Jazz Vocabulary

[Basshead]

Dont panic Brent, Ima stick to sing and CC solos

Not is not the same scale, Db mixo and G altered, just one note changed but the whole point here, at least to me, is to know how people like Wes thought and IMO no one of those players had any chord scale concept in mind, not even Abercrombie or even Metheny, do your research, watch the interviews, all that stuff started with some books, some famous school and some guy who wrote a book just behind our buddy in that video or maybe am I wrong?

Back blues, no worries, this week Im focusing only on Bb and F blues comp and solos

[Christian Miller]

Hey Christian, nice video but who told you that Wes used the altered scale? just curious, Peter Farrel said the other day that Wes used more what would be Db mixolydian instead of G altered(ab melodic minor) and I find this a bit confusing to be honest.

Told? Don't wait around for people to tell you things. Go find out yourself!

But -now you're talking my language - what did people actually play? Let's get into the weeds!

Peter is correct AFAIK. I would go further - the altered scale is rare in general for this era and earlier. I can think of an example from George Shearing, but there's not a huge amount. It tends to be minor key (harmonic/natural minor) or tritone dominant/mixo scale.*


So I'll weasel my way out and say I never actually said that Wes used the altered scale... I'm just relating it to the way people tend to learn these days. The way I personally think about this stuff is not quite how I lay out in the video.

These days it's the altered scale is the default choice in jazz theory books and education. Everything gets analysed through that lens - a player plays a passing b9 in the voice leading of a II V I line - altered scale. The classic b9-#9-b9-1-b7 figure on a V7? Altered scale! A player plays a Db or an Abm triad on G7 - altered scale. And so on. Wes does indeed use all of those devices.

But that's not quite the way it is in this era - even modal influenced post-bop! There's a lot of devices and subs that get used that are related to the scale in this way, but unambiguous use of the altered scale is actually quite rare. I can think of some, but not many.

I'd also say that that G7alt arpeggio shape I give is not actually the altered scale, despite me saying it is. It lacks the b5, and when I put the b5 in I note in the video that it sounds a bit spicy. That's because the usual choice for a V7alt - the V7b9#9b13 actually consists entirely of notes from the I natural and harmonic minor scales. The "#9" is what happens when you play a minor line with a b7 over a V7 chord, and there's loads of examples of that from the music, going back to the 40s, maybe before. One may almost call it 'the blues'. I think it comes naturally from the way jazz musicians improvise music.

TBH I'm hard pressed to find example of him playing melodic minor. Take this tune for example, where the chords seem to demand it (Bb-^7 and Ab-^7)

It's dorian all the way. You can hear at 1:31 the piano is clearly playing an Ab-^7 and Wes is happily playing the Ab dorian - with a clear b7 - over the top.

At 2:05 he's playing the blues on this -^7 chords.

OTOH all his altered dominant stuff in this solo is like one note - often the b13 of V7 going to the 9 of I. Which I see more as a chromatic voice leading rather than from any parent scale. The changes go by quick - so there's a lesson there for all of us. Think of one note, not seven.

But I'm not a Wesologist - I expect Peter has transcribed much more of his stuff than I have. There's also others here who have transcribed his stuff a lot.

But it varies from player to player. Blue Mitchell uses melodic minor religiously on the original Horace Silver recording which is interesting because he was an ear player according to DJG (although the other horn, Junior Cook doesn't.)

You know who else doesn't seem to use melodic minor in his lines? Wayne Shorter, even where it would seem the natural choice from the chords.

You know who seems to - Charlie Christian! (Although not the altered.) I even have an example from Stephan Grappelli lol. Does it count if they did it without the explicit knowledge of what they were doing? I'll leave that to the philosophers.

But don't take Peter or my - or anyone's - word for it. See what you think.

*(I believe Lennie Tristano taught melodic minors on dominants as far back as the 40s, but I don't think his teaching was mainstream, more like a seperate sect within bebop.)

