Chief criticisms - Chord Scale Theory

[vintagelove]

"Note choice is not terribly important."

I said this first on the forum, so I will own it here. Let me explain my statement.

For what? For playing jazz at the highest level. How do I know? I have transcribed solos of the greatest jazz musicians of all time (not all of them obviously) for some players 90%-100% of what they play is rather dull, note choice wise. For others the note choice is more unusual. But none of them have bad time.

Ergo. Note choice is not terribly important.

It is not necessary to play interesting notes to be a great soloist. I mean there's only 12 of them anyway in the Western system, so it's a pretty limited set of resources. How hip do really think you are playing an F# on a C? It's like wearing a leather jacket and thinking you are the last thing in youthful rebellion.

The thing is note choice is a MASSIVE consideration for beginner to intermediate players. Note choice might feature in some advanced player's thinking, but it is not mandatory.

Playing over functional chord progressions is quite different from playing blues licks and modal improv - the sort of thing most guitar players are familiar with before they move to playing more traditional jazz material (I speak for myself here, but many others have a similar background.)

As a result, we need to spend some time getting used to play through things with rapidly changing chord progressions. Because of this note choice becomes a significant issue.

Because of that we become (and by we I mean me too) obsessed by choosing the good sounding notes. In fact, my argument is this, once you have got through the phase of being able to play fluently descriptively through the changes of a song (however you achieve this) this your mission to my mind is to achieve freedom and flexibility rhythmically. Think of a rhythm, now express it in a melody. Stop playing 8ths all the time (easier said than done.)

This will do more for your improvised line than learning more scales.

Needless to say most of find this easier to do on a modal vamp than on a functional harmony progression. All this means is that we don't know the chord tones (and the various rhythmic decorations involving neighbour tones) well enough.

This is what stevebol's Berklee link basically says.

Its funny how different people are.

i have never once, in any music been stopped by or impressed with a rhythm. My foot taps, or it doesn't.

i have been very impressed by note choice.

i could honestly live happily listening to blazing solos only using 8ths and triplets. My ears/brain do not require rests.

i feel the same way about classical music. Give me Bach any day over the most romantic of romantic pieces.

Rests bore me...

[JonR]

Its funny how different people are.

i have never once, in any music been stopped by or impressed with a rhythm. My foot taps, or it doesn't.

i have been very impressed by note choice.

i could honestly live happily listening to blazing solos only using 8ths and triplets. My ears/brain do not require rests.

i feel the same way about classical music. Give me Bach any day over the most romantic of romantic pieces.

Rests bore me...

YMMV indeed.

(Although I like Bach too. If only more jazz solos in 8ths sounded anything like Bach's 8ths...)

[pkirk]

Its funny how different people are.

i have never once, in any music been stopped by or impressed with a rhythm. My foot taps, or it doesn't.

i have been very impressed by note choice.

i could honestly live happily listening to blazing solos only using 8ths and triplets. My ears/brain do not require rests.

i feel the same way about classical music. Give me Bach any day over the most romantic of romantic pieces.

Rests bore me...

weird.

Not to pick on this guy, but I ran across this when someone recommended something in another thread. I realize this isn't him playing but rather illustrating his concept, but this typifies the sound of putting note choice above everything else in bebop. strings of 8th notes....they are all right, and kind of interesting, but I'd contend this has zero jazz content.

[pamosmusic]

@christian


I get that ... It's sort of like the whole "communication is 90% non verbal" thing

i would say rhythmic interest, time, and band dynamic are all tied in first place and somewhat intertwined. Line shape I think is more important than note choice. That's where I think a lot of the "I play what I hear - what's all this pattern nonsense" theories fall apart. A major triad is a far more interesting and relatable melodic shape than a #11 sitting by itself. Then articulation - an "avoid note" played with authority or the same pitch played fifteen times in a row with a cool dynamic arc would be way more interesting than bland uniformly articulated color notes.

after all that I think pitch selection is in there. It also has the ability to make every one of those other elements infinitely more compelling. By itself though ... Not so much.

