The Jazz Guitar Chord Dictionary
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  1. #76

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    Quote Originally Posted by garybaldy
    Family life and troublesome vehicles have taken over for a while.
    Well, to be honest, those things are a bit more important than music. Good luck with them.

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    The Jazz Guitar Chord Dictionary
     
  3. #77

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    All of this stuff takes lots of time. All of the modes and chords of the harmonic minor scale? I've worked on that a little every once in a while, but it doesn't seem to apply to most of the music I play. As a result, it's something that ends up on the back burner.

    Back to the Alt scale mystery:
    When using the Dorian mode of a minor chord vamp, you can't really hit a wrong note, so melodic lines are easier to come up with. But with so many dissonant notes in the Alt scale it isn't so easy to hear how to use them. There seems to be more ways to come up with lines that sound terrible than lines that sound good! From what I'm hearing from Jazz musicians, arpeggios tend to work better than a linear (scalar) approach. And playing random notes usually turns out yucky.

    How about experimenting with starting (and ending) lines on different notes within the scale? This would help to hear each of those alt notes (one at a time). That approach would also lower the tendency to repeat the same riffs stolen from Wes!

    Also, just because a V I cadence comes up doesn't mean an Alt scale riff is needed. Paraphrasing Chic Corea, ..."if don't hear what to play, don't play anything".

  4. #78

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    Quote Originally Posted by Tal_175
    I work on these things in the context of tunes. If I get a chance, I'll pick a tune and record something to show one way of working on developing phrases.
    In the key of Gminor the notes of D7alt ideas I mentioned would be:

    #9, b9 down to the 6th: F, Eb, D, C, Bb (note Bb is target here as it's the 3rd of Gminor)
    augmented arpeggio from the third: F# Bb D F

    Note the arpeggio can be connected with the first idea since the last note of the arpeggio (F) can start the first idea. Passing notes, trills, approach notes, octave displacements, triplets etc can be used to generate various phrases with just these two building blocks and resolve to G minor. Like I said, if I get a chance, I'll record one way of how to do this in the context of a tune.
    Funny that the example above is a straight Bb major scale down, with Bb being the corresponding major to G minor.

    I have spent a lot of time learning the AbMelMinor scale, arpeggios of several altered chords, tritone substitutions and all, just to find that I'd been playing that stuff all along and called it blue notes. Well, at least now I know what I'm doing

    Anyway, I'm thinking of changing my signature to "Blue notes were killed by Bmelmin and Abaugmaj, warlords of Super Locria".

    O Elbereth Gilthoniel!

  5. #79

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    Quote Originally Posted by bobby d
    All of this stuff takes lots of time. All of the modes and chords of the harmonic minor scale? I've worked on that a little every once in a while, but it doesn't seem to apply to most of the music I play. As a result, it's something that ends up on the back burner.

    Back to the Alt scale mystery:
    When using the Dorian mode of a minor chord vamp, you can't really hit a wrong note, so melodic lines are easier to come up with. But with so many dissonant notes in the Alt scale it isn't so easy to hear how to use them. There seems to be more ways to come up with lines that sound terrible than lines that sound good! From what I'm hearing from Jazz musicians, arpeggios tend to work better than a linear (scalar) approach. And playing random notes usually turns out yucky.

    How about experimenting with starting (and ending) lines on different notes within the scale? This would help to hear each of those alt notes (one at a time). That approach would also lower the tendency to repeat the same riffs stolen from Wes!

    Also, just because a V I cadence comes up doesn't mean an Alt scale riff is needed. Paraphrasing Chic Corea, ..."if don't hear what to play, don't play anything".
    Aye.

    I think one thing that it comes down to is; what can you hear? Then the actually much more trivial problem of, can you play what you hear?

    And simply wanting to 'not play wrong notes' is not good enough. Much jazz education is framed in an incredibly stupid way from the point of view of psychology. Avoid notes; prohibitions. Don't fuck it up! Don't play the F#! Don't think of the elephant!

