Outlining the chords

[princeplanet]

I guess this is a sister thread to the other one going where peeps are posting their playing, so didn't want to disrupt it, but had a couple of questions for the members:

When you choose not to outline, what's usually happening? Are you generalising in the tonic? Blues running? Playing chromatic or symmetrical figures that you know can't sound "wrong"? Or are you playing what you hear, even if it contains clashing notes?

I'm often surprised when I analyse my own playing to find notes that don't always outline the harmony, but still sound as I intended in a way I like. I stick mainly to the road map though as I'm not developed enough to "wing" it every time, but am getting more confident with lines that contain odd notes instead of slapping myself on the wrists for it. A couple of examples (of many)-

Against a dom chord in many situations it's common to play the b9 (convert to diminished), so I see no reason why we can't reverse that so that I might ignore dim or b9 chord and play the straight 9 over it. Because I use a lot of chromaticism I seldom hear a problem with that.

Another is where I substitute major 2-5-1 material over the relative minor's 2-5-1. So that in C, against the V chord I might be embellishing around the notes b d f a which gives me the 3 5 7 9 against G7, but against E7b9 it gives me the 5 7 b9 and 11. I can make it sound ok to my ears, even if I went for plain old G7 arp against E7b9, the b3 against the chord still sounds ok to me, certainly less obvious...

Naturally, If I played this way and you took the backing away, you won't guess what I'm outlining because it's obtuse. Is that such a bad thing? Herbie Hancock says he never plays the "butter" notes because they sound too obvious and I'm sure that guys like him and McCoy, Joe Henderson etc are more interested in the "rub" between what they're doing and what the band is playing. Don't get me wrong, I've spent years learning to outline the chords with many an etude as a vehicle, but it will take many years to learn how to not outline the chords as well, so where do we draw the line?

[mr. beaumont]

First step is "think key, not chord."

But consider the key of every movement, don't try to put the whole tune in one key from the start. But you'll hear it right away.

[Irez87]

I won't say anything other than check out my performance ear training thread if you wanna know my process. But I agree with most of what has been said here so far. However, I do think of songs in one key. I will post the podcast on Giant Steps this weekend, I promise.

[destinytot]

When you choose not to outline, what's usually happening?

Personally, I'm always trying to outline, including at a point of rest/resolution in a progression.

Naturally, If I played this way and you took the backing away, you won't guess what I'm outlining because it's obtuse. Is that such a bad thing? Herbie Hancock says he never plays the "butter" notes because they sound too obvious and I'm sure that guys like him and McCoy, Joe Henderson etc are more interested in the "rub" between what they're doing and what the band is playing. Don't get me wrong, I've spent years learning to outline the chords with many an etude as a vehicle, but it will take many years to learn how to not outline the chords as well, so where do we draw the line?

There's an old chestnut and back-handed compliment that goes "So-and-so plays a good solo..." (the inference being that it's always the same solo). When I first heard it, I thought the wordplay clever but the intention cruel. Now I think it says more about the speaker's appreciation of tonal gravity.

Personally, I draw the line where method stops (and madness/insanity begins).

I own plenty of their recordings and I've seen them live and in several countries, but I rarely listen to the music of the guys you mention these days (as I have other fish to fry). However, their crafting of the "rub" demonstrates connaissance de cause (they know precisely what they're doing).

While I respect what I think of as the dignity of difference ('one man's meat etc'... 'horses for courses'), I now think taste has less do with approaches to playing than I did a year ago. Confidence arises from the dissolution of doubt. From this, I infer not 'believe harder' (!) but 'consolidate gaps in your knowledge'.

Irez's performance ear training thread champion's Bruce Arnold's methods, which resonate with me (because I recognise parallels with linguist Stephen Krashen's ideas on comprehensible input). The notion of hearing in one key is counterintuitive but liberating - I've tried it on two tunes and I buy it.

Nevertheless, my immediate goal - as far as consolidation goes - is to take advantage of remarkable opportunities provided by technology:

[fumblefingers]

i think the idea is to improvise a melody, whether it sounds like running changes, a vocal melody, a rhythmic motif, etc.

[Irez87]

I have a great metaphor I want to share about this process. I want to use it to barter with Greg Fishman for a lesson discount.... I will share it here first. Later today, promise.

[mr. beaumont]

i think the idea is to improvise a melody, whether it sounds like running changes, a vocal melody, a rhythmic motif, etc.

Indeed it is.