that said ... What do I spend far and away the most time practicing? Note choice essentially. Sigh - perhaps a changing of scenery is in order.

as for chord scale theory ... I still don't like it as a teaching tool but rather as a slightly more advanced thing. When it's used properly it can be used to imply cool tensions and entire modes just like any other way of thinking about harmony. The thing is you just have to be accustomed to playing strong melodic figures and bringing in rhythmic ideas and chromatic pitches and jazz phrasing. That's why I think thinking chord to chord and transcribing ideas and learning tunes and bop heads is the place to start. It's more conducive to all those things. There's absolutely no reason a bebop pattern over a major triad - for example - can't be applied in a way that implies more extended chord scale kind of relationships. I just don't generally see it taught that way in books and (the few) classrooms (that Ive been in). Seems more appropriate for someone who's familiar with the language already.

[vintagelove]

weird.

Not to pick on this guy, but I ran across this when someone recommended something in another thread. I realize this isn't him playing but rather illustrating his concept, but this typifies the sound of putting note choice above everything else in bebop. strings of 8th notes....they are all right, and kind of interesting, but I'd contend this has zero jazz content.

Well, it is jazz. Truthfully, I am sure many would love to play at his level.

that being said.....

lack of of feeling is the problem there, that's not the same thing as lack of rhythm. He could have played every rhythm known to man and it would still bore me to death.

People who suck, make music that sucks. If you have never loved, had your heart broke, partied, accomplished something, lost something, etc etc. how can you ever express those feelings through music.

He is probably as exciting at a party as that solo....

[christianm77]

I'll start another thread... somewhere, I think when I started the Practical Standards Thread I originally just played and verbally talked through tunes, made possible analysis and how that could effect and create different improv approaches.... more like how it does effect improv.

Sounds good, look forward to checking it out.

[christianm77]

Its funny how different people are.

i have never once, in any music been stopped by or impressed with a rhythm. My foot taps, or it doesn't.

i have been very impressed by note choice.

i could honestly live happily listening to blazing solos only using 8ths and triplets. My ears/brain do not require rests.

i feel the same way about classical music. Give me Bach any day over the most romantic of romantic pieces.

Rests bore me...

Your response is interesting to me because it reveals the different ways we listen to music.

Since I started practicing drumming and working on rhythm stuff, I suddenly find myself liking all kinds of music I used to hate - hiphop, dance music even disposable pop. If it grooves, I like it.

I used to be a proper contemporary music buff, Boulez, Ligeti, Schoenberg etc. I liked 20th century and contemporary music because of the new sounds and harmonies. TBH, jazz is much less impressive to me from this point of view, but I enjoy the way it has appropriated some of the techniques and put them together with the rhythm thing. In this sense I feel jazz is a more complete form (to my ears)... The rhythms have always excited me first and foremost about the music - you do get that a little bit in Stravinsky, Shostakovich, the more Slavic stuff, and Bartok etc.

I would also say that there is a distinctive jazz ay of dealing with harmony and that CST is part of this, but it is not necessary in fact to use jazz harmony to play jazz. If this was so, gypsy jazz and much of the early music couldn't exist, let alone the 'atonal' and true modal forms of the music. Actually 75% of the music Bird played wouldn't qualify...

The reference to Bach is interesting. The thing I notice with a moto perpetuo type thing is of course Bach's extraordinary skill in creating foreground and background elements in his music. A Bach prelude for violin or cello may not contain rests per se, but it does create, melody, bass and inner voice movement in one line. The melody can essentially be in long notes while the other 8th (or 16ths) fill in the rest of the music. Of course anyone who has spent any time at all with this material will know what I mean.

In Charlie Parker this musical sensibility is somewhat more evolved (!) because the rhythms are significantly more advanced and complex than what Bach was using. On paper they might look like strings of 8th's but in fact, just as with back there are foreground and background levels. Most obviously in bebop we have the concept of a ghost note - a note of almost inaudible pitch.

