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TL;DR
I think jazz is more bitonal. You have to hear both the melody line and the comping at the same time to some degree. They may have a clear vertical relationship- but they might not.
Those CST type relationships C/Bb7 etc are present and beautiful but they are also only part of the totality.
Quadrad could explore a way of relating more tenuous relationships.
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04-17-2018 05:07 AM
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Jordan,
do not take it as an off-top but I suddenly thoght that actually your approach reminded me a bot of renaisscance and baroque solfeggi practice...
so called solmization that used 3 hexachords ut(do)-re-mi-fa-sol-la that were transposed from C (natural), G (hard) and F (soft - with b flat)...
So they overlap eachother and when you you sing there are some rules how you switch from one to another and you sing using only six names using only 6 syllables all the time...
Actually I find this sytem very convinient for melodic solfeggi practice. It really trains quickly. And makes a great introduction.
But of course it does not work for the needs of modern music at full extent.
You can check this video
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Hey, it only took about 20 minutes. Granted, minutes 2-19 were boring as hell, but I've withstood 18 minutes of boredom for worse reasons.
Originally Posted by jordanklemons
Don't take my word for it. Listen. And if you can figure out a better and more direct way to explore these types of oddities than just sitting with a Bb7 vamp, arpeggiating a C triad, and then adding D (the 3rd of Bb7... but the 2 against the C triad) until that paradigm shift takes place in your ear (like Joe mentioned earlier in the thread having happened for him) where you can now hear C behaving like 'Do' and D (the 3rd) behaving like 'Re'... if you figure out a quicker and more direct way to accomplish that, PLEASE let me know. As a student and a teacher of music, you'd be doing me a massive favor!!!
Last edited by Boston Joe; 04-17-2018 at 07:06 AM.
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Didn’t see this - thanks man. Originally Posted by jordanklemons
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So interesting that jazz is really all about intonation really... most of the tools are about the immediate expression of an idea right now...
And Jordan's approach confirms for me once again.. so much attention to slightest intonation in realation to just one chord is so specific..
Again I think that modality is real home of jazz (not CST but modality as the way of thinking)...
even early standards though they are functional... jazz does not employ fuctionality...
Real functional tonality works only when there are big tonal areas and modulations. Then it makes sense as an artistic system.
And to have a whole song in one tonic key (even with a short shifting bridge) is not functional tonality yet.
And when jazz player taje this song and begins to solo over it over and over.. it is even less functional...
All the seemingly functional turnarounds - become some kind of modes in that context
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A lot of this feels like sort of doing the reverse of a substitution. Like it's un-substituting or something.
I've been hammering that E/b2 over D-6 for a few days, and it sounds totally inside to me now. Trying to work out the rest of the tune.
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Originally Posted by Boston Joe
I think I know what you mean...
It's probably because the subs are by nature an multiplication of harmonic units, even if we do not superimpose but just sub one for abother - in our mind we still think of both (or even more) options simultaneously...
It makes the feeling that harmony is very dense potentially.
And melody is harmony here.
And what you are doing now is more about dissecting sigle harmonic unit and adding to it melodic elements...
and melody here is a separated from harmony - connected but like another entity...
That gives a bit more fresh air and space maybe))) after a dense room full of colourful harmonic options))
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I thought I was doing the opposite: Dissecting the melody and building harmony around it. Originally Posted by Jonah
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Can this be viewed as a path towards managing bitonality, one sound at a time?
It seems to be included in my understanding of one usage of bitonality. That is, playing an inside sounding melody, but not over the usual chords. So, instead of being inside, the same melody is outside of the harmony.
My feeling is that many good bitonal lines would be perfectly inside, commonplace things, against a certain chord progression. The stronger the melodic line, the better. And you have to play it like you really mean it.
It gets to the point where you can put a few beats of any melody against just about any harmony -- provided the melody is strong enough and you don't stay outside for too long.
I've always thought about it starting with melody and thinking about harmony next.
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Ha...)))I thought I was doing the opposite: Dissecting the melody and building harmony around it.
