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Originally Posted by pamosmusic
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06-17-2024 04:06 PM
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Originally Posted by pauln
Maybe.
When we were saying “triad” with no additional modifier, though, we’re probably talking about three note, tertian, and inversions. As far as basic, easily categorized tools for improvisation go, that’s the meat and potatoes.
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I presume the context is more what **** should people work on first, rather than trying to define what is and isn’t a triad?
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If there isn't going to be a lengthy debate about what a triad means on a playing the changes thread, then they might as well shut down the forum.
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Originally Posted by Christian Miller
arpeggio
1: production of the tones of a chord in succession and not simultaneously
2: a chord in arpeggio
I don't see anything in that definition about harps, nor have I ever heard an instructor mention harps when explaining what arpeggios are, nor any mention of the speed in which they must be played.
Personally, I prefer the word arpeggios because using the words "chord tones" implies ONLY using the notes in the particular chord of the moment. However, the arpeggios don't always only include the notes in the chord, they can also include upper structure extensions of the chord, and even include alterations of the chord. YES, it can sometimes be just only the notes in the chord. The musician has the choice of using strictly only "the chord tones" or playing notes from an arpeggio that include extensions and even alterations of the chord. As always, it depends on the context of the specific tune and just the choice of the musician. You can play it one way on one chorus and a totally different way on the next chorus, there really are a lot of valid musical options.
I like to look at it not as just an isolated chord, too. What came before the chord and what comes after the chord have an influence on what tool I might choose to use in my improv at a particular time in a song. It's that sense of direction thing in one's phrasing, where did it come from, and where is it going?
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Originally Posted by AdroitMage
Sorry to … um … split hairs.
Anyway … arpeggio implies a structure to me. Like when I think of an arpeggio, I think of chord tones in succession. You’re talking about using the arpeggios to visualize the chord tones within a scale. So the arpeggio there is sort of a formal structure rather than a musical device.
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Originally Posted by pauln
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Originally Posted by AdroitMage
‘An arpeggio (Italian: [ar?pedd?o]) is a type of broken chord in which the notes that compose a chord are individually sounded in a progressive rising or descending order. Arpeggios on keyboard instruments may be called rolled chords.’
this does not contradict the dictionary definition although it is more specific.
So, one can quibble about definitions- but the fact that this association of pitch order and speed exists at all is problematic from a communication standpoint if we are taking about playing notes out of pitch order at a slow tempo. Ie not Yngwie.
The Wikipedia description is how the term has generally been used in Western music pedagogy historically. It also has these associations in the wider guitar community, perhaps more relevantly.
Arpeggio is an Italian word derived from the infinitive ‘arpeggiare’ or ‘to play on a harp’. We know what harps do of course. Arguably that’s a sort of fossilised meaning, but actually I think it relates rather well to what most musicians mean by it.
(In fact the literal meaning of many everyday Italian musical terms are not accurately reflected by their commonly used English synonyms. The literal Italian meanings of ‘piano’ and ‘legato’ are interesting, for instance, and probably better explain what to do to a student.)
The term used in classical music theory fwiw is also chord tone when describing for instance the construction of melodies.It’s also a good clear English term. Chord tones. Tones of the chord. No Italian is necessary. I see no reason not to use this term for clarity.
Besides there are actual arpeggios in jazz, too! Parker absolutely plays an Eb+ arpeggio on the F7 in Dewey square for example. Just not … all the time… there’s plenty of uses of chord tones that aren’t parts of arpeggios in this music too, parts of scales, leaps, chromatic runs, enclosures, octave displacements etc etc
Sent from my iPhone using TapatalkuLast edited by Christian Miller; 06-17-2024 at 07:29 PM.
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Originally Posted by nevershouldhavesoldit
If the goal is to play 'through' rather than 'over' the changes, there's a lot of thought and visualisation that has to be in place before a performance. I like the analogy with auto racing. Most people will start out with a generalised view of the terrain and then pay attention to each area with potentially problematic zones receiving special treatment.Last edited by PMB; 06-17-2024 at 08:26 PM.
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Originally Posted by Christian Miller
And in classical guitar, obviously arpeggio has a meaning not totally separate from its more general meaning, but definitely closer to that connotation of the “harp.” It refers more to a specific repetitive right hand pattern across multiple chords than to a particular collection of notes.
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Originally Posted by pamosmusic
But - It’s a hell of a job breaking that muscle memory aspect though. Everyone goes up and down usually from the root because it’s how you practice arpeggios. It’s hard to get students to look at a note in one chord moving to a note in another, because each arpeggio is like a self contained object and the individual notes are not randomly accessible. I guess they have memorised the fingering and shape?
Turning that into note knowledge requires a conceptual leap (it worked like that for me too tbf.)
