Your Favourite 'Imposed Pentatonic' or 'imposed arpeggio'

[Tal_175]

The problem with the altered scale is people think of it as a derivative melodic minor scale instead of shell notes + altered notes of a dominant: R 3 7 + b9 #9 b5 #5.

[Christian Miller]

Some fun stuff I'm working on for a forthcoming video

[Christian Miller]

The problem with the altered scale is people think of it as a derivative melodic minor scale instead of shell notes + altered notes of a dominant: R 3 7 + b9 #9 b5 #5.

I believe Gary Burton has the scale as having a 5th in it as well.

Warne Marsh/Tristano's construction is this (to quote John Klopotowski):

This final altered dominant 7th chord is actually used quite a bit in jazz, although again not exactly in the context taught by Warne. The idea here is to superimpose a tonic minor scale/arpeggio beginning on the b9 of the dominant chord, so if the lower chord is C7 then the superimposed tonic minor scale would begin on either Db or C# in the second octave. Also, the segment of this scale from C in the second octave to the C above the staff is sometimes called the “super Locrian” scale. However, as in the other polytonal harmonies the available notes in this harmony/scale change depending on the octave, so we begin with a C7 scale (either mixolydian mode on C, or dominant harmony #1 in this explanation) but move into Db melodic minor in the second octave once the b9 chord tone is available. As in the second dominant harmony Warne liked the additional altered chord tones in the third octave, in this case the b9 and #11 (both transposed up an octave) of the C7 chord.




Klopotowski, John. A Jazz Life: Memoirs and studies drawn from experiences as a student of Warne Marsh, 1982-87 (p. 153). (Function). Kindle Edition.

[Mick-7]

D7alt - Eb melodic minor - D (root)
DEAD BORING

I don't follow, how is the b9th, #9th, b5th, #5th over the dominant chord (e.g., Ebmm over D7) "dead boring"?

[rpjazzguitar]

Maybe not - but the sounds also work a bit differently.

So for every melodic minor mode except the altered if you play the seventh of the melodic minor you get the characteristic sound of that scale

Dm - D melodic minor - C# (7)
D7 - A melodic minor note - G# (#11)
D-7b5 - F melodic minor note - E (nat9)
Dmaj7#5 - B melodic minor - A# (#5)
D13b9sus4 - C melodic minor - B (13)

All the cool notes

But it doesn't work with the Altered scale

D7alt - Eb melodic minor - D (root)
DEAD BORING

Altered is kind of its own thing. Just something I noticed.

Same with voicings. One of hip thing I can play on G7alt is a quartal stack on the b7. E.g. 3 x 3 3 4 4

If I use the same voicing on Db7, it just becomes a regular Db6/9 chord. Just a bit boring.

I understand that there are many possible paths to playing well. I wouldn't presume to suggest or even think that mine is particularly valuable. But, for the sake of discussion ...

The chord names you list, I would write differently. That's Dmmaj7. D9#11, Dm9b5. And for the latter, I'd have thought Ab was indicative of the characteristic sound, assuming that one note can be that in this situation.

And, if you build off the second mode in thirds you get Dm7b9. But, you can continue and get D F A C Eb G B (the entire mode) and, per Levine, pick whichever notes you want. He recommended D G A C Eb (meaning he replaced the F with a G). Not only is B not the most important note in his formulation, he doesn't even recommend playing it. Of course, he doesn't set the rules and anybody can do whatever they want.

As far as the alt scale goes it is true that the 7th note is the root and thereby uninteresting. But, I had no prior expectations that the 7th note was supposed to be special. To my ear, it's the b13 and #9 together that make the sound I usually hear as alt on guitar. So it's something like xx3446 against G7. And, speaking only for myself, I've gotten more out of thinking that way (finding the voicings that sound good, one at a time) than starting with theory, generating multiple options and trying to sort them in a hierarchy of usability. I gather that others are more successful with that. I'm not criticizing the approach, I'm just saying there are other ways to get these sounds.

[Christian Miller]

I don't follow, how is the b9th, #9th, b5th, #5th over the dominant chord (e.g., Ebmm over D7) "dead boring"?

I’m not sure if you understood my post. Could you give another squizz and if you are still none the wiser I’ll try to explain it a bit better?


