-
Well I practice maybe 15m a day atm and my brain is so fried I need something really specific to focus on.
OTOH I have no need to play the stuff I normally do cos I’ve already played that.
-
04-14-2018 09:17 AM
-
Actually thinking about it one of the most important things I feel I developed - and embarassingly recently at that - is the ability to ty different concepts out on the instrument, voicings, motifs, ideas etc, more or less in real time in the practice room.
I think the think that really helped me has just drilling scales, chords and arps all over the neck, but constantly varying the parameters and as soon as I can play something, moving on.
Really Barry is heavily about that, but of course it’s not the only way of doing it.
Now when I improvise I find I have a much more freedom and openness than I had when I was more of a licks and ‘language’ player. So I think this dry work is really important, as well as all the listening stuff.
-
Well, I'm familiar with this phenomenon from learning to play golf. (Stick with me here). I'm a terrible golfer, but I did actually take lessons at one point, so I at least understand the fundamentals of the swing. So my pro gave me that. But I had problems. Big slice, etc. So I'd make a correction with my grip or my stance or something, and my swing would get much worse for a little while. But then I'd get it back and my slice wouldn't be so bad. So I've seen this kind of thing before, and it doesn't bother me too much.
Originally Posted by jordanklemons
HOWEVER, the problem here is that I still have playing to do outside the shed. I've got weekly rehearsals, and the occasional gig. (In fact, I've got a fairly important gig on the 27th). So I need to find a way to not sound like ass while I'm trying to learn this stuff.
Yeah. I've seen a couple of your videos on that, and it's something I want to get into eventually, but for the moment (by which I mean the foreseeable future) I'm working on the BH stuff with regard to comping and voicings. As I've mentioned, I do see a connection between BH, and your approach, and that's something I plan to explore when I've got the BH thing down. I think the borrowing stuff in the BH approach will provide some skills in terms of being able to construct some of your type of voicings.Another neat benefit that you and I probably haven't discussed much if at all is the overlap between the melodic side of things and the harmonic. Just like the piano player, we can develop voicings by putting the harmonic structure in the "left hand" and the melodic structure in the "right hand". So for the E major/D- chord you're talking about... we might see some voicings like...
**I'm transposing all of this up a whole step so we can use our open 6th string to imitate a bass player hitting the low root note... so this is now F# major/E-
0X5[322]
0X5[676]
0.10X[11.11.9]
Notice we have the melodic triad in the top 3 voices for each of these, and then some of the basic harmonic information (R and m3) always underneath?
-
Yeah, I agree. I think in the beginning - especially if the musician is already gigging and working with other players - it's important to sort of compartmentalize these new ideas. I found the smaller the pieces we work on, and the more time we spend pushing the ear out of familiar territory and growing its comfort zone, the quicker this stuff all starts to become quite natural. I mean, we launched our Melodic Triads Study Group just back in January, and we've already seen insane spurts of growth and progress with many of our members. So even just within a few months, big changes are possible. And I know when I was learning this stuff at the beginning, I would see major changes taking place sometimes within 1 or 2 practice sessions because the work was so focused. But it is working with small, incremental steps... so it make things a little weird in the beginning with other work. While I love the more "out" stuff (like the E major triad over D-7), I tend to try and stick with OVERLY applicable, acceptable tonalities with the study group, in large part because I want to make sure that each tonality we look at will be helpful in as many situations as possible as quickly as possible. Originally Posted by Boston Joe
I think for the normal person, it's also really helpful to try and turn off all the brain chatter when playing. Studying this stuff and practicing it with strong limitations is great... but when it comes to playing with other musicians, it can be really helpful to just turn off the overly analytical mind and let the ears run things. If we've done our job in the practice room properly, we'll end up using the new way of hearing and phrasing in a natural and organic way that doesn't feel forced or get us stuck painting ourselves into a corner.
