Dorian conversion?

[Christian Miller]

There’s some absolutely mega players who are basically grips guys when it comes to chords. (I do think if you spend any time doing chord melody stuff you build up a picture of how it fits together.)

[Tal_175]

There’s some absolutely mega players who are basically grips guys when it comes to chords. (I do think if you spend any time doing chord melody stuff you build up a picture of how it fits together.)

Fair enough, that's entirely possible. But let me ask you this way. When a student comes to you with the desire to study jazz seriously and become a legit player:

- Do you see a value in encouraging them to be aware of how the notes in the voicings they learn relate to the chord itself?
- Do you think it's a good idea for them to cultivate a more unified view of chord voicings and the underlying scales in a way that creates a positive feedback loop between harmony and lines as they grow their vocabulary?
- Do they just blindly memorize grips and not learn how those notes relate to the other notes available to them in same area of the fretboard?
- Do you teach them the "dominant scale" just as x number of box patterns in dots or do they learn it with the understanding of the intervals that make up the scale within a octave?
- Is it instantly obvious to them that if they make the b7 of the dominant scale a natural 7 they have a major scale or do they get another set of X position dot box patterns to memorize for the major scale?

[pamosmusic]

Fair enough, that's entirely possible. But let me ask you this way. When a student comes to you with the desire to study jazz seriously and become a legit player:

- Do you see a value in encouraging them to be aware of how the notes in the voicings they learn relate to the chord itself?
- Do you think it's a good idea for them to cultivate a more unified view of chord voicings and the underlying scales in a way that creates a positive feedback loop between harmony and lines as they grow their vocabulary?
- Do they just blindly memorize grips and not learn how those notes relate to the other notes available to them in same area of the fretboard?
- Do you teach them the "dominant scale" just as x number of box patterns in dots or do they learn it with the understanding of the intervals that make up the scale within a octave?
- Is it instantly obvious to them that if they make the b7 of the dominant scale a natural 7 they have a major scale or do they get another set of X position dot box patterns to memorize for the major scale?

It’s a bit of a false dichotomy, no? I frequently ask students to find their place on the fingerboard and give them no reference but pitch and chord quality or whatever, but I rarely ask them to spell the notes in the pattern for me in real time. That’s just not really the way playing the instrument works to me. There is a very fluid relationship between visual tactile memory and aural memory.

I think the inverse of these questions would be how often a person thinks about the pitch letter names they’re playing when playing at a tempo above a slow ballad. It’s driven by something other than that sort of knowledge.

Again … I’m not saying you shouldn’t learn notes on the neck or that the way you’re talking about understanding the neck isn’t useful. It’s obviously very useful and smart … I just mean that there isn’t real a clear dividing line between playing the notes and “playing the black dots.”

[Tal_175]

It’s a bit of a false dichotomy, no? I frequently ask students to find their place on the fingerboard and give them no reference but pitch and chord quality or whatever, but I rarely ask them to spell the notes in the pattern for me in real time. That’s just not really the way playing the instrument works to me. There is a very fluid relationship between visual tactile memory and aural memory.

I think the inverse of these questions would be how often a person thinks about the pitch letter names they’re playing when playing at a tempo above a slow ballad. It’s driven by something other than that sort of knowledge.

Again … I’m not saying you shouldn’t learn notes on the neck or that the way you’re talking about understanding the neck isn’t useful. It’s obviously very useful and smart … I just mean that there isn’t real a clear dividing line between playing the notes and “playing the black dots.”

I'm a bit puzzled that your take on what I said was the ability to spell pitches in real time when I was neither talking about spelling pitches nor realtime playing.

To be honest, I did not expect my posts to create any sort of controversy. I thought they were more in the "no brainer" category. Nevertheless, many jazz musicians have their own processes and I am interested learning about how other players approach their instruments and the music.

In summary what I was saying was, in my own experience, there is a big benefit in adopting the intervallic relationships to the harmony as the fundamental way we relate to the instrument to the extent that we relate to it visually and mentally. Moreover, the less random one's organization of their playing early on, the faster their ears can develop.

The more commonly seen path is appealing. It's got a less steep learning curve early on, although it's by no means easy. Memorize scale boxes and chord grips as two different aspects of the instrument. Once you can technically execute them, you got something to play. That's kicking the can down the road IMO when it comes to jazz. I believe it makes things harder for most people later on.

It's considerably slower if you try make yourself aware of the intervals in the voicings and see how they map on the intervals of the underlying scale and let the high level grips and boxes emerge from that. Yet, I believe it's crazy not to take the time and do it because it prevents the fretboard from holding you back down the line.

