Jazz Guitar Lines in Context

[Irez87]

Is that the Dom7b5 diminished? For instance, C7b5+Bdiminished?

[kenbennett]

I like this thread. Here's one I "discovered" on Lady Bird while singing it solfege (to get it in my ear). That IV to bVII in the first 4 bars, a ii-V doesn't do it justice. Instead of thinking of that Fm to Bb7 in Eb major, think of it in C natual minor or C harmonic minor (to grab that b9 off the Bb7, mmm). That way, your c major line moves fluidly (ew?) to a cminor line. Of course, you outline the Fm7 to Bb7, but your point of reference is the Cm. Before a smart alleck tells me, I know Cm is the relative minor of Eb major. But your line will realize itself quite differently, try it.

I get Lady Bird and Lazy Bird mixed up. I play one of them but I can't remember which.

About the dominants... I know I treat them differently, but I've never paid attention to exactly how I do it. The context sort guides you.

[christianm77]

yes, that opened up a world for me, when i discovered that i could replace the IIm7b5 with a "straight" dominant chord, like in your example G7 for Bm7b5 and C7 for Em7b5 and then just moving the root one half-step to make the third of the dominant chord. if you apply the subdominant principle , you can also play:
c|%|fmaj|fmin|bbmaj|bbmin| etc.

edit: pat martino might play Am % Dm Fm Gm Bbm

Hours of fun ;-)

[christianm77]

Is that the Dom7b5 diminished? For instance, C7b5+Bdiminished?

Sorry what's the context?

[PMB]

i always think of sonny stitt as the rosetta stone of the min6 diminished scale. he has the I-V movements in minor down cold. i guess this is old news for you, but anyone try the min6 down and then the dim up in the orderly fashion you mentioned. single note line in Fm: F D C Ab G Bb Db E D C Ab F E G Bb Db C Ab F D Db E G Bb etc... stitt must have had literally hundreds of variations on this principle, which he used in tunes like "be-bop".

Just transcribed a blazing line from Stitt's "Bebop" the other day and it's a textbook example:

[christianm77]

Just transcribed a blazing line from Stitt's "Bebop" the other day and it's a textbook example:

This line reminds me of Lester Young's Tickletoe, in that you don't really have the Fm6 arpeggio, more the the Fm triad. There seem to be a lot of lines like this in the Swing/Bop era. Also you have some use of chromaticism just to break things up a little bit.

The 6th is used as the ending note - always a good move....

Personally I use this stuff a lot. I love the way it sounds. I could go a bit deeper with it though. Maybe a Stitt fest is required!

IRRC BH attributes at least one of these types of licks to Coleman Hawkins....

[grahambop]

I think Sonny Stitt (on tenor) is a handier resource for learning bebop from than Charlie Parker. His tenor sax lines fit in the guitar register better (compared to the alto sax), and he played without a lot of the rhythmic complexities of Bird. Like that line above, mainly eighth notes.

[christianm77]

he played without a lot of the rhythmic complexities of Bird. Like that line above, mainly eighth notes.

There's a whole screed in waiting here. Barry Harris seems pretty dismissive of Stitt's rhythm especially at slower tempos - he says that he didn't have a strong feeling of the quarter note triplet... Pretty surprising given they such frequent collaborators.

Stitt is very classical in a way. I have to say I find a lot of the second generation guys rhythmically simpler than Parker, but the '8th note to death' thing is something which has had an adverse affect on jazz phrasing. There's nothing more boring than hearing a player play a series of 8th notes with no real phrasing, as BH points out, you need a few triplets in there! Actually listening to Hendrix again last night, I notice he uses some lovely little triplet ornaments, just like Parker.

I think a big reason why a lot of contemporary jazz sounds a bit 'thin' to me is that you don't get much of this type of detail - ornaments, turns, moves between triple and duple time. BH of course has some harsh words to say about '8th notes and modes' school of playing, but I think much of it rings true, even if I am less of a conservative than him, haha.

Of course, I'm not really talking about Stitt, who sounds pretty badass to me!

