Pat Martino Quantum guitar (moving 7#5 chords in minor thirds)

[GuyBoden]

I have the DVD, which includes a notated booklet.

Here's a small part of the line, but up an octave:
Attachment 123230

EDIT: Don't be fooled into thinking it's complex, it's only an 'A Mixolydian scale' with an additional #5 note, but he's using his 'minor-ization of everything' technique, so a 'B minor scale' with an additional #11 note.

[Mick-7]

btw, all Pat's talk of changing one note in a diminished or augmented chord to form a "related" (?!?!) major or minor or dominant chord, reminds me of this story from the way-back machine:

I was at the Berklee College of Music the summer of 1977, and Pat Martino was in town for some shows at Paul's Mall or The Jazz Workshop...and word somehow got around school that Pat was also offering lessons during the days that he was in town. For $25/hour. Which, in 1977, was insanely high for guitar lessons! But me and a bunch of my classmates all agreed that a lesson with Pat Martino would be a real feather-in-the-cap, so a bunch of us pooled our money to get the $25 together, then drew straws to decide who would go study with Pat, with the understanding that the winner would then return and share everything he'd learned with all us "financiers"

So Mr. Short Straw (not me) goes and takes a guitar lesson with Pat Martino. Comes back the next day with pages and pages of notes that he'd written down during his lesson, diagrams, weird geometric shapes, some standard musical notation, a few fretboard/fingering charts... He starts trying to explain Pat's concept. It's dense, complicated, comprehensive, erudite. So much information! But well worth $25, we agree, even if most of us could barely wrap our heads around it.

One week later the June '77 issue of Guitar Player Magazine hits the stands. Pat Martino is the artist on the cover. And the interview/article with him includes 100% of the material that he taught Mr. Short Straw the week before, only more clearly explained and with much better diagrams. And it only cost $3 for the issue.

Actually, there is a lesson therein which I also learned the expensive way, which is, if you can only take one or two lessons from a celebrity musician, it's only liable to be useful if you go in with a specific goal, specific questions re: what you should learn and do to improve your own playing. If you don't do that, you usually leave with the player's personal music manifesto, which you may be unable to put to any practical use.

[Mick-7]

EDIT: Don't be fooled into thinking it's complex, it's only an 'A Mixolydian scale' with an additional #5 note, but he's using his 'minor-ization of everything' technique, so a 'B minor scale' with an additional #11 note.

Which is the same as what I was just saying in this other thread: The Barry Harris scale for ii V in Minor

That is: A mixolydian/B aeolian (natural) minor plus #5 or b5 [A-B-C#-D-E-(F)-F#-G] = D major plus b3rd (F) or D melodic minor plus major 3rd (F#).

Have we sufficiently confused the OP yet?

[GuyBoden]

Which is the same as what I was just saying in this other thread: The Barry Harris scale for ii V in Minor

That is: A mixolydian/B aeolian (natural) minor plus #5 or b5 [A-B-C#-D-E-(F)-F#-G] = D major plus b3rd (F) or D melodic minor plus major 3rd (F#).

Have we sufficiently confused the OP yet?

Yes, Pat Martino seems to over complicate everything in his tutorials. I have most of his DVD tutorials, I converted his examples to standard scales. It's makes the tutorials much easier for me.

Most of his DVD examples are standard scales with a few added notes, but his execution at a very fast tempo with such drive and phrasing is phenomenal. One of the best players ever.

"Have we sufficiently confused the OP yet?"
No, I think we've made it easier to understand from a standard scale perspective.

[paulkogut]

I did a lot of work with Pat's "Liner Expressions" , before these videos were available. It took me a while to realize how tied in these type of lines are with Pat's sense of modal composition. Lines that sound great over a long A7#5 vamp might not have much to offer when navigating 2 beats of A7 in a standard tune...

Folks interested in Pat's playing over standard standards (Just Friends, Once I Loved, Minority, etc) might want to check out Steve Khan's transcription book "The Early Years"

PK

[GuyBoden]

I did a lot of work with Pat's "Liner Expressions" , before these videos were available. It took me a while to realize how tied in these type of lines are with Pat's sense of modal composition. Lines that sound great over a long A7#5 vamp might not have much to offer when navigating 2 beats of A7 in a standard tune...

Folks interested in Pat's playing over standard standards (Just Friends, Once I Loved, Minority, etc) might want to check out Steve Khan's transcription book "The Early Years"

PK

Yes, I have his first book "Linear Expressions" with his 'activities', it's the Pat Martino 'minor-ization of everything' method too.

[Cunamara]

I think it's better to look at what Pat actually plays and to mostly ignore his explanations. His neurological situation (you can look that up elsewhere and I recommend watching Pat Martino: Unstrung. That he could even walk and talk after his brain surgery is surprising, that he could play as he did is amazing and a testament to resilience) is such that his verbal explanation is convoluted, but his actual playing is direct. One thing I noted in the booklet for Quantum Guitar is that Pat's minorization is often the Dorian scale even when he's talking about something else- or at least it was transcribed that way. (Now that I think on it, might have been Linear Expressions rather than Quantum Guitar; it's been years since I looked at those.)

There is another video online in which he demonstrated a sort of harmonic improvisation based around his "parental chord forms" notion (dim and augmented), playing some really interesting stuff quite unlike what I normally think of about Pat. He talked about these forms for years without much demonstration of what to do with them. I'll have to see if I can find it and time stamp that part.