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Originally Posted by Mick-7
PhD candidates do seem to have two main hobbies
1) avoiding doing their PhD work
2) complaining about how much PhD work they have to do, usually over drinks
Also I don’t have any money
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04-11-2024 04:10 PM
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Originally Posted by rpjazzguitar
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Originally Posted by Tal_175
Anyway if the person saying it’s a fee lunch is meant to be … no it isn’t?
It’s funny, 2nd mode melodic minor? Just go and transcribe Charlie Christians rose room, first few bars will do it. This is not about what people do in the abstract. If you learn jazz by listening to jazz this concept arises naturally. Because that’s how people did it most of the time.
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Originally Posted by Christian Miller
The reason I am talking about scales is I was originally responding to a post where you said you prefer the master scale approach.Last edited by Tal_175; 04-11-2024 at 05:55 PM.
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Originally Posted by Tal_175
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Originally Posted by Tal_175
It’s also the way most of those guys taught and learned.
Parallel thinking also clearly exists. A good simple example might be the alteration of a riff to fit a blues, but I wouldn’t say there so much obvious modal thinking…
the relative concept for me came from learning from records, and going back to Barry just confirmed and vastly extended what I’d already seen for myself.
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Usually at this point someone says they never wanted to learn bop anyway, but want to play contemporary jazz like people who wear plaid shirts. In which case, fair dos. I do think plaid shirt wearing correlates with a higher incidence of parallel/root based thinking.
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Originally Posted by Christian Miller
I do get your point that derivative notions do exist on the records. But the derivative application of harmony is very specific to an individual players approach in my experience. I don't think it's easy to make generalizations about the situations in which the derivative approach is used across the style even within a period.
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Originally Posted by Tal_175
A lot of modern modal players do sound modern and modal on standards, which is cool… it’s a different accent.
Otoh plenty leant to apply bop language by transposing etc at college but may not know these ways into m7b5 chords and so on and have to practice those separately (heaven forfend!) so it’s not black and white. I don’t know tbh. I’m constantly surprised at the things they don’t teach at some of the places, but they seem to produce people can play, who cares I guess.
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One thing I was addressing is pros and cons of thinking Galt vs Abmelmin. I do see it as pros and cons.
In my playing, if I see Galt, I can do it thinking from the root or from the parent melodic minor, Abmelmin. But that's because it comes up a lot on the G root.
If I saw D#alt or Gbalt, I don't have the note names instantly available. It would be a good thing, but I haven't drilled it enough. I could think about note names, but it would take too long. I know the intervals (half whole half, then whole tone) which would work, although I might be root bound as I searched for them. More efficient would be thinking about the parent melmin scale, because I instantly know the note names in all of those (same as major, but flat the third).
So I end up preferring knowledge and use of the chord names but, as a practical matter, where my knowledge is spotty, the parent melmin is easier for me. That's because I haven't done the work on alt scales to get them instantly available in 12 keys and several additional enharmonic spellings. Or, by fingering pattern. Or by intervals without having to think too much about the root.
That D#alt is pretty easy if you think Emelmin. Or Em(add9). It would be nice to instantly know the chord tones (which I'd have to laboriously work out for this post). Or you could think half step whole step half step whole steps which becomes D# E F# G A B C#. Even as I look at that now, I can't instantly pick out the chord tones. R 3 #11 b13 b7 b9 #9. Oh.
For the purpose of teaching improvisation, I am reminded of what Jovino Santos Neto reported about how Hermeto Pascoal taught him. Apologies to both of them if I've gotten any of this wrong.
Fans might recall that Miles Davis once called Hermeto "the most impressive musician in the world", or so it says on the Internet. Hermeto is on Live Evil.
Hermeto had the students write in several alternatives to each chord in the chart.
That is, if the chord was Cmaj7, they'd write in several different chord names in the white space above the chord symbol and then use them, initially at random, but, presumably, more deliberately as they learned the sounds.
So, for Galt, for example, you'd have a series of alternatives including, I would think, Abm(add9), G7b9b13, Bbm7, Db13 and many more possibilities.
Some of them would have the G root, some not. You'd have a choice. Abm(add9), for example, is Ab B Eb Bb which you could choose to write as G7b9#9b13. It's not a bad idea to think of it that way -- and it will be even better when you have as many G7b9#9b13 licks under your fingers as you do for Abm.
Hermeto's approach also has the advantage of teaching all of this in the context of a song. He also apparently taught this in a group setting with lots of time on the charts trying everything out.
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Originally Posted by Tal_175
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Originally Posted by Christian Miller
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Originally Posted by GuyBoden
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One thing I do know is that 'jazz college' is not a monolithic entity. Different institutions do teach differently. Even individuals within institutions teach different. Ritchie Hart's approach being very different to Mick Goodrick's, and so on.
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Originally Posted by Christian Miller
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Originally Posted by Tal_175
So you see the chord D/C - what are you thinking?
