7 and b7 in same phrase over same chord?

[nikolozj]

I didn't know where to post this, looked for appropriate thread and couldn't find....
Anyway.... I hope I won't sound too stupid.
My question arose from this video:

Here Stochelo plays his phrase and says it's for A minor.
I understand the whole phrase except where he plays sevens. I always knew that 7ths are sensitive and it's important to distinguish wether it's full 7 or b7. But here, in this phrase they're both there and they fit perfectly.

First I thought that the phrase was guided by Melodic minor scale where you have 7 in ascending and b7 in descending but in the phrase he hits b7 when ascending too!

Is it chromatic passing note?

[bako]

Several paths to G# in an Am context.

The G# is the leading tone to Am.
It can be part of an approach chord ex. E7-Am.
The G# can be a passing chromatic note linking G-A.
There can be movements within the Am family Am-CEA AmMa7-G#EC Am7-CEG Am6-F#EC.

[nikolozj]

Thanks bako!

The part I don't understand is b7 which in this case is G and not G#
The G#/Ab in this case full 7th always fits nice in any GJ progression I played so far.
But b7? I always knew, if the chord is 7 it's 7 (maj) and that's it, no b7.
If the chord is b7 then b7 and no 7 allowed!

There's another thing, mostly GJ is based on 6 chords.

So what I thought it might be, the chord itself Am6 doesn't have any 7th and as long as we have both tones (7 and b7) in melodic minor scale (ascending 7 and descending b7), so we can use them both over the chord that doesn't put it straight if it's 7 or b7??

G is actually only twice in his phrase here:


-----------------------12----(here)15-----12---13---14---12------------------------------------------------------------
----------------13------------------------------------------------13------------------------------15-----13----12-------
----13--14--------------------------------------------------------------14-----(here)12---11----------------------------
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------


But in the first part he is first ascending to G and then descending from it.

[TH]

I don't know if this helps or obscures the issue but melodic content can be determined by harmonic choice, as you do from your analysis, or it can also be dictated from a rhythmic framework. Yes, the two are not mutually exclusive, but sometimes as you look at these phrases, how they fit within a beat, you'll see that non (strictly) analytically correct notes are there to drive a rhythmic feel. This is the realm of chromatic approach tones, passing notes, and any number of embellishments with names, but it's the swing feel that dictates the note choice. Take the real time swing feel into account when phrasing and where the phrase is going. It may answer a lot of questions as far as what's going on.
Just suggesting that particular perspective/approach as an aid for a note choice mindset.
David

[nosoyninja]

I would say your analysis is correct to a certain extent. In Chord-scale theory, you are identifying an incorrect note. Or at least a note that doesn't exactly fit the theoretical framework. It still sounds good though, doesn't it?

If you analyse it from an arpeggio standpoint, as opposed to a scalar one, though, there is less reason to identify either the b7 or the Maj7 in a minor chord as a wrong note.

K

[JonR]

Thanks bako!

The part I don't understand is b7 which in this case is G and not G#
The G#/Ab in this case full 7th always fits nice in any GJ progression I played so far.
But b7? I always knew, if the chord is 7 it's 7 (maj) and that's it, no b7.
If the chord is b7 then b7 and no 7 allowed!

There's another thing, mostly GJ is based on 6 chords.

So what I thought it might be, the chord itself Am6 doesn't have any 7th and as long as we have both tones (7 and b7) in melodic minor scale (ascending 7 and descending b7), so we can use them both over the chord that doesn't put it straight if it's 7 or b7??

G is actually only twice in his phrase here:


-----------------------12----(here)15-----12---13---14---12------------------------------------------------------------
----------------13------------------------------------------------13------------------------------15-----13----12-------
----13--14--------------------------------------------------------------14-----(here)12---11----------------------------
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------


But in the first part he is first ascending to G and then descending from it.

As TruthHertz suggests, what you have here is a line featuring a few chromatic approaches, along with what seems to be a largely dorian lick.

