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Originally Posted by tonejunkie
Obviously the chords change in any tune, one can hear that plainly, but it doesn't mean the key changes. Although most jazz tunes do have key changes in them.
Are you trying tunes other than the blues? I'm only saying this because I'm not sure the blues is a reasonable vehicle for practising key centre changes.
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12-21-2020 09:44 PM
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Originally Posted by ragman1
Also thanks for everyones help :-) It makes sense now that I'm not just looking for a "Key Center" teacher and everyone has given me great ideas on how to move forward.
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Originally Posted by tonejunkie
But my point is that the sound is more important, much more important, than the name.
But you didn't answer my question. Are you trying tunes other than blues where key centres are unavoidable? Like All The Things You Are, for example. Sorry to keep on :-)
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Originally Posted by ragman1
Also I'm just wondering when you hear the note B over Am in a Am D7 G progression would you hear it as a 9 the same as if you B over Am in a Am Dm G7 C progression?
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Originally Posted by tonejunkie
If you look at the chords to ATTYA they definitely and obviously split up into various different keys. There's no ambiguity, it's clear and evident. For example, the first 8 bars are:
Fm - Bbm - Eb7 - Ab
Db - G7 - C - %
There you have a vi - ii - V - I - IV in Ab major followed by a V - I in C major. You have to change keys. And there are 5 keys in the whole song (Ab, C, Eb, G and E).
Also I'm just wondering when you hear the note B over Am in a Am D7 G progression would you hear it as a 9 the same as if you B over Am in a Am Dm G7 C progression?
Yes, because B is the 9 of Am wherever you are.
(Am is also the iii chord in F major where all the B's are flat. If you played a natural B over the Am it would sound a bit funny but it would still be the 9 of Am).
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Here's three examples over FM7 - Gm7 - Am7 - BbM7 - C7 - FM7.
The first Am is played diatonically with Bb, as is usual.
The second one has a B natural.
The third one (oddly!) has an F#.
One point is how the sound of those notes is affected by the harmonies around them. But if they were written out they'd still be called Am7, Am9 and Am6 regardless. At least, I think so. A theorist might correct that.
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Originally Posted by ragman1
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Spotting the difference between a true key change and chromatic harmony can take a experience.
Also it’s a little ambiguous sometimes.
Key changes are often structural; For AABA tunes it’s typical to stay in one key for the A sections change key in the B section. All The Things is atypical because it changes key from Ab to C in the first A and then the second A is the same thing in a couple of different keys (Eb and G); the last A is in Ab all the way through.
Most tunes aren’t that complicated. For instance Body and Soul stays in Db and goes to D and C in the B section. Have You Met Miss Jones is squarely in F but goes adventuring in Bb, Gb and D for the B.
But then what constitutes a modulation isn’t always clear. For instance I think of the IV, V, IIm, VIm and even IIIm keys as being in some way part of the home key even though you get strong II V’s and things moving into them. They are more like sub keys if you like - different floors of the same building.
but yeah - Does Honeysuckle Rose change key in the B section? Maybe? Sort of? But why would I think of the B of that tune as going to Bb when the same progression in another tune I might think of being in F?
How about Rhythm Changes. Well technically no, but in practice I play each chord in the B rather than just improvising in Bb (this is common in jazz for chains of dominant chords in fourths.)Last edited by christianm77; 12-22-2020 at 05:43 AM.
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Originally Posted by christianm77
Last edited by ragman1; 01-06-2021 at 02:20 AM.
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Originally Posted by tonejunkie
I did have trouble hearing the changes in Autumn leaves and tbh I think your playing has a lot of stepwise diatonic stuff going on. I’m not hearing compelling voice leading between chords which is a big part of straightahead jazz language.
And tbh, I think you should be taking lessons on that from the records. Again, this is a common thing I see, people are looking to answers from theory when they already have all the resources they need and the pressing work is to listen to and copy lines by ear from your favourite recordings until the sound of the music is in your ears and fingers, and to work out from there how to put it all together.
I might be mistaken but I would guess that you maybe haven’t done so much of that?
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Originally Posted by tonejunkie
I took some lessons from him and feel they have helped my overall musicianship quite a bit. The nice thing is you can get a taste of his teaching very affordably at his Patreon place, although private, one on one lessons will certainly be different, being based on your current level, needs etc.
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Originally Posted by christianm77
Originally Posted by christianm77
Originally Posted by GastonD
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what I'm trying to do at this point is learn jazz vocabulary using this key center approach due to how I hear lines on recordings and how I hear them in my mind. So if we are playing C Blues and a teacher tells me to play F Mixolydian over F7 its confusing... meaning that when I'm playing a F it sounds like a 4 to me not the 1. Or on a recording I heard a B on the G7 chord I would hear it as 7th of the key not the 3rd of G7.