    You are setting yourself up to FAIL. Ask any psychologist. (Also these exact prohibitions, these potential 'mistakes' somehow don't sound like mistakes when played by real musicians. Almost like the rules aren't really that important.)

    It's not wrong to say the 13th on a IIm7 is an avoid note because it 'gives away' the sound of the dominant....
    but it's not a very helpful way of framing it.
    Why instead not simply say - using the 13th on a IIm7 chord will make the chord sound like a dominant?

    No; instead of 'avoiding wrong notes' think about playing the right ones which are of course, ones that you hear.At first these 'right notes' might actually be Wes Montgomery's right notes. After a while, they will become right notes you haven't heard on a record. And you discover that the rightness of these notes is as much a function of time as pitch.

    When I call the altered scale in II-V-I situations a 'chimera' I mean that it is a semi-successful attempt to roll together a whole bunch of different things into one 7 note pitch collection. The head of a whole tone scale, a second head of a minor into major modal interchange with false relations, a third head of a diminished scale, the body of a tritone sub and the tail of an enharmonic misspelling.

    It's not wrong exactly; but it's not enough.... It's an abstraction of something that its not always helpful to abstract.

    For example, not all altered chords - even those belonging to the altered scale - sound alike. A 7b5#9b13 chord is profoundly different colour to a 7#9b13. One of the biggest limitations of CST, taken on its own, is that it simply doesn't contain enough detail to make stylistic and nuanced choices regarding harmony.

    I have have found it helpful to use a number of separate techniques that relate to the altered scale; the scale in its entirety is quite rare. The fairly obvious fact is most II-V-I jazz lines don't have enough notes in them for the altered scale analysis of them to be anything other than an abstraction.

    Generally you have two situations:

    1) where the scale is used as voice leading (in which case we may as well just use voice leading.)
    2) where the scale is used as a colour - for instance in a non-functional tune

    In the latter case, it is usually better to use something consonant as a sub for this - triads and pentatonic scales are good here (such as the subs suggested above), also consonant intervals like 4ths and 5ths through the scale.

    We can characterised approach 1) as Swing, Bebop etc and approach 2) as Post-modal, Fusion, Contemporary.

  6. #80

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    Just to illustrate my rather wordy point, here is a fairly stock line taken from a Wes solo:

    I Need an Altered Dominant Scale Boot Camp Regime-wes-lick-no-chords-jpg

    So, without knowing the 'background harmony', what's the simplest way of understanding how it is constructed?

    How many situations can we use it in?
    Attached Images Attached Images

  7. #81

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    Quote Originally Posted by bobby d
    But with so many dissonant notes in the Alt scale it isn't so easy to hear how to use them.
    That's why I just go for it and what happens happens. And usually it's fine.

    But the absolutely essential thing is to know, more or less, where you're going. If you're focussed on the alt scale too much you'll miss the resolution. And usually it's the resolution that determines how you play the alt scale.

    In that Wes lick, he was heading for the 3rd of the M7, which is a very good place to go. But if he'd had the 5th in view he'd have played the alt line differently, right?

    Or, of course, you just play your alt notes and go for the nearest M7 tone (probably not the root, too boring).

  8. #82

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    An awful lot depends on how complex a song is. That's why I love Bluesy Jazz and Jazz Standards that are just easier to improvise on. And of course, fast tempos give us less time to know what to do when it's time to interject the Alt scale.

    Also, when someone calls out a song that I don't know from Adam, it's pretty much CST for me. It's all fun, but mostly when there's freedom to forget theory and just play. Which means hitting notes that might be perceived as wrong lol.

  9. #83

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    I always think of it like language. There's the word and then there's how to use it!
    practice Melodic Minor arpeggios and scales throughout the entire fingerboard.
    Then practice it against your ll,V,l minors.

