Horizontal or Vertical Thinking - What are your thoughts

[ragman1]

As far as I know, horizontal means using, say, one scale over a series of related chords whereas vertical means deliberately selecting one's notes to fit the particular chord. Personally I do both all the time.

ie. Em7 - A7 - Dm7 - G7 - CM7.

You could play C maj over the whole thing, dissonance notwithstanding, or D maj then C maj. That would probably be called horizontal.

Vertical might be:

Em7 - E mel or G maj
A7 - Bb dim or A lyd dom
Dm7 - D mel
G7 - G alt
CM7 - C or G maj

Obviously bebop would favour a vertical approach, I would say, which is why it's musically much more rich and complex and much harder to play. But, of course, you could just play C over the whole thing except G alt for the G7 :-)

[TH]

Not to be glib, but it doesn't need to be one or the other, especially just on someone else's word.
Maybe Lee Konitz is not Sonny Stitt. Maybe Lester Young is not Coleman Hawkins. Maybe Sonny Rollins is not John Coltrane. Maybe Paul Desmond is not John Jenkins. Those dualities are big with historians and while they do point out different approaches in each case, they don't address the way you learn the inevitable mix of vertical and horizontal that you'll want to have in the end.
You will find the same essential guiding forces in any of these pairings and I think it's a limitation to think of the duality of melody and harmonic structure as being more essential to improvisational proficiency.
You may spend more time on one at any point in your development, and that's your choice, but let that come from what you feel most natural about. In the end, you'll wind up having to study both ways, if you want to develop a lyric sense over changes. Why not get the benefit of a good fit to your own predispositions. If you think melodically, learn melodies by ear and then learn to hear chordal structures. If you have good harmonic structure recognition, learn your arpeggios and then develop the ear to connect them with a line you can sing.
But I'm just one kind of ignorant beginner to this game. Just throwing in a two cent thought.

David

[christianm77]

Dunno, big caveat is that I can only chip in on my interpretation of the musicians of this era I have transcribed, which is mostly Lester, Charlie Christian, Parker, Dexter and Bud Powell.

But my question is - how would you view these weird non harmonic seeming subs? You could go deep into vertical theory, but TBH I would rather not worry about it, and think about targeting certain chords and moving towards them via some sort of movement...

I see that as mostly horizontal and a bit vertical, as we are ignoring verticality on everything but significant chords, but YMMV. In any case, I would say it's pretty clear that the Bird and Lester at least seemed to thinking this way in so much as they were thinking at all (e.g. 'outline Bb, bit of enclosure, oh I'll stick in a Gb cos it's my favourite note, now a bit of blues, now go to Eb, chromatic thing back into Bb') rather than thinking about vertical relationships all the time.

As always, specific stuff addressed to that argument very welcome. I find the 'hey everyone does their own thing' while undoubtedly true lacks a little heft for argument's sake. Why not drill down a bit and get specific? Are we serious or not? Let's study this music!

PS: I might add that I've been trying very much to think myself into the mindset of a horn player. Horn players are (often) hustlers and front the band. They play a melodic instrument without 'chord shapes.' They are not nerds like guitar players and piano players. I find it compelling that their approach to music might be a little blaggy and hustly in the best possible way.

[PMB]

My question to you is : by vertical and horizontal do you mean harmonically and melodically or do you mean physically on the guitar ? I know that the Berklee books and Jimmy Bruno suggest playing scales, modes etc vertically. i.e. From the sixth string to the first. Whereas the Mick Goodrick approach and George Van Eps approach is more horizontally based.

The vertical approach to my mind implies a more harmonic approach by its very nature. You are "seeing" scales within chord shapes and vice versa. A horizontal approach is more like "seeing" the fretboard like a piano. I think that this lends itself to more melodic playing.

I could elaborate more but I want to make sure that I am understanding your question.