Note I'm not talking about the more casual, "Learn the grips and boxes but yeah, it's also good to know what's in them. By all means." approach. That makes the compartmentalized grips and dots view the fundamental and intervals the secondary thing (or even "optional" thing that the purist fanatics do). What I mean is making internalizing intervallic relationships the essential thing.

If it hurts your brain to identify every interval in a chord and move voices to different intervals,
if it is easier to memorize a new chord as a grip than to identify the voices in it,
if you don't see chord voicings in your single note playing and vice versa than in your approach the intervallic relationships aren't fundamental. Which is perhaps fine for some players, who knows.

[Tal_175]

There are more mega players outside of jazz tradition who don't study their instrument seriously than in jazz tradition (especially straight ahead and beyond).

I remember Julian Lage was talking how he was obsessed with Van Eps books as a teenager. Certainly no one can accuse players like Lorne Lofsky, Lage Lund or Jonathan Kreisberg of not having studied their instruments enough.

Even Joe Pass who liked to pass himself off as a folksy earplayer was all over this stuff. If you watch his chord melody instruction video, he talks a lot about chord scales. When he is talking about a chord, every note of the fretboard becomes an interval of the chord. That's just a natural way to view the guitar for someone who played the changes for decades. He's got his grips but these grips are very much connected with how he sees the lines and clearly these grips are very transparent to him.

There is a famous quote from another big natural player George Benson something like how he sees fretboard differently in the context of different chords.

[pamosmusic]

There are more mega players outside of jazz tradition who don't study their instrument seriously than in jazz tradition (especially straight ahead and beyond).

I remember Julian Lage was talking how he was obsessed with Van Eps books as a teenager. Certainly no one can accuse players like Lorne Lofsky, Lage Lund or Jonathan Kreisberg of not having studied their instruments enough.

Im not sure where anyone accused great players of not having studied their instruments enough, so I’m not entirely sure what you mean here.

I just think the patterns and the tactile stuff is an important part of the study.

There is a famous quote from another big natural player George Benson something like how he sees fretboard differently in the context of different chords.

It’s entirely possible the quote is apocryphal, but I think the one you’re referring to is where Benson says that when he’s playing a certain chord, the fretboard lights up with the notes available to him. Which serves your point but also suggests the visual aspect is super important to him as well.

[Tal_175]

Im not sure where anyone accused great players of not having studied their instruments enough, so I’m not entirely sure what you mean here.

I just think the patterns and the tactile stuff is an important part of the study.



It’s entirely possible the quote is apocryphal, but I think the one you’re referring to is where Benson says that when he’s playing a certain chord, the fretboard lights up with the notes available to him. Which serves your point but also suggests the visual aspect is super important to him as well.

Of course. The approach I'm talking about is not non-visual. I'll repeat what I said in an earlier post because I think it summarizes this view well:

In my own experience, there is a big benefit in adopting the intervallic relationships to the harmony as the fundamental way we relate to the instrument to the extent that we relate to it visually and mentally.

I'm of course talking about straight ahead and beyond jazz guitar. Approach to the instrument is strongly interconnected with the style it's played in.

[mr. beaumont]

Really what it boils down to is YOU need to to do whatever it takes for YOU to understand and play YOUR best.

We talk a lot about what the greats thought or didn't think. But they'e the greats. I've heard people use Wes Montgomery as an excuse for not reading music...and it's like "Ok, when you can play like Wes, then you don't have to read."

There's also the aspect of where your favorite players learned...did they learn in school or on the bandstand? I'm not saying the old school guys were necessarily better, but they sure needed to streamline things when they were basically learning on the job. Music school gives people a lot more time to conceptualize things.

[Reg]

Yea... sounds great. Personally... there are many approaches that work for playing jazz.... But what might want to work more on.... is rhythmic patterns that repeat. Maybe think of them as rhythm licks, or rhythmic phrases.

You can plug and play note organizations anyway your able to. By that I mean... use chord tone organization, any of the minor, dominant or any of the other approaches for organizing what notes you use and what they are using as the References for their use.

But rhythmically.... there isn't a lot of room for what organizations of melodic phrases you use..... I'll try and say it simple.... Different styles imply different rhythms and how you should rhythmically play.

I would just keep going in the direction your going. Don't get hung up on scales or how some knock Chord Scale concepts. They work.... it's just more work to understand how to use expanded Chord Tones. Anyway... just keep enjoying and improving etc... But you do need more work with your rhythmic skills...
If your having fun playing now... put some time into rhythmic licks...

[Reg]

Here's a post from Jack's techniques thread.... it's cool... might help