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Edits welcome... I can revise tonight...
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04-11-2018 10:07 AM
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Oh yeah btw Jordan the compliment was intended. What you’re playing sounds to me like legit bebop language divorced from mere Parker quotations or canned vocab.
The interesting thing is that this another way the tunes can be your teacher. TWNBAY contains no explicit Mel minor harmony so everything exists within that trad bop soundworld, but there are tunes where if this is not explicit then it would certainly be tempting, for instance where you have a 7#11 etc - Blue in Green has an instance.
More modern tunes still would suggest other possibilities.
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I am planning to standardize this way, thoughts welcome:
1
b9
2
min3
maj3
4
#4
5
b6
6
dom7
maj7
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Originally Posted by tomems
the thing is it is impossible to put it thta way)))
How you name the degrees depends on the context that you hear these chords in..
their functions and all that.
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Min7 not dom7- correct interval nomenclature afaik. I remember getting told off for that :-)
b2 not b9 (typo I think)
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Great points, how about:
1
b2
2
min3
maj3
4
#4
5
b6
6
min7
maj7
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You asked if I didn't find playing with triads to be limiting... and talked about triads being vanilla. Originally Posted by ragman1
I find it to be quite the opposite. I find triads to be a sort of secret door into a VERY freeing and exciting way of playing that few walk through because they assume triads are too simple, limiting, and vanilla.
As the video shows, we can produce to some rich depth to our harmonic playing, and they help us to tie together our melodic playing in to our harmonic understanding.
The two usual go-tos for improvising single notes are either scales and modes, or chord tones.
Is A-7 and FMaj7 common chords to use with a C major scale? Sure. But what I played displays a big problem. When we're using a C major scale or key over an A-7 chord... most people would say that we're playing in A aeolian. And by the theory books, that's true. But did you hear that the A note wasn't behaving melodically like a root note? It wanted to move. So that's a problem if we jump right for an A minor scale, right? What we assume to be our strongest note might not be.
Same thing with F lydian... why is the F note behaving like a tension note if all that's happening is playing in F lydian?
When I switched into the F melodic minor, why did the F note sound like a tension note? When I laid the F melodic minor scale over an AbMaj#5, wouldn't we just be in the 3rd mode of F mel min? So shouldn't Ab act as the tonic note? But it didn't... it acted as a melodic tension note.
Over the Bb7 chord, we saw that every 1-3-5-7 chord tone behaved as a tension note, a passing note to get to the next C major triad note.
If our only approaches to improvise are modes and chord tones, these types of sounds become incredibly difficult to find. Especially on the fly when we're improvising.
You may have also noticed with the Ab chord that I also threw away all of the "tension" notes and just played through the inversions of the Ab chord, but always with the C triad on top. It still sounded like the harmony right? Just no more melodic tension and resolution. Now we're just playing the harmony.
The logic of switching from a C major scale to an F melodic minor scale is that I didn't. I know from the standpoint of someone who thinks with scales I did... but from my standpoint... my primary focus in my thought process when I'm playing is the melodic triad. Then I visualize the harmony underneath it. Then I visualize the tension notes around it that I can use to play melodies with. The melodic triad for all of these was C major. So while you may see a scale change (a point that I don't argue against, I just say isn't what I'm thinking about) I see a melodic triad NOT change. It's still C major triad. Then I decided to put a more complex harmony underneath it specifically to show that using a basic major triad isn't vanilla or limiting. And I just know that when I'm combing an AbMaj7 chord (in the piano player's left hand) with a C major triad (in the piano players right hand), that certain tension notes will work better. But as I showed in the video, we can also get rid of the tension notes and just invert the chord. Or we can add in ALL of the tension notes and just play a chromatic scale where we harmonize C, E, and G with a voicing. Or we can isolate only 1 tension note.
X11.10.[988] -> Ab note on the 4th fret 1st string -> XX6[553]
Again, on display, we can see the root note of the chord behaving as a tension note that wants to resolve down to a C major note... and it's surrounded by two AbMaj7#5 voicings which both have the C major triads sitting in the top 3 voices.
This is why I enjoy the quadratonic idea as a teaching mechanism. I use it to teach students, and even more importantly, I use it to teach my own ear. I hear that Ab as 'Le'... the b6... desperately wanting to resolve down to 'So', the 5. I don't hear it as a root note. I fully accept that it IS the harmonic root note. But I also trust my ear enough to register that it's not behaving as such melodically in this context. Nor does it sound like the minor 3rd of an F minor scale.
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Jordan -
Thanks for the long reply. I realised you were busy the other day. Hope health stuff is OK. I meant to ask before.
