Understanding Charlie Parker through triads

[jordanklemons]

No, that makes sense.... Kinda... There are always exceptions of course...

But in general I divide chords into two categories, static and resolving.... But you can turn one into the other.

Absolutely. Always exceptions. Though the more I work with triads, the more I realize that the exceptions usually seem really clever and stimulating to me intellectually and then don't sound as fulfilling to my ear. But I definitely break rules here and there and wouldn't give anyone else a hard time over it. Like I've been saying throughout this thread, it should really all be governed by the ear. If your ear digs the sound of an exception, then why not? Always go to the ear for the first and last call. But I suppose we also have to remember that if we're doing our job right, our ear is always evolving and maturing... so who knows? hahaha

[jordanklemons]

Thanks. Yes, when I said Gm7 and Dm7 I meant the basic triads GBbD and DFA. In fact, with the other triads on top, it gives you a pentatonic or hexatonic scale to play with...

I've already recorded something and it sounds pretty good. Mind you, this is a slow and meaningful tune. I was wondering what happened with faster and more complex pieces.

By the way, what would you do with a diminished triad?

Word. That's great man.

Faster like this?

I recorded this earlier today. I took the melodic triads I found in the Bird riff that started this whole thread and applied them wherever I could over the first half of Another You. Granted, I use a lot of chromaticism, enclosures, and a few extra tension notes... but my goal was to stay true to the melodic triads, regardless of what techniques I added over top of them.

Not sure if this is as fast as you're talking. I recognize that this is nearing 200, but far from the 300-350bpm we sometimes encounter in really nasty, intense bop. But at least at this tempo I find it works. It did take me quite a while of thinking this way and practicing to get this type of stuff working in vocabulary. But now it's hard for me to remember how I ever heard or played music before this stuff. And it gets into my playing much quicker. I only just applied these melodic triads to the tune last night and within 30 minutes of shedding the tune was playing it with lots of new vocabulary and ideas relatively comfortably.

Oy... you had to go and ask about diminished. hahaha
Diminished is tough... very cool... but such a tense sound that it often creates a lot of exceptions. If you have any specific chords you're curious about, maybe we can talk about a specific tonality that utilized a diminished triad. Otherwise, all I'll say about it for now is try adding the natural 4 against it. Immediately opens up a blues vocabulary inside that triad. Just a neat little trick I noticed from working with quadratonics (triad + 1 note). Gives us the root, m3, 4th, and #4/b5 from the blues scale.

[jordanklemons]

Also, Rag... speaking of faster tempos...

Normally I prefer to think one chord at a time as it allows for really digging into voice leading that creates a lot of movement. But next month in the study group, we're going to be looking at rhythm changes and we're going to be using melodic triads to lump together chunks of chords so that we can actually have - relatively speaking - very little happening in our minds and fingers, but be able to improvise melodically through the form. While it's not my preferred place to start with this stuff (because the point is to learn to slow down, listen, and start to hear and control tension and resolution within our lines), it is possible to use a mutation of these ideas to simplify down a chord progression and make it more manageable at faster tempos... or just to be able to play less stuff over chords.

[ragman1]

So you don't find yourself limited by triads then? I mean, I've tried reducing songs to their basic vanilla chords - no 7s, only doms - and harmonically it works fine, of course, but it leaves gaps where you might need lines. If we then super-impose other triads on the vanilla ones it will open the sound up considerably but I'm not sure it still sounds a bit sparse. Personally I'd be tempted to use the triad ideas together with the usual lines. What do you think?

Diminished - I've tried including the 4. That's good. You get that little chromatic run which is nice :-)

Thanks, Jordan, I'll keep at it

[ragman1]

to lump together chunks of chords so that we can actually have - relatively speaking - very little happening in our minds and fingers, but be able to improvise melodically through the form.

Oh, that would be so nice... :-)

Giant Steps at 400 :-)

[dot75]

6 x 30 min BBC Radio shows presented by the late, great & still straight Charles Fox.

Part 4 by dot. | Dot | Free Listening on SoundCloud
Part 6 by dot. | Dot | Free Listening on SoundCloud

[christianm77]

Word. That's great man.

Faster like this?

I recorded this earlier today. I took the melodic triads I found in the Bird riff that started this whole thread and applied them wherever I could over the first half of Another You. Granted, I use a lot of chromaticism, enclosures, and a few extra tension notes... but my goal was to stay true to the melodic triads, regardless of what techniques I added over top of them.

Not sure if this is as fast as you're talking. I recognize that this is nearing 200, but far from the 300-350bpm we sometimes encounter in really nasty, intense bop. But at least at this tempo I find it works. It did take me quite a while of thinking this way and practicing to get this type of stuff working in vocabulary. But now it's hard for me to remember how I ever heard or played music before this stuff. And it gets into my playing much quicker. I only just applied these melodic triads to the tune last night and within 30 minutes of shedding the tune was playing it with lots of new vocabulary and ideas relatively comfortably.