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That's an interesting point rarely discussed here. How predictive are the fingerings/positions that players gravitate towards? There's a tendency to treat them as passive frames but each choice will have a direct effect on the musical outcome. For instance, playing modes with 'vertical' Jimmy Bruno/CAGED fingerings tends to direct the player into thinking of them in derivative terms, i.e. treating the dorian as the 2nd mode of the major scale whereas 'horizontal' Reg/7-position fingerings are by design more parallel in nature, i.e. treating each mode as an independent construct - dorian is a major scale with a flattened 3rd and 7th.

[christianm77]

That's an interesting point rarely discussed here. How predictive are the fingerings/positions that players gravitate towards? There's a tendency to treat them as passive frames but each choice will have a direct effect on the musical outcome. For instance, playing modes with 'vertical' Jimmy Bruno/CAGED fingerings tends to direct the player into thinking of them in derivative terms, i.e. treating the dorian as the 2nd mode of the major scale whereas 'horizontal' Reg/7-position fingerings are by design more parallel in nature, i.e. treating each mode as an independent construct - dorian is a major scale with a flattened 3rd and 7th.

IMO it doesn't matter what you choose so long as you practice the living **** out of it.

Then when you've done that, do it another way.

[PMB]

IMO it doesn't matter what you choose so long as you practice the living **** out of it.

Then when you've done that, do it another way.

Sure, but having worked through all those approaches (CAGED, 3-note per string, 7 positions), it's clear to me how each affects my choice of lines, articulation etc. Of course, the idea is that they all eventually fall away like training wheels on a bike.

[christianm77]

Sure, but having worked through all those approaches (CAGED, 3-note per string, 7 positions), it's clear to me how each affects my choice of lines, articulation etc. Of course, the idea is that they all eventually fall away like training wheels on a bike.

If you are finding this is not the case, I think you need to step away from the guitar then. Sounds to me like overthinking. If your decisions are based around the instrument, my suggestion would be to work primarily by ear and, perhaps, from notation.

It's particularly useful to work on stuff that is not improvised on or written for the guitar - sax solos or Bach violin partitas for instance. Allow your ear to make the decision about which fingering works best. That's when the fun starts.

Scales are just an exercise. Position playing has nothing to do with actual music. It is merely preparation that assists with the execution of actual musical phrases.

[christianm77]

To use your analogy, you have to take the training wheels off. I remember when I was a kid riding without them for the first time I thought I wasn't ready, but I was.

[PMB]

If you are finding this is not the case, I think you need to step away from the guitar then. Sounds to me like overthinking. If your decisions are based around the instrument, my suggestion would be to work primarily by ear and, perhaps, from notation.

It's particularly useful to work on stuff that is not improvised on or written for the guitar - sax solos or Bach violin partitas for instance. Allow your ear to make the decision about which fingering works best. That's when the fun starts.

Scales are just an exercise. Position playing has nothing to do with actual music. It is merely preparation that assists with the execution of actual musical phrases.

Nothing to do with overthinking, merely an observation. If you're directing your comments at me specifically, well I worked through these things years ago although I realised that my post was written in present tense (I meant to say 'affected' rather than 'affects'). I regularly play 3-hr standards gigs, no charts with some of the best players in town so no trouble with the ears at all. In fact, I don't ever 'think' positions when playing but if you were to stop me in the middle of an improvisation, I could tell you where a phrase might be derived from - just like being asked to locate the adjective or verb in a sentence that was quickly uttered.

[Doublea A]

That's an interesting point rarely discussed here. How predictive are the fingerings/positions that players gravitate towards? There's a tendency to treat them as passive frames but each choice will have a direct effect on the musical outcome. For instance, playing modes with 'vertical' Jimmy Bruno/CAGED fingerings tends to direct the player into thinking of them in derivative terms, i.e. treating the dorian as the 2nd mode of the major scale whereas 'horizontal' Reg/7-position fingerings are by design more parallel in nature, i.e. treating each mode as an independent construct - dorian is a major scale with a flattened 3rd and 7th.

Music rarely fits into this box or that box. Playing vertically will lend itself to certain tendencies and horizontal playing will move towards other tendencies. The reality is that playing is usually a combination of the two.

Most Rock, Blues and country songs stay in one key. Which lends itself to the CAGED system. Since jazz songs tend to move through different key centres the strict usage of the CAGED system will not work.

