How to play over Min7b5 (half diminished) chords, Gibson 175, FractalAudio

[jzucker]

How to play over Min7b5 (half diminished) chords, Gibson 175, FractalAudio

here's a link to the corrected tabs as a free download on my patreon. Sorry about that.




Just a moment...



I get asked about this all the time. My answer is to think about them as minor chord up a minor
3rd from the root.


So for Dm7b5, think of Fminor.
The second question I get is "which minor scale".
The two that I use most often are:
FMelodic minor (F G Ab Bb C D E) and
F Dorian (F G Ab Bb C D Eb).


Notice that Melodic minor has the E natural which is the natural 9 on the Dm7b5 chord.
If the Dm7b5 is going to Cmin, you will need to carefully voice-lead your lines since that
note is the major 3rd of the key.


If you listen to Coltrane on the Lush Life album, he uses this technique all over "I love you".
Pat Martino also uses it and borrowed much of his language from that recording.


This example uses legato techniques over F Melodic minor material over a Dm7b5 chord.
Note - I notated this using economy picking but for the 2nd and 3rd downstrokes in each
phrase you can also use hybrid picking and i and m for those 2 notes.


https://youtube.com/watch?v=xB2OWhgvmes


#sheetsofsound #halfdiminished #min7b5
#jazzguitarlessons #guitarlessons
#jazzguitar #modernjazzguitar #jazzguitarriffs
#IbanezGuitars #IbanezBenson #altereddominant

[Reg]

Yea Jack... I use that approach all the time. Great Vid.... really material all should develop in their playing. Throw in some blue notes...

[Christian Miller]

That’s how I do…


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[GuyBoden]

Interesting, good stuff, what's the thinking about using Melodic minor modes?

The D Locrian Nat2 scale over Dm7b5, obviously, it's the same notes, but not thinking about the parent Melodic minor scale, thinking about it's modes.

Does this Melodic minor modes method make it too complex for teaching?

Melodic minor mode six
D Locrian Nat2 scale
D E F G Ab Bb C

(It could also be named D Aeolian b5.)

[pamosmusic]

Interesting, good stuff, what's the thinking about using Melodic minor modes?

The D Locrian Nat2 scale over Dm7b5, obviously, it's the same notes, but not thinking about the parent Melodic minor scale, thinking about it's modes.

Does this Melodic minor modes method make it too complex for teaching?

Melodic minor mode six
D Locrian Nat2 scale
D E F G Ab Bb C

(It could also be named D Aeolian b5.)

You mean how to refer to it? Like sixth mode of F Mel minor or as its own thing or whatever?

If that’s the case … then I always think of the parent scale, which I think is just a relic of my old guitar teacher. I think there are advantages to that, but across the board the way my students get it best if is we say “minor off the third” for example.

[pamosmusic]

(As an aside, Jack, I just had a student ask me about this sound because “I saw a video about it on the internet” and now I’m wondering if it was this video!)

[jzucker]

I have conflicting views on that subject. Sometimes, I think the simplicity of thinking of minor tonalities and superimposing them up or down has it's advantages. It makes things simple, let's people use the licks they already know, let's them use familiar sounds like pentatonics, blues scales, etc. Other times, I think it's worth breaking out of the box and learning a distinctly different repertoire such as looking at the scale in the way you describe. I have been doing a little of the latter lately with synthetic , asymmetrical pentatonics.


For example, one of my favorites is the Maj7#5 pentatonic used over a dom7 chord on the 3rd degree. For example, BMaj7#5 over G7 which gives you a G7#5#9 sound. The scale is B D# F G A#. That can also be looked at as Eb b6 pentatonic.


But, while I love that sound, it's somewhat of a finger buster for me. So I thought to myself, well - since it comes from Ab Melodic minor, what if I adjust the notes as I move across the strings to avoid large stretches so that during sequences, i'm not all tangled up. And I came up with this scale.

Interesting, good stuff, what's the thinking about using Melodic minor modes?

The D Locrian Nat2 scale over Dm7b5, obviously, it's the same notes, but not thinking about the parent Melodic minor scale, thinking about it's modes.