-
Originally Posted by joe2758
nice comparison but normally artists never did that))) except Picasso and DeDaumier-Smith))))
-
And no one's ever heard of DeDaumier-Smith))))
-
Mmmm... that seems like a pretty big assumption to make Jonah. Maybe most famous artists didn't have a period of their more famous, professional work that wasn't entirely influenced by a particular color... but I'd be willing to bet that many, if not most, talented painters have done extensive work with studies of color, light, shade, techniques, shapes, negative space, etc. I know Van Gogh studied color extensively and developed a very personal way of combining colors that most other painters would not have considered natural. And a quick google search for something like "color studies" will yield plenty of schools and blogs talking about these ideas. Hell... look at any classical guitar composer's portfolio and they'll be filled with "etudes" or pieces of music that was meant to isolate down ONE thing the composer either wished to improve upon for themselves or for their students. It was often about a particular technique... but not necessarily always the case. I'm just talking about doing this with sound. I personally don't see much of a difference. One is focusing on muscle memory... the other is focusing on our ear. Depending on where a musician's priorities are, they may want to work on both equally or spend a little more time on one than the other. Originally Posted by Jonah
I'm not making an argument that the Rosenwinkels and Scofields of the world should put everything else on hold and make multiple albums ONLY based on the sound of 'Re'... I'm sharing these ideas as a means of practicing and learning to open ones ears.
It's no different than Van Gogh's color studies. Or a culinary student taking the time to get to know the flavors of each herb or spice. Or a basketball player who wants to improve their game standing at the free throw line for 20-30 minutes a day and ONLY working on that element of their game for a period of time, and then isolating down a lay up, or dribbling with their left hand, or bounce passes, etc. I've heard plenty of stories about the world's top athletes always being the first one on the court or field and the last to leave... and spending hours working on one specific element of their sport over and over. It's simply a method for isolating down to an element of the bigger picture, learning to develop greater control and to use it with more intention.. and then moving on to the next puzzle piece.
I'd venture to say that this type of practice is probably far more common for great artists than you're making it out to be.
That said... as I've been saying since the start of this thread... I'm not here to convince anyone of anything or get anyone to stop playing the way they want to. Just sharing an idea and letting people know there's a free study group. If you're interested in the ideas you're welcome to join. If not, that's cool too. Whatever works for you is what's best.
-
Speaking of which, I rearranged things a little with working on Alone Together. Originally Posted by jordanklemons
I'm using an F/#4 over the first couple of D-6 chords, and saving the E/b2 for the last one, to up the tension level. I came up with two quads for the G-7 in bars 7&8 - Bb/^7 and D-/b6 and then realized that they were the same group of notes. Right now, I'm just playing the V7 chord tones over the II-Vs. I'll fill those in later.
(I realize the the F/#4 quad is basically the same as D-6, but I'm really trying to frame F as the tonic, which makes me think that I might be able to make the Bb/^7 and D-/b6 quads have distinct tonic sounds even though they're the same.)
-
@Joe...
All sounds good. Just realize that with the F major triad you're tonicizing the C note over a D-6 chord... which means it's not really a D-6 chord anymore, it's a D-7. So in the old school traditional language, this isn't going to function well as a minor tonic i chord. It's great for the ii chord... but less so the i-6. Some players who are into more modern stuff say that's okay I don't know... totally up to the player I suppose. Just worth keeping in mind. I tend to rely on just a basic D minor triad personally... but there's plenty of options. Just keep that C note in mind. It may cause issue. You could also try the A major triad if you want a minMaj tonic... which also works in the traditional sense. Maybe (A)/b6. The A triad will tonicize the 5th, maj7th, and 9th.. and the b6 you've added is the F note... so it gives you all the essential ingredients to define a D minor sound, but it turns the min3rd into a melodic tension note and gives some pretty tasty resolution/stable notes.
-
Jonah, you had me wondering how often painters used "studies" to learn, develop, grow and influence their painting and their style. I just did a quick search and found a wikipedia page specific to "studies" from the painting perspective.....