[Irez87]

Oak ee doaks...

Lemme see if I remember this from last night...

I am an odd thinker, btw

...


So, I went out to dinner with my girlfriend and we had to walk through Times Square so I could get to the subway. That got me thinking, walking through a city with an extremely high population density is like navigating chord changes. I can thank Michel de Certeau for the inspiration of this metaphor.

BASE PARALLEL:

When walking through a crowded city block, you have several choices:

1. Zig zag quickly through the crowd because you are an awesome New York bred and born New Yorker. First you find the gaps in the crowd. When you get really advanced, you can squeeze your way through any part of the crowd of pedestrians. That's my gf, not me

2. Hesitate and get left behind. Risk getting pushed around as you try and carefully walk through the crowd.

3. Think you are too cool for school. Walk on the street, but risk getting hit by an oncoming taxi or bus. I wish this were a joke, but I know people who have died doing this. NYC is nuts. This is how I navigate the crowd.

4. Hug the wall and pray for the crowds to subside. During rush hour they never do...

FOR THE SOLOIST:

1. You have mastered the song, melody, harmony, tempo, everything is on lock. You first find the easiest way to navigate the changes. Common tones and tonality for denser harmonies. At the most advanced level, you can solo over the most abstract harmony and still find melodies through every nook and cranie of the melody, harmony, and pulse of the song. You know how to phrase effectively and you can zig zag through the song like an adept dancer of the highest form.

2. The intermediate soloist. This manifests itself as musicians that may know the changes of the tune to a superficial extent. However, they can't locate the connections. The phrasing of their lines is lost. They think too much vertically and not enough horizontally (you need both) when they solo. Chords are separate entities to them. Therefore, they loose the harmonic rhythm and flow of the tune.

3. The modal soloist. They treat everything in vague tonal areas. They use the blues scale to navigate changes. George Benson does this to great skill and so is McCoy Tyner (different approaches)... but he is adept enough to dodge the stray "bus or taxi" harmony that is thrown at him.Let's relate the buses and taxis to "out harmony" like side slipping or Coltrane changes coming from the pianist. When you dodge the "out harmony" you are thrown back into the traditional harmony of the tune.This is totally acceptable, and pleasurable to listen to, but you need to know how to navigate the tune.

4. The beginning soloist. He or she doesn't know enough about the tune to play. They freeze from stage fright and a blues intimidates the hell out of them. They pray that the changes will clear up and they will hear something simple to jump into... but that rarely happens at a jam session . This used to be me, big time.

FOR THE COMPER:

You control the density and speed of the crowd

...So what do y'all think. I used to teach English... can you believe that? Poor kids...

[mr. beaumont]

I think the older i get, the less i want to think about anything, really.

[christianm77]

I guess this is a sister thread to the other one going where peeps are posting their playing, so didn't want to disrupt it, but had a couple of questions for the members:

When you choose not to outline, what's usually happening? Are you generalising in the tonic? Blues running? Playing chromatic or symmetrical figures that you know can't sound "wrong"? Or are you playing what you hear, even if it contains clashing notes?

I'm often surprised when I analyse my own playing to find notes that don't always outline the harmony, but still sound as I intended in a way I like. I stick mainly to the road map though as I'm not developed enough to "wing" it every time, but am getting more confident with lines that contain odd notes instead of slapping myself on the wrists for it. A couple of examples (of many)-

Against a dom chord in many situations it's common to play the b9 (convert to diminished), so I see no reason why we can't reverse that so that I might ignore dim or b9 chord and play the straight 9 over it. Because I use a lot of chromaticism I seldom hear a problem with that.

Another is where I substitute major 2-5-1 material over the relative minor's 2-5-1. So that in C, against the V chord I might be embellishing around the notes b d f a which gives me the 3 5 7 9 against G7, but against E7b9 it gives me the 5 7 b9 and 11. I can make it sound ok to my ears, even if I went for plain old G7 arp against E7b9, the b3 against the chord still sounds ok to me, certainly less obvious...

Naturally, If I played this way and you took the backing away, you won't guess what I'm outlining because it's obtuse. Is that such a bad thing? Herbie Hancock says he never plays the "butter" notes because they sound too obvious and I'm sure that guys like him and McCoy, Joe Henderson etc are more interested in the "rub" between what they're doing and what the band is playing. Don't get me wrong, I've spent years learning to outline the chords with many an etude as a vehicle, but it will take many years to learn how to not outline the chords as well, so where do we draw the line?

