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Youve probably heard of this. Sheryl Bailey and some contemporaries call it “family of four.” Barry Harris I believe calls it the Important Chords.
Originally Posted by rpjazzguitar
its Dominant off the root
Half diminished off the third
Minor 7 off the fifth
Major 7 off the flat seven
When you look at a lot of bebop soloing, that plus the minor third subbing really covers a lot of what they’re doing.
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06-11-2024 06:49 PM
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If they're who I think, sure hope this doesn't happen.... Originally Posted by rpjazzguitar
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Let's take G7. Arpeggios from all the chord tones of G7 are G7, Bmin7b5, Dmin7, Fmaj7. Add to these chords the G mixolydian scale with passing notes (G bebop scale but there could be more passing notes than the nat 7). These four arpeggios and the underlying scale can be used to develop vocabulary over all four of the chords and more. Originally Posted by rpjazzguitar
Suppose you are playing minor blues in D. The home chord is Dmin6. You can use the vocabulary from the G7 bebop family. Dmin6 = Bmin7b5.
The fourth bar of D min blues is a minor ii Valt: Amin7b5 D7alt.
So you can use F7 bebop family for Amin7b5 and Ab7 bebop family for D7alt.
For G7 Bmin7b5 Dmin7 and Fmaj7 you got the family. The remaining three chords also form a family. Cmaj7 Amin7 and Emin7.
So the idea is that you work on developing phrasal fluidity using the family and get good at it in different keys and areas of the fretboard. Then start applying it to tunes after a simple analysis to figure out how to apply this organization to the progression of the tune.
Pat Martino minorization is similar but uses the minor as the engine.
So instead of G7 bebop family, you would use D dorian phrases. You can use D dorian phrases over G7 Dmin7 Bmin7b5 and Fmaj7.
That's four chords of the C major harmony.
Guess what? You can use A Dorian over Cmaj chords. That gives you C Lydian. How about altered chords:
Amin7b5 D7alt
C dorian for Amin7b5 and Eb Dorian for D7Alt
Not to mention tonic minor. Of course you can just use Dorian for the tonic minor.
One set of vocabulary based on dorian to play over pretty much any chord you see in any standard.
Again the idea is to work on coming up with phrases that you like and develop your vocabulary using a simple concept and work on applying it to tunes.
I'm not really advocating for any particular organization. But it seems to me that it's a good idea to pick one and use it as the reference to approach jazz harmony and playing the changes.
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Thanks for clarifying. So, to put it in an easy key: Originally Posted by pamosmusic
C7
Em7b5 (rootless C9)
Gm7 (the iim if C7 is the V7)
Bbmaj7 (rootless Gm9)
In Warren Nunes' system of "there are only two types of chords" ...
In F,
Gm7 = Bbmaj7 = C7 = Em7b5 (Warren adds the Dm7 too - it's most of a Gm11).
and, for completeness,
Fmaj7 = Am7 = Cmaj7 (has the #11) = Dm7 (Dm7 is in both types).
Warren mixed and matched.
So, it's one means of harmonic organization, if I understand the term.
It does not include tritone subs. It does not include harmonized scales.
And it does not include finding subs by specifying a bass note a half step from a target, with a melody note and then experimenting to find inner voices that work well. I suppose Coltrane changes are another kind of harmonic organization.
The trick to this is paring the mathematical possibilities down to chord sequences that sound good and that you can play fast enough on guitar.
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Thanks for taking the time to explain it. Much appreciated! Originally Posted by Tal_175
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I was unable to get anything out of fretboard diagrams with dots showing a multitude of scales. Originally Posted by Mick-7
Instead, I started drilling on the notes of the chords and scales I use. The idea was to get them all automatic (as far as I could get with that). I already knew the fingerboard from reading.
I drilled it with IRealPro by cycling through 12 keys multiple times. If I couldn't do it, I slowed it down.
