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Originally Posted by ragman1
I doubt he has it codified in the same way, but I know he heartily endorses Jordan’s way of going about things. And Jordan’s is no Bernstein clone but he’s very Bernstein-esque in interesting ways … angular in ways that sound similar, rhythmic, sparse. So I might take Pete at his word on that one.
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11-06-2024 11:17 PM
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Originally Posted by pamosmusic
I doubt he has it codified in the same way.
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Originally Posted by ragman1
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Sounds right, you've explained it well :-)
I was just checking it out. Try this at about 8.12 and 14.05. And you may as well go on to Part 4 because it continues :-)
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Originally Posted by ragman1
But yes, he obviously knows them. Probably just doesn’t think they’re terribly useful to think about.
For what it’s worth, I find people like that kind of fascinating because I don’t know what I’d do without scales to practice.
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Originally Posted by pamosmusic
I'm not sure you answered my question. You said he might not codify scales in the same way. So I said the same as what or who?
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Originally Posted by pamosmusic
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I don't really know what we're talking about. Past my bedtime.
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Originally Posted by Mick-7
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Originally Posted by rpjazzguitar
In the Jimmy Raney Aeberosld he just plays AL as a series of descending ii Vs. I’ll try and dig it out.
Obviously it doesn’t work for every melody.
For comping you have more freedom but you do need to be listening to the soloist.
Peter is about staying off I as much as possible
Sent from my iPhone using TapatalkLast edited by Christian Miller; 11-07-2024 at 04:53 AM.
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Originally Posted by bediles
People like to turn that into an absolute and then argue against it for some reason. I always took it to mean a preoccupation with scales is not helpful.
But that’s less pithy.
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Personally, I've no hesitation in blaming teaching resources. Teachers, books, websites, all of whom say you have to know scales and provide endless pictures of the fretboard with endless coloured dots all over them.
Then you're supposed to run them up and down, then in patterns and sequences, and all that. Then you might have a tune of some kind that says 'Here we play the major scale, here we change it to another major scale' and all that. And so it goes on.
Most of the questions we get here are from victims of these methods because they reflect a tremendous effort on the student's part to understand this stuff and just get miserably confused.
Far too much emphasis is placed on an intellectual approach to the whole thing, as though the practical issues of playing the instrument can be worked out the same way as a math problem or philosophical treatise.
Thank god I'm self-taught.
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Originally Posted by Sam b
there is a lot of post-factum analysis in this application. It is not a compositional tool (and I doubt it ever was)
In jazz - scales are applied as a practical tool for linear playing - melody. (So on the contrary to classical it is much more 'before you play it' rather then anyalyzing 'after it')
So if you choose Harmonic minor you will have F natural, melodic minor F# and G#, natural minor all natural etc.
Now the relate it to the main key (which is still G major) - G# will be in accordance with E major chord and increase its tension to temporary tonic (Am). F# depends on how you use it, it can be even stronger tension to Am (more classical MM application), or it can sound more or less as F# natural to G major key.
If you play HM - F nat can bring in bluesy touch (as it is still G major) etc.
So for me it is a combination of traditional classical thinking with jazz scale theory thinking...
Lots of things depend on how you personally hear it, and also ho much time you have, how quickly the harmony changes, how strong can be the feeling of a new temporary toni, and how you hear and apply it...
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I don’t think I’ve ever heard a pianist say ‘forget scales’ - maybe I’m wrong
I think it’s to do with the layout of the instrument. We play a shapes instrument.
You could spend years mastering the notes and scales over the fretboard which on the piano would be relatively straightforward. And this knowledge might not come with a clear understanding of how they relate to chords or songs.
It’s probably no accident so many top jazz guitarists also play at least decent piano. It really does make more sense on keys.
On the other hand playing out of chords has always worked extremely well on guitar.
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Originally Posted by ragman1
This stuff is confusing by nature, even more confusing on a guitar, but one must work through the confusion to understand. It's just like algebra, nobody is inherently bad at math, they just don't try.
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Originally Posted by Christian Miller
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Originally Posted by AllanAllen
If you’re looking at videos, you might get Christian or Nathan Borton, or you might get absolute swill.
And a lot of people transpose their negative experiences with the bad parts of those resources onto “Education” which usually means unwarranted criticism of jazz programs at universities or people who teach jazz privately. And sure there are lots of criticisms to level there that would be totally reasonable, but also it’s a very pedagogically diverse group and usually way less dogmatic than people tend to think. Especially now. Probably more so thirty years ago.