Therefore you need to combine the two systems to really play through songs.


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[christianm77]

Nothing to do with overthinking, merely an observation. If you're directing your comments at me specifically, well I worked through these things years ago although I realised that my post was written in present tense (I meant to say 'affected' rather than 'affects').

Dunno. Hence my 'if' at the start of my statement. Also I feel might statements might equally apply to me from time to time. Aren't we often relating our own struggles when we post these things?

I regularly play 3-hr standards gigs, no charts with some of the best players in town so no trouble with the ears at all. In fact, I don't ever 'think' positions when playing but if you were to stop me in the middle of an improvisation, I could tell you where a phrase might be derived from - just like being asked to locate the adjective or verb in a sentence that was quickly uttered.

I find my ears are a work in progress, but they tend to know best when I get in touch with them.

In my experience the ears lead the fingers to places where the fingers didn't even think they could go. Usually when I sing through a phrase the fingering most often suggests itself.

I work on the mechanics of the instrument (to this day) so I can be free to play as I need to.

But it's kind of intellectually ... boring... it's like talking about painting a wall. Oddly zen and fulfilling in it's own way but not really much to discuss. I dunno - do you paint in vertical stripes, left to right or the other way around? How are your brush strokes. Who cares? So long as the wall gets painted nice and evenly and all over.

In lessons I might break it down a bit more. That's why they pay me. I happen to use CAGED for beginners, but I have no tribal loyalty to it.

[christianm77]

Music rarely fits into this box or that box. Playing vertically will lend itself to certain tendencies and horizontal playing will move towards other tendencies. The reality is that playing is usually a combination of the two.

Most Rock, Blues and country songs stay in one key. Which lends itself to the CAGED system. Since jazz songs tend to move through different key centres the strict usage of the CAGED system will not work.

Therefore you need to combine the two systems to really play through songs.


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There's at least two stages to this -

The beginner MUST drill muscle memory because they can't play. Anything they practice will be good.

Therefore the answer to 'should I use CAGED, 7 positions or 3 notes a string?' is 'pick one and practice it everyday for a year or two.'

Later - the more advanced student must over-write muscle memory habit and develop flexibility in order to improvise more freely. Improvisation practice involves the constant over-writing of habit.

Therefore the answer to 'should I use CAGED, 7 positions or 3 notes a string (or some other thing)?' is 'yes.'

[rpjazzguitar]

On numerous occasions, I've asked great players what they were thinking during a particular solo.

None of them ever answered by talking about either vertical or horizontal approaches in any recognizable way.

My favorite answer was "I was thinking "darker"".

Another answer was something to the effect of thinking about target notes. My impression was that the target notes were pretty far apart.

The most common answer is "I don't know".

I believe that all of these responses were entirely honest.

A better question might be, "what did you practice to be able to play what you played?". But, that still won't tell you what they were thinking.

Speaking for myself, the goal is to be able to feel the changes so well that I only think about melody and the issue of notes vs. chords is entirely unconscious. Or maybe, to the extent that I'm thinking, it's focusing on the drummer (or some other player) trying to pick up on a rhythm or lick.

When I fall short of this goal, the result is gumbo, to be kind. Odds and ends trying to avoid clams. So, it's chord tones, the occasional practiced scale or arp, all fit together as best I can.

One thing that may be different between what I do and what the bop giants did, I suspect, is that I play a lot more tunes I don't know well. My band book is 125 tunes. My octet's band book is another 100+ (no overlap) with new ones brought in regularly. And, I sub for a couple of big bands where I've never played an arrangement I knew, and never played the same one twice. So, it's a lot of reading of new material. Sometimes the harmony is obvious GAS style, other times it's in outer space. Clamless gumbo is a success. But, the bop guys, I think, really knew the tunes they were blowing on. If that's not true, maybe someone will say.

[ragman1]

IMO it doesn't matter what you choose so long as you practice the living **** out of it.

Then when you've done that, do it another way.

Hilarious :-)

[christianm77]

On numerous occasions, I've asked great players what they were thinking during a particular solo.