This doesn't guarantee art, but it sure helps with outlining changes while avoiding clams. And, this approach may start to break down when you want to create outside sounds.
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Don't be silly, find the biggest poster of Wes you can, and put that on your wall instead! Originally Posted by equenda
Thank-You/Grazie mille, PrincePlanet! Can I print your whole post and put it on the wall on my workshop??
Ettore
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Triads from root, 3rd and 7th Originally Posted by pamosmusic
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To take it back to this without talking about the ins and outs of what I’ve actually practiced over the years, I think what i would advise someone just getting into changes playing would be to learn to spell out harmony clearly. Most blues and rock players have no experience doing this, and tend not to know arpeggios and triads very well. Being able to spell out the changes of a blues or a simple standard is a prerequisite for anything more sophisticated and the basis of more jazz lines than you might think for all the verbiage expounded on clever stuff. Originally Posted by todonne3
Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
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I am currently being mentored in bebop, which I have never really done much with despite playing for 40+ years (I don't generally care for bebop as a listener- uptempo stuff is fatiguing rather than exciting to me, and bebop tends to be aggressively uptempo). I knew the basics of it, more rudimentarily than I should. It's been a bit frustrating, partly because my ear is just not all that good, but I am proceeding in the belief that it will improve my playing all around. Bebop is in many ways the foundational language of jazz over the last 80+/- years. I don't think of Jim Hall as a bebop-oriented musician, but he closely studied Charlie Parker's and Monk's recordings.
A key piece to this is guide tones rather than just any chord tones, typically identified as the 3rds and 7ths of the chords as they pass by (root and 5th can also be used, but the 3rds and 7ths contain the emotional punch). Playing a guide tone on the strong beats (1 and 3) even for an 1/8th note "attaches" the line to the underlying harmony, even with chromatics and tensions thrown in. Listen to, say, Bruce Forman- he can play alone with no accompaniment and you'll hear the harmony and even be able to identify the song without him playing the actual melody or chords. He does that by hitting the guide tones which weaves the harmony into his line.
One thing about being mentored by a sax player, though, is their expectation that a solo involves long lines of legato 8th notes that do not sit at all conveniently on the guitar- but are supposed to sound like they do.
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When Reg talks about "'harmonic organization" ... this is part of that toolbox..if you go through the inversions of these chords and play with some Originally Posted by pamosmusic
symmetric harmony ..the landscape opens up ALOT..experimenting with diminished and augmented scale embedded chords and symmetric patterns is also
a very good way to develop harmonic organization.
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I don’t know about all that. This is conceptually pretty simple. Originally Posted by wolflen
Four arpeggios that work on the dominant.
Dominant played relative to the dominant as written, m3 up, and tritone up.
Boom done.
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Here's how I would get a rock/blues player started on changes if I were starting from the beginning:
1) Learn 7th chord arpeggios and be able to play them through a tune. I would start with the top 4 strings (DGBE) since that's where most of your soloing will take place, and saves you from the problem of only knowing your arpeggios if you start them on the 6th string. This is one of those "necessary but not sufficient" steps. You need to know chord tones, and indeed some jazz lines are just straight up chord tones. But they will not get you playing changes alone, at least not to the point where it sounds good.
2) From there, you need some idiomatic ways to voice-lead lines through changes. I would start with bebop devices:
- For V7 chords going to I (major or minor), it's more idiomatic to use a dim7 arpeggio. It will share every chord tone with the V7 except for the root, which will be a b9. This lends itself to some very nice voiceleading. On a G7 going to Cmaj:
Ab voiceleads to G
B voiceleads to C
D voiceleads to C
F voiceleads to E (Eb for a minor chord)
- Making sure that chord tones line up on strong beats. This is not even close to a universal rule, as a cursory look at any transcription of great players will show. But it's very common, and being able to do it is important. You can check out Barry Harris half step rules, Jerry Bergonzi's book on bebop scales, it's all very similar material.