Oy... you had to go and ask about diminished. hahaha
Diminished is tough... very cool... but such a tense sound that it often creates a lot of exceptions. If you have any specific chords you're curious about, maybe we can talk about a specific tonality that utilized a diminished triad. Otherwise, all I'll say about it for now is try adding the natural 4 against it. Immediately opens up a blues vocabulary inside that triad. Just a neat little trick I noticed from working with quadratonics (triad + 1 note). Gives us the root, m3, 4th, and #4/b5 from the blues scale.

OK, listening to the clip and thinking of the melody

Bb/6 - Ebmaj7
Fm/2 - Dm7b5
G/7 - G7b9
Cm/4 - Cm7
Fm/not sure - Bbm Eb7
Eb/6 - Abmaj7
Eb/b6 - Abm6 or Db7#11
Eb/2 - Eb
Gm/not sure - Cm7 F7
Bb/7 - Bb7

Think I missed some stuff - is that right?

[jordanklemons]

So you don't find yourself limited by triads then? I mean, I've tried reducing songs to their basic vanilla chords - no 7s, only doms - and harmonically it works fine, of course, but it leaves gaps where you might need lines. If we then super-impose other triads on the vanilla ones it will open the sound up considerably but I'm not sure it still sounds a bit sparse. Personally I'd be tempted to use the triad ideas together with the usual lines. What do you think?

Diminished - I've tried including the 4. That's good. You get that little chromatic run which is nice :-)

Thanks, Jordan, I'll keep at it

Did you see the video I put up back in post #85 (I think)... the one with the listening experiment.. based on Joy to the World?

That might answer this question. Playing with triads doesn't mean ONLY triads. We can still use "scales". It's just about how we're organizing resolution points vs tension notes within our phrasing. I think that video might clear this question up. I think.

[jordanklemons]

OK, listening to the clip and thinking of the melody

Bb/6 - Ebmaj7
Fm/2 - Dm7b5
G/7 - G7b9
Cm/4 - Cm7
Fm/not sure - Bbm Eb7
Eb/6 - Abmaj7
Eb/b6 - Abm6 or Db7#11
Eb/2 - Eb
Gm/not sure - Cm7 F7
Bb/7 - Bb7

Think I missed some stuff - is that right?

Looks like you spotted a lot of "my stuff".
Keep in mind that NORMALLY I would analyze the melody of a tune, find the triads at work there, and begin by improvising within the contour of the melody. Like I did in the Blue in Green video.

This video is different. With this one I was purposefully leaving the structure of the melody of this tune and attempting to use the melodic triads that I found in our Bird riff this month. I was sort of forcing them into place wherever I could to try to get my ears and fingers to get outside of our normal way of navigating things and to bring in these new vocabulary ideas from Bird. Not vocab in the sense of riffs. I don't think I played his riff once. Just vocab in the sense of utilizing specific resolution notes over each chord to voice lead through the changes more in the way he seemed to be hearing in his riff. And I also used the Maj9 tonality over the Eb chord at the beginning even though that's not what the melody does, but that's the fully-extended tonality we studied last month, so I wanted to put it on display.

All of these melodic triads are interchangeable and substitutable with each other. So if we have even just 2, 3, or 4 options for Maj chords, minor chords, dominant chords, and diminished chords... we can develop an incredibly varied vocabulary in terms of how we move through tunes. Even without any riffs, we can improvise a ton. Especially if we're quoting the melody and ornamenting it with the melodic triads... it can really make things feel very alive and organic. I've found. I didn't quote the melody here at all because I was intentionally leaving the melody of the tune and trying to bring in new melodic triads and tonalities into my lines.

Anyways, the mel triads and the quadratonics you found are all pretty spot on. Great ears. They're not necessarily all my PRIMARY quadratonic... some of the ones you wrote out are actually my 2nd or 3rd choice of tension note. But I wasn't restricting myself to pure quadratonics. The qadratonics are just a practice method, a means to internalize the new melodic triad and hearing it as stable points... and learning to hear the notes around it as tension notes and understand how they sound and function... it's best to do that in small bites... one note at a time.

The only ones that it looks like you couldn't figure or just "missed" were the ones that I stole directly from Bird's riff that started this whole thread.

I tried to force these in over all of the ii V's. So...