As an exercise, take the top notes of a Bird solo, and write them out as if they were full melody notes. Compare to the same exercise with a Bach prelude. The difference in the rhythm will be stark. The difference, is basically where some of the 'jazz' is (or at least some of the jazz that Western notation can record.)

I would advise a jazz student to start with Bach's materials actually - simple triads and the odd seventh chord, with lower chromatic and upper diatonic neighbours. Practice putting chord tones on the beat or on the 1 and 3. Get it so you can do this without fail and thought, and use neighbours or chord tones on the other notes.

There's a long way you can go with this, but it won't be jazz. If you do it through a very Baroquey progression - No Moon at All or Autumn Leaves, say, you will get a baroque sound.

The problem comes when one says 'how do I make this into jazz.' The answer is to change the rhythm, not to change the notes. Displace the chord tones, add irregular accents, above all express a rhythm with you melody.

It's like hand drums. If you tap out a Charleston pattern say in 8ths, you would fill in the unaccented notes softly with your hands. So, we have X x x X x x X x, say

Now the big X's are the top line of the melody, say and the little x's are your notes coming up to it. Or perhaps the big notes are your chord tones and the little ones are enclosures. Loads of possibilities.

Every line should be a rhythm.

[Hep To The Jive]

wow !!!
mantra ....

"note choice is not terribly important"

do what ??
could you expand and explain that a bit more please ?

ps not just hep , anyone who agrees with the
statement , please chime in

Cool, sure! Christian and Pkirk did it already, and very good too, nicely put! I can only add an example from a recent experience..

There's a band I play with plenty, sometimes we do private parties, our job is to make people dance and have a good time. It's not just old jazz, we re-work some standard pop songs like Pink Panther, or Miserlou, or even classical tunes like Elise, make them swing, groove, rock, whatever... Our talented and notorious singer/trumpeter makes everything sounds fresh for it to be original and entertaining. But at the core, we are old school swing pretty much.

Anyway, I brought this new upright bass player to play a private party with us. I met him at a strait-ahead jazz jam, and he's well established young man on a jazz scene. I heard him play standards, he sounded great, and since non of our regular bass players was avail. I asked him for the gig. Well, it didn't go down well, the guy was struggling pretty much not just with originals, but with tunes like All Of Me, Sweet Georgia Brown... He just couldn't cope the feel, the simple groove of playing root-five on bass with occasional walking line was too much! I could tell he was over thinking everything, trying to fit his sophisticated language into a simple tune.

Now he's obviously a talented and educated player, but it did sounded like he spent most of his jazz studying worrying about note choice. And he's not even a guitar player, isn't it a mandatory for any bass players to get the groove skills first?

I came to jazz from playing blues, rock'n'roll, styles less sophisticated than be bop, and I did study CST, and have a decent grasp on it, but I'd never teach this stuff to anyone who can't get the basic feel first.

Sorry for my rather awkward story telling

[christianm77]

Anyway, I brought this new upright bass player to play a private party with us. I met him at a strait-ahead jazz jam, and he's well established young man on a jazz scene. I heard him play standards, he sounded great, and since non of our regular bass players was avail. I asked him for the gig. Well, it didn't go down well, the guy was struggling pretty much not just with originals, but with tunes like All Of Me, Sweet Georgia Brown... He just couldn't cope the feel, the simple groove of playing root-five on bass with occasional walking line was too much! I could tell he was over thinking everything, trying to fit his sophisticated language into a simple tune.

Haha your story rings so many bells it's not funny. Just finding a bass player who knows when to go from 2 to 4, or someone who is happy to do something very simple well. Same with drums.

And then you listen to Paul Chambers play in 2, and realise, he ain't so different from a New Orleans tuba player! And he knows when to go to 4, right?

EDIT: Luckily I know some wonderful bass players who are not only technically fantastic, but also know their job inside out (and importantly) really dig Ray Brown (this is mostly for more modern stuff, not traddy trad)... Unfortunately, they are also very often busy (I can't imagine why), so I need lots of numbers. Lots of great players in London though. It's not NYC to be sure, but plenty of good players...