Fantastic question. I'm going to post some thoughts before I read what everyone has posted.

My understanding of this is constantly in flux. My current feeling is that when playing with other musicians, anything is valid - but intention is important to start it off.

Now I think in terms of training on your own or playing with other players (working on improvisation together - how often do we practice that?) you need to take aim on specific goal and develop that. Outlining a set of changes clearly while playing a musical line might be one (a simpler exercise would be to do it with strict arpeggios or scales.)

In terms of playing with other musicians of course, it's not necessary to outline everything all the time. So you might also want to develop the ability to not outline what the others are doing, but outline something else, something that stands aside.

Increasingly, I'm starting to think that what is important in improvisation is not that you do this or that type of movement (ii-V-I or whatever) but that you line can include some movement. In the simplest terms, if you play the melody 4-3 (f-e in C) in a key, that could evoke a number of chord progressions If you play b6-5 (a flat - g in C), the same. If you play both together, could be a V7b9 I, a III7 VIm (or VI) a IVm I, a iim7b5 bII7 I, and so on and so forth. But four notes might be enough for a melody, if you are not running changes in continuous single or double time lines. Those four notes have a clear sense of motion within the established key - 3-4 (e-f) is not the same sense as 4-3 (f-e).

If we go further it is perfectly possible to put motion in which doesn't match up to that in the chnages - a very simple example would be playing an extended ii-V-I on the first four of Rhythm Changes for example... (Try it)

I haven't even touched on the more contemporary harmonic possibilities.

Hopefully over the next few weeks I might start to take a look at this concept and start freeing up my changes playing.

Anyway, there isn't a wrong or right in any of this, just potential resources that can be drawn on improvisation. Anything is up for grabs, but you have to work on it to stop it from being random. You have to create structures in your music... And, of course, aim to hear everything you are playing.

That's what I fink wiv my brane.

[grahambop]

I've got an interesting Jerry Bergonzi DVD about improvisation where at one point, he says 'melody always trumps harmony', and to illustrate this, he plays phrases on the sax repeatedly (over a set of standard changes being played on the piano), and his phrases have hardly any relation to the underlying chords, in fact they are quite 'outside'. But they still sound good, because they have a melodic logic and structure which the ear recognises. And this works despite going against the underlying harmony.

So that's one way to get outside the chords and still make it work, provided your phrases stand up well enough.

[grahambop]

I think the older i get, the less i want to think about anything, really.

Thinking is such an effort at my age, I try and do as little as possible. At least I think I do.

[Irez87]

Graham, is that the DVD from JazzHeaven

My musicianship teacher, Bruce Arnold, studied with Jerry Bergonzi and Charlie Banacos back in the day when he lived in Boston.

I love that Boston drawl. I dunno, do I have an accent?

RE: Thinking at any age. No Graham, think everyday. There have been studies that state that people who study music enter senility much later in life than those that just watch TV all the time. To me, senility sounds frightening, my Grandpa was a different man when he became senile... Thinking keeps the mind healthy

Be well, and play music. Playing music helps the mind and soul stay healthy

Graham, listen to my new pod cast on phaseology on the ear training thread. I think you'll really like it. I analyze the phrasing of Mozart's 25th... My dad listens to classical music all the time and he raised me on that stuff.

So go, listen. I think the levels are a little better now, but I would love suggestions on how to make the podcast more listenable.

[grahambop]

Graham, is that the DVD from JazzHeaven

RE: Thinking at any age. No Graham, think everyday.

Yes it's the JazzHeaven one, I have both volumes. Loads of good ideas in them. In fact I've only scratched the surface of all the exercises and approaches Jerry goes through.

I was only joking about the thinking - I have to think pretty hard all day in my job (systems). Hopefully playing and listening to jazz (and classical music, my other favourite) must be good for firing up some brain cells and neural connections on a regular basis!

I had a quick listen to your 'you've changed sketches' and the sound was much, much better.

[mr. beaumont]

I will try and listen, Irez, but generally i find podcasts excruciating unless they're done by people with a radio background.