I think really getting inside Bird's rhythms (away from his note choices) is a fantastic thing. I've had a lot of fun playing Parker heads on a Djembe.

Another one is Sonny Rollins.... Amazing rhythmic ideas sometimes with very simple notes. I really need to get more into him, actually.

EDIT: I think the rhythm IS the bebop language. Everything else is just tonal harmony....

[Groyniad]

Yeah, I didn't want to further confuse people. He says dominant, like it's the dominant of all scales. Very Hegelian, no?

i just finished teaching a three day workshop on hegel - i did not expect him to come up here. are all the other sounds 'taken up' into the dominant you're referring to?

[Groyniad]

There's a whole screed in waiting here. Barry Harris seems pretty dismissive of Stitt's rhythm especially at slower tempos - he says that he didn't have a strong feeling of the quarter note triplet... Pretty surprising given they such frequent collaborators.

Stitt is very classical in a way. I have to say I find a lot of the second generation guys rhythmically simpler than Parker, but the '8th note to death' thing is something which has had an adverse affect on jazz phrasing. There's nothing more boring than hearing a player play a series of 8th notes with no real phrasing, as BH points out, you need a few triplets in there! Actually listening to Hendrix again last night, I notice he uses some lovely little triplet ornaments, just like Parker.

I think a big reason why a lot of contemporary jazz sounds a bit 'thin' to me is that you don't get much of this type of detail - ornaments, turns, moves between triple and duple time. BH of course has some harsh words to say about '8th notes and modes' school of playing, but I think much of it rings true, even if I am less of a conservative than him, haha.

Of course, I'm not really talking about Stitt, who sounds pretty badass to me!

I think really getting inside Bird's rhythms (away from his note choices) is a fantastic thing. I've had a lot of fun playing Parker heads on a Djembe.

Another one is Sonny Rollins.... Amazing rhythmic ideas sometimes with very simple notes. I really need to get more into him, actually.

EDIT: I think the rhythm IS the bebop language. Everything else is just tonal harmony....

I have to say man - these are thoughts that are very very close to my own. my favourite player by a mile (if you don't count bill evans) is charlie parker (and bud powell) - and the next guy i work on all the time is sonny rollins. sometimes bh sounds at least as much like bud powell to me as bud powell. what i love about all these guys is the way they break up the time and place their phrases over the bar lines - its that rhythmic playfulness and subversion that makes the music happen.

a real pleasure to read these posts! (though you're using a lot of terminology that i don't know).

it sounds like you've met and spoken with bh quite a bit - is that so? what a player!!!!

[princeplanet]

I have to say man - these are thoughts that are very very close to my own. my favourite player by a mile (if you don't count bill evans) is charlie parker (and bud powell) - and the next guy i work on all the time is sonny rollins. sometimes bh sounds at least as much like bud powell to me as bud powell. what i love about all these guys is the way they break up the time and place their phrases over the bar lines - its that rhythmic playfulness and subversion that makes the music happen.

a real pleasure to read these posts! (though you're using a lot of terminology that i don't know).

it sounds like you've met and spoken with bh quite a bit - is that so? what a player!!!!

I'd add Dexter, Cannonball and Jackie McLean, along with Rollins and naturally Parker. All very playful with their phrases and ideas, not too neat like Stitt or any number of the other "second tier" players (all which are still amazing players!!).
You gotta put Wes in there too. Now, to dovetail back to the OP, all these players have lines that are rooted in context, If you just take their blues playing alone (all are killers), I don't think you'll hear a line that you'd wanna use out of context. You wouldn't say "Here's a great Dom 7 line against the I7, I might try that against the IV7 or V7." Sounds kinda obvious, but I see so many novice (and not so novice) players revert to this modular approach and it comes off stiff. Dunno, is it a CST thing maybe?

BTW, Stitt, although not a fave, (to agree with an earlier post) is indeed a vast compendium of typical bop language, for changes or Blues. Check out his version(s) of Walkin'- one perfect lick after another, almost like an Etude! Great for study, not so much for inspired listening...