"In art, a study is a drawing, sketch or painting done in preparation for a finished piece, or as visualnotes.[1] Studies are often used to understand the problems involved in rendering subjects and to plan the elements to be used in finished works, such as light, color, form, perspective and composition.[2] Studies can have more impact than more-elaborately planned work, due to the fresh insights the artist gains while exploring the subject. The excitement of discovery can give a study vitality. Even when layers of the work show changes the artist made as more was understood, the viewer shares more of the artist's sense of discovery. Written notes alongside visual images add to the import of the piece as they allow the viewer to share the artist's process of getting to know the subject.Studies inspired some of the first 20th century conceptual art, where the creative process itself becomes the subject of the piece.[citation needed] Since the process is what is all-important in studies and conceptual art, the viewer may be left with no material object of art.
Studies can be traced back even as long ago as the Italian Renaissance, from which art historians have maintained some of Michelangelo's studies. One in particular, his study for the Libyan Sibyl on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, is based on a male model, though the finished painting is of a woman. Such details help to reveal the thought processes and techniques of many artists."
-
I am not painter... I studied some drawings for better understanding how it worked for the Old Masters. I am a big admirer of Arts and I read a lot of stuff about it... Originally Posted by jordanklemons
Besides I live in the City with allegedly biggest World Arts Gallery (or it's the the big 3: I believe only the Met and Louvre can compete) and I visit it almost every two weeks... it's just that I have some practical experience. Though i do not pretend to have expertise.
The colour is extremely important part of painting but paradoxally enough it is the most illusive, subjective, and and changing extremely quickly...
Going to museums we rarely think about what was the colour the painter really used at the momen of creation, what was the light where he worked or where his work should have been put.. or if it is frescoes they suffere even more and besides the glasses in cathedrals were different and the light.
All these points affect the drawinngg and general comption perception very very little - wee can probaably non-essentially... but for the colour the effect of aall that can very crucial.
And it also depends on style and school - for Venetian painting the colour is very important, for Florentine not that much (of course important too but it will not loos its essence probably even black and white, where Venetian will suffer significantly).
As for my assumption.. it was very specifique - it is just too expensive even today to study a single colour that intensively and systematically... and in the past it was just impossible.
There were lots of work in sketchess... but not the studies of colour.
Mostly b/w drawings.
From 19th century on watercolours became also a part of process and they were cheaper. But they give different quality of colours than oil.
In modern arts there was much more attention to colour.. of course colour is very important for Van Gogh. But I must say one thing: the intesiveness of colours does not mean that colours are important for aesthetics of this painter. For example for Monet colour is much important than for Van Gogh imho, though his colours are that intensive.
Colour is very important for Chagall.
And Rotko is probaly the purest colour examiner...
(By the way... If you ever get interested read the books of Michel Pastouraeu - Frech historian of colour - they are quite easy to read and very deep and informative and interesting for any person who is sensitive about our perception of arts and life.)
-
Fortunately, solfeggi is free Originally Posted by Jonah
-
Well, some thoughts. Originally Posted by jordanklemons
I watched a couple of the videos and that was helpful in terms of understanding the basic idea. I'm seeing it as a parallel path. That is, you could think this way, or a different way, and still progress. Example: nothing wrong with thinking Fm +4. But there's nothing wrong with thinking "Fm pentatonic omit b7" either.
I understand that the Parker lick was the jumping off point. But I think calling the thread "understanding CP" was misleading, not that this is a major problem.
As I look at the lick, he plays 5 notes before the chord change, counting the pickup, and only two of them are in Fm triad. In fact, he never plays the 5th until later.
After the chord changes, he does use the notes of Cm, but it looks an awful lot like he was thinking Fm13 or just plain Eb.
But, I understand what you said in the video about trying to hear things as Parker might have.
So, I'm thinking about the whole approach. Say, you hear F Ab C Bb as a distinct entity -- different than F Ab C Bb Eb -- and you want to internalize that sound (and others you may find with a similar process). And then, when soloing,you can hear the sound in your mind and know how to find the notes, great. Is that the idea?
If so, it's intriguing, partially because it's so different from the way I learned. I learned chord tones and pitch collections (scales, but without an implied ordering), first as a way of avoiding clams, and later as a way of creating interesting harmony -- but all the while dominated by the desire to make up a new melody that fit.
I heard the idea of dividing up a pitch collection into pieces to extract different note-groups, but I was not taught to focus on it. One teacher, hearing something like that, would say, annoyed, "no licks! make melody!".