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[Christian Miller]

I understand that there are many possible paths to playing well. I wouldn't presume to suggest or even think that mine is particularly valuable. But, for the sake of discussion ...

The chord names you list, I would write differently. That's Dmmaj7. D9#11, Dm9b5. And for the latter, I'd have thought Ab was indicative of the characteristic sound, assuming that one note can be that in this situation.

And, if you build off the second mode in thirds you get Dm7b9. But, you can continue and get D F A C Eb G B (the entire mode) and, per Levine, pick whichever notes you want. He recommended D G A C Eb (meaning he replaced the F with a G). Not only is B not the most important note in his formulation, he doesn't even recommend playing it. Of course, he doesn't set the rules and anybody can do whatever they want.

As far as the alt scale goes it is true that the 7th note is the root and thereby uninteresting. But, I had no prior expectations that the 7th note was supposed to be special. To my ear, it's the b13 and #9 together that make the sound I usually hear as alt on guitar. So it's something like xx3446 against G7. And, speaking only for myself, I've gotten more out of thinking that way (finding the voicings that sound good, one at a time) than starting with theory, generating multiple options and trying to sort them in a hierarchy of usability. I gather that others are more successful with that. I'm not criticizing the approach, I'm just saying there are other ways to get these sounds.

I mean there’s really only one path to playing well, and all of this theory stuff is really just directions, options and systemisation of what’s really important.

I expect Levine himself would have told you the same thing.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[BreckerFan]

Superimposing pentatonics and arpeggios is my favorite way to either add diatonic color or access outside sounds. And you can think of it more as a dimmer switch than an either or. My approach is in large part stolen from Adam Rogers.

For diatonic sounds I might do:
-min 7 arpeggio/min pentatonic from the 3rd of a Maj 7 chord (very common)
-min 7 arpeggio/min pentatonic from the 7th of a maj 7 chord (lydian sound)
-min/maj7 arpeggio from the 5th of a dominant 7 chord (lydian dominant sound)
-min 7 arpeggio from 3rd of a half diminished chord

Introducing more color:
-min 7 arpeggio/minor pentatonic from the #11 of a maj7#11 chord (includes the b9)
-min/maj7 arpeggio from the 3rd of a major 7 chord (includes #9)
-Dominant 7 arpeggio from the 3rd of a major 7 chord (includes #5)
-min/Maj7 arpeggio from the 7th of a major 7 chord (includes b7)

But then to really get the polytonal, outside but still kind of inside sound that I love from Rogers, you can start filling in these arpeggios with scales that contain more non-diatonic notes:
-Dorian from the 7 of a major 7 chord
-Dorian from the #11 of a major 7 chord
-Melodic minor from the 3rd of a major 7 chord
-lydian dominant (melodic minor mode) from the 3rd of a major 7th chord

Here are a couple YouTube shorts showing some of these sounds in context:

Adam Rogers Inspired Etude on What is This Thing Called Love - YouTube

Modern F Blues Outside Substitution Etude on Birdlike - YouTube

[Mick-7]

I’m not sure if you understood my post. Could you give another squizz and if you are still none the wiser I’ll try to explain it a bit better?

o.k..... you said, "for every melodic minor mode except the altered if you play the seventh of the melodic minor you get the characteristic sound of that scale." That seems irrelevant to me, there are 6 other notes in the scale.

[Christian Miller]

I understand that there are many possible paths to playing well. I wouldn't presume to suggest or even think that mine is particularly valuable. But, for the sake of discussion ...

The chord names you list, I would write differently. That's Dmmaj7. D9#11, Dm9b5. And for the latter, I'd have thought Ab was indicative of the characteristic sound, assuming that one note can be that in this situation.

And, if you build off the second mode in thirds you get Dm7b9. But, you can continue and get D F A C Eb G B (the entire mode) and, per Levine, pick whichever notes you want. He recommended D G A C Eb (meaning he replaced the F with a G). Not only is B not the most important note in his formulation, he doesn't even recommend playing it. Of course, he doesn't set the rules and anybody can do whatever they want.