The stuff you guys are chatting about relating to the almighty m6 - I'm kinda doing a similar thing, but thinking of it as m7b5. I dunno whether it's a BH idea which may have had an influence, but I'm trying to see the world as V and I, more specifically, m7b5 and maj6. Every chord in every piece is either Dom (m7b5) or Tonic (I6). I don't see any advantage in calling m7b5 a m6, it's the same Dom class pitch collection.... But these other BH ideas involving improv choices, they sound intriguing, and probably up my alley. Is that stuff all in the Roni Ben Hur book?

[Irez87]

More so the master and slave dualism. I read him briefly in grad school while taking a Women's poetry class.

[christianm77]

it sounds like you've met and spoken with bh quite a bit - is that so? what a player!!!!

I've attended a few classes with him, never as many as I would like for all sorts of boring reasons. But quite a few things he's said over the years have stayed with me.

I know a few guys who have studied with him in much more depth. They help me out a bit, and also there's the online resources. BH is a serious influence on my music. There's quite a lot about the way I think and play - I forget where it's come from, then I watch a video or read something, and realise it's come from Barry ten years ago...

That said it's only this year I've really started to work hard at the BH material.

[christianm77]

I'd add Dexter, Cannonball and Jackie McLean, along with Rollins and naturally Parker. All very playful with their phrases and ideas, not too neat like Stitt or any number of the other "second tier" players (all which are still amazing players!!).
You gotta put Wes in there too. Now, to dovetail back to the OP, all these players have lines that are rooted in context, If you just take their blues playing alone (all are killers), I don't think you'll hear a line that you'd wanna use out of context. You wouldn't say "Here's a great Dom 7 line against the I7, I might try that against the IV7 or V7." Sounds kinda obvious, but I see so many novice (and not so novice) players revert to this modular approach and it comes off stiff. Dunno, is it a CST thing maybe?

BTW, Stitt, although not a fave, (to agree with an earlier post) is indeed a vast compendium of typical bop language, for changes or Blues. Check out his version(s) of Walkin'- one perfect lick after another, almost like an Etude! Great for study, not so much for inspired listening...

The stuff you guys are chatting about relating to the almighty m6 - I'm kinda doing a similar thing, but thinking of it as m7b5. I dunno whether it's a BH idea which may have had an influence, but I'm trying to see the world as V and I, more specifically, m7b5 and maj6. Every chord in every piece is either Dom (m7b5) or Tonic (I6). I don't see any advantage in calling m7b5 a m6, it's the same Dom class pitch collection.... But these other BH ideas involving improv choices, they sound intriguing, and probably up my alley. Is that stuff all in the Roni Ben Hur book?

The almighty minor 6! I like it!

I think the modular thing might be CST influenced. Not every minor or dominant chord in the key is the same. You shouldn't play dorian against iii, for example. Simple stuff, but if you think of chords in isolation rather than working tonally within keys it's easy to see where things can go wrong if you are used to seeing each chord (or ii-V) as an isolated thing with it's own independent scale.

The Roni Ben Hur book covers some BH material for improvisation. Not all of it, but enough to be getting on with, and it's useful to have it all written down somewhere.

If you enjoy that, you might consider taking the plunge and getting the full on Barry DVDs....

[pingu]

related ....
i find it difficult to blow over
the B section of Rhythm Changes

for ex
on the D7 , am i supposed to be playing
1) the III7 of Bb
2) the V7 of next chord G something
3) D7 blues type feel
4) Amin6 stuff even ?

all of the above ?
I can't flow nicely on these cyclic Dom things
Sweet Georgia Brown too ...

i need an exercise to flow these chords into
one another more smoothly
decending guide tone lines seem too
clunky/mechanical to my ears

thanks for any help you can give

[PMB]

This line reminds me of Lester Young's Tickletoe, in that you don't really have the Fm6 arpeggio, more the the Fm triad. There seem to be a lot of lines like this in the Swing/Bop era. Also you have some use of chromaticism just to break things up a little bit.

The 6th is used as the ending note - always a good move....

Personally I use this stuff a lot. I love the way it sounds. I could go a bit deeper with it though. Maybe a Stitt fest is required!