Of course, no matter how you expand your harmonic vocabulary, it's going to help.
What I find when my practice is adequately focused is this. If I force myself to sing a line before I play it, invariably it is more melodically and rhythmically interesting that what I would have done without singing first. Typically, it's no more advanced harmonically (which suggests a path forward, perhaps).
If I ever master the ability to spontaneously play the sung lines, then I'm going to be looking for harmonic advancement in a more focused way. But, my experience is that I have rarely gotten something into my playing by starting with theory.
Instead, something catches my ear, I find it on the guitar, and figure out other places to use the sound. It is only a slight exaggeration to say that the sounds divide themselves into two groups: sounds I can incorporate immediately, and sounds that I struggle with for years and may never get. And yet, I can't turn away from this sort of theoretical material.
-
I hear you on that. The problem I have is that I find theory fun for its own sake. Originally Posted by rpjazzguitar
-
You may not be a painter, but as someone who teaches this stuff for a living--I'd say you know your stuff! Originally Posted by Jonah
I don't want to derail the thread here, but man, if anybody ever want to talk about the connection between jazz/painting, I'm all in
-
kick one off Jeff, I’ll watch at least
-
That’s a rich vein man. I love visual art but haven’t done any myself for a long time. Well up for this. Originally Posted by mr. beaumont
You may not be a painter, but as someone who teaches this stuff for a living--I'd say you know your stuff!
I don't want to derail the thread here, but man, if anybody ever want to talk about the connection between jazz/painting, I'm all in
Btw, Jordan I have so many questions about how to apply melodic triads, but I suspect they are the sort of things I need to sign up for the course to answer :-)
-
It might be worth pointing out that students are often given a limited palette of two or three colours as an exercise. Picasso, who's been mentioned, didn't do it as an exercise. His blue period was the result of a friend committing suicide coupled with severe depression.
Just mentioning it in passing...
-
Well my best advice would be to try and find a way to study with Stefon. Though with his performing schedule mixed with the time commitment and responsibilities that I'm sure his new gig way up the chain at Manhattan School of Music comes with.. my guess is that that would be tough. Then again, he doesn't teach this stuff translated onto the guitar. So the first 6-12 months of my own work was essentially spent dreaming up ideas for how to translate it, and then writing out notebooks full of specific shapes and ideas to see how best to make it work in a practical sense. But I know you well enough to know that you'd still make it work if you could. Originally Posted by christianm77
Besides that, the only way I know of to dig into it was to take private lessons with me. I'm sure there are other Stefon students out there that teach it as well, I just don't know who they are... and I've never seen a book written... and it probably won't ever be because the method is too heavily rested upon the ear and the emotional experience of hearing sounds which is tough to convey through typed word... as we've seen in the threads I've spawned over the years :/
The study group I launched in January was to try and make it easier to share with folks who were interested. I kept it free with optional donations for those who wanted to help as I didn't want to scare away younger, broke, working musicians and music students. But recently the group had been asking for more stuff and more access, so a few weeks ago I did launch a subscription side of it that gives people more access to the study guides (normally they're like free, month-long rentals... like a library where it gets returned... but the subscribed members get to hold on to all of them so they can continue going back and working on any of the tunes or tonalities with all the videos and pdfs) plus a couple extra sections within each study guide that goes a little further into depth with adding additional tension notes and develop bebop and modern jazz enclosures using the triads and tension notes as well as more stuff with the harmonic end of things in terms of developing movement within harmony to create tension and resolution within a chord that's not based only on the chord's function in the progression... yada yada yada
Anyways... I saw you joined the facebook group. That's awesome. It's free to get started and jump in... you can get the facebook group, The Essentials study guide to get started, the current monthly study guide, and the 2 open office hours every month all for free... so there's plenty of resources if you want to learn more. I try to do my best to answer questions to the group and to offer feedback on videos.
Definitely hit me up if you ever need anything. It's tough to type out all the benefits and answer every question in written form as I'm over 3 years in and I'm still discovering new uses for it that are on my long list of things to explore. But the resources are there for anyone who wants to check it out and see some of what's possible.