As far as the alt scale goes it is true that the 7th note is the root and thereby uninteresting. But, I had no prior expectations that the 7th note was supposed to be special. To my ear, it's the b13 and #9 together that make the sound I usually hear as alt on guitar. So it's something like xx3446 against G7. And, speaking only for myself, I've gotten more out of thinking that way (finding the voicings that sound good, one at a time) than starting with theory, generating multiple options and trying to sort them in a hierarchy of usability. I gather that others are more successful with that. I'm not criticizing the approach, I'm just saying there are other ways to get these sounds.

The way you get the sound, is to hear the sound, and then play the sound.

But I will give you a little run down of my thinking. For all those chords there's a very typical diatonic place for them to crop up. In order to make them not sound diatonic, that one note is what you need. I'm not going to go through the whole list, so here's a super practical one.

Take the A Train - Cmaj7 D7 (D-7) G7, right?

OK, so to accommodate the D7 in the progression, you alter the F to an F#. It's V/V secondary dominant. Common practice music theory.

Loads of jazz tunes do this, Exactly Like You is a good example.

Then Billy Strayhorn comes along and does something no-one (as far as I know) had done before - at least in jazz. He put a G# on the D7 chord in the melody, and the shout chorus. Really clear.

That's the 'special note' - today we see that as belonging to A melodic minor, or if you prefer its mode D lydian dominant. It's ONE note different from the standard vanilla form as Reg would call it.

Therefore it's the characteristic note. The note that makes it 'melodic minor' for want of a better term.

In the same way -7b5 chords have been in use since the baroque era. They occur naturally on the seventh degree of the diatonic major scale, and especially on degree II of the minor key.

Now listen to Bill Evans play Beautiful Love. The first chord is II-7b5, E-7b5 in this key. But we can clearly hear an F# in the chord voicing. Bach didn't write stuff like that.

Same for the other examples. Compare

IIm --> II Dorian - II Melodic Minor
IIIsus4b9 --> III Phrygian - III Dorian b9
IV --> IV Lydian --> IV Lydian Augmented
V7 --> V Mixolydian --> V Lydian Dominant
VII-7b5 --> VII Locrian --> VII Locrian #2

Each scale is one note different. And here's the clincher - in each case except the altered, that characteristic note appears on the leading tone (7) of the parent melodic minor.
- And when you think about the way the chords arise from the basic key, it's quite clear it has to be that way
- It's also obvious after a moment's more thought why the altered scale breaks the pattern.
- Lastly, the names of the scales could make this fact a bit clearer don't you think?

Hope that's clear. I actually think Levine would have been down with this idea. Surely this is taught?

It's also a lot easier than trying to hear every note in a seven note scale.

[rpjazzguitar]

I mean there’s really only one path to playing well, and all of this theory stuff is really just directions, options and systemisation of what’s really important.

I expect Levine himself would have told you the same thing.

The way you get the sound, is to hear the sound, and then play the sound.

But I will give you a little run down of my thinking. For all those chords there's a very typical diatonic place for them to crop up. In order to make them not sound diatonic, that one note is what you need. I'm not going to go through the whole list, so here's a super practical one.

Take the A Train - Cmaj7 D7 (D-7) G7, right?

OK, so to accommodate the D7 in the progression, you alter the F to an F#. It's V/V secondary dominant. Common practice music theory.

Loads of jazz tunes do this, Exactly Like You is a good example.

Then Billy Strayhorn comes along and does something no-one (as far as I know) had down before. He put a G# on the D7 chord in the melody, and the shout chorus. Really clear.

That's the 'special note' - today we see that as belonging to A melodic minor, or if you prefer its mode D lydian dominant. It's ONE note different from the standard vanilla form as Reg would call it.

Therefore it's the characteristic note. The note that makes it 'melodic minor' for want of a better term.

In the same way -7b5 chords have been in use since the baroque era. They occur naturally on the seventh degree of the diatonic major scale, and especially on degree II of the minor key.

Now listen to Bill Evans play Beautiful Love. The first chord is II-7b5, E-7b5 in this key. But we can clearly hear an F# in the chord voicing. Bach didn't write stuff like that.

Hope that's clear. I actually think Levine would have been down with this idea.

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Levine advocated for learning theory, but was quite clear that there was more than one theory. He wrote that that's why his book isn't called Jazz Truth.

