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I have been on a recent learning binge lately. I've been going through the plethora of learning resources I own, both online and in book and video format. My focus has been mostly on learning to improvise bebob lines. I play both keyboard and guitar in cover band rock,but am most interested in learning and improving my jazz capabilities.
So I've gone back through Mark Levine's theory and piano book, Richie Zellons stuff, Barry Harris, Pat Martino, Robert Contri, Jimmy Bruno and all the other stuff I have. I am a junkie when it comes to collecting this stuff. You would think I would be a genius player at this point and I am certainly not.
I've spent quite a bit of time focusing on scales and modes of all sorts to the point of being a bit overwhelmed by the sheer numbers andvariations. Beyond that, attempting to play them in all different keys and positions (although a bit easier on piano than guitar) is time consuming. Then there is the aspect of where and when to use them.
What I've discovered is that these modes and scales are not providing value where I need it. Perhaps my expectations were wrong. What I've found, and has simplified things for me, is that there are only 12 notes to mess around with. On top of any chord or ordered sequence I can choose from these 12 notes. I could basically ignore learning scales and the like in every key if I just think of notes by theirsequenced number from a starting point. 1 b9 2 b3 (#9), 4 (11), etcetera. I have the ability to quickly name the #9 in any sequence or chord. It is hearing and establishing the sound in my head that is key.
I think perhaps, this is where Jimmy Bruno has got it right, everything is a pitch collection, a bucket of notes to be had. Some are chord tones and others are altered and nothing more.
For me modes only sound like modes when they are played in sequence or lines are targeted to hit certain notes within the mode. I do not have time when improvising to think about hey an Ephrygian should be played against this chord and let's see, an Ephrygian is nothing but a Cscale started from the 3rd of C or let me playH-W-W-W-H-W-W, or where the hell is my fingering for a phrygian scale in this position. It just seems easier naturally to think and hear 1 b9 #9 4 5 b13 b7 or 1 b2 m3 4 5 m6 b7 . For me this for me is more transferable. With this I am really ingraining the sound associated with its place against a chord or in a sequenced pattern.
I do believe modal and scale practice has its place in getting things under your fingers. But again, I think Bruno and others have it right where perhaps learning a major scale in all positions is all that is needed. Everything else can be derived.
What has also made a bit of difference in my playing has been thinking in themes and sequences. Using enclosures, basic motifs and expanding on them, playing with the melody. That has added some coherence and musicality to my playing.
This being said, I've only made some incrementalimprovements but a lot more than I've made in the past.
Again, I think perhaps my expectations are off on the benefit of learning and utilizing modes in my improvisation. I would like to hear from others.
Regards,
Rick
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12-22-2016 11:29 AM
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So your overall goal is bebop lines? Sorry, I'm having a little problem figuring out where you're trying to go, and I'd need to know that to actually be of help.
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Yes, my desire is to improve my soloing capabilities in a bebop style. I have the opportunity to join a quartet on either guitar and piano and want to improve my improvisational skills. I should say, single note solos.
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How much transcribing have you done? Generally, I find modes useless in that context.
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At this point in my playing, I find modes to be an arbitrary side-note. Something I get and can talk about, and I'm sure on some level that my ability to understand them helped my big picture understanding of tonal systems... but it accounts for only about 0-2% of what I play... and that's only when I'm not playing jazz and instead gigging with a funk group or something. It's SUPER rare when I'm playing standards or originals that I'm utilizing modal theory.
The most bang for my buck that I got from modes was when I was a little hippy/jam-band teenager rocking out with my friends and our band. We would just jam on A Dorian for like 2 hours. It was fun, and I'm sure it helped me learn a lot. But as soon as I started checking out jazz and bop, it didn't help at all... and frankly, I think it slowed my progress. I had a lot of unlearning to do before I could start anything else.