The other way around why not... as long as melody and harmony are related.
On second thought... I still think as long as we admit that there is vertical harmony as part of our musical langauge - we always hear it contextually...
And whenever we play the melody we presume some harmonic context even if we do not do it conciously - some kind of 'background noise'...
Like when someone says - do you remember this guy... what you see mentally is not just the image of the person hanging in the the emptiness... but some related context too.
The important point for me is that when we 'analyze melodies' as above - we actually reduce them to our harmonic references (which are often personal and formed by culture, education, experience)...
And as Christian described some posts before there are cases - especially in jazz solos - where melody can go quite far astray from backing harmony with some connection potnts... and this contrast is kind of specific musical expression too.
But when we just take melody we will relate it just to what we hear...
I am not saying it is wrong - on the contrary I like it very much...
But it's important to understand that using for example triads as reference for melodic analysis is as conventional as using pure 5ths, or cluster chords, or stack 4ths chord.
When you (or netter to say your ear) chooses triad - it chooses certain context, language, musical cultureLast edited by Jonah; 04-18-2018 at 03:20 AM.
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Hey Jordan, really loving your approach. I've seen many of Stefon's videos and even got his ear training app... wish I could study with him. Anyways, the sensation you're describing that is, hearing the Bb as "te" over the Bb7 lydian chord has to do with our perception of the global key. One of the biggest confusions brought about from CST is the assumption that every chord creates its own key center. This isn't always true (In fact, it's more often not the case). Take an F triad and play an Emaj7 over it. E is going to function as the global key, in other words, it will be heard as 1. F is now a b2.
It still confuses me when people say: play dorian over a ii chord in a ii-V-I. That kind of implies that the ii chord creates its own dorian tonality/modality and is heard as a 1-3-5. Unless you hang on that ii chord for a really long time, I think it would be very difficult to hear it as a 1-3-5. It's more often than not, heard as a 2-4-6. A true dorian would sound like 1-2-b3-4-5-6-b7, but if you play dorian over a ii chord in a ii-V-I, it's going to sound like 2-3-4-5-6-7-1 in major. The fact is, our global perception of key can and often does, override the temporary harmonic environment.
This is why classical harmony, while based on triads, was written in four voices. The fourth voice doubled one of the notes of the triad that would reinforce the global key center. There's a reason you should "had" to double the 3rd of the vi chord in a deceptive cadence. The 3rd of the vi chord is the scale degree 1 of the global key. Doubling that note reinforces the tonic of the key. If you were to double the root of the vi chord, it would start to take on a more modal flavor; we'd start to hear an aeolian-like cadence and perceive that vi as a i.
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Interesting... I grew from Romatic classical tradition first of all- from Mozart, Haydn, Beethoven, Schumann, Schubert, Tchaikowsky, Wagner, Mahler, Bruckner... Originally Posted by rpjazzguitar
and I always heard harmony/melody as 'two expressions of one entity'
Depending on style... but in that music harmony is kind of 'idea', 'potentiality'
And melody is an expression of this idea in expressed real material...
Like sculptore who works on stone - he has to understand the nature of this certan stone, its veins, configuration and then he can begins to cut the figuer - the stone tells him potential solutions...
Experienced player or composer in that style goes directly to melody often - just because he does not need to estinate the nature of this stone every time... he just goes directly to cutting 'cause he just feels it will fit the nature of the material.
When he composes melody the harmony is already there, he does not have to think about harmony first.
But still the harmony has primacy in music based on functional tonality.
I can't remember examples of bitonality expressed purely in pitches.
All the examples that comes to my mind have some other means to dissect 'tonalities': timbre, texture, vertical disposition, or rythmic disposition... and if you just put the pitches together you cannot hear the two harmonic layers separately.
Besides - maybe I would not call it 'bi-tonality' but rather 'bi-harmony'?
If understand you correctly of course...
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Yeah managing bitonality.
Also shoehorning vertical relationships to see what happens.