- Getting comfortable using approach notes: chromatic and diatonic approaches, usually but not always to chord tones. A very easy one to start is a leading tone below an arpeggio -- it's a bebop device you've heard a million times.
The boundary between bebop scales/half step rules and approach notes can be very ambiguous, and there's a lot of overlap. The important thing isn't to get caught up in what it's called, only understanding what it's for: using chromatics to make sure that notes land on the beats that you want them to. The combination of rhythm and harmony together.
3) The next big step is using "altered" harmony as a kind of melodic voiceleading. This is not universal to all jazz players. Bebop players used bits and pieces of it, and I don't think it really became systemized until the late 50's with guys like Coltrane and Bill Evans. But it's a very standard part of the jazz sound now.
In brief, we are going to use either a melodic minor scale or a half-whole diminished scale on a V7.
Let's take a Dm7 -> G7 -> Cmaj7. Standard chord scale theory would have you play D dorian, G mixolydian, and C ionian/major. Those all have the exact same notes, so not a lot of "changing" going on.
Instead on the G7 we use either the seventh mode of melodic minor or a half whole diminished. Compare the note collections:
D E F G A B C
G Ab Bb B Db Eb F
or
G Ab Bb B Db D E F
Any note in D dorian can voicelead nicely to a new note and back again when it goes to Cmaj. You will want to use your ears to decide whether to use the diminished or altered scale -- both can work, but some sound a little better in certain situations than others.
The number of players who can do this really well are very small, and working this out so that it's second nature is a big but worthwhile investment.
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To OP.
I'm practicing All of Me now. When its finished, the world will bend all their knees!
.. not.
But there is that 3rd option, just play what feels right. If it sounds lame, then try something else.
Keep trying until you find a thing that doesn't sound lame.
The lame sound is either a lack of knowledge, lack of rhythm, lack of love, etc. Lack of what you need.
The point is, you can have 5 approaches that lack of something else.
Just saying. This happens a lot.
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OP is long gone. He replied once on page 1.
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How do people use this info? If you think, "I'll use 7th mode melmin", do you actively avoid the E natural so that it doesn't make the melmin more ambiguous? Originally Posted by dasein
If you don't, then it's one 9 note scale (with both the E and Eb).
What notes are left? A, which is the natural 9th. Since you've got both b9 and #9, I guess you don't need the natural 9.
C, the 11th which is in the I chord coming up, so you don't want to start things sounding tonic-y too soon.
F#, the maj7, which could conflict with the dominant sound of the chord, but great players have done it.
So, this is a very basic question and maybe not a very good question. If you want to create the sound of jazz thinking about scales, how many notes should be in your pitch collection at any given time? Too few and things might sound too simple (or not) and too many and it all might start sounding like the chromatic scale.
Major candidates are 3 (triads), 5 (pentatonics), 6 (my own idiosyncratic reasoning about dropping the avoid note in some situations), 7 and 8.
I don't think any of these ways, but I'm curious about how people who might think about such things use the info.
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Here's how I think of it. I'm not saying my way is the best way, it's just what I've personally arrived at. Originally Posted by rpjazzguitar
I pretty much think of the 7th mode of melodic minor and the half whole diminished scale as variations of the same scale.
I don't think 7th mode of mel min or melodic minor a half step up. I think of a dom7#11 on the tritone.
It was always hard for me to think of Dm7 to Galt/Abmm to Cmaj on the fly. Dm7 to Db7 to Cmaj is much easier.
From there, G half whole diminished is the same as Db half whole dim. So in my head, Db half whole dim is almost the same as Db7#11, except with a b9 and #9 as opposed to a natural 9.
I'm not really concerned about keeping a consistent number of pitches in the collection, I only care about voice leading and making the lines sound flowing.