[Basshead]

Ok thanks mate, as far as I know Lenny Tristano was all about ear training but he is another interesting legend.

[Christian Miller]

Ok thanks mate, as far as I know Lenny Tristano was all about ear training but he is another interesting legend.

Read this book to find out more
A Jazz Life, a book by John Klopotowski | Jazz Guitar | Warne Marsh

AFAIK Warne Marsh was pretty close to Tristano's teaching approach.

I wouldn't call it ear training. There aren't exercises for 'improving your ear'. This is about learning to internalise the music.

Seriously, people sweat the 'getting the notes out on your instrument' side of it. But that's relatively easy once you can sing it.

[djg]

So I'll weasel my way out and say I never actually said that Wes used the altered scale...

pheew, that was a close one...

[GuyBoden]

I'm deep, deep down the fretboard rabbit hole and I like it.

(Below is a CAGED position with a couple of extra notes. Useful for BH "added Half step" rule number 4, when playing lines starting on the 2nd, 4th and 6th note of the scale.)
(You've got to play music within the scale. Play an arp, Jump up an octave, Jump down an octave. Use approaches, enclosures, slides etc.)


I'm also singing along to Bird heads/solos, but slowed down. All good fun.

Edit: The very little Jazz vocabulary I have is from stealing Phrases from the Jazz greats and playing that phrase for a month or so. I don't think some folk realise that it takes an enormous amount of Repetition, Repetition, REPETITION to get a Jazz phrase into your sub-conscious. (Repetition of singing and playing the phrase.)

See: Play the same phrase everyday for a month challenge:
Play the same Phrase everyday for a Month challenge.

[Tal_175]

The first book I got when I decided move to in the direction of jazz was Al Di Meola's "A Guide to Scales, Chords & Arpeggios Book". I found it to be a very scary book at the time. It has pages and pages of chord voicings, scale fingerings (including modes), arpeggios and progressions. There are 6 fingerings in some positions. It has lessons with a dozen tasks where each task is like go to page X and memorize all the fingerings. Then go to page Y memorize all the major voicings on that page etc. I tried to work through the book, it sucked the life out of me. Not only it was dry but it seemed like it'd take a life time to learn it. Little did I know that I even doubted if anyone would know all that. These weren't anything like playing the blues. I put to book away and never looked at it until recently.

I picked the book up recently. There is nothing in the book I can't easily access on the fretboard now. I was actually surprised how little it covered. Arpeggios don't have upper extensions, chord voicings are fairly basic etc. Some chord voicings I may not use but they are the sort of voicings I build when I need to without memorizing as grips. I don't play 6 fingerings of dorian per position but some I do, the others I play if I need to. I know the scales and I know the fretboard both pitchwise or intervallically. I can play a scale diagonally, or on a single string or in reverse starting on any chord tone and I do sometimes with little effort. These don't seem like a big deal to me anymore. In fact I think one needs a lot more work then just memorizing those fingerings if one is to put the scales in use in the jazz context. So memorizing everything in the book wouldn't even get you there in itself.

The point is, I took lessons from good jazz guitarists back then (maybe 4 or 5 at different times). They knew their fretboard. It was like watching a magic trick. They could talk about a concept and just instantly find it anywhere on the fretboard or play voicings of a chord up and down the fretboard without a blink. There was no barrier between things they knew about music and their instruments. Everything they knew were also at their disposal. I was kind of good at playing things by ear, that didn't impress me (at least it wasn't as mysterious to me as knowing the instrument). What impressed me was the command on the instrument. None of the teachers helped me with the fretboard. It's not because they didn't want to. None of them had a well thought out plan for how to teach that stuff. I had to figure it all out myself. I was able to remove the barrier but I had to try and retry many approaches in terms of how to organize harmony and fretboard. I would've saved me a lot of time if one of these teachers had put some thought into that aspect of musicianship that they took for granted.