For instance - simple common example from bop and swing - we have an Fm6 arp on F#o7. We can easily turn that into a bluesy quadrad (Fm/3)
And I’ve already talked about B/#4 on G7 lol.
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I talked about it a lot on this forum... (I would argue a bit on triads in 4 voices but not now))) Originally Posted by powersurge
What I wanted to say was that perception has tendency to change.... hearing the is musical and cultural thing.
Also what you refer to speaking of Dorian is basically CST... I - being classical guy - also did not get it in the beginning - why would anyone need to use Dorian D or Mixolidian G ove ii-v-i in C major - whe it's all C major anyway...
I am not defending CST now, I am just tlking about musical (not social or historical) origins of this approach (and many other jazz approaches)
But later my understanding of things changed... one of the things I got was that in jazz theory is extremely practical and focused on giving tools to improvize..
it does not much analyze overall result from listener's perspective (as classical thoery does where actually it's the same thing as from composer's and player's perspective)...
and when you use scales it actually affects your phrasing, options, feeling of integrity etc. - artistry.
As I wrote many times - ii-v-i in jazz theory is not a cadence... it's a harmonic mode.
(Disclaimer: it can be a cadence in original standard changes, but I anot talking about analysing standards)
And since it's not a cadence you do not need apply key realtions to it (not necessarily at least)
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Biharmony is a better word for it. They
It’s really about embellishing a very simple template. None of the parties play the same embellishment but none of them play the basic skeleton either.
So the effect is chord substitutes.
Take a 12 bar blues for instance. We all know a few variations of the changes. So I can outline blues for Alice in my line why someone else plays the standard jazz changes.
Some of those subs will have a harmonic relationship, but some will just be passing dissonances between the voices with clashes in chromaticism.
Take a look at Walter Page and Lester on Lady be Good for a simple example. But of course it can get a lot wilder than that.
Oh, Lady! | DO THE M@TH
Part of the fun of bop and swing, for me, is learning just how much you can push it out and stay in the language. You can be really free with it harmonically actually. Any cadence works on any other, for instance.
Anyway a little OT, but I think quadrads are a way to explore the grey areas.
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Most of the time, when I'm soloing, I'm inside the harmony. By that, I mean chord tones and extensions so that the harmony in my solo line is the same as the harmony of the tune, plus some extensions of the chords. So, if I'm playing a ii V I in C, I might play the notes of Fmaj7, then Abm9 then C. Which is actually Dm9, Galt C.
But, now and then, under certain circumstances, I can hear two things at the same time. I hear the original harmony and then I can hear a melodic line that applies more traditionally to a different harmony. Those fleeting moments are as close as I get to true outside playing. The rest of my "outside stuff" is just tricks like sideslipping that I usually avoid, but I toss in now and then.
When it happens, I have no idea what I'm playing, other than I can hear a melodic line and make it work even though it isn't rooted in the harmony of the tune in a conventional sense. Ordinarily, I'm pretty conscious of the chord tones in the comping, but at these special times that stuff is fully out of mind. In fact, if I was thinking about anything using internal language, it wouldn't happen.
It's fun when it happens and I am thinking about how to get to it more often.
I mentioned circumstances. I'm not certain, but I think the following apply.
I have to have internalized the harmony of the tune, so I can feel it.
The pianist has to be playing sparsely enough to leave some room for the outside line. But, not too sparsely or I might lose the foundation.
I have to be super relaxed. It never happens if I'm tense. That's not a recommendation against tension, oddly enough. I've noticed that when I'm playing with a super exciting rhythm section and horn backgrounds, I'm tense, but I'm more likely to play something I've never played before. But, those things are not bitonal.Last edited by rpjazzguitar; 04-18-2018 at 01:34 PM.
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Actually Ethan’s little essay at the end of the link is interesting. It’s an eloquent argument for what I think of the horizontal approach to jazz I’ve talked a bit about here. (Ethan has made similar points elsewhere and I am influenced by his thinking.)
‘When the soloist, pianist, and bassist all move in lockstep, with everybody playing exactly the same chords and chord scales at all times, it can get pretty antiseptic. There’s no “funk.”