Now I essentially break down everything into triads. Like you said, there's only 12 notes. If we break down a chord and give ourselves the (a) triad as our melodic structure (or bucket of notes if you will), we're going right for the meat. We can still add other notes in and around the triad... but those notes will behave as the structural beams that hold the melody up within the harmony. Whether I'm playing bop, swing, modern, out, in, whatever... I follow this same notion. Depending on the style, I may do different things with the triads (connecting them with chromatic notes, connecting them with diatonic notes, adding specific melodic tension notes to create movement, altering the notes to utilize an upper structure triad, developing pentatonic scales, forming dyads, building voicings, etc)... but it all starts from triads.
I find when teaching that most of my jazz students want to jump (or already have jumped) right into the complex, complicated elements of the music, but are usually not overly adept at the basic fundamentals. Many of my students have all their inversions of a Maj7 chord down, but can't play their C major triads all over the fretboard. Once we can do that, then we can break down Maj7 chords and understand them with triads which inevitably always leads my students to having a much better understanding of what's really happening with a Maj7 chord and how to use it effectively... or a Maj9, or whatever.
To me, what's more important than memorizing scale shapes and positions on the fretboard (which is important and helpful) is understanding with our ears how the notes within those shapes sound and behave. Which ones define the sound? Which ones create a sense of stability? Which ones create a sense of tension? What energies do they emote? Etc.
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Certainly not enough transcribing. I have generally poor auditory working memory. Meaning I cannot retain long lines. I can transcribe in very short chunks but I find I do not readily incorporate other folks lines, or even repeat my own. It is a double edged sword as it forces me to create new but prevents me from leveraging reuse. This is whole different problem.
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I agree with Mr. B above.
If your goal is to play bop as opposed to just integrating some bop vocab in your playing there seem to be some well established methods for doing so. From reading your post, which I can personally relate to in my own musical journey,
it seems like you're thinking along the right lines. One thing that I've been thinking more of recently is the value of using motifs as an improvisational device. As many know, the great tenor player John Gilmore informally gave Coltrane a lot of advice which included using a motif approach. I suppose it could be said that a motif/motive is just a pattern. Maybe so but there could be at least a subtle difference.
from wikipedia: "The motive is the smallest structural unit possessing thematic identity".[3]
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I'm by no means an expert, but it is my understanding that bebop is not modal playing. If you are trying to get an idiomatic bebop sound thinking in modes doesn't seem the obvious choice.
Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
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Well, I mean, there's 12 notes. The problem with thinking about modes in a bebop context isn't that they're giving you "wrong notes" or anything, but it's that they don't make anything easier to digest.
Whereas you play a Gary Burton tune with 8 bars of one chord, and maybe there thinking about a mode is the one of the most "direct" approaches. Time and place for everything.
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Bop is not modal at all. Modes are too simple to be easily conveyed. I like novice jazz and fusion players or rock players trying to impress by dropping words like Phrygian. Then when I try and explain it to students they are so full of the idea that this is the true path and very deep and complicated, they can't get that it's not really AT ALL. And then those guys who get criticized for playing scales all the time, are these modal players trying to play modes on top of bop and rock tunes. Yeah, they're actually playing scales. Not the secret sauce at all. But you should know them.
Chord tones, extensions, altered tones, enclosures. There's the secret sauce.
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Bebop is about making interesting lines when the chords are flying by (often at breakneck pace), playing/embellishing/amplifying chord tones. I.e., the "Changes".
Modal music--which incidentally includes most of African and Asian popular music--involves making interesting lines during long periods of harmonic stasis, where there are no chord movement. i.e., "no changes"
Completely different mentality, practice routine and skills required, different principles, different points of emphasis, different vocabulary.
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Jodan,
Thank you, that all makes a lot of sense.