The full lick is as follows - assuming everything he plays is 8th notes (but see later):

|------------12-15-12-13|14-12------------------|-----------------------|-------------
|---------13------------|------13----------15-13|12---------------------|-------------
|---13-14---------------|---------14-12-11------|---14-13-16-14---------|-------------
|-----------------------|-----------------------|---------------14------|-------------
|-----------------------|-----------------------|------------------15-14|12-----------
|-----------------------|-----------------------|-----------------------|-------------
 1  .  2  .  3  .  4  .  1  .  2  .  3  .  4  .  1  .  2  .  3  .  4  .  1
    G# A  C  E  G  E  F  F# E  C  A  G  F# D  C  B  A  G# B  A  E  C  B  A
   (1)               (2)                              (3)

That's all essentially A dorian mode, and the G# and F are acting as chromatic approaches.
(1) G# - simple chromatic approach to root (and on up an Am7 arpeggio;
(2) F - chromatic approach to F# (6th, right on the downbeat) and on down an Am6 arpeggio;
(3) G# - resoluton to A delayed by going up to B first, forming an "enclosure" of the root note: G#-B-A.
In fact you can see the previous B-A as part of a 5-note enclosure: B-A-G#-B-A, seeing as that first B is on beat 1.
Putting the 9th (B) on the beat is an accented non-chord tone (nice effect), which could simply resolve down to A, but going on to a chromatic G# and back to B-A embellishes it nicely. Obviously he follows that with a descending Am arp in which the last B is just a passing tone enabling the final A to land on the beat.

The other interesting part is the jump from F# up to D towards the end of the 2nd bar. The D is another accented non-chord tone, leading down via C to that B on beat 1 of the next bar. With the following enclosure it makes nice little phrase ending up on the root: D-C-B-A-G#-B-A. (Strong beats 1 & 3 underlined.)

HOWEVER... when he actually plays it at speed, afterwards (with the accompaniment) he changes it a little (and does the same things every time in the full tempo version, so it's obviously how he means it to go):

[              >        >                 >
|----------12-15-12-13-14|12---------------------|---------------------------|-------------
|--------13--------------|---13----------15-13-12|---------------------------|-------------
|---13-14----------------|------14-12-11---------|14-13-16-14----------------|-------------
|------------------------|-----------------------|------------14-------------|-------------
|------------------------|-----------------------|---------------15-14h15p14-|12-----------
|------------------------|-----------------------|---------------------------|-------------
 1  .  2   .  3  .  4  .  1  .  2  .  3  .  4  .  1  .  2  .  3  .  4     .   1
    G# A C E  G  E  F  F# E  C  A  G  F# D  C  B  A  G# B  A  E  C  B (C  B)  A
   (1) |_|_|       (2)                              (3)

">" = accented notes. Notice that he's playing the opening arpeggio as a triplet, meaning the G (7th of chord) falls right on beat 3 with a heavy accent, and the following F# (6th) is also strongly accented, but now a syncopation, being an 8th note earlier than was implied in the slow version.
The whole lick beyond there is an 8th early - putting the next F# right on beat 3, pulling that accented D ahead of beat 4, and changing the impact of the enclosure around (3) - but he gets the final A to still land on the beat by adding a quick hammer-on on the previous B.
He doesn't do this in the opening version (without accompaniment), which is more like the slowed-down version. So either he hasn't made up his mind about the timing or he's -- improvising! (gasp...)

You may think I'm over-analysing this... ... but it's important to work from the accents and the chord tones, to make an assessment about which (if any) notes are chromatic.
In a sense it doesn't matter what the full scale is; whether it's dorian with passing G#, or melodic minor with passing G, or harmonic minor with passing F#, etc... What matters is chord tones, and any non-chord tones he chooses to accent (which may be on the beat, or syncopated off the beat). The rest (non-accented passing notes) could be anything, and chromatic is as good (or even better) than diatonic.
So if he chooses to accent both G and F# (as he does) you may assume he's thinking "dorian" - but maybe he just likes the sound of those two notes. And if you want to sound like that, you'd make the same choice.
But it's equally important to accept the option of approaching any chord tone from a half-step below (and maybe even from above, at least in a chromatic line), regardless of scale.
To oversimplify, chromatics are how you get your solos to sound "jazzy" .

[Guitarzen]

You can play any damn note you want. You don't need a logical reason. You don't need there to be a particular theory that gives you permission to do so. You just need to trust your ears. I'm not saying abandon theory, use it. But don't think of it as being what you can or cannot play. Especially the cannot part.