IRRC BH attributes at least one of these types of licks to Coleman Hawkins....

Maybe the only reason he didn't add the 6th until the end is the insane tempo. After years of transcribing, I rarely have to slow down phrases but that line is off the scale! You're right, it is very like Tickletoe but I'd more readily associate running chord changes with Hawkins.

[PMB]

related ....
i find it difficult to blow over
the B section of Rhythm Changes

for ex
on the D7 , am i supposed to be playing
1) the III7 of Bb
2) the V7 of next chord G something
3) D7 blues type feel
4) Amin6 stuff even ?

all of the above ?
I can't flow nicely on these cyclic Dom things
Sweet Georgia Brown too ...

i need an exercise to flow these chords into
one another more smoothly
decending guide tone lines seem too
clunky/mechanical to my ears

thanks for any help you can give

That's a big topic that deserves another thread. I'd say all of the above and more. Why not go to the source to derive ideas that could be then turned into exercises? For instance, check out Lester Young's use of the augmented triad in the bridge to "Lester Leaps In", Ben Webster's chromatic fills between the 9th and 7th in "Cottontail" or Parker's use of the minor/major 9 arpeggios over the related ii chord in "Moose the Mooche".

[christianm77]

related ....
i find it difficult to blow over
the B section of Rhythm Changes

for ex
on the D7 , am i supposed to be playing
1) the III7 of Bb
2) the V7 of next chord G something
3) D7 blues type feel
4) Amin6 stuff even ?

all of the above ?
I can't flow nicely on these cyclic Dom things
Sweet Georgia Brown too ...

i need an exercise to flow these chords into
one another more smoothly
decending guide tone lines seem too
clunky/mechanical to my ears

thanks for any help you can give

You can do what ever you like! Any of those options should work fine.

I think in these cases, where the chords are pretty long (2 bars+) the dominant seventh can be thought of as it's own little tonality. I would run the mixolydian (or lyd dom) on each unless I was doing something special. You can see this if you examine the melody of Sweet Georgia Brown or the middle 8 of Anthroplogy....

I would suggest running licks and scales through the chord progression. You could go right around the cycle, all 12 dominants, in position, to develop flexibility.

A simple but surprisingly tricky and powerful (at least for me) Barry Harris exercise is to run the scales to 1-7-1. do this in all positions and octaves. You could also try a simple 1-7-b7-6-5-4-3-2-1 dominant bebop on each.

[christianm77]

Maybe the only reason he didn't add the 6th until the end is the insane tempo. After years of transcribing, I rarely have to slow down phrases but that line is off the scale! You're right, it is very like Tickletoe but I'd more readily associate running chord changes with Hawkins.

I think its nice without the 6th.

[christianm77]

I'm going to repost the Night and Day example from my post above with the correct scale - I notice I had made a mistake here.

Dm7b5 G7b9 | C

We use Bb7 as the basis, not G7! (all the example I gave sounds kinda cool) We raise the Bb to B over the G7. I'm going to keep it so resolve to E, because I like it that way. Two beats per chord. This works out if we start on F. We don;t need to use any added notes in the Bb scale in this example.

F Eb D C B Ab G F | E

Sorry for any confusion! Two bars each

Dm7b5 | G7 | C (as in Night and Day)

F Eb D C Bb A Ab G | F Eb D C B Ab G F | E

(Here we do use an extra half step between Bb and Ab)

[pingu]

That's a big topic that deserves another thread. I'd say all of the above and more. Why not go to the source to derive ideas that could be then turned into exercises? For instance, check out Lester Young's use of the augmented triad in the bridge to "Lester Leaps In", Ben Webster's chromatic fills between the 9th and 7th in "Cottontail" or Parker's use of the minor/major 9 arpeggios over the related ii chord in "Moose the Mooche".

thanks pmb and christian ....
will try those things out ....

i think i'm conflicted as to each of the
chords being a new 'home' or
if they're the V of the next chord

like the F7 is deffo the V of the
Bb (the A section is all Bb to me)