Originally Posted by jordanklemons
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Thanks for your reply. I guess my thoughts pertain more than to modes but also scales. If I separate "modal" playing from modes they are no different than scales or any collection of notes. Even on your site, you have a course on improvising on the harmonic minor. Again, perhaps for me, it is just a pitch collection that contains a root, second, min3, 4th, 5th, min6th and 7th. It only will sound like a harmonic minor based on the targeting of notes, sequence or what it is played over. By the way, great playing!!!
Originally Posted by henryrobinett
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Thank you very much!
I think of modes and scales differently. Scales are a collection of references to pitches around satellites of harmonic movement - chords. It's just a reference pool that positions chords of tonic and dominant and their moons. Obviously the spelling of all the chord tones and power the direction of those tones push and pull, like gravity.
Modes actually have almost none of that. The only satellite is the root NOTE of the mode itself. All tones being effectively equal besides the root note. Then this has been altered to use with chords. It's actually kind of a bastardization. It makes people sound like they're playing scales on chords rather than pin-pointing the sounds of the chords and movement themselves. But its a stylistic thing, you know. Post fusion. Misapplying Coltrane. LOL.
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I think there's a useful distinction to be made between "modes" and "modal." A mode is just a scale starting and ending on a note other than the tonic (assuming we're not talking about Ionian ...) As said in the OP learning and practicing modes can be useful in terms of getting certain sounds in your ears and as warm up material. But if the goal is to figure out what pitch collection works over a chord progression, being able to play all modes in all keys is tangential to that.
"Modal" is another story altogether, though. To oversimplify (and I'm sure others can say this much better than I can), that's an alternative harmonic framework for composition and improv to functional (especially ii-V-I-based) harmony. Understanding, say, that Impressions is "in" Dorian, or that "Parts of Dolphin Dance" shift into a modal rather than functional framework helps in figuring out what to do with those tunes. It might even seed ideas for playing "outside" over other tunes. But practicing modes in isolation doesn't get you any further in terms of playing "modally" than it does in playing functionally. (and I'm still trying to figure out what to do over Dolphin Dance ...)
JohnLast edited by John A.; 12-22-2016 at 01:26 PM.
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I think this guy wraps it up in the end of the video:
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Too much information Originally Posted by rickshapiro
A common symptom of the internet age.
You need to start with something simple - it doesn't really matter too much, although chord tones are a classic.
Just get one thing going. And you need to start with phrases, and hearing stuff. Even if you can only hear 1 3 5 over a progression, that's a great start. Even if you can only hear 1, it's a start.
But there's many ways into it. What would be helpful is a teacher. If you can't find a teacher, then commit to something simple and achievable, such as, can I play 1 3 5 chord tones all the way through a I IV V 12 bar blues?
OK, next step, change the note order
Next step, add jazz subs
Next step, try lower neighbours
Next step, try upper neighbours
Next step, try triads on the 3rd, so 3 5 7.
Just an example, doesn't have to be exactly this. But something that clear.
But you have to commit, you have to practice these things in short but disciplined bursts.
I still do this goal setting. Don't expect genius jazz lines right away, but check out Jordan's triads video. A lot of hipness comes from the way you play things, and that has to be learned by listening.
Remember that a lot of internet jazz courses are a way of making money.
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Henry, you weren't supposed to tell just everybody.... ;o) Originally Posted by henryrobinett
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I know that others have profited immensely from studying theory.
My experience has been different, at least to some degree.
It was certainly helpful to understand tonal centers/key movement within a song.
I has been very helpful to know the notes in the chords I play -- and to have an idea of how the rest of the notes of the scale sound against those chords.
And, then some chord/scale theory helps when somebody puts a chart I've never seen in front of me, with strange looking harmony that I can't sound out in my mind, and I have to solo on it 30 seconds
But, otoh, a lot of the time I've spent trying to digest on-line info regarding permutations and combinations of chords and scales, well, it has been wasted.
Here's an alternative: pick a song. play the solo changes repeatedly. sing a solo. Learn to play the solo you just sang. When you get bored with your ideas, find a recording with a solo you like. Lift a sound or two and see if you can get it into your own singing (based on the idea that, if you can't sing it, maybe you shouldn't play it). Eventually, move on to another song.