[jtizzle]

You can play any damn note you want. You don't need a logical reason. You don't need there to be a particular theory that gives you permission to do so. You just need to trust your ears. I'm not saying abandon theory, use it. But don't think of it as being what you can or cannot play. Especially the cannot part.

It has to have logical reason. You can't just play a phrase composed of Eb, G# and Bb's over a C major chord and get away with it.
Chromatic notes almost always have to have a resolution. You can leave them open ended, but in most cases, it sounds like you don't know what you're doing, unless you really know what you're doing.
In the case of the 7ths, the chromatic note is used as a chromatic leading tone to the diatonic note. Over a dominant chord, the raised 7th is a leading tone to the root, even if it's not in the chord. The same can be said for any chromatic note leading into any chord tone. You can lead to the root, 3rd, 5th, 7th this way.

[JonR]

You can play any damn note you want.

Sure.

You don't need a logical reason. You don't need there to be a particular theory that gives you permission to do so.

Logical reason is not the same as permission. Theory isn't about permission, any more than English grammar prevents from talking any way you like.

If a note sounds good, it will be for a logical, theoretical reason. There will be a way to explain it, and why it sounds better than a note that sounds bad. You don't have to be able to explain it yourself, but someone will be able to.
It's not totally subjective - any more than it is totally objective.
It's the grammar of a language. You can speak in street slang if you want, it still has to make grammatical sense within its own set of rules, or no one will understand it.

IOW, it's not true to say (a) there are no rules, or (b) good music breaks the rules. Good music always follows rules of some kind; that's what makes it "good", how we know it's "good".

You just need to trust your ears.

Of course. But the reason you can trust your ears (IF you can) is that you've absorbed the grammar of the language already, through a lot of listening. That's how you know what sounds "good" (because you know the difference between right and wrong sounds).

I'm not saying abandon theory, use it/

If your ear is good enough, you don't need any conscious awareness of theory (you'll be following theory anyway). But not many people's ears are that good, so theory can help with suggesting options one might not be able to find purely by ear.

But don't think of it as being what you can or cannot play. Especially the cannot part.

Who says it's about what you can't play?
It's about "common practice"; what most players tend to play, "as a rule". If you want to fit right in with the idiom, then you try to play the kind of things that most players in that idiom tend to play most often. (We're talking here about gypsy jazz, which is a definite vintage idiom with well-defined stylistic characteristics. Genres like bebop, swing, dixieland are similar vintage styles, long dead, whose defining elements are well understood - by ear, if not actually written down in books, although a lot of it is. Jazz in the present day is not so limited, because it's still growing and developing - although it shares a lot of practices with vintage styles; which is how we know it's "jazz" )

The more "outside" of common practice you go, the more "challenging" or "difficult" your playing will sound; to some ears it might sound plain "wrong", but of course that's no reason not to do it. Jazz (more than most music) is driven by innovations that sounded wrong to the conventional ears of the time. But the innovators that succeeded had their own logic, that eventually became apparent. And the more their "new" practices became "common" (adopted by most other jazz musicians), the more they entered the language of jazz theory.

[bako]

You can't just play a phrase composed of Eb, G# and Bb's over a C major chord and get away with it

Example attached.
This is cheating, using those notes as a passing G7alt but resolving.

[Guitarzen]

Jtizzle and Jonr, you guys are just flat wrong here. If you study music throughout history, you will find every great composer has done something that "you're not supposed to do". That's what made them great. You're trying to have a logical debate with me about something that is not logical: art / creativity / imagination.

[mr. beaumont]

Couple of things...



In jazz, there's no rule about MM being different ascending and descending. Melodic Minor in jazz is 1, 2, b3, 4, 5, 6, 7.


The notes that "don't belong" are passing notes, approach notes. Look at what he hangs on, not passes through. You can play anything over anything if you know how to resolve...


Nothing says a lick has to come from one scale. A chord is a harmonic environment, not a rigid law with one scale that goes with it.



This is something that can be addressed with simple facts about jazz playing.

[Guitarzen]

Nice example Bako, and yes it's very common knowledge in jazz theory that you can play V chord lines over the I.