Bb-7 -> Eb7
(Bb-)/4 -> (F-)/4

C-7 -> F7
(C-)/4 -> (G-)/4

F-7 -> Bb7
(F-)/4 -> (C-)/4

That's a new movement for me. I'm sure I was hitting some "wrong" notes in there. My goal was just to try and get a more natural feeling with think of the root triad over a ii chord (which is NOT my usual go-to) and thinking of the minor triad built on the 2 of a dom7 chord... which means hearing the 9, the 4, and 13 as the stable notes to outline the chord with. That's VERY new for me.

[christianm77]

Thanks Jordan.

In between bouncing the baby, sending emails etc, I've been thinking a lot about this.

1) The triads in every example you have posted here all exist as options within the harmony I would usually play derived from BH. So, I actually feel by concentrating on this melodic/triadic relationship I feel I'm making a very specific application of my general knowledge. This I like very much.

But it also shows the convergence of apparently disparate approaches. What you played sounds like stone bebop that a BH student might play - but I think many BH students (me!) would spaff more notes in there.

For instance, I already play Cm/Bb (usually as part of an Abmaj7 arp, but there's no reason why I couldn't just use Cm in my usual way of viewing things.) However to focus on this as a way of supporting the melody is pretty useful...

BTW - here is another example of that application you probably already know - first chorus of Wes on Four on Six at Smokin' at the Half Note. Listen to what he plays on the ii-V's in the first half A.

2) The more I think about it the less strange your idea of hearing the melodic triad tones as resolved notes and the tension tones (which may be a chord tone of the shell voicing) seems. In fact this is how I hear what I play. For instance, if I play Fmaj7 or Am on G7, I can pop a little neighbour tone under any of these notes and treat the F A C E as if was a chord tone.

It's just a reframing of something which I already did by ear. But that's not to dismiss it... It's actually a very deep realisation.

Of course, the polytonal possibilities go far beyond the conventional bebop or even CST related ideas we have here. You can go very outside with this... and:

3) I've also been thinking about the perverse unusual choices. I may post something horrible.

BTW: One nice exercise I learned from Lage Lund is to thread the basic 1-3-5 triad with a triad built on the 7 of the chord. So Bm on C would be an obvious example.

But - you can also use less obvious arpeggios that include that note - such as G#m, E (all the options I listed above.)

Now, you could easily widen the application of that to the melody note triad, or to a quadrad.

My favourite so far is putting B/b5 on G7. Dick move right? :-)

(But Barry would encourage you to use this choice.... So it's not actually that weird at all)

[jordanklemons]

Yo, at the doctor’s waiting room and will respond to your points when I’m able. But I had to ask, Christian... what’s “stone bebop”? Is this a British thing? A BH thing? I’ve never heard this term before.

Also, very jealous re: the bouncing. So pumped to get out and visit my brother and finally meet the brand new nephew so I can get my bounce game on. How is the little bubs anyways?

[joe2758]

hell you don't even want to hear my sober bebop

[Boston Joe]

Yo, at the doctor’s waiting room and will respond to your points when I’m able. But I had to ask, Christian... what’s “stone bebop”? Is this a British thing? A BH thing? I’ve never heard this term before.

I assumed he meant "stone" as in hardcore. Like "He's a stone killer," or "Stone free to do what I please."

[jordanklemons]

I assumed he meant "stone" as in hardcore. Like "He's a stone killer," or "Stone free to do what I please."

Oooooh, I didn't even think about that Joe. My first thought was a small club here in nyc called The Stone that's owned by John Zorn and usually does a lot of very avant garde stuff... so I thought maybe this was "out" bop. Then I thought, nah... it's not a very famous club and that's waaaaay to specific of a reference. So I thought maybe British stones... like money. Like this is very commercially sellable bop? Yikes... I'm not sure if that sounds like a compliment or a diss hahahaha.

I decided to go with it being a cool new vocab word in the BH world that I just wasn't hip to yet.

If your definition is what's up then I would take that as a huge compliment. To be an overly academic, intellectually oriented player who's way into the modern stuff and be told I can hold my own in the bebop world by someone so well informed in bop and BH ideas is quite a compliment for me.

[jordanklemons]

@Christian...

I should perhaps point out that I don't see melodic triads and this way of thinking and playing as being mutually exclusive from, better than, or really THAT different from the BH method. They both have pros and cons but are perfect systems in what they offer. I think. Just that as someone who's only met Barry once or twice and been to one masterclass and hasn't FULLY committed to his material, I don't feel THAT comfortable talking about his system. It's amazing, and I love it, and I do work on it... and usually when I work on it it's attempting to find the anchor points between melodic triads and Barry's ideas with tonic vs diminished stuff. They really are there... and what little crumbs I've found have be insanely excited to continue fusing the two schools of thought together. I've started formulating some ideas and pathways with it, but it's so early in the process, and I don't really have anyone to help guide me... so I'm being slow and patient with it and letting it simmer before I really talk about it with anyone or share the ideas. I'd hate to start "teaching" anything and get a bunch of people trying something out, only to realize 3 or 4 years from now that it's all garbage and a waste of time.