He also said that he learned most of what he knew from transcription. Nonetheless, he wrote that becoming a certain kind of player would require theory. I think he would have cheerfully acknowledged that not every great player knew all the theory in his book. My impression is that some transcribers apply theory more than others.

I offer Andres Varady as a counterexample. He made the cover of GP at age 14 or so, earning it with the quality of his play -- and reporting in the interview that he knew absolutely no theory, not even the notes in a C scale, iirc.

Joe Pass, famously, had a student explain to him what modes are.

Warren Nunes refused to discuss modes at all. He had his own views which were a lot sparser than those in Levine's book.

It's possible to attribute theoretical knowledge to them post hoc, but I knew Warren well enough to suspect that he'd have rejected the characterization, except for the approach he actually used, which isn't what you read in Levine's book, despite some overlap.

My impression is that younger players may know and use more theory, because it's available and promulgated pretty widely. Also, that many great players advocate its use. But, not all.

And, of course, Levine was clear that the great players weren't thinking about theory as they played. He wrote that they did it years before and introjected those elements in their playing.

So,we can disagree about how many paths there are to play well.

[rpjazzguitar]

The way you get the sound, is to hear the sound, and then play the sound.

But I will give you a little run down of my thinking. .

I appreciate the rundown.

My approach to this general area is to think first about chords. There's a chord on the chart, or a superimposition in my mind, for which I know the chord tones, the consonant extensions and the leftovers. It's hard to know from where things creep into your playing, but, I think, IME, it's mostly by thinking about chord substitutions.

So, for a simple example, in a tonic Dm situation I might think m6 or minmaj7. For these chords a B and a C#, respectively, are what it takes to move the sound off the minor triad while maintaining the tonic character. Where those notes fit into D melodic minor, or a mode thereof, is not something I feel a need to think about.

The same thing would be true of D9#11. The Ab moves it off the straight D9 sound. I learned it by playing xx4554 in A Train. I'm aware that it can be seen as from Amelmin but that wasn't how I learned to use the sound.

I may still think about the melodic minor scale in arriving at alternative voicings for a melmin chord -- since all melmin chords will substitute for each other, to one degree or another. There are so many options it's challenging. It's a work in progress to get some of these possibilities to be automatic.

It could be argued that I'm leaving a lot on the table -- that working through the theory would provide many more options. Sure, but I'm more inclined to see that as a rabbit hole than a solution, not that others don't benefit from that type of exploration.

At a basic level I think how good one's ear is and what one has learned, in what order, are determinants of how one can proceed efficiently later.

[Christian Miller]

Levine advocated for learning theory, but was quite clear that there was more than one theory. He wrote that that's why his book isn't called Jazz Truth.

He also said that he learned most of what he knew from transciption. Nonetheless, he wrote that becoming a certain kind of player would require theory. I think he would have cheerfully acknowledged that not every great player knew all the theory in his book. My impression is that some transcribers apply theory more than others.

I offer Andres Varady as a counterexample. He made the cover of GP at age 14 or so, earning it with the quality of his play -- and reporting in the interview that he knew absolutely no theory, not even the notes in a C scale, iirc.

Joe Pass, famously, had a student explain to him what modes are.

Warren Nunes refused to discuss modes at all. He had his own views which were a lot sparser than those in Levine's book.

It's possible to attribute theoretical knowledge to them post hoc, but I knew Warren well enough to suspect that he'd have rejected the characterization, except for the approach he actually used, which isn't what you read in Levine's book, despite some overlap.

My impression is that younger players may know and use more theory, because it's available and promulgated pretty widely. Also, that many great players advocate its use. But, not all.

And, of course, Levine was clear that the great players weren't thinking about theory as they played. He wrote that they did it years before and introjected those elements in their playing.

So,we can disagree about how many paths there are to play well.

People express themselves in a million different ways, but when you look at the fundamentals the musician’s path is pretty universal, and probably has been for thousands of years.

You have to use your ears, become intimately acquainted yourself with whatever musical tradition you are drawn to - and you have to play with other people.

Anyone I’ve ever played with he sounds good has done this. There are no shortcuts. Luckily it’s a (mostly) fulfilling process.

The theoretical side of it in a living oral tradition like jazz, is simply a way of finding vocabulary to talk about what we hear.