There are lots of cats who want to 'interact' all the time - that's great, but you can't do that till you can do 2 and 4 well, right?

Same thing on guitar - if you can't play straight 4's, what makes you think you can comp off beats rhythmically?

[Hep To The Jive]

Haha your story rings so many bells it's not funny. Just finding a bass player who knows when to go from 2 to 4, or someone who is happy to do something very simple well. Same with drums.

And then you listen to Paul Chambers play in 2, and realise, he ain't so different from a New Orleans tuba player! And he knows when to go to 4, right?

EDIT: Luckily I know some wonderful bass players who are not only technically fantastic, but also know their job inside out (and importantly) really dig Ray Brown (this is mostly for more modern stuff, not traddy trad)... Unfortunately, they are also very often busy (I can't imagine why), so I need lots of numbers. Lots of great players in London though. It's not NYC to be sure, but plenty of good players...

There are lots of cats who want to 'interact' all the time - that's great, but you can't do that till you can do 2 and 4 well, right?

Same thing on guitar - if you can't play straight 4's, what makes you think you can comp off beats rhythmically?

Yep, same thing here in NYC, I know cats who feel equally comfortable in Gypsy jazz, and straight ahead, and whatever you throw at them, and they like it all too, which is important! The downside it's hard to book them sometime, they are booked month ahead, everybody wants to play with them! Why indeed?

[pkirk]

Well, it is jazz. Truthfully, I am sure many would love to play at his level.

that being said.....

lack of of feeling is the problem there, that's not the same thing as lack of rhythm. He could have played every rhythm known to man and it would still bore me to death.

People who suck, make music that sucks. If you have never loved, had your heart broke, partied, accomplished something, lost something, etc etc. how can you ever express those feelings through music.

He is probably as exciting at a party as that solo....

Well, I'd contend that it isn't jazz at all. I think he's just playing an exercise he wrote to illustrate his pedagogical technique.
I also suspect that he can play reasonably well, when he's not selling his method, which probably sells *precisely* because so many beginners think note choice is what makes jazz jazz. I find it to be a perfect example to illustrate to those forum participants that even if you get your note choices under control, like CST and the million other methods that are discussed in this forum, that is just a tiny part of what playing jazz is.

Saying there is no "feeling" really illustrates the point of why note choice should be down on the list. We can talk all day about what scales/arpeggios/etc work over what chords. But when it comes to real musicality, it is often claimed that somebody lacks feeling. In my view, saying it lacks feeling is just an imprecise way of saying that the other 95% of jazz improv ingredients are missing. The problem with the playing in the video includes the awful phrasing, the stilted swing feeling, the lack of any articulation or accents or dynamics, and the fact that the two of them have no musical connection. These are all things that can be quantified to a certain extent, but it is harder than quantifying note choice. You can't play with feeling if you have little rhythmic control, little ability to place your notes in different parts of the beat, don't use dynamics, don't listen to your bandmates, etc, no matter how many times your heart was broken, etc. And these ingredients can be practiced, just like note choice can.

My point in getting into this discussion is just to share that little insight that took me so long to get. Lots of players on this forum probably were hip to this much faster than me, but from what I frequently hear from those brave enough to share their playing is that there are plenty who could use reminding: note choice isn't that important!

[mr. beaumont]

I guess I can't seperate note value/feel from pitch, really.

I wanna hear it all. Like every player on this track can.

[Robertkoa]

YMMV indeed.

(Although I like Bach too. If only more jazz solos in 8ths sounded anything like Bach's 8ths...)

Ted Greene often did in some ways..- right ?
One of the few that did or does?

Luckily...you don' t have to be that skilled/ gifted to come up with cool Solos .

[Robertkoa]

Interesting thread and as an experienced but typical Rock Musician learning more about Jazz and Music in General ( learning a lot here ) .
First - to play Jazz and improvise well like Pros on Gigs all over do all the time:
You kind of have to be a Black Belt- timing ,feel , knowing the changes, quick reactions to other Musicians onstage- that's just taken for granted to be a Pro- .
Now you might not be a 7th or 8th Degree Black Belt like Benson/Pass/Brecker/ Coltrane but you need to be a Black Belt to play well on a Gig. Most Pro Jazz Guys don't realize how good they are anyway.