Does this Melodic minor modes method make it too complex for teaching?

Melodic minor mode six
D Locrian Nat2 scale
D E F G Ab Bb C

(It could also be named D Aeolian b5.)

[Christian Miller]

Inevitable “derivative” vs “parallel” post. (Goodrick, the Advancing Guitarist.)

I’d stick my oar in for the derivative - that is “master scale” - approach, as you maximise utility of material (scales, voicings, licks etc) at the expense of a bit of mental arithmetic (that you need to drill a lot, in my experience). It’s an approach that unifies a diverse bunch of masters - Holdsworth with Barry Harris and Lage Lund for instance.

But that’s not to say parallel isn’t useful too. Adam Roger’s approaches it this way IIRC. Less mental arithmetic, more material. But if you know your intervals you can get good at altering stuff you know … interestingly my obsession with figured bass etc is encouraging me to think this way.

You can relate to a wider conception
- theoretical unification
Vs
- mastery of specific cases

If you already do one, there’s value in investigating the other.


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[Tal_175]

Inevitable “derivative” vs “parallel” post. (Goodrick, the Advancing Guitarist.)

I’d stick my oar in for the derivative - that is “master scale” - approach, as you maximise utility of material (scales, voicings, licks etc) at the expense of a bit of mental arithmetic (that you need to drill a lot, in my experience). It’s an approach that unifies a diverse bunch of masters - Holdsworth with Barry Harris and Lage Lund for instance.

Well, another downside is the fretboard blindness that results from it. It deprives people of the arrangement, and harmonic exploration tools that a good fretboard knowledge provides. A good fretboard knowledge is one that aligns itself with one's mental harmonic and musical organization. If the only way one relates to dominant chords is playing their tonic melodic minor licks oriented to the b9 of the chord, aren't they just kicking the can down the road?

I guess you can pick your battles by mixing the approaches. That's why Barry Harris used the parallel approach for dominants when teaching (instead of just using the major scale from the 4th degree), since it's a central harmonic tool. But used derivative approach for minor7 b5's.

[Tal_175]

I have conflicting views on that subject. Sometimes, I think the simplicity of thinking of minor tonalities and superimposing them up or down has it's advantages. It makes things simple, let's people use the licks they already know, let's them use familiar sounds like pentatonics, blues scales, etc. Other times, I think it's worth breaking out of the box and learning a distinctly different repertoire such as looking at the scale in the way you describe. I have been doing a little of the latter lately with synthetic , asymmetrical pentatonics.


For example, one of my favorites is the Maj7#5 pentatonic used over a dom7 chord on the 3rd degree. For example, BMaj7#5 over G7 which gives you a G7#5#9 sound. The scale is B D# F G A#. That can also be looked at as Eb b6 pentatonic.


But, while I love that sound, it's somewhat of a finger buster for me. So I thought to myself, well - since it comes from Ab Melodic minor, what if I adjust the notes as I move across the strings to avoid large stretches so that during sequences, i'm not all tangled up. And I came up with this scale.

Jack, it seems to me that this is still the derivative approach applied differently, no?

[jzucker]

Jack, it seems to me that this is still the derivative approach applied differently, no?

not sure what that means.

[pamosmusic]

Jack, it seems to me that this is still the derivative approach applied differently, no?

I mean …. Sort of? But because he’s using pentatonics it’s kind of not really either?

It seems like there’s a bright line between thinking of things in a derivative or relative way (sixth mode of F melodic minor) and thinking of them in a parallel way (D aeolian b5 or whatever the hell we’re calling it). But there’s not. Theres kind of a spectrum where there are different ways to think about the scale that are still relative and different ways to think about the scale that are still kind of parallel.

Like this pentatonic idea … so thinking of an augmented pentatonic scale is obviously not derivative because it’s taking a specific sound from melodic minor and thinking of it as distinct … but it also is kind of derivative because you’re applying it over something other than the augmented major 7 after which it’s named.

So there’s a wide spectrum of ways to look at this stuff and the pentatonic thing kind of demonstrates that there isn’t really a hard line between these two different ways of thinking about the scales.