So if I'm on a Dm7 and a line ends on E, I'll go to Eb and play more of a melodic minor sound. If it ends on an F, I'll resolve to E and use the half whole dim. But again -- I don't really think of them as particularly distinct. It's kind of like how on a tonic minor, you have your choice of the natural 7, b7, and natural 6 as sounds you can draw from. But I don't think of those as belonging to separate scales, they all fall under the umbrella of "tonic minor."
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Thanks! Originally Posted by dasein
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Hi! Originally Posted by emanresu
At the beginning of this video I play a single note solo over the "ALL OF ME" chord progression. I try to follow the changes using arpeggios,the harmonic minor scale and chromatic approaches.
In this image you can see the first chorus with tab and fingering:
Bye!
Ettore
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Yea... if you haven't been schooled on basic functional harmony as in the direction of Equenda... get it together.
It's kind of like one of the standard building block of western music.
But that is not what will make you sound like your playing jazz. It's like playing a scale and only playing a few of the notes... or comping and leaving out most of the changes etc.
Again playing the changes isn't just spelling out the chords and connecting the dots with reference to a melody.
And using Key Center as Reference for developing improv ... doesn't really mean just using one key center.
There many approaches that can be applied or used as a Reference for.... developing a solo or Backing up someone else who is soloing.
Harmonic organization is just another tool for creating Relationships with the tune your playing and how to musically Organize the Development of those Relationships.
Using different harmonic organization for defining what the changes are...and what the development of those Changes can become... is part of being able to play in a Jazz style.
Being able to imply Blues using any approach is also part. Using Chord patterns helps expand with organization... using a.....playing the changes approach as well as a Key center approach. Will help one get out of the Vanilla mode.
I guess you need to decide what playing in a jazz style is for You. It's not just playing jazz tunes.
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Joe pass once said "when the chord changes, you should change" and who am I to argue with that? Now, when I improvise, I do "make the changes" but I take many liberties. I sometimes play a line over the bar line (Treat the new chord as though it is still the old chord for a bit), I substitute lots of changes, I "side slip" and I often play a different melody over the changes ("Quotes").
When improvising, I hear everything I play a nanosecond before I play it. Again, as Joe Pass once said, if you don't hear it, don't play it. I try to keep my lines melodic and lyrical. Who wants to hear a player running scales? And if you are just wiggling your fingers on the fretboard hoping it sounds good, guess what? It rarely will.
Kenny Burrell talks about how every great jazz guitarist has a system. I have my system and each of you should find your system if you have not done so already.
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If you play over the key center too much in jazz, your lines will sound vague and like you're just noodling over a key center. Playing over the key center works fine for rock and roadhouse blues, but for jazz you need to know how to play the changes, tension and resolution.
Most of the time... there are times when playing over a key center can sound absolutely great in jazz tunes too. You have to develop your ear and learn when you can play the key center thing, there's no formal rule about that, AFAIK.
Listen to a lot of jazz, get a good teacher, transcribe, and learn a lot of jazz tunes.
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Oh JFC, if you know how to play key centers you're playing changes too. There's no dichotomy.
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I would like to do a command F on this whole thread for the word “noodling.” Originally Posted by mr. beaumont
Seems to be used an awful lot with respect to playing key centers and not at all with respect to changes.
Controversial opinion: noodling over changes is also lame.
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Learn your arpeggios, that is a big key to sounding like you're playing the changes and not just noodling in a key. Once you can 'see' the arpeggios in the scales, that's a clue to which notes you can "lean on" to sound like you're playing the changes and not just running your fingers through scales *yuk* Learn to play them backward and forward, cleanly, with equal aplomb, in all positions and in any key.
Actually, a good player can come up with lots of interesting things to play by just limiting himself to the arpeggios. It's a good exercise to master when learning how to sound like your playing changes and not sound like vague noodling.
Then, once you've got them in your muscle memory you can start adding back in other scale tones, upper extensions, alterations, chromatic tones, leading tones etc, etc.
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