Now on simpler or Modal Music or "Heard It Through the Grapevine" or Blues even Jazz Blues I am a Black Belt also but on
"Cherokee" until and unless I really learn those changes and "Live " Them I am a Green Belt and it does not really matter too much if I learn Chord Scales for that Tune until I can zero in on those Chord Tones ( assuming I have good time ( yes) and chops( yes) and a feel for chromatic approach tones ( yes but not like many of you !).
I can see what Metheny is saying or said about Chord Tones being more important but seems like 5 or 6 " safe" 'Melodic Cadence ' target tones for each chord not 4 like he said.

Interesting what he said about Rhythm and Time because I have not followed him closely at all ( I remember the Song " James" and that thing is very strong for a non vocal Tune) and I noticed his Timing has improved greatly when Soloing.

When he first was popular he used to do that slurred kind of thing which is cool sometimes but he did it all the time or much of the time and his picking has improved a lot .
Who am I to criticize his Time? Lol. Listen and you will hear it." Time" I have.
I bet he would admit it his time when soloing has improved.

So CST as has been stated got a bad name not because it's horrible - but because Green Belts were trying to do it or because you are not supposed to just run scales and people were doing that especially in the 80s..
BUT - CST should be "integrated" IMO.

Even two Stars I saw recently talking on a Video about ii- V- Is were talking about Improv and there it was the C major Scale a tiny little squiggly snake on the Fretboard and they played fragments from it to try to break it up - one of them touched upon the enharmonic nature of all the Modes.

BUT neither said you have the whole Key of Cmajor it's the Parent Key - ALL the structures from Cmajor arpeggios stacks of fourths playing across any diatonic Barrè Chord or any Diatonic Voicing AND the I Major Pentatonic the IV Major Pentatonic and the V Major Pentatonic ( and the Relative Minor Pentas)
now you have much more Raw Material and less likely to be boring and you can stack intervals etc.
Also - CST uses Mostly 7 note scales and Pentatonics zero in on Chord Tones better IMO so ...that all started with those Berklee William Leavit Books - probably not intending people to just play scales unadorned but people did that.

So a balanced approach and zero in on every chord tone first...arpeggiate through the Changes ...THEN spice it up...
But if you do it right those Chord Scales work right now...IF you do it right- the great thing about Applied Jazz.
Anyway that's my take and rant...

Feel free to correct me etc. I have learned a lot here in a very short time - a great Resource and lots of great Theory Guys here with lots of patience.

Years ago I asked a UM Guitar Instructor named Peter Harris who also played with Carmen Lundy in a R&B Jazz Group called Nimbus..what he meant by "Know" a Tune
he said- know the Melody and be able to play it and know the Changes able to play them and be able to arpeggiate through them.

[mr. beaumont]

Any criticism of CST is based in misunderstanding, a misunderstanding that chords have notes, scales have notes, and sometimes they match up.

It all comes from the "play this OVER this" school. There is no magic in what works.

[katamaranos]

Its funny how different people are.

i have never once, in any music been stopped by or impressed with a rhythm. My foot taps, or it doesn't.

i have been very impressed by note choice.

i could honestly live happily listening to blazing solos only using 8ths and triplets. My ears/brain do not require rests.

i feel the same way about classical music. Give me Bach any day over the most romantic of romantic pieces.

Rests bore me...

I'm impressed with a rhythm when the band goes out rhythmically - I can't tap my foot anymore. I'm even more impressed when they come back.

[christianm77]

Its funny how different people are.

i have never once, in any music been stopped by or impressed with a rhythm. My foot taps, or it doesn't.

i have been very impressed by note choice.

i could honestly live happily listening to blazing solos only using 8ths and triplets. My ears/brain do not require rests.

i feel the same way about classical music. Give me Bach any day over the most romantic of romantic pieces.

