What changed your guitar playing instantly?

[docbop]

Let see it happens over and over. First back at GIT taking Joe Elliot's Improv class which eventually became his book and the arp's studies. Later as a bass player studying improv learning a even more challenging way of doing arp and scale studies. Next would be a combination of Bebop scale, guide tones, and approach notes.

Dig questions like this because they make me look back at my mental process and how that has changed. Some change was not a conscious effort but happens by changing how you use what you practice. So something I notice over recent year or so is I don't think in scales much now I'm thinking chord tones and voice leading. Even how I think of the fretboard is changing.

It's a great journey and I look forward to my next aha moment.

[theskypilot]

All of the above is cool and one day I will learn it all. In the past two years, the biggest thing that I learned was when the Pentatonic Scale clicked with me. Melodies, rhythms and solos just started making sense.

I am just starting some jazz stuff and really digging blues stuff. More discoveries to follow.

[RyanM]

In one of those old Scofield clinics where he's demonstrating modes someone asked about how he seemed to be playing from shapes and chord forms contained in the scale other than the ones associated with the modal centre. A big lightbulb went off and was instantly playing more sophisticated sounding stuff.

It was essentially about learning to think of modes as extended harmony, i.e. instead of just a scale that goes up and down linearly, every mode is 7 triads/7th chords that have a relationship against the modal centre, and over any given chord you can basically be playing any chord/mode within that parent scale. All those bebop embellishments and approaches being used with the higher structure arpeggios.

Another one was in the Jim Hall video where he talks about and demonstrates motivic development... it's not something I've heard too many people address... in particular I remember where he takes a blues lick and "opens it up" with wider intervals another lightbulb went off.

[Cal]

There aren't many things that somebody can just tell you and then change the way you sound in a major way.

But, this did it for me.

Somebody explained that I could move up a voicing in accordance with a scale. So I could start with, say, any 4 note voicing of Cmaj7 and then move each note in the chord to the next chord tone on that string.

The day that somebody showed me how to do that in fourth voicings and then explained that I could use any of them over any chord in the key of C, including tonic or dominant sounds, well, that made a difference. That is, the same chord would work over Cmaj, Dm or G7! (among others).

I started with xx2233, then xx3455, then xx 5567 etc.

So think of a song that starts with a couple of bars of Cmaj7 and start moving those voicings around, creating a countermelody with the notes on the high E string.

Same argument for a melodic minor. I play a song that goes Fmaj7 for a couple of bars then Bb7#11. I use the major voicings in 4th for the F (similar to what I posted above) and then melodic minor voicings in 4ths for the Bb7#11 (start with, say xx0011 and move it up the Fmelmin scale).

It takes some time to get all the voicings under your fingers in every key, so it's not instantaneous in that sense -- but it only takes a minute to explain.

And then, of course, you can start with any voicing in the scale, particularly with melodic minor (no avoid note) and move it up, getting an infinite number of possibilities.

[Philco]

When I read and understood the above post by CAL.

Thank you!

[Cal]

That's cool! I'm glad it was helpful.

I might add, then, that the guitarist who got me onto it was Chico Pinheiro. His comping is amazing. He has a great many things worked out in harmonized scales. He showed the thing with fourth voicings, but he also mentioned that you could pick any collection of notes from the melodic minor scale and start moving those up the scale. I'd been aware of the concept of moving each note of a chord to the next chord tone, but I hadn't thought, up to then, of moving to the next scale tone. And, doing it in stacked fourth voicings like xx2233 gave it an ambiguous sound that transcended the usual major/minor/seventh harmony.

So, for example, suppose the chord is a C7. You could just move Fmaj voicings around. Or, you could think of Gmelmin and move the voices around with that scale (it's the white keys, except for Bb and F#). So, you get, sort of, a C7#11 sound happening. I haven't tried it, but I would guess that you could think Calt and move Dbmelmin voicings around (because Calt is part of Dbmelmin). Db Eb E Gb Ab Bb C, so it's going to sound like C7b5#5b9#9 (or a subset thereof)-- no matter which notes you pick from the scale.

Try this. Play 2 bars Fmaj7 and 2 bars of Bb7#11. For the Fmaj move around all the fourth voicings generated by starting with xx0011. For the Bb7#11, start with the Jimi Hendrix E9#9 x7678x and move it up the Fmelmin scale. You'll get 7 voicings that way and every single one of them is a useful substitute for Bb7#11, as long as the bass player is playing a Bb root.
Same thing if you start with, say xx2133 and move that one up the Fmelmin scale.