  10. #84
    One of the most difficult aspects re altered/melodic minor is learning enough to justify wood-shedding it in a meaningful way. It's a little difficult to hear in others' playing at times, because most of the notes can be thought of in the context of another scale etc. Learning where the notes are is pretty important. The workaround I found that helped the most was working on Reg's idea above of Extended Diatonic Relationships (chords up and down a third). This is important with Melodic Minor, because there are scale degrees which are just honestly lesser-used in practice. The 2nd scale degree (dorian b9) isn't used as much, but if you practice it as an "upper extension of altered", you can learn to hear and see it much more quickly. The same is true in wood-shedding it as a lower extension of the IV of melodic minor, Lydian Dominant.

    Lydian dominant is the gateway drug IMO, because it has more parallel direct relationship to the chord/scale it's subbing. It's much easier mentally and kinesthetically to woodshed A-7, Ab7#11, Gmaj7 than A-7 Dalt Gmaj7. (D altered doesn't spell cleanly as a parallel analogue to D mixolydian. It also doesn't lay out that way on any instrument. Players on all instruments physically/mentally learn altered from the parent melodic minor scale first. Many actually think about it that way as well always. It's not traditional functional 1-2-3-4-5-6-7 and isn't spelled that way in relation to D7.) So, start with just learning melodic minor scale chord relationships for each scale degree in one position each, starting from the 6th string, and then relationships up and down a third. That way, all scale degrees have a relationship to at least one easily used chord application.

    Back to altered, again, you're not going to hear multiple measures of straight melodic minor playing, and that isn't the point. But this fact is very often used to imply that it isn't that important. I'd disagree with that, but whatever. Another Reg concept which is super important, not only for long-term application but also for short-term practice/motivation etc, is the concept of harmonic rhythm. Most altered lines are a measure long or half of a measure. It's really helpful to practice going in and out of altered and learning to hear it. In real life, you often "go altered" at the end of a phrase "on the weak side" of a chord pattern, maybe even just the last beat, but one beat of altered isn't easy to practice. So, practice playing 3 measures of D mixolydian and 1 measure of D altered. Listen for it in transcribing.

    Learn some of the cliches. #9-b9-1-7 -(3 of I chord) is pretty standard, but think about it in terms of harmonic rhythm as well. It might be viewed as 4 notes diatonic maj, 4 notes altered V, 4 notes diatonic major. Learn to hear the in-and-out. The fact that it's brief, doesn't mean that it "doesn't exist" or that it's not important to learn as a stand-alone. It's not simply "embellished diatonic" in the way many players think of it, and if you learn to see it as a stand-alone, you can eventually apply in other ways and extend the ideas into longer phrases as well. It has a ton of implications for extending blue note ideas, CESH patterns over minor chords, developing mixed chord patterns over single chords etc.

    Forgotten about this old video. It's too long honestly. Sorry... it is what it is...
    Last edited by matt.guitarteacher; 10-17-2020 at 04:26 PM.

  11. #85

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    Quote Originally Posted by garybaldy
    I'd like to be able to form a smooth run over,for example, Bbm7 Eb7alt Abmaj7 at the drop of a hat.
    Cheers
    why?

  12. #86

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    Here is a pretty good boot camp regime:

    http://valdez.dumarsengraving.com/PD...nePatterns.pdf

  13. #87

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    Quote Originally Posted by grahambop
    Here is a pretty good boot camp regime:

    http://valdez.dumarsengraving.com/PD...nePatterns.pdf
    Phew! That was some workout, but I think I've got it memorized. Got any more?

  14. #88

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    There used to be a monster PDF of about 200 Sonny Stitt solo transcriptions on the web, not sure if that’s still around!

  15. #89

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    Quote Originally Posted by princeplanet
    Phew! That was some workout, but I think I've got it memorized. Got any more?
    Set up a mirror and play it right-to-left. Then turn the pages upside down, etc...

  16. #90

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    Quote Originally Posted by grahambop
    Here is a pretty good boot camp regime:

    http://valdez.dumarsengraving.com/PD...nePatterns.pdf
    Thank you for posting this. Very interesting and a little overwhelming.