Rests bore me...

To me being 'impressed' has a lot to do with being a musician. In fact I am often impressed by rhythms - the drumming on jazz records is often the thing that gets me going, for example. A lot of the more interesting hiphop stuff is hugely impressive rhythmically.

In this sense it's about admiring the craft. Nothing wrong with that.

But really being impressed is a very shallow experience.

Most non-musicians (aside from nerds and music journalists) find nothing impressive about music at all. They simply don't understand how hard it is to write a 6 part fugue, or how hard it is to swing like Wes. Even if they did they probably wouldn't care.

They just listen to music innocently and either it touches them or it doesn't.

This reminds me of Bill Evan's statement.

“I believe that all people are in possession, of what might be called a universal musical mind. Any true music speaks with this universal mind, to the universal mind in all people. The understanding that results will vary, only insofar as people have or have not been conditioned to the various styles of music, in which the universal mind speaks. Consequently, often some effort and exposure is necessary in order to understand some of the music coming from a different period or a different culture, than that to which the listener has been conditioned.
I do not agree that the layman’s opinion is less of a valid judgment of music than that of the professional musician. In fact, I would often rely more on the judgment of a sensitive layman than that of a professional, since the professional, because of his constant involvement in the mechanics of music, must fight to preserve the naivety that the layman already possesses.”
—Bill Evans

[Tag101]

Because the masters constructed lines using notes from many scales in a single line, and I-III and VI chords have the same function as do the II-lV-V and VII chords. Why think of 7 different scales? Waste of time for the most part.

[christianm77]

Because the masters constructed lines using notes from many scales in a single line, and I-III and VI chords have the same function as do the II-lV-V and VII chords. Why think of 7 different scales? Waste of time for the most part.

I think it's more for playing contemporary post bop stuff with vamps and non functional harmony. which of course what George benson is the master of (although his vamp playing is pretty epic too)

If you don't play that contemporary stuff cst is more like 'special effects' rather than the substance of the movie. IMO

[kenbennett]

Because the masters constructed lines using notes from many scales in a single line, and I-III and VI chords have the same function as do the II-lV-V and VII chords. Why think of 7 different scales? Waste of time for the most part.

In functional harmony all chords have the same function?

[mr. beaumont]

CST is NOT thinking about 7 different scales over diatonic chords...

[targuit]

CST to me appears to be a certified pool of approved notes for use over a particular chord. Given that the chord tonic, 3rd, 5th and 7th are intrinsic to the chord - that constitutes a "duh". Add in the 9th, 11th, and 13ths plus relative flats and sharps for all the notes "permitted" and you don't have much left to "get approved" (1, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 9, 11, 13 -permitted). That leaves the 2nd. So overwhelming.

Waste of time.

[Tag101]

In functional harmony all chords have the same function?

Sorry, maybe that was worded in a confusing way. In a major key, the I III and VI have the same function (tonic) and the II IV V and VII have the same function. (Dominant)

[Tag101]

The same rules basically apply in non functional harmony. The chord is either at rest, or pulling your ear to the next chord. Just about any chord can be heard as tonic or dominant. it depends on what comes before or after. Vamp on a dim chord. Its tonic.

[JonR]

The same rules basically apply in non functional harmony. The chord is either at rest, or pulling your ear to the next chord.

There's a lot of modal jazz where that's not the case. Arguably, the whole point of modal harmony (in its original concept) is to avoid any sense of pulling to a next chord. That was the idea behind using quartal voicings.
Naturally, that doesn't mean that players can't insert some kind of arpeggio or chromaticism to create a leading sound.
Neither does it mean the melodies can't have that sense of leading, even when the chords don't.

Just about any chord can be heard as tonic or dominant. it depends on what comes before or after. Vamp on a dim chord. Its tonic.

Really? I don't hear that at all. I mean, vamping on a dim is fine, but "tonic"?
A dim chord is by definition unstable, which - strictly speaking - rules out any tonic function.
If the dim chord is "tonic", then what kind of chord is going to be "dominant" in relation to it?