I don't think I said 'vanilla' as such, rather that 3 notes might prove limiting in soloing terms. I know you are saying put in another note, a tension note, to up it a bit.
Incidentally, let me ask about that to make sure. The number to the right of your chord symbol - i.e. (F-)/4 over an Eb7 - is the extra note.
Is that the 4 of the Bb scale (Eb)? Or the 4 of the Bb scale from root F (Bb)? Or the sus4 of an Fm chord (Bb)? Or the sus4 of the Eb7 (Ab)? Or which note? I admit to some confusion there.
I understand about the freedom and harmonic possibilities triads provide vs. scales etc.
I understand that the same scale (C maj emphasising the C major triad tones) over certain root notes alters the feel/sound/positioning of the notes. In fact it may cease to be a 'C scale'.
But you did actually say 'I'm going to put this into F melodic minor...'. but you used Ab as the root. I'm not sure why you chose Ab as the root (!) but that might explain why it sounded a lot different than if you'd used F as the root.The logic of switching from a C major scale to an F melodic minor scale is that I didn't. I know from the standpoint of someone who thinks with scales I did...
High notes carry, so I guess the ear still hears the 'tune', especially in a reharm, regardless of the underlying sound. We'd still recognise 'Happy Birthday' even if there were completely random chords behind it.
But the other way around is probably more interesting. I'd say that was the attraction of triads. In a solo the tune goes on a back-burner but the underlying harmony is the same. If we play, say, a G or Dm triad over G7, it'll sound pretty straight. But an E maj triad won't...
In a way, this resembles the way substitute pentatonics are used, like Bbm pent over G7, etc. Although triads may open up more possibilities.
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I fiddled with a few things, changed them, then changed again. Using b7 seems to work better in my brain (I tried m7 for that note for both m7 and dom chords but I am trying not to give things two names...)
Any way you slice it, those two "A" notes are outside tones. Everything else seems to fit in a bucket...
For the record, I still don't know what's going on.
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Why did you put those 'A' s there?
You see when we begin to alter 3rds or 6ths it is difficult to to keep it all clear and clean.
This concventio is still realted to classical functional thing and it describes it the best... enharmonic intervals are not the same in the cointexts and it is important whether you raise or drop it.
And when we begin to raise minor 3rd we get into a bit different world where to be precise we should have the separate name for every note probably - or at least for 8 notes for sure))))
so that the 8th tone was not associated with another step of the scale just raised or lowered.
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I think I had kind of a breakthrough with this yesterday in terms of hearing resolutions within the triads. I was playing an E Maj triad with an added F against a D-6 chord, and I could hear it wanting to resolve to E. And I got some decent G# ones as well.
Further investigation is needed, but this is the first time I've really heard these juxtapositions in the way that Jordan describes them.
And as Jordan says, I don't see this and the BH thing as too far from one another. The BH borrowing thing is, I'd say, in the same neighborhood as Jordan's approach. Or lets just say that working on both of them at the same time isn't causing me any major cognitive dissonance. (Actual dissonance is another story...)
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You mean which note resolving to E?I was playing an E Maj triad with an added F against a D-6 chord, and I could hear it wanting to resolve to E. And I got some decent G# ones as well.
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That's cool. But what's going on then? Originally Posted by Jonah
Are there scale / chord tones for the notes over each of the three chords? Or one set of scale / chord tones for the entire phrase (as in it should all just be considered Eb major)?
Or is Bird just playing all 12 notes over all chords at all times and there's no way to make sense of it?
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@Bostonjoe i wasn’t thinking of BHs borrowed note thing but that’s a good point
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Originally Posted by tomems
Originally Posted by tomems
I was not referring to Bird... more to the system in general.
Anyway no need to make it absolute)))
As for Bird's phrase... if you want to put it that way...
I would just say A is a chromatic passing approach note...
To me it's coming from vocal intonation.. I treat it rather not like a separate tone.
This note belongs to Bb or to Ab... so it's either lowered Bb or raise Ab...
Maybe raise 3rd is ok for some context... but forme it's not that definite...
I think if a singer would sing it he would make it higher than pure A before Bb, and lowere than pure A before Ab
?
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Mostly the F, but I definitely heard the E as "home" regardless of where I was coming to it from. Originally Posted by Jonah
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Originally Posted by Jonah
That makes sense. 4, not a minor avoid note, chr on either side, then m3, 1. OK...
I still don't get the 2-4-6 over the Bb7... a triad but a funky choice...
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In my native language in solfege there is a beautiful term for which I could not find English equivalen unfortunately...I still don't get the 2-4-6 over the Bb7... a triad but a funky choice...