-
Word... Originally Posted by rpjazzguitar
Thanks for checking out some of the videos. Yes, absolutely... I've said it 1000 times, and I'll keep saying it. My intention isn't to prove traditional theory wrong or tell anyone they need to change anything. It's just offering a view of the same 12 notes from a different perspective which I've found to be profoundly helpful as a student of the music, a composer and performer, and a teacher. Originally Posted by rpjazzguitar
There's nothing wrong with the minor pentatonic omit b7. Same four notes. The only question I would ask a private student of mine who wished to hold tightly to what they already knew and felt comfortable with rather than trying things from a new perspective is, are they in total control of their playing, or are they at least working towards that in their practice time? F minor pentatonic is great. It takes a lot of time and commitment and practice to be able to control our fingers enough to play within that. It takes even more to be able to isolate out the b7 and opt not to play it. Does the student have the ability to do that already? Do they have the ability to add the 2 into it? To create a pentatonic that's F-G-Ab-Bb-C? Do they know their solfeggi syllables well enough to anticipate the quality of the melodic tension that 'Re' (G) will bring into their lines? And know how and where it wants to move? How about 'Fa' (Bb)?
F minor over an F-7 is a relatively easy pairing... Would that student be able to shift the melodic 'Do' to a C note and utilize the C minor triad over the F-7 chord? Would they need to rely on the C minor pentatonic scale to achieve that? Or would they be able to utilize the 2 and the 4 against the C and create lines that still sound as simple as Do-Re-Me-Fa-So but where they're actually hitting C-D-Eb-F-G... so now the D note (the 6th/13th) of the F minor will yield the same melodic tension as the G note did earlier. And now the F note (the harmonic root note) will sound like the 4 in a minor "scale". Which means the F#/Gb (the b2 of the F-7 chord) will function and behave like the blue note. Can they construct "scale" like ideas over F- with a G minor triad? How about G major? How about C major? Bb? Eb? Enatural? Each one of those will utilize the same 12 qualities of the solfeggi syllables and their tension but will yield drastically different sounds for melody and for voicings.
These are the types of odd things I notice and sonic areas that intrigue me... where my ear enjoys going to explore. I enjoy analyzing tunes and/or riffs from great players specifically because it gets me away from my comfort zone so I can find new sounds and attempt to internalize them so they can be used naturally. Really no different to me than someone taking a few months or years to learn the major scale, the melodic minor scale, the pentatonic scale, or the octatonic scale, etc. The main goal of the quadratonic is really to act as a method for learning to hear, understand, and create a new 'melodic Do' which will govern the points of tension and resolution in our lines over any given chord so that we don't have to fish for notes... we just know where they are. The notes may or may not all be found within the same scales (Joe's example of using the G major triad is an example of a melodic triad that would be found outside the normal scale approach to a minor chord, but absolutely still works). But it won't matter, because if I'm hearing a certain tonality, I know exactly where to find my strong resolution notes and can weave them together with the tensions that I'm hearing.
