the huge barrier between scales and arpegios and jazz language

[mastodonovan]

As long as you are being true to melody,harmony, and rhythm you deserve to be up there playing. Dont be afraid to play something simple

[Joe Dalton]

I think a large part of the problem for a lot of people has more to do with how they aproach scales and arps. When you constantly run straight arps and scales with 8ths how do you think it's going to come out when you play?

When you practice try writing down a couple of rhythm patterns before you start and run the scale and arps with those rhythms. Also try switching up the patterns. Play them every other note down and then play the others on the way back up for example. But really the rhythm thing is what tends to help people the most.

[matt.guitarteacher]

i find there's a big stagnation point when i did my scales and arpegios home work , i was disapointed there was some big GAP between the theory knowledge , intervals and the real jazz language , and this GAP isn't filled by any academic curricula , it's something each one should find out on his/her own.
i think it could be very inspiring if we share how we overcame that GAP between scales arpegios and the language . i personaly still haven't , i struggle jut follow the harmony and in the same time express myself within the framework of the tune , including some chromatisim and target strong chord tones did emprove my phrasing just a tiny bit , but i'm still uncoherent , my phrases make up a frankeinstein at the end , no meaning whatsoever , i sometimes hate myself and think of taking a break to change my ideas .

I've been thinking about this gap more lately, as I've been working on this stuff anew, with some melodic minor subs. I think the biggest gaps in application probably come from doing it without a teacher, and I speak for myself there as well. I once went through the playing arps up and down thing too. I think some big factors to really "breaking through" on applying arps in a musical way are primarily to do with phrasing and considerations ofor melodic/harmonic rhythm. That's where the in-the-book-theoretical part is harder. It's just easier to see someone else do it. For sure, watch Reg's video on targeting or enclosures. (I'd have to find that one. I don't remember where it is.)

Like many things he has a completely different take on targeting than traditional approaches I've seen. Most tend to view targeting primarily as it's own separate melodic thing, whereas reg looks at targeting patterns from the standpoint of complete note sets. These are very cool, and not explained well at all in text. It's all about phrasing and melodic/harmonic rhythm.

If you don't have your ears around some basic targeting patterns it's difficult to use an arpeggio as the actual "tension" to outline the chord which follows. It's almost easier to just learn some basic patterns to get your ears around them. Over a dominant 7 chord, work melodic ideas like 2-1, 2-7-1, 2-b2-7-1 (7's being natural, not flatted). That's just basic, vanilla stuff. See Bert Ligon's free material on his site for this kind of thing. Anyway, once you get your ears around that, you hear everything differently.

For example, a basic jazz pattern like 1-2-3-5 "arps" (for lack of a better term) work really well over most anything, but if you don't know what's going on, it's very random and much less unhelpful. What makes series of 1-2-3-5 patterns "work" in a progression is that they actually enclose the 1 of the next chord to which you're resolving. So, rather than hearing A-B-C-E as just a random arp pattern, you could really think more about the following note in the pattern, the D (or 1 of the next chord, D7). Forget about Am7 for a second and just focus on the D. Practice hearing the phrase more as melodic tensions which resolve to D. You're surrounding D, playing everything but D...tension...tension...tension...then, D. It doesn't really matter if Am7 is the chord of the moment or not, you can target that D melody note using that pattern.

It's a pattern which works well, but it is important to know somewhat why it works. Otherwise, you're missing a lot of the lessons of transcribing etc. One reason it works is because the final two notes enclose the succeeding pitch in the new chord (the resolution). If you extrapolate that lesson to Joe Elliot's connecting game for arpeggios, one simple strategy is to simply resolve down when you're ascending to a new chord and resolve up when descending to a new chord. Then, you get the enclosure on the change, by default. That's just one way to work on it and is very vanilla, but it's still the same concept when you later apply it to altered and other outside melodic ideas.

Back to Reg's video on this: he uses arpeggios and complete note sets from melodic minor to target chords, rather than "random number patterns" like I listed above. The random number patterns are somewhat helpful for getting your ears going initially, but it's what Reg would call "throwing things against the wall and seeing what sticks". Better, long term, to know what actually works and why. The complete note sets are pretty helpful for that.

If you're doing the back and forth melodic thing over Gmaj7 using D altered to target your Gma7 chord tones, you've got some hip targeting "patterns" without having to work on them as separate patterns, in isolation. Joe Elliott works this pretty systematically into the lessons in his book, if you know how to apply them. May have to post some Joe Elliott redux stuff in it's own thread. I've gotten a lot more out of it on round two, by really applying Jimmy Amadie/Bert Ligon/Reg ideas of tension and release.

Sorry to bloviate. Too many thoughts.

[MarkRhodes]

I ran across a reference to Bunky Green in a True Fire lesson last week. I forget whose lesson it was, but he played sax and grew up near Chicago. His mom drove him an hour to a lesson with Bunky Green. Bunky Green gave him one ii-V line to play. One. That was the week's assignment. The next week, Bunky told the kid he didn't know it well enough yet. The next week he gave him another line. Three weeks, two lines. The guy wound up getting a lot out of those lines, transposing them to all keys, getting them smoother, refining the accents. Gradually he got to where he mixed part of one line with part of another and he didn't have to think about it. They were second nature to him them.

Bunky's books are like that. He thinks it best to learn some lines and get the theory later. Others take that same approach. I think there's a lot to it.

[dingusmingus]

It's a pattern which works well, but it is important to know somewhat why it works. Otherwise, you're missing a lot of the lessons of transcribing etc. One reason it works is because the final two notes enclose the succeeding pitch in the new chord (the resolution). If you extrapolate that lesson to Joe Elliot's connecting game for arpeggios, one simple strategy is to simply resolve down when you're ascending to a new chord and resolve up when descending to a new chord. Then, you get the enclosure on the change, by default. That's just one way to work on it and is very vanilla, but it's still the same concept when you later apply it to altered and other outside melodic ideas.
...
If you're doing the back and forth melodic thing over Gmaj7 using D altered to target your Gma7 chord tones, you've got some hip targeting "patterns" without having to work on them as separate patterns, in isolation. Joe Elliott works this pretty systematically into the lessons in his book, if you know how to apply them. May have to post some Joe Elliott redux stuff in it's own thread. I've gotten a lot more out of it on round two, by really applying Jimmy Amadie/Bert Ligon/Reg ideas of tension and release.

Very cool Matt--I've also been thinking about revisiting those Joe Elliott concepts after a couple years of other ideas, listening, transcribing, etc. I hope you will follow up on this, here or in one of those threads.

[matt.guitarteacher]

Very cool Matt--I've also been thinking about revisiting those Joe Elliott concepts after a couple years of other ideas, listening, transcribing, etc. I hope you will follow up on this, here or in one of those threads.

I don't know which is more kosher, between new thread or just posting in one of the existing threads. Personally, I don't think "zombie thread" issues apply to threads of that kind of "study" nature. I'd almost think that it just makes more sense to keep in one place.