I would say they all find it easier to play these exercises in eights than quarters of half notes. At least if I talk about ‘chord tones’ it reinforces in theory the idea that these notes can come out of, well, x 3 5 4 5 x, and the like.
But that’s the guitar - it’s a grippy instrument. Trying to get students to play the notes of a drop 2 root position grip with different fingers or as a melody with one or two fingers - students find that very difficult at first. Just to separate in their minds where the notes are from how they should be fingered.
It’s the same issue as getting a student who’s done a year of beginners classical to play D major in second position right? They will play that F# with the pinky
It’s why I rail so much against the conflating of fingering and fretboard mapping. After you can basically operate the instrument you have to bust through that to get some flexibility. We need to, as you say, have the notes light up.
But that’s not really a consideration unique to jazz necessarily, although it is associated with jazz players because we kind of need to know this stuff. The way jazz uses those resources and how best to teach that is a whole other area.
Sent from my iPhone using TapatalkLast edited by Christian Miller; 06-17-2024 at 07:56 PM.
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Originally Posted by Christian Miller
It’s why I rail so much against the conflating of fingering and fretboard mapping. After you can basically operate the instrument you have to bust through that to get some flexibility. We need to, as you say, have the notes light up.
The way jazz uses those resources and how best to teach that is a whole other area.
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Originally Posted by PMB
This is one of the many reasons I love to play solo. I've been playing a solo gig at a country French cafe this month, and it's like therapy for me. I set up and start playing tunes that stir my juices at that moment. Although I've always tried not to play the same tune more than once in a long time at a regular gig, I've started playing the same tunes different ways the same night. I did Blue Bossa as a bossa the first hour and as a swing tune the second. A few weeks ago, I did The Chicken as a medium swing tune first, then later as funk. Sometimes I like tight inside inversions and clusters and sometimes I hear chords that are wide open and sparse. I just play whatever's in my head at the time.
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Originally Posted by nevershouldhavesoldit
So suppose you're playing All of Me. When you go to the 3rd bar from the 2nd bar, are you mentally aware that you're on E7 for two bars and you'll be leading to A7 after and does that inform how you visualize the fretboard in any way? To me that is a very essential part of improvisation. But based on how you described your process, it sounds like it is all aural imagination and memory of the tune for you and your mental map of the harmony doesn't inform how you navigate the fretboard. Is that true?
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Originally Posted by Christian Miller
I agree with your other point too, students relying on memorized patterns
and such is a stumbling block for student guitarists. The goal is to have your fretboard knowledge down so well that you are NOT relying on patterns anymore, but rather playing from a standpoint of pure melody, so that you are actually playing whatever you hear in your musical, creative imagination and NOT running your fingers through some scale, mode, triad, or arpeggio pattern like an exercise. Sure, when you're first learning, you have to memorize the patterns and play exercises to get them all ingrained. It should, with practice, start to mean more to you than that, which means seeing all the intervals and how they relate to whatever harmonic context is going on, and even what other melodic possibilities are relevant to that particular harmonic environment. Way back when I was a beginner, I read something like that in an instruction book, and then it seemed impossible, LOL, but I made it the goal. I don't know if I'm there yet, but I've made progress, and as long as I'm making steady consistent progress, I'm happy. It's still always the ultimate goal, though.
I agree, too, that all guitarists should practice all the melodic tools, including chromatic, forward and backward and in all the note values, quarter, eight, sixteenths, triplets, legato, staccato, straight notes, swing notes etc., etc., starting slow and progressively going as fast as they can, cleanly, until its all second nature.
As far as what to think while you play. Personally, I think the goal is to eventually know my fretboard so well that I don't have to think about it anymore. So maybe about the cadence, say its iii min goint to ii min going to Vb9 to I maj to i min. Then to only think about what I want to say over that and have the fretboard knowledge so well ingrained that I can, on a moment's notice, make it happen, just like having a conversation with someone. You don't have to think about the grammar rules or the alphabet, or the dictionary, or what words to use, or what order to put them in, you just know it so well that you just do it. That's the ultimate goal on the instrument anyway, LOL. Am I there yet? Well, it's the goal anyway, LOL.Last edited by AdroitMage; 06-17-2024 at 11:34 PM.
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Originally Posted by AdroitMage
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Nobody else gonna talk about Dewey Square?
To spark conversation, I'd like to change my response to Eb Mixolydian until the C7 bar in which I'd play F Harmonic Minor
Scale gang bitches!
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Originally Posted by pamosmusic
I was just pointing out, maybe not in the best way, that the word triads, to me, refers to three note chords, and the word arpeggio, to me, also includes four note chords with the notes played individually not as a chord. So when I think triad, to me, that excludes four note chords, that's all I was trying to say, and maybe not in the best way.