Yeah, that's a big part of it. Specifically the methodical application of quadratonics for practicing. Learning to hear Do - Me(or Mi) - So plus other emotional tensions around them that push and pull energetically within the melody creating movement. Originally Posted by rpjazzguitar
Cool, glad you think so too. Originally Posted by rpjazzguitar
Me too. I spent the first 23ish years of my musical life learning to think and play with scales, modes, and chord tones. At first it was all modal where everything was mostly democratic. Very little priority was examined. If a note was in a scale, it's good. If it's not in the scale... be careful! Eventually I got bored with the scales so I started intentionally forcing myself to bring in the 5 non-diatonic notes to see what would happen. Ahhhhh... pure, democratized freedom of choice. Everything works. Now I can look back in hindsight and realize that the reason I still felt unhappy and searched for more was that playing modal like that meant I was ALWAYS anchored to ONE melodic 'Do'. Sure, I felt comfortable using all 12 notes over it in one fashion or another... but those notes always behaved the same way because I hadn't realized yet that I could more the melodic structure into a new tonality. Even when I played other triads or chromatic passing stuff... it was always in relation to the melodic triad. If we jammed for 20 minutes in A dorian... my ear didn't have the ability to stop subconsciously hearing the A minor triad at the top of the totem pole, so everything else I played was subservient to that and governed by that. Originally Posted by rpjazzguitar
Eventually I started studying jazz and specifically bebop and was taught all about chord tones. Now there's a new, stricter sense of hierarchy. The 1-3-5-7 chord tones are of the utmost importance over any given chord, then the rest of the scale tones are pretty important as well and behaved as melodic tensions, then the bebop passing note, then the non-diatonic notes. Then I met my teacher Stefon who showed me the phenomenon of our ability to change where the melodic 'Do' was over any given chord, and I suddenly realized that if I dropped the 7 from my chord tones way of thinking, simplified it into a triad, treated those three notes as the top of the totem pole, then I could move that triad into all sorts of interesting new places to actually tonicize any parts of the chord I wanted. C triad over Bb7... we just made the 9, the #11, and the 13 into the melodic stable notes, and we turned the 1-3-5-b7 in the melodic tension notes.
C-D-E-F-G-Ab-Bb-C
We could say it's the 5th mode of F melodic minor, but I'm not sure how that intuitively makes sense or helps anyone since we're playing over a Bb7 chord. I hear this as
DO - re - MI - fa - SO - le - te - DO
If you phrase this way, we just turned all the chord tones into tension notes. Bb - the harmonic root note - is now going to sound and behave like TE!!! The b7! This isn't an opinion. Try it and listen. It's literally the most insane thing I can think of as a musician that's been taking music classes, private lessons, and flipping through books for over 25 years now. Nobody has ever told me that I can make Bb sound like the b7 of a Bb7 chord. Like, it makes no sense whatsoever. Right? But try it and hear it. 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!!!
For me, that's the first step. Then I'll mess with another tension note... maybe Ab, the b7 of the Bb7 chord... but the b6 (Le) against the C major triad. the 2 (Re) and the b6 (Le) have VERY specific emotions to them (for Le, think Batman, or the phantom of the opera). Now instead of saying, hey a Bb7lydian chord, here's my F melodic minor scale... let's go! Now we can think, okay, well here are my strong, stable, resolution points C, E, and G. Now I can use a little bit of this emotion to move over this way. Oooo, I'm feeling some of that emotion, let's throw that in... uuuuuhhhh, yeah... now back to that rich sounding resolution. It becomes a game of what colors, emotions, and flavors we want to twist around within our lines. And don't even get me start on talking about using this stuff through chord changes!! hahaha
-
Here's a little analysis that I sometimes use with private students to show how simple melodic triads actually are (especially when we're getting stuck in the big theory debate or trying to get too clever and making them more complicated then they need to be).
Here's a melody from a famous tune. I've removed the chord progression. If you recognize the melody... DON'T go and immediately look up the changes. Just check out the melody first.
I went ahead and broke it down into its melodic triads. This one (I think) is pretty simple and not really controversial, right? It's an F major triad in the first measure, with G being the "melodic tension" note. Measure two, we switch the relative minor, and now the melodic triad being used is the D minor... and again, 'Re' (the 2 against the D) is the tension note being used.
Could we just "simplify" it all by saying the whole thing is just the F scale? Yes, of course. That theory isn't wrong.
But if you want to improvise within the contour that the composer crafted for us in the melody, to learn from the melody and to improvise lines and ideas that pay homage to the melody without directly quoting it we could just jump straight for what I would notate as (F)/2 for a bar and then (D-)/2 for a bar. Yes, it's all in the same key... but there's a pretty clear harmonic/melodic shift that happens. We can DEFINITELY add more tension notes if we want, maybe even build back up to the full F major scale. But the idea is that the strong, stable, resolution notes that builds the first measure is clearly F major triad, and for measure two, it's D minor. So if we want to get outside our normal muscle memory and riffs, and if we want to play within the plot of the melody, we could phrase lines around those specific resolution points and that would yield phrases that would be reminiscent of the original melody... and would themselves contain great melodic clarity and integrity.
