Picking and practicing

[christianm77]

No offense, but you're wrong, this comes directly from an 85 year old trumpet player, the complete antithesis of the modern chord scale theory. This is the language of Bird (that exact example, measure 14 Scrapple from the apple) and all the other bebop greats.

All of the other things you mentioned (rhythm, flow, internal dynamics, accents, passing tone) are variable, thats what you do with the vocabulary, thats how you vary it and keep it from becoming stale. It's just like language, you connect small bits of vocabulary in order to better express your thoughts and feelings.

I saw your half page explanation of playing a min iv over a dom7, all I could do is shake my head... It's a min7 arp off the b7 of a dom7 chord. It's a little snippet of vocabulary, that's all.

OK then

[pamosmusic]

I mean ... truthfully I don't necessarily think that he is wrong. An AbMaj7 arpeggio over a Bb7 chord is just that ... Santana could play that, Charlie Parker could play that, John Coltrane could do that. It's how they would address it melodically that would make them sound different, no?

[jordanklemons]

In the circles I run in, it's more or less commonly accepted that these words in question carry fairly specific meanings:

Vocabulary: These are all about melodic phrases. We're literally building small bits of our "language" here. So little riffs or licks, phrases from a bebop head, ideas we steal from a transcription, etc. Of course knowing how to apply them and in what situations they work are important... but that's sort of implied by the nature of the process. That said, knowing melodic phrases without a harmonic context is not necessarily worthless. There are times (extended intros, cadenzas, playing free jazz, playing out, etc) where the relationship between the harmony and the melody really doesn't necessarily matter that much. All depends on the situation.

Harmonic Vocabulary: This refers mostly to voicings. It's literally the harmonic version of vocabulary. Rather than knowing melodic phrases (and understanding how to apply them) it's about knowing harmonic voicings and how to apply them... or being able to voice lead through progressions with them.

As far as talking about the ability to use a Maj7 arpeggio built on the b7 of a dominant chord, and then being able to sub that dom chord for the other ones in the diminished cycle and the related diminished chords themselves... to me that honestly just sounds more like "theory" than anything else. All three are important. And all three topics work together and are integral to a big picture understanding of how things work. But I would expect to learn about that Maj7 arp on the b7 idea in a "jazz theory" class before I would expect to learn about it in an improv or vocab building class. In those classes, I might expect to hear the concept taught, but then I would expect the teacher to have people come up with different ways of using it so that they're building a vocabulary of unique phrases that are all based off the theory.

[christianm77]

Yep. Thinking about it, the way I play there are quite a few little figures that I play on major triads and so on that can be applied in a number of different contexts. I would thinking of the melodic figures on the arpeggio as the vocab side of it and then would practice applying this melodic fragments in different contexts - for example something on a maj7 could go:

Imaj7 - I
IVmaj7 - I
bVImaj7 - I
VIImaj7 - I

and so on. Those are the big one for me - you can probably think about other resolutions. Now if we look at it from the point of view of chord subs you could think 'hmm that's:

just a static I
b7 on V7 - I
b7 on bVII7 - I (i.e. minor/backdoor)
b7 on bII7 - I (i.e. tritone)

Or whatever modal interchange/modal theory suits you.

The question I find myself asking is how important is the second step, especially if you can clearly here the sound of each of these little cadential phrases. For me the second step seems a little superfluous. It doesn't hurt you necessarily to know it, but in terms of improvising melodic lines, perhaps you just need to get used to playing into the target chord in various ways.

In the case of Barry Harris, we would parent each of these arpeggios from what todays theory would call a mixolydian mode, and it would just be 'play a four note chord from the 7' without really thinking of what that chord was in particular. So literally - miss out a note each time sort of stuff.

So that's a very melodic way of looking at it to me - here's a simple scale let's break it up this way or that.

[pamosmusic]

Imaj7 - I
IVmaj7 - I
bVImaj7 - I
VIImaj7 - I

and so on. Those are the big one for me - you can probably think about other resolutions. Now if we look at it from the point of view of chord subs you could think 'hmm that's:

just a static I
b7 on V7 - I
b7 on bVII7 - I (i.e. minor/backdoor)
b7 on bII7 - I (i.e. tritone)

I like this a lot .... ever try this with some of your more unconventional ideas? You mentioned earlier that thinking melodically opens you up to more unusual "superimpositions" ... I believe the example you gave was the strong chromatic pull of a B major to a C major triad opens up the possibility of using a B major over a G7 chord which is ... to say the least ... harmonically unconventional.

Ever try any of those unusual resolutions like this?

[christianm77]

I like this a lot .... ever try this with some of your more unconventional ideas? You mentioned earlier that thinking melodically opens you up to more unusual "superimpositions" ... I believe the example you gave was the strong chromatic pull of a B major to a C major triad opens up the possibility of using a B major over a G7 chord which is ... to say the least ... harmonically unconventional.

Ever try any of those unusual resolutions like this?

Everyday. G7-->B-->Cmaj7 is one of my favourites. Particularly stylistic for swing and Gypsy Jazz gigs.

Thing is, they aren't actually harmonically unconventional at all. The B-C resolution was common place in the 1930s, for instance. The resolutions I listed are all part of the Barry Harris system which one way of teaching pretty old school changes playing. You can hear them in classic solos.

This isn't experimental stuff - this is tradition.

Thing is - we have forgotten this approach. Now everything is chords and 'correctness.'