Yes, you can construct fantastic improv, in certain contexts, by just using triads as that basis for your improv. Metheny used to do that all the time on those PMG records, and sounded beautiful, sophisticated, and super hip, like on the tune "James." Are you happy now?
I’m not here to argue, just to share my humble opinions from a guy who's been playing and studying jazz guitar for over 20 years. It's just my humble opinion, and you can have yours, no need to waste time arguing. So if one guy likes to call them chord tones and I like to call them arpeggios, big riffing deal, IMO. We're not negotiating world peace here, LOL.
Anyway, to me, the notes, chords, scales, arpeggios etc., are just like the pallet of colors to a painter. Really, it doesn't matter what the artist calls the colors on his pallet. What makes him a good artist is what he or she does with those colors when that brush hits the canvas. That is what is going to determine if he is considered a good artist or not.
I think we can at least agree on that?Last edited by AdroitMage; 06-18-2024 at 12:11 AM.
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Originally Posted by AdroitMage
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Originally Posted by AdroitMage
These days many students start with theory and expect and it’s transcription etc that enters the picture later!
Secondly, professional musicians don’t discuss theory that much in my experience. This is mostly a concern of terminology in education. Pros play.
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Originally Posted by Christian Miller
Even once he was selling Grammy Award-winning records, at his soundchecks he says he plays for two hours before every gig just working on whatever he feels like playing that day. Add that to his gigs, which are at least 2 hours long, and sometimes even two sets in a night, and that is still a good 4 to 6 hours of playing on gig nights. Now add to that the hours he surely must play his instrument when he is on his tour bus traveling between cities, and you'll see he is still getting in hours and hours of practice on a very regular basis. On top of all that, he says that after every show he writes in a journal about how he feels he played that night, going through the whole show. THAT is why he plays so brilliantly, in addition to his amazing gift of talent.
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Originally Posted by Tal_175
Once I have shape and dimensions in my head, it works in any key. For this, I can thank that grouchy old piano teacher who made me learn and practice scales until they were baked into me. I hated her - she never even tried to connect the dots from theory to real music for me. But once I learned the fretboard reasonably well, I could approach the song “shape” from anywhere on it. That lets me use multiple octaves, starting positions, fingerings, positions etc, and I often use different ones throughout a tune.
Hmm - I’ve never tried to put this all into words before, and it’s not easy to describe.
i “see” changes almost like different levels in a simple house, and playing them is like walking through it. Some tunes are simple, like a Cape Cod salt box, and some are mansions. Some stairs are longer and some ceilings are higher. Until I know the design and dimensions, I can get lost inside. But once I learn it well enough, it’s like being in my home - I just know where everything is, even with my eyes closed or walking through it backwards.
The above is a feeble attempt to put a mental concept into words. I don’t literally see any of this - it’s just the way it feels to me as I try to verbalize it.
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As always, sorry for my English.
The Arpeggio VS. Scale debate do not make a lot of sense....even if I am a great fan of the "Arpeggios/Changes route".
As an example, if I consider the C9 chord with the natural extensions the notes are: C E G Bb D F A.
These are of course the 7 notes of the F major scale, F G A Bb C D E F, only in different order.......or in other words the arpeggio is build by third intervals and the scale is built in second intervals.
Personally I don't like (anymore) the major/diminished second intervals and I like the major/minor thids intervals. Even better the fourth interval but good melodic lines with fourth intervals are too difficult for me and I confess that I have tryed a lot using books by Joe Diorio and Don Mock.
Back to the topic (playing the changes) we all know that you can play good solos with almost every group of notes/intevals......and the real IMPORTANT question is: what rhythm I can play with these notes? I think that the "recipe" for a good jazz solo is to put any notes/pitch "over" a good rhythm.
Ettore
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To the OP: what you play is important but, I think, how you play it is even more important, and that's up to you, your feeling, your taste etc. I mean, you can play key centre or changes or you can play outside, which is cool, too, but you want to do it in context, rather than randomly, without struggling and as meaningfullly as possible, if you will.
Having said that, I would concentrate on changes first. Start with the "harmonic skeleton". Figure out each chord's inner workings, spot cadences and work through them. Take two (or more) chords (in the song) at a time, find common notes, scales and arpeggios, melodies etc. then move to the next two (or more) chords... using both your knowledge and (especially!) your ears.
If you've got a loop pedal record two (or more) chord sequences from the song and figure out what sounds good on them (or simply sing, using your ears). You can always go deeper and analise the song's harmony and form, to get an overview. But with figuring out changes you can't go wrong. I mean, the old school stuff: what scale (and arpeggio) sounds inside each chord, before you venture outside.
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Originally Posted by AdroitMage
(I daresay he doesn’t have to do that anymore.)
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