None of them ever answered by talking about either vertical or horizontal approaches in any recognizable way.

My favorite answer was "I was thinking "darker"".

Another answer was something to the effect of thinking about target notes. My impression was that the target notes were pretty far apart.

The most common answer is "I don't know".

I believe that all of these responses were entirely honest.

A better question might be, "what did you practice to be able to play what you played?". But, that still won't tell you what they were thinking.

Well luckily, we have some scattered ideas, this being one:

(May just be a warm up rather than a full on practice session - but yes, technical work, scales, classical studies.)

But yeah, I kind of thing the painstaking analysis of something that is done so intuitively after years of preparatory work IS kind of funny. I mean I doubt Bird cared that he outlined this chord progression against this other chord progression.

So this whole vertical/horizontal idea? Well there's the actuality of the notes analysed academically, but then there's the other truth of people shedding the living crap out of their instruments, drinking in the language of the music by imitating their favourite recorded solos, imbibing a world of time/feel through endless gigs with great musicians and then letting go and just playing when that critical moment arrived.

Good luck getting a college course out of that. Good luck even doing that now - first two steps, sure. Step three? Not so easy.

I mean I oversimplify slightly - there was obviously some conceptual work going on behind the scenes. But yes, 'don't know.'

On a good night I 'don't know' - I would like to 'don't know more'.

Speaking for myself, the goal is to be able to feel the changes so well that I only think about melody and the issue of notes vs. chords is entirely unconscious. Or maybe, to the extent that I'm thinking, it's focusing on the drummer (or some other player) trying to pick up on a rhythm or lick.

When I fall short of this goal, the result is gumbo, to be kind. Odds and ends trying to avoid clams. So, it's chord tones, the occasional practiced scale or arp, all fit together as best I can.

One thing that may be different between what I do and what the bop giants did, I suspect, is that I play a lot more tunes I don't know well. My band book is 125 tunes. My octet's band book is another 100+ (no overlap) with new ones brought in regularly. And, I sub for a couple of big bands where I've never played an arrangement I knew, and never played the same one twice. So, it's a lot of reading of new material. Sometimes the harmony is obvious GAS style, other times it's in outer space. Clamless gumbo is a success. But, the bop guys, I think, really knew the tunes they were blowing on. If that's not true, maybe someone will say.

Well Charlie Parker only had a fairly small working/recorded repertoire when you think about it, although he did tend to have things nailed in every key which wasn't at all common practice in the swing era apparently.

AFAIK he couldn't play as well on *every* progression and knew when to sit out - there's good evidence for this. He also often heavily simplified progressions for blowing purposes when it suited him, presumably to allow the use of his general vocabulary.

And how many times did he play Blues and Rhythm Changes?

TBH many players had small repertoires which were fully internalised. The Lennie Tristano school springs to mind. And how many times did Miles play My Funny Valentine? When you are in a working band you might play the same set list dozens of times in a row.

I know I do. You get good at certain tunes, and you shed the things you play on the gigs.

Sight reading is a different discipline, but I have to say solos on chords at sight is never the same thing. Unless, perhaps, you are an absolute monster reader.

[ragman1]

The most common answer is "I don't know".

I used to do that and got those answers too. At first I thought they were just being impatient and a bit selfish. Actually I still think that. They couldn't be bothered even trying to help the poor confused seeker after truth :-)

Common sense says they must have some idea in their head otherwise they'd play nonsense but apparently they can't be bothered trying to share it. If they said 'Well, it's far too complex just to trot out in a few words, go and study it' that would be more honest.

I did ask a pretty good sax player once how he dealt with changes and he said 'Oh, tonal centres mostly' which was the best answer I ever got.

Then one day someone asked me that question and I couldn't help myself, I said 'Dunno really, I just sort of do it'. Then I saw the look on their face and kicked myself. So I said 'Well, it's experience and lots of playing. You know the song, you know what sounds good, and you just go for it. What exactly you do isn't very predictable, it depends'. I hope they didn't feel too short-changed.