    Are these all based on patterns Coltrane actually played? I couldn't find any information on how they were compiled.

  17. #91

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    Quote Originally Posted by rpjazzguitar
    Thank you for posting this. Very interesting and a little overwhelming.

    Are these all based on patterns Coltrane actually played? I couldn't find any information on how they were compiled.
    No idea, I assume they have been transcribed from recordings. Each pattern is repeated 12 times (i.e. taken through all 12 keys) so I guess that is possible, given how many ii-Vs there must be in Trane’s recorded solos.

  18. #92

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    Quote Originally Posted by BigDaddyLoveHandles
    Set up a mirror and play it right-to-left. Then turn the pages upside down, etc...
    I just tried this, wasn't quite working for me, until I played them left handed like this, and then it seemed to make more sense, cheers!

  19. #93
    Quote Originally Posted by grahambop
    Here is a pretty good boot camp regime:

    http://valdez.dumarsengraving.com/PD...nePatterns.pdf
    Thanks for the link.
    Could someone please talk me through the use of the #7 over a Dom7th when it doesn't appear to be a chromatic passing note or part of an ornament (if that's the correct word)? Thanks

  20. #94

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    I think you can play any note as long as it is part of a phrase which has some kind of internal logic, and resolves eventually. A fairly fast tempo probably helps too.

  21. #95

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    Voice leading. So long as Gb eventually resolves to G there’s really no issue. As you get used to that you can add notes in between.

    So while
    3 x 3 4 x 2

    might sound bad on its own, in context I bet few would notice

    x 5 3 5 6 x
    3 x 3 4 x 2
    x 3 2 4 x 3

    Here we have F-F#-G in the top voice

    The Db mixo scale BTW gives the complete chromatic chromatic scale in combination with the C6/9/major pent. its like the most efficient way of playing a cadence....

    Db Eb F Gb Ab Bb B
    C D E G A

    Cool huh? (I think so) look at all the semitone resolutions.

    Trane loved mathematical patterns in music and studied with Dennis Sandole who was a big Webern and Schoenberg head so it’s likely he’d clocked this.

    The altered scale is similar but has G instead of Gb... because jazz needs to be tidied up otherwise daddy gets angry.

  22. #96

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    Quote Originally Posted by djg
    why?
    you may think i was being facetious but this is the question you need to answer for yourself first.

    you barely have enough time to read this thread yet folks recommend to you to study the semi- and ultralocrian (whatever those are) or consider a 4nps approach. these may be valuable tips for some but certainly not for you.

    so again, why? and why in all keys? is it because you see the chord symbol "alt" a lot and gather that this must be an important part of jazz improv? or are there special tunes you're studying? or do you like the sound of a passage you think is altered?

    -do you know that the alt symbol is basically the musical equivalent of putting a wet finger in the air? (i.e. usually just sloppy notation)
    -are you aware that in jazz we improvise over functions first?
    -are you familiar with the concept of tritone sub?
    -can you play a II-V into minor?
    -are you aware of the principles of chord substitutions, like VI subbing for I and IV for II-V? can you improvise using those principles? can you include the tritone sub of the IV chord and resolve to I?
    -can you access and resolve altered notes in a dominant chord via grips like x8787x (F7b9) or play simple formulas like 3 b9 1 7 around the cycle?

    all of the above should be butter and bread to you.

  23. #97
    Quote Originally Posted by garybaldy
    Thanks for the link.
    Could someone please talk me through the use of the #7 over a Dom7th when it doesn't appear to be a chromatic passing note or part of an ornament (if that's the correct word)? Thanks
    In harmonizing for horn charts or block chords, it's often looked at as being a dominant approach to the dominant-chord-of-the-moment. G# on an A7 chord could be things like 3rd of E7 approach chord to A7. Same with it's tritone, Bb7. These can be harmonizations for block chords or jumping off points for extending melodic ideas off of the maj-7 interval.