[jzucker]

ok, after reading a few posts, I see folks are attempting to differentiate between derivative and parallel. Now that I understand what you're talking about I will say that I don't really put much credence into the difference. At the end of the day, the chords are the chords and the notes you play are the notes against the chords.

When you are first learning, perhaps you are blindly playing "parallel" stuff but as you practice it and it gets ingrained in your psyche and ear, it's no longer just blindly playing parallelism. My studies and transcriptions of / with Pat Martino showed me that he approached things STRICTLY from the parallel standpoint but I think we can all agree that he didn't sound limited at all. And if you go back and listen to john coltrane's "I love you" from the lush life album, you can CLEARLY hear that he was playing parallelisms. Listen to what he plays over the Gm7b5-C7. He's clearly using Bbm7-Eb7 lines and at times Dbm7-Gb7. Later, he demonstrated a mastery of what you guys are calling derivative.

The truth is a good musician learns both techniques. It's not an either or. There are tons of advantages to thinking in parallel including the fact that you are playing material that is familiar to both you and your audience. People say they know what they like but they really like what they know.

LEARN ALL THE CONCEPTS.

[Christian Miller]

ok, after reading a few posts, I see folks are attempting to differentiate between derivative and parallel. Now that I understand what you're talking about I will say that I don't really put much credence into the difference. At the end of the day, the chords are the chords and the notes you play are the notes against the chords.

When you are first learning, perhaps you are blindly playing "parallel" stuff but as you practice it and it gets ingrained in your psyche and ear, it's no longer just blindly playing parallelism. My studies and transcriptions of / with Pat Martino showed me that he approached things STRICTLY from the parallel standpoint but I think we can all agree that he didn't sound limited at all. And if you go back and listen to john coltrane's "I love you" from the lush life album, you can CLEARLY hear that he was playing parallelisms. Listen to what he plays over the Gm7b5-C7. He's clearly using Bbm7-Eb7 lines and at times Dbm7-Gb7. Later, he demonstrated a mastery of what you guys are calling derivative.

The truth is a good musician learns both techniques. It's not an either or. There are tons of advantages to thinking in parallel including the fact that you are playing material that is familiar to both you and your audience. People say they know what they like but they really like what they know.

LEARN ALL THE CONCEPTS.

I had a bit of trouble following this, I think maybe the terms are reversed? Not sure.

Goodrick’s terms as I understand them

Derivative as ‘apply melodic minor to the V or bII of the dom7 chord’. Many applications derived from a few scales
Parallel as ‘play Lydian dominant or altered on dom7’. Scales applied to chords one to one.


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[pamosmusic]

I had a bit of trouble following this, I think maybe the terms are reversed? Not sure.

Goodrick’s terms as I understand them

Derivative as ‘apply melodic minor to the V or bII of the dom7 chord’. Many applications derived from a few scales
Parallel as ‘play Lydian dominant or altered on dom7’. Scales applied to chords one to one.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Yeah I believe derivative is a synonym for “relative” in the Levine terminology

[rpjazzguitar]

My thinking, up to now, goes something like this.

Say, Bm7b5 E7 Am (keeping things simple for the sake of discussion).

For Bm7b5 there are four chord tones. B D F A.

It's the locrian chord in C, so the rest of the white keys will work.

Now, it's B D F A and also C E G. To my ear, I don't really want to lean on any of the C E G that hard, although I kind of like the E.

Bm7b5 is also 6th mode D melodic minor. In this case, there's only one difference from all-white-keys and that's the C#. So add that in to the white keys and we're up to 8 notes that work, from one perspective or another.

Then, you can think about A harmonic minor. A B C D E F G# A. So throw in the G# and we're up to 9 notes.

Three left. They're the black keys apart from C# and G#. That is, F#, D# and A#. F# seriously mucks with the sound of the b5 because it's the natural 5. D# wants to make the chord sound major, so it mucks with the minor sound of the chord. A# makes it a minor major seventh flat 5, which doesn't sound good to me. It's also a half step above one chord tone and below another, which puts three half steps in a row. Sure, you might do it, but it's not the most consonant choice.