Now here's where things really get interesting, to me anyways.
If you didn't know the tune, and if you go by the notion that the most important notes are the chord tones, and that improvising melodies over chords starts from using the 1-3-5-7 of whatever chord is happening... you're might assume that the chord progression is F major to D minor, yeah? Maybe? Just based on the theory that we all agree works and is so prevalent in jazz pedagogy. That would make sense right? F to D-? That's what's happening in the melody, and we're often times taught to improvise melodies by outlining the chord tones, so it would make sense that THAT'S how great melodies would be composed, right?
But what if I told you that wasn't the chord progression. What if the tune didn't go I -> vi ??
What if it's I -> ii ?
What if the chord in measure 2 is actually a G-7? This gets back to what Joe picked up on a few pages ago... that the chord progression and the melodic progression are like two different rivers that are connected and affect each other... but don't necessarily follow the same current.
If this seems like nothing more than a simple theory analysis that doesn't affect you, that's cool. For me... this discrepancy brings up some massive questions in my mind... and eventually leads to the desire to find a way to bring in new ways of organizing and specific methods for internalizing melodic and harmonic ideas so that I can help myself play music in a way that's ultimately more in tune with how the music I love ACTUALLY appears to be constructed vs what a theory book told me. The theory is all correct, none of it is wrong. It just doesn't really dig deep enough about the relationships possible between harmony and melody... nor does it give me a step-by-step method for learning to master any of those harmonic/melodic relationships.
This is a pretty simple example... but it's simplicity (to me) helps highlight some of the benefits we've been talking about for the last 8 or so pages. I'm gonna go sing this catchy little tune while cooking dinner.
-
Thanks, good example. Although I've no idea what the tune is :-)
-
Me neither. It's been bugging me so much that I've tried everything. Talking to the rain and flowers, scratching my head for hours...
-
Ha... nice... looks like someone's got a brain Originally Posted by PMB
It's If I Only Had a Brain from the Wizard of Oz. Great little tune.
-
Hmmm. That example struck a chord so to speak....
For years now I’ve been hearing melody lines and solos primarily from the harmony of the melody rather than relating it to the underlying chords. I’m basically tonicising them in your way of saying it.
That vertical relationship is always secondary and IMO is not always particularly illuminating or helpful.
So I think always hearing I as Do is another natural failing of the CST vertical approach when used ‘out of the box’ - more trad jazz chord subs approaches encourage you to hear the new chord as an entity in itself. If you are self taught this is actually clear right away I think. I suspect it is how Wes heard for instance.
I remember seeing this stuff in Charlie Parker and then reading Steve Coleman’s essay where he talks about what he calls invisible paths.
In Coleman’s analysis the harmony expressed in the line need not have a terribly obvious relationship to the underlying harmony except where the improviser chooses to end up/resolve.
Perhaps the difference here is that while like you I hear the expressed changes in the line as their own progression that should be heard but I don’t always think there’s a relationship to the left hand voicings. I don’t think changes jazz lines always have a simple relationship in this way.
They can do, but often you have dissonances in the melodic line that seem unconnected to the comping chords. This stuff with the maj7 on 7 (Barry’s B on G7) is a case in point. In each case we resolve to a related target chord - let’s say C for simplicities sake, but the dissonant chords we use to set it up are not necessarily related by any clear vertical relationship.
Another common example would be playing over F F#o7 C with F Fm C which you hear all the time.
None of which discredits or contradicts the quadrad approach in my mind. If anything it suggests ways in which it can be applied in combination with more horizontal harmonic and melodic thinking.
I also feel that this system in how you have presented it has maintained a strong sense of chord scale relationships. It certainly produces some beautiful sounds that I am keen to develop in my own playing. It gives you a way of getting at the good stuff in CST.
But there is also a potential in the quadrad approach for walking through a door into something quite new - for me - and unmoored from the cst tonality.Last edited by christianm77; 04-17-2018 at 05:01 AM.
Reply With Quote
There Will Never Be Another You - chord changes
Today, 02:06 AM in Comping, Chords & Chord Progressions