Litterally it means ' singing about'
In practice it means singing or playing diatonic or chromatic scale notes about the main chord-tone avoinding resolution (usually on strong beat)...
Using a triad one step above or below (more often above) is kind of more advanced way to do it but I think it's quite typical too...
The nature of it is expanded suspension - expanded both hozontally (melodically) and vertically (harmonically)
The beauty of that simple phrase is in its ambiguity... when he comes Eb over Bb7 on 1st beat - this Eb at the moment sounds like suspention to D (3rd of the chord)...
But then he goes down to C - so it's like he is 'cheating around' D... you see.
And when he jumps up to G... and then to F
it looks now like he was playing around F actually... like it is Eb-G-landing to F and C is sort of stepping aside to reinforce that feeling using neighbouring triad...
the more important thing are intervals from these C minor triad notes to resolution note F
2nds from Eb to F and G to G, 4th from C to F
Try to play it
1) Eb - F
2) Eb - G - F
3) Eb - C - F
4) G - C - F (here's that 4th)
5) G - Eb - F
6) G - Eb- F (a bit awkward one)
Then try to make it with D too
1) Eb - D
2) Eb- C - D
3) Eb - C - G - D (also 4th leap)
etc...
Ambiguity is all in music.
And besides... a triad one diatonic step above the main chord makes a complete 13 chord of the basic one.Last edited by Jonah; 04-12-2018 at 11:09 AM.
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Interesting...Mostly the F, but I definitely heard the E as "home" regardless of where I was coming to it from.
you said you played it against D-6... how did you hear that chord in the context then?
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I'm not sure, to be honest. This happened last night about ten minutes before I had to run off to rehearsal, so I didn't really have a lot of time to think about it. Originally Posted by Jonah
The best I could say is that I heard them as distinct but related. If you look at "E add F" in the context of D minor, you get the 2nd, 3rd, b5th and 6th. So you've got three chord tones and one natural extension, so it's not that far off the basic chord to begin with. But because the triad sound is so strong, I could hear E as "home", and it's the 9th, so it's not such a weird note to emphasize.
It was definitely an "a-ha" moment, but one related to the ear. Not a theoretical one that's easy to explain.
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Pretty cool paradigm shift, right? I remember the first time I noticed the notes were behaving differently than I theory soaked intellect had always "assumed" they were sounding. It's sort of like looking at one of those blurry pictures that pops into a 3D image if you look at it the "right" way. I'd studied solfeggi ear training for a couple of years before doing my triad work. I could hear all 12 solfeggi syllables by the emotion it had within a key without singing intervals. When I started using this kind of triad stuff and realized that the chord tones/scale degrees were different than the solfeggi syllables I was hearing, it really made my head spin for a couple of weeks. It was very difficult to accept as it sort of went against all of the theory I'd always learned. But, we have to trust our ears. Originally Posted by Boston Joe
Essentially what you're hearing is that the E note just came into focus as the melodic 'Do' over your D- chord. Which means that F is harmonically the minor 3rd, of course... but melodically, in that particular tonality, F is actually 'Ra'... the b2.
This is a cool tonality. I honestly haven't messed with it TOO much as a 6 chord. I suppose in that context we could call it a D-(69)#11?? Which being a -6 would sort of make it function as more of a minor tonic chord.. but with that #11 as a tonicized "chord tone" it will likely act as a very modern, hip, out sort of a minor tonic. I've played with it a bit as a -7 chord, so I treated the B note as the 13, not the 6. D-13(#11,9). In that case it becomes incredibly related to the V13b9. Right if we think of D- as the ii, the V is G7. If we put that same triad over the G7, we get G13b9. So we get that ii V relationship where we're essentially utilizing the same melodic structure - (E)/b2 - but where the underlying chord changes. Could probably also be used in more modern, pantonal situations as well. Try playing Stella, and when you get to bar 5 (F-7 chord with the G note in the melody), try harmonizing that G note with the G major triad.
You could try something like...
(F pickup note) -> X6[978]X -> X5[978]X
You can see the G major triad in both voicings. For the F-13(#11,9) chord the G triad is over the Eb note (the b7 of the F-7, so it helps define the harmony)... and then when we switch to the Bb13b9 chord, the G triad stays the same and the Eb in the lowest voice resolves down to D, the 3rd of the Bb7 chord.
A pretty modern sound, but one thing that's possible with chord melody and comping using this tonality.
Either way, that's cool that your ear shifted and you heard that. Especially with such a tricky and rare tonality. We're literally tonicizing the "blue" note there... which is pretty neat.