So, now we've got 9 notes that are applied to the Bm7b5 based on different ways of thinking about it. It could be thought of as "General Minor Flat Five Scale".

How to use the idea?

Well, to my ear the four chord tones (and maybe the E) are the ones that sound fully consonant if you're leaning on the chord. With major scale harmony I find it easy to divide the chromatic scale into chord tones, consonant extensions and other. Sometimes "other" is common tensions and avoid notes separately, but I'm not consistent on that. With m7b5 I don't hear that division -- maybe I should. So, it's all about chord tones and melody. If the harmonic rhythm is quick, I probably end up thinking about the chord tones and target (the tonic minor) and play A minor something. If the Bm7b5 is lasting a little longer, it's melody respecting the chord tones and adding the spice.

If I have to think about it, the mental shortcuts are:

1. Major scale a half step up.
2. Minor scale a minor third up.
3. Minor scale of the target (a step down and probably harmonic minor)
4. Only play notes that sound good.

[jzucker]

there's another choice which I will be making a video on but i'm afraid this will get the group into an uproar, . You can use a melodic minor a 1/2 step up from the m7b5 chord in a 2-5-1 progression.

So if the progression is

| dm7b5-g7 | C |

I will sometimes use | EbMelodic Min - AbMelodic Min | C of some type

Exercise for the class, who can tell me why this works and what the thinking behind it is? (other than it sounds good).

By the way, i'm doing an exercise on this soon.

And another thing...When you come up with names for these terms like derivative, plurals, parallels, asymetric, synonyms - you have to be prepared that there is no ISO standard for this terminology. This is one of the problems I have with college level theory courses. They've standardized on centuries-old nomenclature.

I studied with Sandole, Martino, Larry Wooldridge, Andrew White, Joe Pass, Barney Kessel and never once heard the term derivative or parallel in regard to the discussion in this thread.

Dennis, Pat and Larry used to talk about diatonic plurals/synonyms and what that meant was that - given that a 13th chord represents every other interval from one to 13, i.e. 1 3 5 7 9 11 13, if you resort them, you end up with 1,2,3,4,5,6,7 which is a diatonic scale. So Dennis, Pat and Larry used to emphasize that any diatonic (non altered) chord in a key is a plural/synonym for any other diatonic chord in that key.

But talk about diatonic plurals or synonyms to the average jazz student in college and they will likely have ZERO idea what you're talking about since they are "made up" terms.

Which is something I discuss on my site (dodecaphonics)

https://www.jackzucker.com/dodecaphonics

[pamosmusic]

there's another choice which I will be making a video on but i'm afraid this will get the group into an uproar, . You can use a melodic minor a 1/2 step up from the m7b5 chord in a 2-5-1 progression.

So if the progression is

| dm7b5-g7 | C |

I will sometimes use | EbMelodic Min - AbMelodic Min | C of some type

Exercise for the class, who can tell me why this works and what the thinking behind it is? (other than it sounds good).

By the way, i'm doing an exercise on this soon.

Ohhh yeah this is a cool sound ... also gives you a little ambiguity. Technically that m7b5 is still there but also kind of feels like the Jordu II-V-i vibe too.

And another thing...When you come up with names for these terms like derivative, plurals, parallels, asymetric, synonyms - you have to be prepared that there is no ISO standard for this terminology. This is one of the problems I have with college level theory courses. They've standardized on centuries-old nomenclature.

I studied with Sandole, Martino, Larry Wooldridge, Andrew White, Joe Pass, Barney Kessel and never once heard the term derivative or parallel in regard to the discussion in this thread.

Dennis, Pat and Larry used to talk about diatonic plurals/synonyms and what that meant was that - given that a 13th chord represents every other interval from one to 13, i.e. 1 3 5 7 9 11 13, if you resort them, you end up with 1,2,3,4,5,6,7 which is a diatonic scale. So Dennis, Pat and Larry used to emphasize that any diatonic (non altered) chord in a key is a plural/synonym for any other diatonic chord in that key.

But talk about diatonic plurals or synonyms to the average jazz student in college and they will likely have ZERO idea what you're talking about since they are "made up" terms.