You can play anything over anything if you know how to resolve...

My experience exactly. And let's not forget that atonality is an important tool to use in jazz as well, in which case all of our "rules" don't apply. I stand by my assertion that music is essentially not a logical thing, or at least a large part of it is not. It's only our obsessive human nature that compels us to try to explain something that is not logical in a logical way. Don't get me wrong I'm a big proponet of using theory. But I'm an even bigger proponent of completely un-boxed creativity.

[TH]

Some play by the rules. Some just play.
David

[nikolozj]

it sounds like you don't know what you're doing, unless you really know what you're doing.

Thanks for replies guys! Lots of ideas. I agree with both sides: it is mystical but it has to be based on some logic.
And I think big part of its logic lies in this understanding:

You can play anything over anything if you know how to resolve...

And I think that this comes with intuition...

[JonR]

Jtizzle and Jonr, you guys are just flat wrong here.

What, even where I agreed with you?
I understand where you're coming from, and I agree. But you're exaggerating the role of "rule breaking", and underestimating the important and presence of rules.
That's all I'm saying: there are rules you (and I and most of us) are simply taking for granted. We don't think about them when we're playing, but that doesn't mean they aren't there.

If you study music throughout history, you will find every great composer has done something that "you're not supposed to do". That's what made them great.

No it isn't. What made them great was that they absorbed all the conventional rules of the time, and then imposed their own variations on them, built on them. They stood on the shoulders of those who came before.

You're trying to have a logical debate with me about something that is not logical: art / creativity / imagination.

We can have a logical debate about things which don't seem to employ logic in themselves.
"Logic" - in the sense of a conscious reasoning process - may not often be evident in musical improvisation or composition. It's definitely there some of the time, but I'd agree we don't judge musical value in logical terms.
Eg, we can compose (or improvise) with conscious awareness of theory, but we use our ears (intuition, instinct) to assess whether it's any good or not. And of course (with a little experience) we can use our ears totally from the start.

I presume you'd agree with that , but I'm just looking a little deeper. Music is "organised sound" (according to John Cage anyway). It's not random noise. "Organisation" presupposes rules of some kind. We tune our instruments according to rules. We play in certain rhythms according to rules. Keys, scales and modes are organised according to rules. (If it wasn't for those rules, we'd have no way of distinguishing what was diatonic, consonant or "inside" from what was chromatic, dissonant or "outside". Those distinctions are at the heart of tonal music, how it communicates to us. Using dissonance is not breaking rules; it's following them.)

But not only that, the melodic patterns we form when composing or improvising also follow more subtle rules, about phrase shape and development. Those rules are not generally learned from books, but from listening to music. We absorb them intuitively; but they are still "rules", "formulas" - which doesn't mean they are inflexible, on the contrary. We're not talking inviolable "laws" here.

What great composers and improvisers do is work within and from what is familiar, presenting new and challenging elements on top of it; stretching the familiar into unfamiliar areas. If they did what "you're not supposed to do" all the time, it would simply be unlistenable - or it would not sound like "music" at all. (And yes I know plenty of 20thC composers did just that - including Cage himself - as a way of opening out what the concept of "music" could mean. It didn't really touch jazz too much, although it did have an influence on "free jazz". Any "atonal" content in jazz was/is always heard in the context of tonality; any arhythmic content is heard in the context of pulse.)

In short, if you can define it as "music", then it has rules, which we all follow.

[JonR]

Nice example Bako, and yes it's very common knowledge in jazz theory that you can play V chord lines over the I.

Sure. Bako's example may contradict what jtizzle said - and I nearly picked up on that myself - but doesn't go against anything I said (or meant to say, anyway ).

You can play anything over anything if you know how to resolve...

My experience exactly.

Again, agreed. I would never say anything different.

And let's not forget that atonality is an important tool to use in jazz as well, in which case all of our "rules" don't apply.

I'd like examples of true atonality used in jazz. Genuinely curious. I know about free improv, but I'm not sure I'd call it "atonal", because atonality has its own strict rules.
But even free improv - which seems to have no rules whatsoever - does have some. It tends to be played to jazz audiences, by jazz musicians who are well aware of jazz history and idioms; against which free improv works as contrast, as challenge: "how far can we push improvisation and still call it "jazz"? - or does it matter if we can't call it "jazz" any more?"

