Carl Kaye - chordal tones

[Bach5G]

I glanced through some of CK’s materials. When she refers to chordal tones, does she simply mean arpeggiating the chord changes?

[Bobby Timmons]

Yes but somehow it's more musical how she explains it. :P

[MarkRhodes]

I glanced through some of CK’s materials. When she refers to chordal tones, does she simply mean arpeggiating the chord changes?

No.
She starts off with chord tones. She thinks of them as "anchor" tones or notes. (She doesn't like beginners to think of "play this scale over that chord." She says harsh things about novice who want to solo from scales. "Don't play over the chord, play the chord!" But what she means by "chord" is a whole lot more than just the notes of a triad. For example, I remember her saying somewhere "Abm9 IS G7!" That may not make sense to a beginner but if you work with what she teaches, you get to the point of, "Yeah, I get it."

So, she starts with what she calls the chordal scale. (F, Gm, Am, Bb, C7, Dm, Em7b5 F) It's not just what chords are but how they move (-in jazz standards, anyway).
But that's just the very beginning.

[Christian Miller]

Yeah I tend to talk about it a similar way. I can’t remember if I got this from Carol or whether I read her stuff and it agreed with what I’d worked out or heard elsewhere.

Fwiw they teach that in classical melody writing too.

Arpeggios go up and down… chord tones are the supporting pillars of more elaborate and embellished melodies later down the line.

[pamosmusic]

Interesting. Yeah not super familiar with her stuff, but I’ve kind of fallen into this thing where I basically keep students from playing a major scale for as long as humanly possible. For some reason the second you give someone a major scale their noodling suddenly sounds like noodling.

[MarkRhodes]

Yeah I tend to talk about it a similar way. I can’t remember if I got this from Carol or whether I read her stuff and it agreed with what I’d worked out or heard elsewhere.

Fwiw they teach that in classical melody writing too.

Arpeggios go up and down… chord tones are the supporting pillars of more elaborate and embellished melodies later down the line.

Right! For a good example of the latter, Carol has an exercise early in her "Jazz Guitar" book (pamphlet, really) where you're playing: note above, chord tone, note below, chord tone. For F, that would be G F E F; Bb A Ab A; D C B C, and so on. The pattern is easy on the ear----you've heard it before--and it hangs together by knowing the chord tones that 'anchor' each group of four notes. It does NOT hang together as a scalar exercise (-there is no B in the F major scale, yet here we have both B and Bb, not to mention Ab.) She doesn't even explain the pattern as 'note above, chord tone, note below, chord tone,' she just writes out the pattern for F, Gm, Am, Bb, C7, Dm, and Em7b5. Once you've got it (and moved it around some) you're better off than you were. ;o)