Which is something I discuss on my site (dodecaphonics)

https://www.jackzucker.com/dodecaphonics

Yeah people hate this because it sounds like "you can play anything over anything" ... like it invalidates the work you do to learn how to play changes. But it's obviously way more subtle than that. You learn how to play very functionally because those are the more common and inside sounds, but also because using those less common diatonic substitutes (Fmajor7 over Cmaj, for example) start to sound not like subs, but like implied changes. So you have to have the vocabulary to make them work.

That's the good stuff though. How those changes start to feel a little more alive and interesting ... you just have to have the lines to make them sound convincing.

Super cool

[Christian Miller]

Actually as Barry guy mostly I relate m7b5 to the dominant a major third down, so

Bm7b5 E7 Am is
G7 running down to E7b9 (G#o7) and then to Am

(That's the most vanilla option. Obviously there's tritones and such)

But the minor relationship gives you the more Bill Evansy natural 9 on the m7b5. Not such a common sound in bop, but it used - Conception is a good example. This is an Amaj7+5 arp on the Ebm7b5 chord - although amusingly Bit Evans plays a Amaj7 arp in the melody when he played it. So playing against type.

[jzucker]

Here's the latest video demonstrating using a melodic minor up a 1/2 step from the dm7b5 in a ii-v-i progression

[Christian Miller]

there's another choice which I will be making a video on but i'm afraid this will get the group into an uproar, . You can use a melodic minor a 1/2 step up from the m7b5 chord in a 2-5-1 progression.

Barry would often recommend the reverse, use a IIm7b5 V7 I as a sub for a II7 V7 Im or a bVI7(#11)

So it goes both ways.

So if the progression is

| dm7b5-g7 | C |

I will sometimes use | EbMelodic Min - AbMelodic Min | C of some type

Exercise for the class, who can tell me why this works and what the thinking behind it is? (other than it sounds good).

I can think of a few explanations as to 'why' this works. In practical terms I think tend to think of it as a loosely functional sub. It's a II V, you can change chord colours to dominant. Also D altered (superlocrian) is only one note away from D locrian..

By the way, i'm doing an exercise on this soon.

And another thing...When you come up with names for these terms like derivative, plurals, parallels, asymetric, synonyms - you have to be prepared that there is no ISO standard for this terminology. This is one of the problems I have with college level theory courses. They've standardized on centuries-old nomenclature.

The nomenclature may not be as old as you think in fact...

I studied with Sandole, Martino, Larry Wooldridge, Andrew White, Joe Pass, Barney Kessel and never once heard the term derivative or parallel in regard to the discussion in this thread.

It's Mick Goodrick's terminology. I don't think it's especially universal. But it is what I saw in his book, so I use it. We can use whichever terminology you can prefer, if it makes it clearer.

[jzucker]

here's the updated video with melodic minor up a 1/2 step over the dm7b5 chord...

[Christian Miller]

Yeah I believe derivative is a synonym for “relative” in the Levine terminology

Tbh I think I prefer that


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[rpjazzguitar]

Dm7b5 is locrian in Eb. So Eb major is a common option.

Ebmelmin lowers the G (in the Ebmajor scale) to Gb (which makes it the melodic minor). That Gb the major third of Dm7b5. So, it's playing a major third against a minor third and the rest is more vanilla.

It occurs to me that I've never specifically worked on taking what seems like it could be the worst note in the chromatic scale and trying to embed it in a line so strong that it becomes a great note.

Abmelmin is aka Galt so it gives both altered 5s and altered 9ths.

[pamosmusic]

Dm7b5 is locrian in Eb. So Eb major is a common option.

Ebmelmin lowers the G (in the Ebmajor scale) to Gb (which makes it the melodic minor). That Gb the major third of Dm7b5. So, it's playing a major third against a minor third and the rest is more vanilla.

It occurs to me that I've never specifically worked on taking what seems like it could be the worst note in the chromatic scale and trying to embed it in a line so strong that it becomes a great note.

Abmelmin is aka Galt so it gives both altered 5s and altered 9ths.

Right but also for clarification, if you actually stack thirds off the “altered scale” it is a half diminished chord.