Early jazz is much more funky. Jelly Roll Morton and James P. Johnson do not always reflect the same harmony their left and right hands. It’s funky: not overtly in a blues sense, but in a diatonic sense. It’s almost next door to Stravinskyian neo-classicism: any note is acceptable as long as you are playing in the key. That’s exactly the way all the solos on this page relate to the band.
But even within the band there’s often a casualness to the harmony, an aesthetic that confuses academics like Gunther Schuller. In the massive volumes Early Jazz and The Swing Era, Schuller frequently criticizes the bass, guitar, and piano when they aren’t together harmonically. (For example, he takes time out to note Page and Basie’s “collisions” in “Shoe Shine Boy”—collisions that I’m sure have only bothered one listener in history, Gunther Schuller.)
We should throw that academic kind of listening under the bus, for it’s technically and historically correct for the rhythm section not to be precisely together. It makes it “funky” or “raw.”
The “raw” aesthetic has extended to modern jazz as well, especially in the bass. It’s how Jimmy Garrison played with Coltrane and how Charlie Haden played with Keith Jarrett. Thelonious Monk was careful to never show his bassists anything.
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These days, many young jazz players learn about how to play on standard chord changes by looking at a sheet from a Jamey Aebersold Play-A-Long. To go back to LBG for a moment, I worry that handing a soloist a sheet of paper with the second bar marked “C9” and the scale C E D F# G A Bb on it is far less musically valuable than knowing whatever pool of common-practice tradition all the above players possessed.
Lester Young had another argument for not bothering with the paper. Lee Young said to Patricia Willard:
[Lester] loved to play jam sessions and loved to not to know the tune…. If you were playing a tune the instrumentalist – the soloist – didn’t know, well, it was fashionable for the pianist to turn around and say, E-flat-seventh, you know, D-flat, C major – he wouldn’t want that. If he didn’t know the tune, he’d say, “Don’t call the chords to me. Just play the chords, and I’ll play.” And I’d seen him do it many a time, you know; they just started playing, and he didn’t know it, but he would play it.
But he would say that it confines you too much if you know it’s a Db7, you know, you start thinking of the only notes that will go in that chord, and he would say that’s not what he would hear. He wanted to play other things and make it fit. And he did. And I think most of the great musicians could do that, you know?’
Actually that mention of Schuller - I often thought that. Louis playing #ivo7 against ivm in the banjo and piano is not a mistake, it’s the blues.
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I think for us guitarists its a funny one though.
We often play the solo unsupported by a harmonist, and we don’t have two hands!
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You know it's very very true...[Lester] loved to play jam sessions and loved to not to know the tune…. If you were playing a tune the instrumentalist – the soloist – didn’t know, well, it was fashionable for the pianist to turn around and say, E-flat-seventh, you know, D-flat, C major – he wouldn’t want that. If he didn’t know the tune, he’d say, “Don’t call the chords to me. Just play the chords, and I’ll play.” And I’d seen him do it many a time, you know; they just started playing, and he didn’t know it, but he would play it.
and I do not een understand why it should be discussed... or it makes me sad that it has to be discussed...
Because this is the basic thing, this is what should be there before one even thinks of picking up an instrument.
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Hey Jordan,
Strikes me Tenderly would be a good shout for a melodic triad analysis?
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Seriously if I could pass some sort of edict that CST should never be taught to beginners I would do it haha! Originally Posted by Jonah
I think the effect is to make musicians worried about harmony. Look at that thread about ‘avoid notes’ in altered dominant lines.
Harmony is a resource, not a straight jacket.
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I agree. My roots are classical so CST made no sense to me at first. Ultimately, the goal is, I think, to be able to hear all 12 pitches over every type of chord. What I really like about Stefon's method is how it BUILDS from simple to complex. Sure, you can give someone a scale to play over a chord, but that's kind of overwhelming... especially for beginners. They're simply not going to be able to hear how each of those 7 notes sounds against the chord. Give them a triad + a tension note however...