(edit)

(I do know one thing. When I've listened back to something I've played that sounded good and tried to recreate it, I couldn't. It just didn't sound the same. I thought that was very telling so I stopped doing it. So now it's spontaneous or nothing).

[Alter]

I m not really familiar with the horizontal/vertical semantics, except when regarding actual movement on the fretboard. But my approach on improvisation is greatly based in harmonic awareness and substitution. I tend to see progressions as a balance in tension and release, and you can manipulate this balance in many ways. For example, a II-V-I progression is tension (dominant area) released into tonic. So in a D-7 G7 Cmaj7 i could play these, tritone subs with related IIs etc, or choose to work in another relative to the Cmaj7 tonic area, say A-7, (thus playing a II-V on A-7). Or i could do constant structure shapes, multitonics etc, (D-7 F-7 Ab-7) into Cmaj7 or A-7 or E-7. Or chords (specially dominant chords) from the altered, the diminished, the augmented or another "outside" scale of a dominant area into a tonic area, or a chord progression into a tonic area, etc.

I find that, if you use chords as a vehicle of improvisation it sort of carries itself, despite of the actual notes you might be playing, and it is also very stylistically correct when bebop is involved. Blues on top of that. Thus when improvising i don't ever think of scales but i see chords, their shapes on the fretboard and melodies/lines around them, chord movements and resolutions etc. Also i look ahead in the tune to see where my target (resolution) chord is, so i can actually be playing completely different chords each time around. After i while you don't think about it as much but rather hear it more. Sometimes it s refreshing to sit on the piano (where i actually have to look to find all that) and go on a theory trip trying to invent and play progressions into a chord.

[christianm77]

@Alter, I think that's kind of what I mean by 'horizontal'

Doesn't mean scales. Scales can be really vertical. For example:

Bbmaj7 G7b9 | Cm7 F7 |

could be

Bb lydian
G 1/2-W
C dorian
F altered

[Alter]

In that sense i would say that i start with the vertical thing, being able to support a simple chord and chord change with a variety of scales, arpeggios, patterns etc, and then move to the horizontal thing, meaning becoming able to support and voice lead the vertical thing over "horizontal" chord progressions and superimpositions.. Kind of like flying an airplane

[christianm77]

In that sense i would say that i start with the vertical thing, being able to support a simple chord and chord change with a variety of scales, arpeggios, patterns etc, and then move to the horizontal thing, meaning becoming able to support and voice lead the vertical thing over "horizontal" chord progressions and superimpositions.. Kind of like flying an airplane

Definitely - practice vertical to play horizontal - kind of counter-intuitive. But it works.

[rlrhett]

I wish I could improvise lines thinking in terms of chord and arpeggios! I was ruined by scales of increasing complexity: minor pentatonic -> major penta -> blues scale -> major septatonic -> modes of the major -> harmonic minor -> dim/whole note.

My brain tells me that I know the chords, it's fewer notes, it's not that different. But when the time to improvise I just can't make my brain think in terms of chord tones and arpeggios.

So does that make me vertically or horizontally challenged?


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[ragman1]

So does that make me vertically or horizontally challenged?

Neither. You can't really make a good solo just on chords and arpeggios - nor, incidentally just on scales. It's a combination of all of it.

[jordanklemons]

This horizontal vs vertical question kind of reminds of the first 5 or 10 years of playing guitar when everybody asked me if I played rhythm or lead. I was still relatively young, so I couldn't explain why I thought it was an unnecessary question, but I knew that I didn't like getting asked it, and I never had an answer for anyone.

It requires two hands to wash your hands.

[vsaumarez]

I originally thought horizontal and vertical was in regard to physical orientation on the guitar. I had to go back and visit my course materials and I discovered it meant an approach to improvising. I understand now what was meant. Thanks for trying to help a fellow out.

That's the meaning I gave your question. I've never heard of vertical or horizontal in another context, but then not all of us are theorists. In your original sense then, it's a very important consideration and imo vertical playing is a mark of a good player. There's a video on Youtube called "Scaling the Ladder: Jazz Guitar" that talks about this.