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So this is a bit of a test. I'm not sure if this will work or not. You may need the app periscope to watch this, but I don't think so. Maybe you guys can tell me if you were able to see the video.
I recorded about a half our of my practice today. I was working on my 13b9 dominant chord tonality. First playing through them in dyads, then breaking the dyads apart into single notes and going in all four directions:
up, up
down, down
up, down
down, up
Anyways, I talk a lot on here about my 4-note approach to chords on here (derived from the upper structure triad).... both in application to creating harmony and in creating melody. I thought I'd share a little peak inside how I practice some of these ideas around the fretboard for anyone interested.
You can watch the video here.
Hopefully it works. I'm curious. Please chime in and let me know if you're able to watch it. And if you have the periscope app or not. I think it should just launch in an internet window. And feel free to share your thoughts and ideas or ask any questions you might have about what I'm doing. I couldn't write out 30-minutes worth of tab, sorry
people already tell me my posts on here are too long! hahahaha
Hope you guys enjoy.
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09-05-2015 05:56 PM
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I'm on a Surface Pro 3 with Windows 10, fwiw. No problem viewing your video.
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gives me a message saying it ended 7 hours ago. I couldn't view it.
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Thanks M-ster...I appreciate you letting me know.
@edh.... is there a 'play' button on the screen? I don't think it plays automatically. I think you have to tell it to play.
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Plays just fine on my PC, chrome and windows 7
I know it's the design of Periscope, but am I the only one who doesn't like that you can't see how long it is?
Jens
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I could see it just fine. I am interested in that guitar as well. In the beginning of the vid, I was like "Jordan is gonan rock out on his dreadnaught like a total gangsta." Then I saw it was your jazz box. Could you go over the choices that went into that guitar in another thread? It looks like it was made to fit your needs, what were they and why? Just interested.
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Could you do this with a drone on the bottom to set the background for the 13b9 tonality? I can sorta hear the extended harmony here and there. Love the idea of using dyads to explore extended harmony. This is what I talk about when I mutter about not letting Drop 2s and 3s be the end all be all in comping. It's a beautiful texture that you hear in classical music as well. Some of what you played sounded like Debussy or Gershwin to my ears. Keep on sharing the wealth, brotha!
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One more thought, and I know figuring this stuff is hard (my teacher just got my started on set theory and I'm like, SCHWA?) But do you sing the line or hum it before you find it on the guitar. I know shifting and the geography of the fret board can get in the way of accessing some of these extended ideas, but if I can solidly hum the idea and hear it against the tonality (the 13b9) than it becomes just a little easier to execute it on the guitar.
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Thanks Jens. And no, you're not the only one. It also bugs me that you can't rewind and fast forward. But I guess the idea is that originally, it was just a streaming video happening live. So it's not meant to rewind, fast forward, or know how long it will last. I suppose when they let you replay it, it's sort of recreating that initial video stream.
Originally Posted by JensL
Plays just fine on my PC, chrome and windows 7
I know it's the design of Periscope, but am I the only one who doesn't like that you can't see how long it is?
Jens
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@Irez - whew...you asked some big questions. This probably won't be short.
GUITAR
I built that guitar while apprenticing with a luthier about 10ish years ago. The choices? Some of them were my choices, and some were because the luthier did things a certain way. The overall design was mine. I wanted something modern and not at all dated or traditional, but I still wanted it to be minimal and simple. I had the vision of a cello in my mind the whole time. Not that I wanted to make it look just like one. But the balance between elegance and simplicity was what I was going for.
I picked the wood out at a badass wood shop he brought me too. He helped me narrow down my choices by saying 'these' are the woods you can use for the sides and back, and 'these' are the woods you can use for the top. So I looked around for a while, and I 'listened' to each of the boards (held it at the node, put my ear up to it, and clocked it with my thumb...you can actually hear how the different boards resonate and carry sound), and chose this beautiful walnut for the sides and back and european spruce for the top.
DRONE AND HEARING
I'm not sure if I could do it with a drone. I'm constantly moving through the circle of 5ths, so I would need a way to make the drone change. I couldn't pre-record the drone and play it back though, because each chord isn't the same length. I'm not squeezing each one into a specific number of beats or measures, I'm just playing every note possible within the pattern that's on the fretboar. I'd have to write out the whole thing to see how it all works out rhythmically if I were going to do that. That seems like more work than it's worth to me. Or I could sing the root note as it's all moving. But I don't have the lung capacity to sing long, held out drones for 30 minutes - 1 hour. hahaha
All of this stuff starts at the piano for me. I'm playing these 4-note groupings over a chord in my right hand while playing the 1-3-7 of the chord in my left hand. I have emotions, energies, stories, and body movements that go along with each different type of chord that helps it's vibe get in my ear. So by the time it goes on the guitar, my ear is pretty open to its sound. I sing it a bit. But you might not like how. I treat the triad as the tonic triad and sing do-mi-so + whatever the 4th note is in relation to that triad, not in relation to the root note of the chord. I find as my ear opens to these harmonies, the upper structure triads create such a powerful effect melodically that the notes begin to behave like a melodic tonic. For instance, in the 13b9...most people would consider the 7 to be a chord tone and a good resolution point...but my ear actually hears it as a b2, like a phrygian sound, that wants to resolve down to the 'root note'...which is the 13. These are the types of quirky things I'm looking for. If I build up an entire vocabulary around this way of hearing, and I have 10 or 15 different types of 'dominant' tonalities to work with (or more???) then the colors and tonalities that could be created with my chords or implies with my single note lines would be much closer to where I want them to be then if I'm just able to work off a palette of a couple of scales and modes.