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[rpjazzguitar]

People express themselves in a million different ways, but when you look at the fundamentals the musician’s path is pretty universal, and probably has been for thousands of years.

You have to use your ears, become intimately acquainted yourself with whatever musical tradition you are drawn to - and you have to play with other people.

Anyone I’ve ever played with he sounds good has done this. There are no shortcuts. Luckily it’s a (mostly) fulfilling process.

The theoretical side of it in a living oral tradition like jazz, is simply a way of finding vocabulary to talk about what we hear.

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

That's a very reasonable account of what good musicians have in common. I noticed that it doesn't mention theory. It might be implied as part of a tradition, but there are counterexamples.

[Christian Miller]

That's a very reasonable account of what good musicians have in common. I noticed that it doesn't mention theory. It might be implied as part of a tradition, but there are counterexamples.

Either is theory is not necessary - or, perhaps theory is a natural by product of the human mind, and everyone creates their own theory by recognising patterns even if they don't know the school names for things. I tend to go with the latter actually.

Focussing on jazz harmony - knowing what melodic minor modes are is apparently not a precondition for playing those sounds. OTOH if you know what they sound like and can hear those notes in your head on the given chord as part of a phrase, they'll always sound better than plugging in those notes because a book told you they sound good.

The best training for that - at least at the formative stage - is listening to jazz and seeing how the greats do it. If you came across a cool sound and had no idea how it was described in theory, you might still learn to play it just based on making a mental note of what it was against the chord - perhaps giving it your own name, putting it into different keys and on different tunes and so on. If you know your theory you can say 'oh it's that thing from the book' and then do exactly the same process. It's not a huge difference honestly.

[rpjazzguitar]

In an on-line discussion, if someone points out that a certain highly regarded player didn't know certain theoretical material (or any at all), sometimes someone will say, sure he did, he just didn't have the verbal identifiers. And then there may be a discussion of what is, or isn't, theory.

Another type of on-line discussion starts with a detailed and, to my eye, arcane theoretical statement, often implying a massive amount of work. My favorite example was a post on usenet recommending playing every possible triad pair against every possible bass note.

Or pointing out technical issues emerging from theoretical superstructure that can be ignored without detriment.

[Christian Miller]

In an on-line discussion, if someone points out that a certain highly regarded player didn't know certain theoretical material (or any at all), sometimes someone will say, sure he did, he just didn't have the verbal identifiers. And then there may be a discussion of what is, or isn't, theory.

I find these discussions almost impossible to have with any degree of nuance. Partly because guitarists and musicians more generally rarely have a clear definition of what music theory is and isn't. Mostly, people seem to think it seems to be knowing the names of things. I'm not sure why knowing the names of things is meant to be so important. (I can see why finding connections between things could be interesting, and possibly even helpful for music).

What I would say - and I don't think anyone apart from the keyboard warriors would say this - is that the driving aspect of musical performance is absolutely not music theory. Neither is it a musician trying to hear every note they are playing one by one. If I say it's schematic - that's a fancy way of saying we organise elements into useful chunks. And that can inform practice and learning (and ear training) in a helpful way.

Actually a stepwise scale is a very good example of that. And you can listen out for certain scales in jazz solos, you can look out for them in music, you can ingrain them into muscle memory and it's an obvious thing for musicians to do because music is full of stepwise scales and bits of stepwise scales. There's a reason we teach scales, no?

But say instead of learning scales with a teacher, you picked up scales because you played and listened a lot of music and music is full of them. There are many documented examples of players like this. It's interesting - what does their process look like form the inside?

Well given human beings are pattern recognition machine it seems possible it might not actually be that different. The sound and fingering of a specific scalar run would be classified as some sort of object. We can then listen to Blue Mitchell play his starting run in Nica's Dream and say - oh it's a stepwise ascending Bb melodic minor on Bb-^7, absolutely textbook. Unlike Junior Cook who uses a bunch of different scales in quite an old school way, Blue sticks to the melodic minor throughout his playing on those chords.

But according to djg (IIRC) Blue Mitchell hadn't much theory background and likely would have had no idea what you were talking about if you'd said that to him. Obviously he heard it and obviously had some conception of grouping that bunch of notes together. This is of course, an assumption, but it doesn't seem a bad one.