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The choice comes from the analysis of Bird's riff. We see him spell out a C minor triad over the Bb7 chord. Originally Posted by tomems
There are tons of ways to analyze music. Scalar, modal, chord tones, as ornamentation from the melody, etc etc. I personally prefer triads as they offer me more benefit I've found from any other system in terms of freedom and development of my ear... but at the end of the day, it's whatever works best for the individual player.
It's sort of like the philosophical argument of whether the glass is half filled with water or half empty. We could argue and debate about it forever. But sometimes, you just get thirsty and want to drink the thing, you know? For me, I don't think of any view of the water as more or less right... it's just an intellectual argument. I just want to drink the thing. So WHY do the notes of the C minor triad work over the V chord in this riff? If I'm being honest... I haven't the slightest clue. And I really don't care that much.
All I know is that it appears to be what's happening in the riff, when I isolate it, slow it down, and play it myself, they all sound good in my ear. So at that point, I just want to drink. The debate on the perspective becomes unnecessary for me. I enjoy the triad approach so much because it not only helps me break things down to understand them, but using the methods my old teacher Stefon showed me, it offers an immediate step-by-step process to get to drinking. Whether it's a really traditional sound, or a really complex modern sound, or even something outside of jazz altogether. It just lets me bring new sounds into my ear and infuse into my vocabulary.
What's REALLY neat here, is that while Bird is using this over the V chord in a cadence... we can use it anywhere. If anyone has registered for the study guide and watched the videos, you'll see that I isolate the V chord and just vamp on it and improvise over it with the C minor triad. It doesn't even need to be within a ii V I... it's just a tonality that can be treated as a static sound OR as a functional dominant chord. If it sounds good, it sounds good.
I like the table you designed. I personally wouldn't recommend getting TOO stuck in that type of thinking forever. But I love that you're trying to push your mind beyond its comfort zone and be able to think from multiple perspectives simultaneously. That's more or less what I'm doing as well. I can think, hear, and see from the standpoint of the Bb7sus chord and from the C minor simultaneously. It's trying to get to the place where piano players can so easily and naturally get to because they're using two hands at the same time. They can play the Bb7sus chord in their left hand and the C minor triad in their right and immediately see both of them and understand how they're both happening at the same time and that they create a very specific vibe. That's the type of thinking and hearing that I'm after on the fretboard, and it's similar to what you're writing out with your tables. A little different... but similar. Being able to look at a picture from many angles and see different things... and then being able to choose between them.
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Yes, exactly. I listened to it by itself for a little while before I started the chord loop. Originally Posted by jordanklemons
I didn't think too much about the harmonic implications of the triad. I just thought, well, the melody goes F to E, so lets throw E and F in there. F is already the third, so lets make that the added note, and then I just tried the E triad. So I wasn't thinking in terms of D minor at all. I think I had watched one of your videos and you talked about the melodic progression being separate from the harmonic progression, so I tried to work with that and derive the triad(s) from just the melody.
Oooh, and I just thought of an analogy. When I was a kid, the amusement parks had a ride called the Rotor. The rotor was like a giant tuna can. You stood against the wall, and the thing would spin really fast. Centrifugal force (pace, physics nerds) would hold you to the wall and they'd drop the floor out from under you. Sounds kinda scary, right? Except that once the rotation gets fast enough to stick you to the wall, it also changes where your inner ear thinks gravity is. All of the sudden, the wall becomes "down" and it feels like you're lying on the floor.
It was like that. But with sound.
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Yeah, this is what I mean about how BH has the 6 vs diminished. That's the tension and resolution. With triads, we have the triad vs the other 9 notes. Within those other 9 notes is a hierarchy of importance... specifically, the notes that define the harmony should ideally come first. That's the tension and resolution. But once the idea is understood... then the whole thing becomes a game of "borrowing" and moving. Just like I've heard you talk about suspensions and anticipations. Same stuff... just what are we suspending from or anticipating towards? Originally Posted by christianm77
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That's it man! Originally Posted by Boston Joe
Now if you're open to treating it as a D-7 instead of a D-6... once you're feeling comfortable with the F (minor 3rd), try adding the C note (minor 7th). The C note will BEHAVE as the b6 against the E triad, so you will likely hear it wanting to resolve down to the 5th, the B. If you can hear that and play with it... try putting all 5 notes together and you have a pentatonic scale built on tension and resolution. You could also take it one step further and add the A note if you want, the 5th of D-7. That note will actually behave like the sus4 sound... the 4 wanting desperately to pull down to the major 3rd of the E triad.
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