[Irez87]

Graham, those were sketches that I wanted to base an entire arrangement around. Which sketches did you enjoy. Pick two or three and I will use those to create the arrangement. Make it kind of a collaborative process. Music, at it's best, in a band, is a collaboration between musicians, not a competition between athletes

[christianm77]

I've got an interesting Jerry Bergonzi DVD about improvisation where at one point, he says 'melody always trumps harmony', and to illustrate this, he plays phrases on the sax repeatedly (over a set of standard changes being played on the piano), and his phrases have hardly any relation to the underlying chords, in fact they are quite 'outside'. But they still sound good, because they have a melodic logic and structure which the ear recognises. And this works despite going against the underlying harmony.

So that's one way to get outside the chords and still make it work, provided your phrases stand up well enough.

So that invites the question, what is it about his melodies that make them so ... logical?

[Irez87]

That IS the question. Care to join in the investigation?

Glad you didn't say "that begs the question"... had fun with that miss-usage in college:

http://begthequestion.info/

I will give you a hint, what makes a melody interesting is more than the superficiality of outlining chords. Not saying that to be mean, just saying that to make a point. Outlining is extremely important, but it doesn't necessarily translate to great melodies.

Bach, for example. Can we reduce the brilliance in his compositions to "he outlined harmony"?

I am currently investigating that question as well. What makes melodies "good"?

Bergonzi, at one point, plays "all the wrong notes" on that DVD. Yet his improvisation still sounds amazing. He says strong melodies and I felt screaming through the screen, "how did you craft this good melodies, Jerry? Tell me or I'll tell Matt Damon and Mark Wahlberg where you live!"

[christianm77]

That IS the question. Care to join in the investigation?

Glad you didn't say "that begs the question"... had fun with that miss-usage in college:

Beg The Question // Get it right.

I almost caught myself with that one...

I will give you a hint, what makes a melody interesting is more than the superficiality of outlining chords. Not saying that to be mean, just saying that to make a point. Outlining is extremely important, but it doesn't necessarily translate to great melodies.

Bach, for example. Can we reduce the brilliance in his compositions to "he outlined harmony"?

According to Jonah, (if understand fully) Bach didn't really outline harmony in the sense that a jazz player would understand it. I kind of believe him. :-) When we see arpeggios in baroque music they are just that - broken chords, not a melodic expression of chord structures. My limited experience of attending a class that included improvising 16th/17th century music on a ground (repeating bassline) would tend to back that up - arpeggio based improvisation is pretty frowned on in fact! And this is the tradition that Bach comes out of...

As Bach was writing from a contrapuntal point of view (of which one aspect was managing the vertical relationships between the melodies.) That might be interesting to a jazz improvisor. In fact in one of my groups, I'm trying to move towards a contrapuntal improvising style in which the chord changes are emergent rather than set and the focus is on improvising melodically and with imitative counterpoint (without a ground or chord progression). In terms of pseudo - early music, this is very much within one key/mode.

There's a lot that comes out of that with reference to ear training etc...

It's great fun, but quite frustrating to practice in that it's hard to get people in a room together and try something new. Most people are running from gig to gig, so time is really short.

Outlining harmony is one key skill for a jazz player. Needless to say, you should be able to do it entirely by ear.

[Irez87]

Try doing that a jam session. The trumpet player didn't even know what I was talking about. But I got the trombone player, a guy I never met before, to join me in some contrapuntal improvision over "There Will Never Be Another You". I might be able to find it on youtube... It had a Jimmy Raney Bob Brookmeyer vibe to it. So much fun. More fun than tradition soloing. But yes, getting people to try something new is like "hold up, the jazz police are here, YOU ARE UNDER ARREST for violating tradition"

Meanwhile, the "tradition" of jazz improvisation, at its orgin, is COLLECTIVE improvisation...

Thank you for acknowledging that "Outlining harmony is one key skill for a jazz player. Needless to say, you should be able to do it entirely by ear."

AMEN, brother! PREACH, brother! PREACH!

Oh god, found something:

That's me at the 00:36 second part... look at that horrible posture I look older than the 92 year old drummer they interviewed. By the way, that guy is hilarious!

ME: So, you must have seen it all. When did you start playing:

DRUMMER: Well, I used to play those shows. You know... the girls without their clothes [smiles]... dancing...

ME: You mean vaudeville and burlesque?

DRUMMER: Yeah, yeah. Those were fun times [smiles, laughs]

He is still an awesome drummer! Keep on playing, keep on keeping on!