People seem to find that very hard to get their head around for some reason. It doesn't seem that strange to me. People see faces in tea grounds, clouds, trees and ink blots. Of course people would spot patterns in music. We are schema based beings.

And obviously - this run does not sound like a scale exercise. It sounds - well - completely badass. Any bedroom Jamie Aebersold playalong noodler could have chosen those notes - but it takes a musician to make them good, and a Blue Mitchell to make them sound THAT good. Important lesson, best learned early. Good musicians make music sound good - not theoretically correct or 'interesting' note choices. I mean, duh, one might say.

In terms of 'theory' the way it went for me as I was getting the basics of my craft together was that it was all fairy stories until I heard a great player do it and then I thought 'oh it's that thing that I learned about in that book a year ago.'

I don't think it's as bad as Star Wars nerds getting excited about lore continuity in Andor or whatever, but there is an aspect of it which is kind of not a million miles away. I think it's helpful to look at it this way for me to stay grounded. TBF having a convenient and widely used name for a thing is not without its uses. However, the important aspect is - of course - that you know how it sounds and how to play it.

Another type of on-line discussion starts with a detailed and, to my eye, arcane theoretical statement, often implying a massive amount of work. My favorite example was a post on usenet recommending playing every possible triad pair against every possible bass note.

Or pointing out technical issues emerging from theoretical superstructure that can be ignored without detriment.

This is one of many reasons why it's impossible to learn music on the internet of course.

[Christian Miller]

I kind of think a lot of teachers of a certain generation (probably around the 60s-70s) felt that learning music through exposure to music wasn't efficient, and that targeted pedagogy including theory and technique etc could get impressive results faster. So you get a lot of systems and so on.

- The teacher hands you a handout sheet with the most common jazz progressions on with lists of tunes where they crop up. May help students learn tunes.

I don't know that that's wrong - but I'm now coming to the conclusion that actually working on music is the most rounded and effective way to learn because it teaches on so many levels at once. The only issue is you need to do it a LOT.

- So rather than give them the answers on a worksheet, tell students to learn three hundred jazz standards and look for patterns lol. Takes a little while to get to the first hundred. But OTOH they will know a hundred tunes and they'll probably spot the patterns too.

Most teachers of course use a combination of the two.

[pamosmusic]

I kind of think a lot of teachers of a certain generation (probably around the 60s-70s) felt that learning music through exposure to music wasn't efficient, and that targeted pedagogy including theory and technique etc could get impressive results faster. So you get a lot of systems and so on.

- The teacher hands you a handout sheet with the most common jazz progressions on with lists of tunes where they crop up. May help students learn tunes.

I don't know that that's wrong - but I'm now coming to the conclusion that actually working on music is the most rounded and effective way to learn because it teaches on so many levels at once. The only issue is you need to do it a LOT.

- So rather than give them the answers on a worksheet, tell students to learn three hundred jazz standards and look for patterns lol. Takes a little while to get to the first hundred. But OTOH they will know a hundred tunes and they'll probably spot the patterns too.

Most teachers of course use a combination of the two.

Id be interested to hear your thoughts on David Baker.

I used to love David Baker and then had a long phase where I did not, mostly for reasons you cite here. Now I’m back on team D-Bake for a lot of reasons.

[Tal_175]

I kind of think a lot of teachers of a certain generation felt that learning music through exposure to music wasn't effective or efficient, and that targeted pedagogy including theory and technique etc could get results faster.

I don't know that that's wrong - but I'm now coming to the conclusion that actually working on music is the most efficient way to learn because it teaches on so many levels at once. The only issue is you need to do a LOT.

I also don't think the concept of "learning music" makes any more sense without a context than "music theory". What does it mean to "learn music"? Learn how to compose music using musiscore? Learn how to play baroque pieces on cello? Learn how to conduct an orchestra? Learn how to play the bass parts in a Pink Floyd cover band? Learn how to write pop tunes? Learn how to read music? Learn how to arrange jazz tunes for guitar? These are wildly different set of skills and music theory wouldn't apply to them equally.

It think it helps that people have very specific musical goals before considering the benefits of theory.

[Mick-7]

Focusing on jazz harmony - knowing what melodic minor modes are is apparently not a precondition for playing those sounds.