[jazzadellic]

The year was 1992, I was living in San Francisco to attend the Academy of Art College (they changed it to University I guess). At that time, I had been playing guitar for about 2 years, with no lessons at all, and I had learned by myself to play some Jimi Hendrix by that point. I could play some of his easier stuff like 'Purple Haze' and I could, with reasonable fluency, solo up the entire fretboard using the pentatonic or blues scale. Anyways, one day I turned on my radio in my new tiny apartment and flipped through some stations. I come across an incredibly awesome guitar solo. It literally blew my mind, I had never heard anything like it, and I knew instantly I needed to play it whatever it was. It was the first time I ever heard a jazz guitar solo. I may have incidentally heard jazz before by accident, i.e. the 'Pink Panther' theme song when I was watching the cartoon as a kid. But I had never really listened to jazz on purpose, and had never really heard good jazz guitar playing. From that day on, I was a jazz guitar fanatic, and it was all I wanted to play or study.

[Philco]

That's cool! I'm glad it was helpful.

I might add, then, that the guitarist who got me onto it was Chico Pinheiro. His comping is amazing. He has a great many things worked out in harmonized scales. He showed the thing with fourth voicings, but he also mentioned that you could pick any collection of notes from the melodic minor scale and start moving those up the scale. I'd been aware of the concept of moving each note of a chord to the next chord tone, but I hadn't thought, up to then, of moving to the next scale tone. And, doing it in stacked fourth voicings like xx2233 gave it an ambiguous sound that transcended the usual major/minor/seventh harmony.

So, for example, suppose the chord is a C7. You could just move Fmaj voicings around. Or, you could think of Gmelmin and move the voices around with that scale (it's the white keys, except for Bb and F#). So, you get, sort of, a C7#11 sound happening. I haven't tried it, but I would guess that you could think Calt and move Dbmelmin voicings around (because Calt is part of Dbmelmin). Db Eb E Gb Ab Bb C, so it's going to sound like C7b5#5b9#9 (or a subset thereof)-- no matter which notes you pick from the scale.

Try this. Play 2 bars Fmaj7 and 2 bars of Bb7#11. For the Fmaj move around all the fourth voicings generated by starting with xx0011. For the Bb7#11, start with the Jimi Hendrix E9#9 x7678x and move it up the Fmelmin scale. You'll get 7 voicings that way and every single one of them is a useful substitute for Bb7#11, as long as the bass player is playing a Bb root.
Same thing if you start with, say xx2133 and move that one up the Fmelmin scale.

Thanks for all the MM stuff. This has been the year of melodic minor for me and it's starting to pay off. This chordal approach will become another part of my practise.
As soon as I read your first post I was thinking about the applications in melodic minor. It's funny how there can be a convergence of helpful ideas when one is endeavouring in a specific area. Synchronicity? Happy accident? Whatever. It's great that it happens. Thanks again.

[mangotango]

Technically, that would have been when I got my head around using the melodic and harmonic minors - that was that moment when my playing started to sound more interesting to me.

However, the moment when my playing started to take proper shape in a jazz context was when i first attended the Jazz Workshop Band that I still attend regularly. It was the first time that I ever held myself out to others as a jazz musician, and it was a "put up or shut up" moment that totally redefined my playing.

[Cal]

I'm still working on getting a set of 7 melodic minor grips that I really like.

If I start with Gmelmin, I like xx4355. The next one is then xx5576, which I don't like as much.

I tend to use xx5776. If I then move that one back down the neck (toward the nut), I get xx4555, which is a standard Am6. No problem there, but it sounds pretty ordinary.

Going back, now, in the other direction (toward the bridge), I get either xx7988 (which I think is great) or xx7788 (A D G C) which is good, but has no mystery in its sound, at least by itself.

And so on. I usually end up playing a mix of differently-generated grips for melmin, i.e. not simply one voicing moved up the scale. In contrast, for the straight stacked fourths, I simply move them up the scale.

[coolvinny]

Jamming with an excellent jazz trumpeter. I've immediately up'd my game, and his flowing lines give me ideas for what to play on my instrument.

[crystalmountain]

ditto to what's been said: transcribing solos of anyone good, using triads in the symmetric diminished over altered chords, various uses of harmonic minor.

[MarkR]

Focusing on playing melodic ideas and lines that I could hear and sing.