[Tal_175]

I get a lot more pleasure playing the instrument now that barrier is gone or very manageable. You get more freedom with less mental effort (the unpleasant type). There is definitely a payoff for the effort. I mean it's always work in progress but it gets easier once you pass a certain threshold.

[Basshead]

Interesting chat fellas, what would you practice if you only had 40 min a day? I think that some of the master would probably focus on just one thing and maybe just that thing for a week or so and then if they had 6 hours a day they would probably do the same, just focus one little bit, lets say transcribing a solo, composing a piece, work on time feel...just one thing per session, what you think?

Im composing a blues in 5/4 and I adapted a couple of bebopy lines that I just learnt here is a little snippet.

Instagram

[AllanAllen]

My favourite example of bad psychology in jazz education is the term Avoid Note. Oh great, tell people NOT to play a note. That's genius that is. Have these people never dealt with children?

Those Jazz kids need more defiance.

Maybe 2 years ago, someone here suggested not to play B natural over the F chord in Take The A Train. So I made a lick using it and I still to this day purposely hit it every time I play the tune.

[AllanAllen]

Interesting chat fellas, what would you practice if you only had 40 min a day?

Me personally, I would work on Parker heads and comping.

[pamosmusic]

Me personally, I would work on Parker heads and comping.

I buy that.

Maybe every other day or something you swap out and play some single note voiceleading instead of one of those elements?

But yeah.

Bop heads are the first things that I work on so when I have a tight practice day, that’s often all I do.

[AllanAllen]

So I'll weasel my way out and say I never actually said that Wes used the altered scale...

I thought you pulled a lick/concept from the D- line and the "What Wes played" ended there. After that it was running it through major and dominant uses.

[Christian Miller]

You could make a case for Wes playing the altered scale at 1:37 in that video BTW. Just noticed. It's the classic 3-#9-b9-1 device on a dominant. That's all over bebop.

Could equally be diminished scale. Or - not a scale at all LOL.

[Mick-7]

I can't get audio on it. The others worked fine.

I've noticed that Basshead's videos have mute set as default, you have to click the little speaker icon on the bottom right of the video screen to turn on the audio.

[Basshead]

Instagram degrades the sound a lot, dont know why, sounds like the nylon guitar has a chorus or something

You guys saw that Abercrombie interview where he says that in Berklee in the 60s there was no books or much theory and he never ever heard about the chord scale concept till much later people started asking him about modes and stuff? there are few stories like that, Joe Pass evening video saying ¨dont ask me about modes¨and just sing everything, dont play patterns...etc. Those two videos specially and the ones Metheny and Stern talk about chord tones were the ones that made me realize I was going well but in a complete opposite direction so I started wondering me... maybe thats why I still suck LOL theres probably some other reasons

I guess in my world the gateway to this type of stuff is more Carlton and Ford, then Scofield, Stern, Metheny... I was lucky I got some Wes and Grant Green records when I was a teen but I did not get it at all. The very first magazine I bought had a Jim Hall interview and he talked about transcribing from other instruments like sax or piano and I remember thinking... wtf man, this guys is nuts... now I get it

[AllanAllen]

CST seems great for talking about music, in classrooms and on forums.

[pamosmusic]

CST seems great for talking about music, in classrooms and on forums.

to be fair, it's also great for bashing in classrooms and on forums.

[Strat-itis]

^

[AllanAllen]

to be fair, it's also great for bashing in classrooms and on forums.

Guilty as charged

[rpjazzguitar]

I have not found it to be a fixed target.

The thing I would tend to emphasise these days is being able to play a given musical phrase in different places on the neck, along strings, across strings, etc etc. (A scale, arpeggio or pattern is a type of phrase.) That's something one can do while learning music, and you develop flexibility.

I can do that but I didn't get it from any kind of fretboard mapping lessons or anything remotely like that. For me, it was simply time on the instrument. Eventually your brain and fingers create an extra part of your brain, or something, and you can do it.