Now, you may be able to use theory to find new sounds, but finding them from transcribing is arguably better because it trains your ear.
The point is, you have to have the sounds as part of you. Then, you don't think about theory when you play.
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The whole idea is if you have to think about it, you don't know it well enough. Theory should not be something you think about when playing. It's something you apply.
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Don't worry Mark, Henry held back the super-dooper-secret ingredient: a dollop of the blues. Originally Posted by MarkRhodes
Originally Posted by henryrobinett
Henry, you weren't supposed to tell just everybody.... ;o)
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It is my belief that good jazz lines, especially in bebop, spell out chord changes (either the chords on the page or substitutions). Lines should spell chord changes, and modes don't lend themselves to that very well. Look at transcriptions of Charlie Parker solos and note how he spells out the chords (including upper chord tone extensions such as b9, #11, 13, etc). There are a lot of books containing exercises to help you improve in that approach.
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As a pure hobbyist navigating this stuff for several years now, I'd say that most of the discussion about pitch collections over chords etc is largely next level stuff. It assumes, or maybe SHOULD assume, that you have basic melodic targeting together.
Basic upper neighbor tones and lower chromatics. Learning to hear tension and release and how things resolve in a basic way. Once you learn to hear basic melodic devices, THEN, using an actual dominant arpeggio to target your tonic destination is pretty straightforward. It's also a pretty straightforward next-step to make your dominant chord altered at that point.
Once you get into altering dominant chords, different melodic minor scales and modes are pretty helpful for organizing what you're actually playing, beyond merely "any of the 12 notes of the chromatic scale". It's tedious to constantly state that there are "only 12 notes", when mostly players AREN'T playing 12 at once. There are other organizing elements at play, and at some point, it becomes helpful to have these terminologies .
But again, that's not the STARTING point for learning to play in the first place. Most pros who are talking about playing "mixolydian" have the basic melodic stuff together, and they mostly use that term for basic disambiguation purposes - for distinguishing the notes they used from Lydian dominant or altered etc. Again, it doesn't mean that they necessarily even have to "think " these words as they are playing, but the terms are helpful at some level in discussing things, or they wouldn't use them.
The fact that the scales themselves don't sound great when just played sequentially up and down like an ape, over a given chord, doesn't mean there ISN'T any value in talking about things that way necessarily.Last edited by matt.guitarteacher; 12-22-2016 at 08:56 PM.
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I'll just add my two cents, speaking as a historian who gigs a lot. Bebop was not about modes; it was about ironic revision of familiar tunes. It was all about making "back home again in indiana" alien to itself. It's interesting but frustrating to play, because it's a little like being in a cage and pacing furiously: i'm going here, then there, here comes the tonic, do it again faster, walk in this way to the far end of the cage, here comes the tonic."
Modes were about escaping that cage and the relentless logic of the tonic. For rockers, they offered a way to "play jazz" without learning how to navigate chord changes.
to play bebop, think like this: there are all these pop tunes and white guys get all the better paying gigs and there's a lot of really corny swing that anybody can play by ear. And you're sitting in front of a bandstand and the leader is pretending to conduct and waving a baton and here comes your solo, eight measures of swing licks. You want to take a tune the corny bands play and make it do stuff they never imagined: you want to take those stale changes and make them contain tricky stuff the corny guys can't play, but it's still the same changes, so they know how thoroughly clueless they are. It's all about staying in the frame of the chord changes, and kicking their ass. I say this loving bebop.
modes were about breaking the bebop revenge cycle and stepping outside the frame. Not having to be confined by two chords a bar till you worked your way back to the tonic.Last edited by PB+J; 12-23-2016 at 12:27 AM.
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I think this might be my new favorite explanation of bop. Bravo... bravo. Originally Posted by PB+J
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