I would see that the altered scale is spelled 1 b2 b3 3 b5 #5 b7 but when I hear it in real music as well as to make it useful to me I have to re-spell the scale 5 b6 b7 7 b2 b3 4.
if I hear Autumn leaves for example and a G is played over any chord in the minor 2 5 1 I hear that as 1st degree or "do" and if I hear that same note G played over any chord in the Major 2 5 1 4 I hear that as the 6th degree "la"
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Originally Posted by ragman1
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FUN? You think this stuff is FUN???
holey moley
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Originally Posted by ragman1
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Practice... quality over quantity.
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Originally Posted by tonejunkie
If you play the 7 scale chords of Bb you'll find the Dmi is the 3rd chord rather than D7. Other than that there's the chromatic chords going down right before the turnaround that (kind of) get outside of that scale a bit.
Using your ear and using a few devices, you can go outside of the Bb scale when improvising while using the scale as a guide. One of my favorite songs to solo on and it sounds like you have a good start on this Jazz journey
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Originally Posted by bobby d
Besides, I wouldn't agree that Bb major and G harmonic minor was one key, even if they are related.
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Since we are talking about key centers, Bb/Gmi use the same set of 7 notes - of course the Gmi would be the natural minor (Aeolian) which is in the melody of Autumn Leaves. The harmonic minor has one different note that could make improv more interesting, so that's a good point.
When I think of key centers I think of scales that chord progressions are centered on. That doesn't have to exclude other notes that might be used when improvising. There may be two or more chords in a song that are based on the same scale. It's a good thing to take note of IMO.
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Originally Posted by bobby d
Actually, there's also a brief foray into the melodic minor in the A section but I think that's more a decoration.
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Originally Posted by bobby d
IMHO the most important place to start – and one that I neglected to do enough of in my formative years, and which seems harder to do as I get older and memory is not as effortless as when I was young – is to learn songs. My teacher tried, but I kept getting sidetracked into scales and the like. Learn the chords, learn the melody and understand how they go together (chord tones, extensions, tensions, approach notes, chromaticism- it's all in the melodies of great music). After you have learned a couple of hundred songs, improvisation becomes much easier because you have an intuitive and developed understanding of how melodic content fits over harmonic content.
Listening to people who identify themselves as having studied in these various systems, it seems to my ears that the folks who studied the Barry Harris approach sound the most like "jazz" as I understand it. It is specifically designed to help its students access that, whereas many of the other systems are more generally applicable to all genres of music and don't necessarily tend to shape the student towards sounding like jazz.
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When I first started playing all those years ago I would do the chord/scale approach. Not bad but now some 48 years later I would never do that again. The past few years I have been thinking only chord by chord. That is thinking of the arps in the chord and forgetting scales almost entirely. Naturally this goes along with the most important part of improvising and that is knowing the melody inside and out.
So learning the melody and the arps for the tune. Then slowly adding in fills and outlining the chord. I am not a killer player but this to me has done more for my playing than anything else. Certainly at transition points I might have the awareness of key center but the focusing on the chord itself. By know the melody of the tune, I mean you know it so well that you can simply starting playing it on any note on the fingerboard and getting most of the melody without thought only ear. That is hard depending but actually Christmas songs are good for this as melody is engrained.
The example I have is lately I started working up Nica's Dream to know the tune really well. I just went over it for days and days. Thinking chords and trying to only use chord notes or extensions. Well sure enough I tune in Wes Montgomery playing Nica's dream and start playing along with it. Just melody and comp a bit. After awhile I easily could go along and play the tune ( no not Wes by any means) but it was freeing. I thought in terms of phasing and playing arps in pattern based the chord. I overcame my usual getting lost at times and I could hear and let things go by knowing where I was to able to pick up and play at any point.
This may sound really stupid or basic but scales just did not do that for me and I quit looking at the tune as a bunch of scales and keys centers.
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It seems that, at one extreme, there is an approach which may be this (I don't really know): The player comes up with a melodic idea. This could be a specific melodic cell, like 1 2 3 5. Or some other kind of phrase. Maybe it's just a general shape to the changes in pitch, like up a few steps, up one more, down somewhere in the middle etc. Then, that player cycles the idea through the harmony in different ways. The idea may be embellished, developed or abandoned for a new idea as the song progresses. But, the core of it is cycling some kind of idea through harmony in interesting ways. Warren Nunes played that way.
At another extreme, there is the player who scat sings a line in his mind that fits the harmony and plays that. The guiding principle is to make a new melody for the tune, sort of as if the composer had written it. I hear Paul Desmond, to name one, that way.
Obviously, these are extremes to illuminate the point.
The first way is chord scale based. The second way, I believe, is ear-training based. You have to be able to generate a melodic line that is also harmonically interesting.
Both can sound great.
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Originally Posted by rpjazzguitar
anyone selling an ibanez pm120?
Today, 01:33 PM in For Sale