Debussy?!?!?! O_O
Well ain't that just kickass! Haha. I have a piano player friend who studied with the same guy that got me hip to all this stuff, and he pointed out that he hears a lot of these ideas, verbatim, in a lot of classical music. Specifically he said it reminds him of some Beethoven pieces. Gotta love it. Hey...we're all still using the same 12 notes that Bach was using.
SET THEORY
I'm not familiar with this. Again, I do sing these ideas a bit. But I also just spend a lot of time at the piano listening to how it behaves and sounds against the lower structure of the chord. The translation from how simple it looks on the piano to the fretboard is tricky and very tedious. It's not necessarily hard. It's just very very tedious. I find if I'm not super concentrated and feeling really stubborn and motivated, I will quickly get frustrated and start noodling or playing a tune.
I find that it works best for me to have 3 positions that are each based on/built around some very common chord shapes that I use (that's where the drop 2 comes into play here for me...as an organizing tool). I'll work on different variations of the 4-note grouping in each of the 3 positions. Once things get comfortable within each position, I'll start tying them together and playing across the fretboard...like you saw in the video above.
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@Irez
I was just watching back through the video a bit while eating lunch to listen to the ideas in 3rd person. I totally forgot, but at a certain point, I started playing the full chord before then arpeggiating it up and back the fretboard. It's probably 10 minuteish into the video. But if you're having a hard time hearing what I'm playing against the chords (since there's not drone) and you want to watch a bit more of the video, eventually I start playing the chords also.
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The ear is a beautiful thing. Unfortunately, many guitarists neglect their ears
. The ears allow you to play you, because everyone hears things a little differently. It depends on what you've grown up listening to and the wiring of your brain. But there lies the beauty in it all. I plan on training my ear for the rest of my life, because there's so much music to make sense of out there.
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That is a really cool guitar, and great playing. I stand by it, your example sounds like Impressionist (?) composers like Ravel and Debussy. Keep on sharing the wealth.
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Oh that's awesome it comes across. I love Ravel and am really influenced by impressionism in general (in case the giant Van Gogh painting in all my videos didn't make that obvious). Bill Evans is one of my favorites because he sort of brings some of that to the jazz table... which is something I've been trying to find ways to do on guitar for a very long time. And this 4-note upper structure way of thinking seems to be helping to find the sounds I've been looking for, which has been awesome. Really happy to know that vibe translates to others.
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No problem. Just calling it like I hear it (all pun intended). My dad raised me on classical music, Neil Young, Dylan, the Beatles, and Coltrane. So I got some sonic references here and there
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I love Bill Evans as well. Oddly enough "California, Here I Come" is my favorite album of his, even though that wasn't part of his "classic trio". Maybe it's Philly Joe unearthing all that swing that Bill had stored away in his arms, feet, and ears...
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You should leave it up, I was gonna steal, I mean "borrow" some of your ideas
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Yeah I would leave it up if I could. Unfortunately, the app I streamed it with only keeps it up for 2 days. But I'm working off all the same stuff in that video that I talk about ad nauseam on the forum. So you're welcome to steal what you want.
It's all just permutations of a super basic idea/concept/approach I took from Stefon Harris. And even his ideas are basically just piano player thinking about harmony, melody, and how the two are really connected.
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So, what you're saying, matey, is that I should study with Stefon if I wanna get those ideas under me fingas, and steal em from you.
All I gotta say is this:
Music is my White Whale. Now where is my Spanish Dabloon!
Though, I don't want to kill music (mind you)Last edited by Irez87; 09-07-2015 at 02:22 PM.
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So this thread is based on a video that isn't even available?.........
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It was, blame it on the gumbo. Wait, are we talking gumbo with andouille sausage or shrimp? I miss New Orleans... But not the dang humidity and buckets o rain!
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If you're able to, you'd love it. I can't recommend it enough. He won't spoon feed you any of the fingerings or shapes or patterns. It's just theory, ideas, harmony, concepts, structure... Originally Posted by Irez87
I took all that and put it on the fretboard. And broke certain elements of it down in different ways to accomplish goals of my own.
But yeah, you'd still love it. Theory and harmony aside...you'd love his ear training methods. They're pretty slick. I'd spent a good bit of time doing solfeggi ear training prior to Stefon. And he has methods for that too. But we spent most of the time learning to recognize harmony. Not just hearing one or two notes, or hearing a chord and having to think about each individual chord tone/extension...just hearing a 6 or 7 note chord and knowing exactly what it is in real time.
He's scary good at it.
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Yeah, it was only available for 2 days. Looks like it's gone now. No worries though. I didn't talk or explain anything in it. It was basically me sitting and practicing a lot of the things I already talk about on the forum constantly. Originally Posted by cosmic gumbo
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Cool. Well, I'll add him to the list of people I wanna take a couple of lessons with.
Let's see:
Stefon Harris, Mike Longo, Howard Alden, Greg Fishman, Vincent Herring, Lage Lund
...If only I was rich... Thanks for the suggestions. I thought Stefon was a West Coast guy, though?
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@Irez
I'm pretty sure he's east coast now. He teaches at NYU at least, so that what I assumed. Though I've never actually asked him where he lives.
@cosmic gumbo
Sorry you missed the original video. It was literally me just practicing single note and dyad variations of a 4-note structure I use over a 13b9 moving through all 12 keys.
Here's a little clip of some of my practice time today that was far less structured. I was still putting a lot of restrictions on myself, but I was no longer just running 1 chord type through the circle of 5ths.
Here I was comping/soloing over a ii V I VI in A Major. I had a loop pedal giving me JUST the root notes. The practice started off as me just working through the chords using 3-note variations of my 4-note structures focused on good voice leading. Eventually I got antsy and started soloing. So the original video was all single notes and dyads. This is basically all single notes and 3-notes. And it's moving through a progression. But very similar in nature.
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