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I played for a while with a reed man from the midwest who would be about 75 or 80 now. He played very well and knew absolutely no theory. He did not know the notes in C major. He'd hear the chord and play on it. Originally Posted by christianm77
He said that, when he was coming up, that's how they were all trained. No theory.
I recall that he was often behind the chord change (if he didn't know the tune). He had to hear it to know what to play. But, I don't recall him ever playing a clam.
That was a fairly quiet Real Book oriented, harmonically conventional quintet. If the music had been blaringly loud and/or harmonically wilder, I don't know if he could have done it. The volume makes it harder to hear harmonic detail (at least it does for me) and I don't know if he was used to a lot of ambiguous sounds and odd tonal center movements.
On the issue of bitonality -- if this thread is about bitonality, or biharmony, -- and a triad based approach to get there, then is it really about understanding Charlie Parker? I've always thought that he was extending the chords, not trying to create bitonality.
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I doubt Bird was thinking about bitonality in any way. (But I'll defer to others who know much more about it than I do.) But despite that, we can look at his playing and see what we can learn about the role that triads play in the way his melodies are constructed. (But for what it's worth, I don't think Jordan was talking too much about bitonality when he started the thread. I think he just wanted to look at the triads. Jordan - correct me if I'm wrong.) Originally Posted by rpjazzguitar
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The original intent of starting this thread was to let people know about the free study guide that I released. That study guide was created for my melodic triads study group, whose soul-focus is on the learning and implementation of melodic triads. We usually analyze one standard a month, looking specifically at the melody and attempting to find a progression of melodic triads (a 'melodic progression') which we can then develop of series of quadratonics or pentatonics from which to improvise within the contour of the melody rather than only relying upon the harmony, arpeggiating chord tones, or some type of scalar/modal approach based on the Originally Posted by rpjazzguitar
ii V I's we see notated above the melody. Our goal is to play in a way that's respectful to the harmony, but isn't reliant upon outlining it, rather to attempt to improvise lyrical, melodic ideas through the form. In so doing, we learn more about the tune... we learn to hear how the melody is constructed, how it relates to the harmony, and hopefully we learn some new fully-extended tonalities (or what some people are calling "bi-tonal"... I simply think of it as tonality... to me a tonality is the application of a melodic triad over a chord... that creates a tonality... whether that triad be a root position triad or an upper structure is a peripheral and secondary point to me) and how to hear and treat them musically.
Sometimes, I enjoy stepping away from full standards and making the focal point a little smaller... a common chord progression like a ii V I is a perfect size. Learning to hear and play through a chord progression with specific tonalities can be a great way to open our ears, get outside of our muscle memory, and learn to improvise freely using a new pathway through the chord progression. Sometimes I just randomly put together tonalities to practice this, but more often, I prefer to look at a riff from a player I love. I see it as no different from learning a composed tune except that it's shorter and improvised instead of composed. But the basic idea of attempting to learn to hear the tension, resolution, voice leading, and movement through the melodic ears of a great improvisor can teach us a lot about them and can help us improve our own playing and hearing. In this case, I definitely feel that I learned something about Bird here. Others may not feel they did. But seeing the consistency with his note choices within almost every pass through this particular chord change was very enlightening for me. The main new thing for me was in the sound of using the C minor triad as the strong, stable notes over the Bb7 chord... or what I would categorize as the Bb13sus9 chord.
The benefits can remain purely intellectual and theory based... or we can take it upon ourselves to find the time and patience to sit with this tonality and play with it until we can hear the C note, not the Bb note, as the melodic 'Do'... and therefore the C minor triad as the Do-Me-So of our lines... which will then yield the ability to intentionally control and create this tonality within our melodic compositions and improvisations.
So there are several goals at play in this month's study guide... but yes, for me, a big one was to learn something deeper about Bird's music. Even if it's a tiny little thing... I want to steal it and own it. Chances are good if you ask me to play the OP riff in 4 months, I won't remember it. But I can guarantee, I'll be applying the minor triad a whole step as the melodic stable notes over a dominant7 chord for many years to come.
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