(Naturally this is all somewhat outside the topic, which is a gypsy jazz lick...)

I stand by my assertion that music is essentially not a logical thing, or at least a large part of it is not.

Well, then it's a debate about how "large" that part is. At least you accept parts of it are logical...

It's only our obsessive human nature that compels us to try to explain something that is not logical in a logical way.

Ah, well that's another issue!
I quite agree that human nature makes us look for patterns and meaning (often obsessively) where there may not be any. But music is made by humans, with deliberate intent. It's not some accidental natural phenomenon. It has clear and well-defined rules.

Don't get me wrong I'm a big proponet of using theory. But I'm an even bigger proponent of completely un-boxed creativity.

OK, I'm just suspicious of that "un-boxed" - or rather I want to "un-pack" the term .
Creativity always occurs within certain limits, usually consciously chosen and imposed by the artist. Paradoxically, perhaps, limitation fires creativity. Without a structure, you can't build anything. A painter works on a canvas (sometimes with a deliberately limited palette); a sculptor works with clay or a block of stone, or some other material with its own properties.
A musician works with a particular instrument (or group of instruments) which have their own (often very narrow) limitations. A composer works with form of some kind: with concepts of key or mode, or (in contrast) with concepts of atonality or serialism; or maybe with rhythm, without pitched notes at all; without pitch or rhythm, I guess "music" is still possible, but would definitely be more "out there" - but some kind of conscious concept still shapes it.

To bring it back to the topic, we have a gypsy jazz lick following well-known rules - IOW all the things that enable us to identify it as "gypsy jazz" in the first place. Some of those rules are shared by other jazz sub-genres, notably treatment of chromatics in a diatonic context, as well as rhythmic accent and swing. In a theory forum, these things are surely worth examining.
It doesn't matter whether the player was aware of those rules or not. He may not know them at all (in a conscious way that he could explain), or he may know them but wasn't thinking about them at the time. That has no bearing on a theoretical analysis of what he played. The point being that if we want to play like that - assuming we can't already (we haven't absorbed the rules subconsciously yet) - then a little analysis will help us discern the rules in a way that helps us apply them creatively elsewhere (We don't just want to copy this lick note for note and use it with no understanding... I hope ).
The OP wasn't asking how to play this lick; he was asking for an explanation of an apparent discrepancy in the note choices. That's a theory question, with a theory answer. (Of course, those "wrong notes" sound good; but not all wrong notes sound good; and one note may sound wrong sometimes, and right other times. That's dependent on rules...)

[Tom Karol]

"Play what you hear; if you don't hear anything, don't play anything." Chick Corea

[mr. beaumont]

"Play what you hear; if you don't hear anything, don't play anything." Chick Corea

I always liked that one...and the one attributed to Jim Hall "Don't just play something, sit there!"

Sorry for the off topic quotes...

[docbop]

"Play what you hear; if you don't hear anything, don't play anything." Chick Corea

Chick also said.... It doesn't matter what you play outside, it all about how you come back in.


As always its about the release/resolution.

[mr. beaumont]

Chick also said.... It doesn't matter what you play outside, it all about how you come back in.


As always its about the release/resolution.

That one almost sounds like "zen koan soundbyte music cool advice" but it's actually really true...

Mark Turner, IMHO, is the current master of this.

[AmundLauritzen]

If you want to think in terms of theory:

E7 can always be played on Am(You can always play the V7 on a tonic, be it major or minor) and that could be where the G# comes from if you want to analyze it, though I don't think that is the case with that Stochelo lines since it revolves mostly around Am.

I'll take Pat Martino as an example: he doesn't think in terms of scales. It seems his minor form from which he carves his lines is a composite of all the minor scales, if you do want to look at it theoretically. He learned some lines with a b7 in them and some with the #7. According to his hear(which is almost divine) a line can have both intervals in them, and most jazz players agree. You can even linger on the #7 when the accompaniment plays a m7 chord. Sounds perfectly fine.

[BigDaddyLoveHandles]

My low-cal-theory take on it is that a minor i chord is more forgiving than a major I chord. Play a 7 or a b7 on the i. Done.