If I had to suggest an approach for a studeht, it would be to learn to read and then to include reading new stuff in your daily routine. Maybe make a point of playing stuff in different places on the neck, although if you don't make a point of it, the music will force that on you.

[Tal_175]

I can do that but I didn't get it from any kind of fretboard mapping lessons or anything remotely like that.

That's true because these are very different notions. What you are talking about is playing an instrument by ear. That is creating the musical sounds you hear in your head on the instrument. This is a good skill but it is separate from what people generally mean by "knowing the fretboard". The former is ear-instrument connection, the latter is mind-instrument connection. So "knowing the fretboard" in this sense means knowing how musical concepts an ideas are laid out on your instrument. Musical concepts/ideas can be pitch names, intervals, chord tones, memorized licks, reharmonization devices, arpeggios, guide tones, scalar patterns etc. etc.

So some musicians believe that they benefit from using all their resources when they perform, woodshed, arrange, compose, accompany music. In addition to their ears, that involves everything they learned about music in their conscious mind. People on this camp find it beneficial to have the skill to find things they know about music on their instruments. That enables them to access ideas different from and in addition to what they can instinctively find by ear. That doesn't mean ears aren't engaged. These ideas can be jumping off points for ears to take over. For example when you are comping you might choose to start a reharmonization or dominant approach idea. When you play and hear that, your ears may take you down a different path than you would have gone other wise (which may have been the same old habits). After a while you might hear these ideas without thinking but the skill to find these ideas on your instrument initiates this process.

[Basshead]

Just for fun, which semi hollow for about 2k? specially ones I could find used, Ibanez Sco Japan for 1500 euros right now in Spain and Yamaha SA2200 for 1400 in Paris (I travel to Paris often).

Or maybe another brands I dont know? too many guitars these days man, used to be easier.

[rpjazzguitar]

Of course not. These are very different notions. What you are talking about is playing an instrument by ear. That is creating the musical sounds you hear in your head on the instrument. This is a good skill but it is separate from what people generally mean by "knowing the fretboard". The former is ear-instrument connection, the latter is mind-instrument connection. So "knowing the fretboard" in this sense means knowing how musical concepts are laid out on your instrument. Musical concepts can be pitch names, intervals, chord tones, reharmonization devices, arpeggios, guide tones, scalar patterns etc. etc.

So some musicians believe that they benefit from using all their resources when they perform, woodshed, arrange, compose, accompany music. In addition to their ears, that involves everything they learned about music in their conscious mind. People on this camp find it beneficial to have the skill to find things they know about music on their instruments. That enables them to access ideas different from and in addition to what they can instinctively find by ear. That doesn't mean ears aren't engaged. These ideas can be jumping off points for ears to take over. For example when you are comping you might choose to start a reharmonization or dominant approach idea. When you play and hear that, your ears may take you down a different path than you would have gone other wise (which may have been the same old habits). After a while you might hear these ideas without thinking but the skill to find these ideas on your instrument initiates this process.

It seems clear that "fretboard knowledge" is a somewhat ambiguous term. See Post #50 for a different view, which is the one I was responding to. Your view, which includes "Musical concepts can be pitch names, intervals, chord tones, reharmonization devices, arpeggios, guide tones, scalar patterns etc. etc." is far more inclusive. I see some of that as general musicianship and not specific to the fretboard, but there's no official definition.

I remain curious about how others assimilate the knowledge, however it is defined.

I did it (to the extent I've been able) by focusing on knowing the notes in the chords, scales, modes, arps I use in 12 keys plus a few enharmonic equivalents - and knowing where they are from knowing how to read. But, as I understand it, this is not the common way players do it.

[Christian Miller]

I thought you pulled a lick/concept from the D- line and the "What Wes played" ended there. After that it was running it through major and dominant uses.

Thanks. That was the intention.


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