[GuitarGerry]

It's possible to play pure melody with little relationship to key/the changes and still maintain a listener's interest. I used to listen a lot to Ornette, mainly his Prime Time phase. To this day I'm sure a lot of my friends thought I was doing it to be different or 'cool', but they simply didn't hear what I was hearing...and sadly few of them would let me play them his music to prove a point. Sometimes all he did was run a simple melody/motif sequentially. By shifting it through different degrees of a scale (often a major scale), the melody would take on different moods as the intervalic relationships changed. The end result could be quite beautiful, if you locked into what he was doing - admittedly it could sound 'out of tune' if it was 'out of key'.

Mostly what I learned from Ornette was the importance of rhythmic and melodic motifs...even if I don't use them in the same way that he did. It implies a logic to everything, because the ear knows what's coming up next. So even if it the melodic fragment has little relationship to the harmony, it will work, because the ear is anticipating what's going to happen next.

Personally, I don't think there's anything wrong with playing modally/using tone centers if it's appropriate. People playing 'outside' during 1920s/30s show-tunes sounds faintly ridiculous to me (it's about respect for the music/genre). Conversely, playing Django style riffs during So What is also nuts to my ears...each to their own.

[christianm77]

It's possible to play pure melody with little relationship to key/the changes and still maintain a listener's interest. I used to listen a lot to Ornette, mainly his Prime Time phase. To this day I'm sure a lot of my friends thought I was doing it to be different or 'cool', but they simply didn't hear what I was hearing...and sadly few of them would let me play them his music to prove a point. Sometimes all he did was run a simple melody/motif sequentially. By shifting it through different degrees of a scale (often a major scale), the melody would take on different moods as the intervalic relationships changed. The end result could be quite beautiful, if you locked into what he was doing - admittedly it could sound 'out of tune' if it was 'out of key'.

Mostly what I learned from Ornette was the importance of rhythmic and melodic motifs...even if I don't use them in the same way that he did. It implies a logic to everything, because the ear knows what's coming up next. So even if it the melodic fragment has little relationship to the harmony, it will work, because the ear is anticipating what's going to happen next.

Personally, I don't think there's anything wrong with playing modally/using tone centers if it's appropriate. People playing 'outside' during 1920s/30s show-tunes sounds faintly ridiculous to me (it's about respect for the music/genre). Conversely, playing Django style riffs during So What is also nuts to my ears...each to their own.

I kind of like messing around with those boundaries though.. but I think you need to know that you are crossing a boundary rather than having a 'one size fits all' approach to improv.

[Hep To The Jive]

Sometimes all he did was run a simple melody/motif sequentially. By shifting it through different degrees of a scale (often a major scale), the melody would take on different moods as the intervalic relationships changed. The end result could be quite beautiful, if you locked into what he was doing - admittedly it could sound 'out of tune' if it was 'out of key'.

I gotta listen to this! I'm not very familiar with Ornette's music, but its sounds intriguing.

I like the idea of repetitiveness. Find a simple melody phrase, and repeat it over, maybe change the rhythm accents of it, like Thelonius did often in his tunes. I know the audience loves it, people dig repetition! Coming from rocknroll background, I call those phrases riffs. If I play an improv. I like to come up with a riff at somepoint and just turn it around, maybe chromatically, up or down, or just stay on it for a while, sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. But at the same time I know where I'm in the harmony, so I can come back to 'outlining the chords' thingy. And if I get lost, well, s#$t happens lol!

[Irez87]

Listen to my pod cast, Hep, on the ear training thread. It's 40 minutes. It will blow your mind, and your ears... I sing on it. My whole topic: how to hear Giant Steps in the key of B major and the myth of the modulation in jazz. Ornette's music is beautiful. Start with the Shape of Jazz to Come:

That's Don Cherry on trumpet and Charlie Haden on bass.

hauntingly beautiful. But not as out as Albert Ayler...

[GuitarGerry]

I gotta listen to this! I'm not very familiar with Ornette's music, but its sounds intriguing.

I like the idea of repetitiveness. Find a simple melody phrase, and repeat it over, maybe change the rhythm accents of it, like Thelonius did often in his tunes. I know the audience loves it, people dig repetition! Coming from rocknroll background, I call those phrases riffs. If I play an improv. I like to come up with a riff at somepoint and just turn it around, maybe chromatically, up or down, or just stay on it for a while, sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. But at the same time I know where I'm in the harmony, so I can come back to 'outlining the chords' thingy. And if I get lost, well, s#$t happens lol!

The Virgin Beauty album is a good place to start. You can hear fragments of what I was talking about (running short motifs sequentially through a mode) during this track. Lock into Ornette's playing and it's purely melodic: