listen attentively when he says something.

[Strat-itis]

I mean everyone here has a very strong opinion of how jazz should be practiced and played, and I'm wondering who is a shredder and who is a keyboard warrior. My playing is what it is, but you can click below and hear it. I'm not telling other people what they shouldn't do but if you tell me what I shouldn't do, I want to hear your playing.

I did tell someone who self described as a newb that working through the Mick G almanac might not be a great thing to do starting out, but if they are super into that, knock yourself out. Whatever you practice, do it well and a lot.

Anyway, I think given the amount of people here who are saying don't practice this fundamental musical idea, a shred off is kind of a fun idea.

Btw I am a huge fan of Christian Van Hemert who is not a scale advocate in order to learn jazz and could shred me into little baby shreds. So I will listen attentively when he says something.

Bro, you opened your account here in 2009. You don't know that 95% of the people issuing mandates about how you'd better practice more musically and ditch those scales because Bird didn't use them, can't really produce a viable recording of head, solo, head, with decent language and animation and no clams?

On the scales issue, you want your mechanics worked out or it will hinder you, not improve you. This isn't done to the exclusion of language or other musical components, you need to work those concurrently.

[pcjazz]

I don't need your scrutiny sir. I've been studying with Chris Parks several days a week for a year and a half. I was explaining the terms to laypeople who likely will not follow BH religiously (or any advice). Why don't you go run your descending half step rules at 150.

Done that. I studied with Barry and Howard Rees for more than fifteen years, and I can assure you that your “explanation” was misleading. I continue to think that when people use Barry’s name to support their use of his terms, they should mean what he meant. If you’d rather play Humpty Dumpty please leave Barry’s name out of it.

[Strat-itis]

I'd wager that you'd rather play Humpty Dumpty since you never post. Are we being tested on Barry terms now? I didn't realize that was the premise of the discussion.

[sully75]

Done that. I studied with Barry and Howard Rees for more than fifteen years, and I can assure you that your “explanation” was misleading. I continue to think that when people use Barry’s name to support their use of his terms, they should mean what he meant. If you’d rather play Humpty Dumpty please leave Barry’s name out of it.

Cool let's hear some!

Tbh I appreciate Barry Harris a lot, he's a level of genius I will never kiss the feet of. Naming really common things by other names seems really weird and makes the concepts unnecessarily obscure.

But anyway, let's hear some playing!