I see Barry and Stefon (both last name Harris... coincidence... I think not) as really having stumbled onto the same thing. Barry looked at bebop and realized there was a simplicity at play and sort of codified it and systemized it... and it's just tension and resolution... tonic and diminished. Stefon did the same thing, just not specifically with bebop. The language and the sounds were all there prior to them... they just found a way to distill it down.

What I love about Stefon's triad ideas is that it's not specific to bebop. It's just pure DNA. The triad thing is at work in all styles all the way back to Bach. I recently saw a distant relative of mine who's started playing mandolin. He wants to get into Americana music and be able to solo over tunes and he asked my advice. I said man, learn your basic major and minor triads for all the most common chords you see in the music... C major, G major, A minor, etc. Be able to play them no problems. Then try adding the 2 against each triad. Really listen to it and hear the tension it adds. Now insert that tension in between the notes and you're creating tension and resolution. When you see a C chord, create tension and resolution over it, and when it switches to G... you switch with it. We could get more complicated, but that was my "beginner" improv lesson #1 for him. And what's crazy is that it's the same thing I would tell someone who wants to study jazz or bebop. The big differences (for me) come later. The bebop student needs to then learn about enclosures, chromaticism, etc. But the underlying principle of tension and resolution governs WHAT we enclose... and WHERE we're heading chromatically. And I think Stefon and Barry both address that question with an insane level of brilliance. And with a ton of overlap. Again, I'm no scholar or expert on BH method... but that's my assessment from what I've studied of his.

[WillMbCdn5]

Stone Bop - a stone in the UK is a weight measure - approx 14 pounds - soooo! I believe he is suggesting it is HEAVY BOP as in really good bop!!!!

Will

[jordanklemons]

Stone Bop - a stone in the UK is a weight measure - approx 14 pounds - soooo! I believe he is suggesting it is HEAVY BOP as in really good bop!!!!

Will

Haha... or maybe it's like when you drop a heavy stone in the water... it just sinks. So someone who plays "heavy" bebop can't keep up when dropped into the deep end of the water... they just sink!

[ragman1]

Did you see the video I put up back in post #85 (I think)... the one with the listening experiment.. based on Joy to the World?

That might answer this question. Playing with triads doesn't mean ONLY triads. We can still use "scales". It's just about how we're organizing resolution points vs tension notes within our phrasing. I think that video might clear this question up. I think.

I saw it and understood it. Using Am and F are logical enough when supporting a C triad and C maj scale. But you suddenly introduce the F melodic minor and I can't see the logicality in that. It's a good scale to use over G7 for a b9 sound but I don't see its context here.

[Jonah]

I saw it and understood it. Using Am and F are logical enough when supporting a C triad and C maj scale. But you suddenly introduce the F melodic minor and I can't see the logicality in that. It's a good scale to use over G7 for a b9 sound but I don't see its context here.

Jordan refers at the beginning to scale as a triad with added tension notes... and expands that.

It's more like you have basic triad that makes the r-3-5 of the scale (C major here) and you have other triads that can share the tones with basic or imply tensions/release... (and they can form a scale)

In that sense it does not matter what scale you imply - it depends just on how you hear these relations basic triad notes and added tensions...

There's one thing aboout this video though to be added... which is important it's the repeated rythm of the pharse... it implies lots of stability...

if you play only c-b-a-g... descening over F major triad very probable that you will eventually hear final F9 as stable root with no need to resolve anything anywhere...

[grahambop]

Stone Bop - a stone in the UK is a weight measure - approx 14 pounds - soooo! I believe he is suggesting it is HEAVY BOP as in really good bop!!!!

Will

stones are quite hard - Hard Bop!

[tomems]

I'm sure some of you would rather play this, but isn't it more fun to put it in Excel? This is what I've come up with... I suppose he's following the "green" path???

[christianm77]

I'm sure some of you would rather play this, but isn't it more fun to put it in Excel? This is what I've come up with... I suppose he's following the "green" path???

Wot no pivot table report?

[christianm77]

@Jordan

Bubbs is on great form and finds everything hilarious apart from my guitar playing which makes her cry.

I said ‘stone bebop’ because I thought it was a cool jazz thing that cool jazz people say :-)

[tomems]

Wot no pivot table report?

Don't tempt me...

[Jonah]

I'm sure some of you would rather play this, but isn't it more fun to put it in Excel? This is what I've come up with... I suppose he's following the "green" path???

A is 3 in Fm7?)
and Ab is b3 in Fm7?)