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I saw an instagram ad "Intermediate jazz guitarists, are you tired of playing the same 3 licks over every song?!?"
I was surprised to learn that I'm an advanced guitarist. LOL
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Originally Posted by Jonah
. Here is an example of a thing called a Fonte by the 18th century theorist Josef Riepel. I think it can be best understood as a voice leading device with a certain rhetorical and formal role. I think of it as a type of 'development' phrase. It would be typical for the beginning of the B section of a binary form piece for instance, such as a minuet. However, it can be found in many other places.
It's a clear two step melodic sequence and uses specific alterations to the prevailing key (b7 and #1 in modern terms) to tonicise the second degree. Obviously a jazzer would understand the first two bars to be 'D (or II) harmonic minor.'
More info on the schema here, from Ewald Demeyre
The Fonte: The Basics – Essays on Music
So we can see the leading tones in the bass and a scalar descent from the b7 (or the b9 of the fundamental bass) down to the third in the next bar. This can be run into a single line and used to imply harmony in two parts.
An example from Bach, who often inverted this basic schema (B section Minuet II from Cello suite no1 transposed and in treble clef), chord symbols are obviously mine haha
Notice that Bach puts this effectively into root position, with the root placed on the first beat.
A jazzer would of course call this a VI II V I line, and identify the first bar as belonging to the harmonic minor. Obviously at no point do we have an augmented second, as the arpeggio avoids this. We might also avoid it by octave displacement, which is something we commonly see in C18 music, and very much in bebop lines. Grant Green loves it.
But thinking about the specific voice leading formula, we do see things like this. Robert Gjerdigen, Mr Gallant Schemata himself identifies the bridge of Alone Together as an example (transposed to the same key). The Ab is something one finds in Mozart for instance (I'll need to find an example), but not so much Bach to my knowledge.
Riepel himself described it as a 'Hermaphrodite Fonte', rather disapprovingly. (Mozart did like the minor/major admixture and of course we see it more and more in C19 music,)
This includes only the melody part of Riepel's schema, unlike the Bach.
but for one written by a jazz musician we have a Night in Tunisia.
Notice how the contrapuntal skeleton remains identical and even though it is articulated with more complex rhythms. Notice that includes both the bass and melody parts of the schema and the aug 2 is managed by octave displacement. Extremely common in bop lines as I have noted.
We also have baba's first bebop. Phrases of this type are actual quite hard to find in the wild in actual improvised bebop solos. I think players thought sequences in general sounded good in heads and tunes, but not in solos.
I'm not 100% sure if this is of great use to anyone, but I would say there's a definite through line on this schemata stuff. I've got a bunch of them in a pdf, naturally.Last edited by Christian Miller; 11-07-2024 at 11:28 AM.
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to the OP, gor bless him, the TL;DR is YES
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Originally Posted by AllanAllen
How many questions by OPs have you seen here that want clarification on what a book or teacher is telling them? Lots, I assure you. Then others come in and the poor OP, confused already, can't understand what they're told.
Don't take what I'm saying literally. Tragically, to be honest, I'm waiting for that sort of response. Looking at everything doesn't literally mean every possible thing. Nor does it mean no one is ever helped here, they definitely are. But the point is there's enough of the other stuff to make it worth mentioning.
nobody is inherently bad at math, they just don't try.
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Originally Posted by pamosmusic
I was more this way in earnest a few years ago (djg quite rightly more called me out on it), especially before I did my Masters project on jazz guitar student's experiences with YouTube.
What I found is that no advanced jazz players would be caught dead admitting that they used YouTube instructional videos haha.
I also found that they were mostly pretty happy with their courses and a great deal of playing, listening and community seemed to encouraged, and they had it impressed on them that that was the most important thing. That kind of changed my perspective on it.
OTOH there seemed to be a lot of stereotype chord scale/theory centred teaching at the less specialist jazz schools.
It's a little hard to say, my sample size wasn't very big.
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Originally Posted by AllanAllen
The most influential jazz theorists have been pianists.
It is possible to view the guitar like this, but it takes a LOT of work. OTOH working from grips and shapes is a time honoured way to approach jazz guitar. If you work on chord melody as well, it gives you a good understanding, and you might play all that chord scale goodness without ever working on a scale.
OTOH - Ritchie Hart says that chord scales were introduced to explain harmony to horn players - ie those that couldn't play chords.
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So A Harmonic minor is kosher, gotcha. Thanks!
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Yes, but it's how it sounds in context. If you think context for all these sorts of questions you won't go far wrong.
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