My thoughts are that the concept of root as independent from bass is starting to disappear in contemporary jazz. Parallel thinking tends to erode the conception of root - so we see D/C - we think lydian. We write Bbm7b6, and think of it as Aeolian rather than Gbmaj9/Bb and there Gb Major and so on. There are solid reasons of practicality why this is helpful for "non functional music" and has become widely adopted - like that of Kurt Rosenwinkel. But the idea of root in this case seems to be mostly equated with bass. (Although Evan and Allan considered that music in relative terms.)
And that is parallel thinking really. Understanding music from the root is a form of applied or relative thinking by definition.
In some ways this is more like the old way of dong things. One thing that has forced me to think more in parallel is figured bass and taking sequences through the key. In the baroque conception like the modern jazz understanding, D/C is indeed a chord on C with a #4 in it.
I haven't done that much of it in bebop because to be honest, there's not a huge amount of it. There are very few - basically no - diatonic sequences in Charlie Parker. Even like the examples I give in some my videos, such as in my diminished video. Parker didn't play that stuff.
So yes, it does depend on the music.
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Definitely root, not bass. As in, the root of G7alt is G, not Ab. Regardless of the inversion or voicing. Otherwise (if the implied root is not G) it's not G7, it's functioning as something else. We are talking about functional harmony in this context of course.
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Originally Posted by Tal_175
OTOH in my experience G7alt/Ab is not common as chord symbol. I can probably find an example in the New Real Book somewhere, but I'd have to look. I actually think something like Abm11(maj7) is more common. Wouldn't swear by it though... .
So something like D/C would be a better example.
Root is a problematic concept anyway. Which is the 'true' root of an Am7b5 chord - A or C? You could make a theoretical argument for either, but it is not obvious. (Barry had a discussion with some music theorists over this one time apparently). Ultimately I would say the root of that chord is a matter of expedience, not objective truth. Many people 'trained properly' would say Am7b5 (that's the mainstream position AFAIK) but usually their arguments boil down to 'that's what I was told' - more sophisticated arguments might include the cycle of fourths or constructing chords in thirds (Rameau etc) both of which I could argue against.
90% of the time modern jazz charts the bass is the root and vice versa. This wasn't always the case, even for standards. Many more inversions in earlier styles of harmony.
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Originally Posted by GuyBoden
did I learn the sort of modal parallel thinking in college? Yes.
did it help me play bebop? I don’t think so.
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Originally Posted by Christian Miller
I could be wrong, but I think there is some uniformity. Which for the record is a bummer.
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I mean modal parallel thinking doesn't even require more music theory. It's an exercise in nomenclature.
I say that because if you can construct a chord at the piano, you can construct a scale. If you know what notes are altered in the chord, you can build the scale (with the exception of half dim chords).
I suppose there's a few rules of thumb with things like shorthand - C7alt chord symbols etc - and the diminished scale and so on, but these are rules of thumb just as much as the tritone sub and so on. I wouldn't call them theory per se. It's just knowing stuff; street knowledge if you like. Specific cases.
The thing that may take a bit longer is learning the standard names for the scales. You know my feelings on that, but that's the way of the world haha.
The main bit of music theory in it is the Berklee criteria for avoid notes, and that's wrong anyway. So you may as well just use your ears.
Straightforward on piano. I'm terrible at piano and I can do it. 'Arranger's piano' they call it, don't they?
The problem for the guitarist applying this stuff is essentially intervallic fretboard mapping, which is not trivial. I think it takes a year or two of focussed study - did anyone get it done quicker? I like to teach students to derive other chord qualities from major 7 chord forms etc, and then build up to scales.
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Originally Posted by Christian Miller
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Originally Posted by Christian Miller
I think we have moved far away from the original discussion into the post modernist harmony. I'm happy to have a discussion about harmony being just a story we all chose to believe in because it has utility despite it being a crude approximation of the reality at best (which is no different than anything else we believe in, including counterpoint, lol).
But the original discussion we were having was the relative merits and shortcomings of the master (or parent) scale vs root oriented mental organization of the fretboard for chord specific playing (playing the changes). Be it internalizing a lick vocabulary or building lines that outline chords.
The two approaches in their pure form:
- Learn one or two (or three) master scales really well. Memorize licks, phrases that are organized around these scales and then drill superimposing this vocabulary based on the right interval of the chord in the moment. For example, learn the major scale really well. On the first chord of blues, think major scale from the fourth of the chord etc. (I actually know good jazz players who think that way). If you're playing altered dominant, think melodic minor from the b9 etc.
vs
- Always work on your chord vocabulary, lines, arpeggios with respect to the root of the chord so that the way you view your note choices correspond to the intervals that will be heard against the chord. So for example when you're playing G7Alt, you view Ab as the b9, not as a place holder for melodic minor material orientation.
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i was lucky. when i started out in the 80s, a buddy gave me a video tape on modes "john scofield on improvisation". it sounded nothing like the jazzmusicians (bird, rollins, wes) that i just recently had discovered. i thought it was complete rubbish. and it is.
edit: judge for yourself. the columbian marching powder certainly did not help...
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Originally Posted by GuyBodenOriginally Posted by Christian Miller
Keane - Everybody's Changing
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