I haven't given much thought to scale modes, which is why I said that your explanation of melodic minor modes vs chords seemed really arcane to me (quite methodical though I must say). I just tried to hear the tonal character of each scale, it's particular interval structure, and make music out of it. Later on I learned chord scale theory and it benefited my chord playing but made little difference to my single line playing because I was already hearing the chord<>scale relationships, just didn't know the theory behind them. As you said, it really all comes down to pattern recognition, which must be primarily aural.

[Christian Miller]

I haven't given much thought to scale modes, which is why I said that your explanation of melodic minor modes vs chords seemed arcane to me (quite methodical though I must say). I just tried to hear the tonal character of each scale, it's particular interval structure, and make music out of it. Later on I learned chord scale theory and it benefited my chord playing but made little difference to my single line playing because I was already hearing the chord<>scale relationships, just didn't know the theory behind them. As you said, it really all comes down to pattern recognition, which must be primarily aural.

In the least arcane way I can put it - it's the note that isn't normally found in the prevailing key and isn't one of the basic chord tones.

So G# for A Train because that note is not found in C major and it is also not found in the chord of the moment D7 (which has an F#).

This is the characteristic note of the harmony.

So a student only needs to listen out for that one note. It makes the sound. For something like A Train or Chelsea Bridge that note is a feature of the melody. This is usually the case, in fact.

Theory thing 1 - that note is always degree 7 of the parent melodic minor.
Theory thing 2 - doesn't work for the altered scale.

What makes this easier in practice is that it's more common to add certain 'colour notes' to certain chords in the key than others.

What I would say is that the note doesn't come from the scale at all - the scale is instead constructed from that note. But that's another topic of conversation.

[Mick-7]

In the least arcane way I can put it - it's the note that isn't normally found in the prevailing key and isn't one of the basic chord tones.

Well, it's "arcane" to those who don't understand music theory, as I did not when I began playing jazz, and in respect to your previous comments about theoretical vs pragmatic systems of learning, is knowing all that likely to make me a better player?

[Christian Miller]

I also don't think the concept of "learning music" makes any more sense without a context than "music theory". What does it mean to "learn music"? Learn how to compose music using musiscore? Learn how to play baroque pieces on cello? Learn how to conduct an orchestra? Learn how to play the bass parts in a Pink Floyd cover band? Learn how to write pop tunes? Learn how to read music? Learn how to arrange jazz tunes for guitar? These are wildly different set of skills and music theory wouldn't apply to them equally.

It think it helps that people have very specific musical goals before considering the benefits of theory.

Yes the engine of it is exactly the same in each case. You need to get into it and do it a lot. You need to hone your ear and your sensibility and obviously as an instrumental musician, your ability to physically play your instrument.

Learning music? Learning and listening to a lot of music within your chosen tradition. Learning by ear combines both things, obviously.

The skills are all differently expressed, and we might not expect someone who's good at one to be good at the others (though good musicianship is something that will help you learn an unfamiliar instrument or style faster than a non musician) - but it all comes down to the ability to hear the music you are making, and that comes from exposure to and aural engagement with a lot of music.

We all use the same tool - the ear - and we hone the ear through close focussed listening and a lot of practical experience of attempting to imitate what we hear. Very much also true for classical musicians, even though at first glance they seem a bit different.

[Christian Miller]

Well, it's "arcane" to those who don't understand music theory, as I did not when I began playing jazz, and in respect to your previous comments about theoretical vs pragmatic systems of learning, is knowing all that likely to make me a better player?

Being able to hear the #11 against II7 will make one a better jazz player, I think. Luckily you don't need to know what a #11 or a II7 is to do that - you just hear in your head 'when you take the A TRAIN". And then after a while just be able to hear 'TRAIN' on its own.

If you've learned a lot of songs that go to II7 you will probably perceive that as a JUICY JAZZ NOTE even if you don't know why. And really that's my relationship with it, even though I know what it's called and the scales it's associated with etc etc.

(The thing about melodic minor is not necessary, but I think it's a pleasing theoretical observation if you like that type of thing, which I do. I think it also identifies what's most important to focus on when learning 'melodic minor' sounds for someone already familiar with CST.)