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just thought I'd start a fresh thread on this because it seems to bring a few recent threads together and I have a particular question to ask everyone:
do people appreciate that - without losing very much nuance at all - one needs only a straight minor sound and a melodic minor sound to negotiate the songbook?
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12-20-2021 12:57 PM
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Please define "straight minor".
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C D Eb F G A B
C D Eb F G Ab B
C D Eb F G A Bb
C D Eb F G Ab Bb
Five notes are the same. Then you pick Ab vs A and Bb vs B.
That gives you, melodic, harmonic, dorian and aeolian.
I think it's pretty simple to think about it that way. As far as how to apply it, why not just go by ear?
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One "magic bebop" scale over a dominant chord is to take the 5th mode of the harmonic minor and add a #9 to bridge the augmented 2nd. Bird used it.
G Ab Bb B C D Eb F
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Originally Posted by Groyniad
OK, so the minor scale goes
1 2 b3 4 5 - the minor pentachord
and then chromatic to the octave
5 b6 6 b7 7 1
Which gives
Natural, Dorian, Harmonic and Melodic all of which can be heard in all jazz ever.
You can play a lot of music on the pentachord. Surprising number of jazz lines do just that. And of course there’s a lot of lines that use the chromatic steps from 1 to 5. That’s a bebop sound.
(I think this is what Pat Martino meant by ‘minor topic’.)
This can all be applied the same way as the melodic minor - Dm goes on G7, Bm7b5, Db7alt and E7sus
Which notes you choose to lean on; b6 is the only note that sounds really dissonant.
6 is the Charlie Christian note. Swing minor.
7 is the Strayhorn note. Jazz minor.
and b7 is the Miles Davis note. Modal minor.
In practice (pre 1970s) jazz lines mix these options up. CST divides them up into neat applications, so now people have intervallic chord voicings that plane through melodic minor modes and so on.
If I had to describe the difference between pre and post-CST improv approaches I would say the latter played melodies which had harmonic implications, the latter play harmonies that have melodic implications.
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Originally Posted by Christian Miller;[URL="tel:1166403"
thanks man , very succinct
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crazy post there from Christian - fantastic man!
what 'straight minor' means is one way into it all I suppose.
why bother? might need to come first.
were it to turn out that you can describe the same music without appeal to (many of) the basic concepts of diatonic harmony - such as the distinctions between maj7; min7 and dominant chords - that might be of practical musical value to certain sorts of improvisers or composers.
we all have the diatonic - perhaps 'classical'? - picture with seven chords, and, arguably 7 chord-types (because ii isn't the same sort of minor as iii or vi - never mind vii - and I isn't the same sort of major as IV either).
but maybe that way of describing the harmony of the songbook is unhelpful in certain ways - obscuring key harmonic connections and making lots of very very complicated patterns on guitar necks (amongst many other things).
if you could think of the seven chords as modifications (inversions perhaps or extensions) of just two sounds of the same type - that might make it easier to navigate changes as a composer or improviser.
and maybe you can. because maybe you can think of all the other diatonic chords as modifications either of I and IV - or of vi and ii.
on this picture a key is a sort of stand-off between two basic sounds - a I and a IV (or a iv and a ii) - you can think of them as two 'straight major' sounds or two 'straight minor' sounds.
G maj 7 and E min 7 (Em9) are closely related and E min 9 is very close to A7 (or A13) which is II7 of G maj
so part of this 'vi' sound or 'I' sound is a II7 sound (this is an example of generating a diatonic dominant sound without appeal to the diatonic concept of a dominant chord)
now in Gmaj - take the IV chord (Cmaj 7). It is very closely related to A min 7 (Am9) and Am9 is very close to D7 (better D13) - now we have gotten to the diatonic V sound in Gmaj7 (D13) as a modification of a maj sound (Cmaj7 - or better C maj 7 sharp 11).
this may sound complicated when you try to articulate it like this - but the point is something like this:
by manipulating two very friendly minor-ish or major-ish sounds you can capture many of the fundamental harmonic movements characteristic of the songbook repertoire. (I'm picking these examples because e.g. D13 rather than just D7 - in G - is so characteristic - and A13 as a II chord is so characteristic too. the prevalence of these sorts of case in the songbook strongly suggests that this non-diatonic way of describing things is a
good way of describing things.)
this is one of the two sorts of minor-ish sound I was talking about in the original post. the other type is melodic minor.
this comes in not only to handle minor harmony - but also to provide an alternative 'straight dominant' sound and a whole bunch of the altered dominant sounds (if not all of them). One way to think of G7 in C on this picture is as D melodic minor - and this makes a straight dominant into a dominant with a strong suggestion of the flattened fifth sound. Again this is another way to capture what is ordinarily thought of as a diatonic dominant sound without appeal to the concept of a dominant chord.Last edited by Groyniad; 12-20-2021 at 09:23 PM.
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Originally Posted by Christian Miller
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I think this could totally work if that's what you want to do. You can basically cover all the bases. Dorian or melodic minor sound nice over tonics, dorian for major subdominants, melodic minor for minor subdominants or altered dominants.
Personally, I like to use many different scales because I like the different tonalities they all provide. Bluez scale minor is essential for me. I might be in the mood for some natural minor or some harmonic minor or maybe something else. I think the next most weird minor scale that I use would be the whole half diminished scale. It's cool, it's basically melodic minor with a b5 and #5.
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Originally Posted by Groyniad
And you can extend those out. Knowing the #4 in the major key is one of the most common chromatic notes and that it belongs to Am6 is useful for instance.
Am7 -> C6 -> D7sus
Dm7 -> F6 -> G7sus
Dm6 -> Fmaj#4 -> G7 -> Bm7b5
Am6 -> Cmaj#4 -> D7 -> F#m7b5
You can also extend these sounds
But then there’s other similar ways of doing things - Barry’s approach. Or Pat’s. It’s what Joe Pass meant I think when he talks about all chords being major, minor or dominant (the three part division is more like Barry, and I find it useful) or Mark Levine when he cuts to the chase and points out you only need two or three scales.
Really what you get into this way is what Mick Goodrick calls derivative thinking; I prefer to call it applied harmony because you are applying things to other things. In this model you are learning a small number of objects - but applying them to everything using rules of thumb. Mick points out that the rules are the things that take the time to internalise; for example ‘oh I put a minor 6 scale/voicing a minor third higher on a half diminished’
OTOH you learn to use the stuff you already know as efficiently as possible. I like it, it’s thrifty!
Where we get into the parallel approach is where you alter the object to fit the prevailing harmonic situation. So if you have a minor7 line, you flat the 5 and use it over m7b5 on the root. That’s also useful especially for motivic playing.
But it’s where you start to get these eye bleeding lists of scales, you know ‘C Lydian #2 on the Cmaj7#9’
There’s not actually much theory here; tbh the main theoretical difficulty with this is remembering the silly names. If you know how to construct a scale from a given chord it shouldn’t be a problem, and that’s the study of intervals, which is time on the instrument, right? Build the basic chord and add the other notes to taste. Learn to do this for both scales and tertian arpeggio structures (the latter often being more immediately musical or ‘jazz’). Which is the musical way to do it IMO.
(I would say that the latter might point you slightly more in the direction of harmony and the former towards lines.)Last edited by Christian Miller; 12-21-2021 at 04:10 AM.
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Anywya it’s easy to write these rules and connections out. What I have found as a teacher is that the first time you say, on the ‘play a minor a minor third higher on the half diminished’ to a student they look like their brain is about to implode and it takes a number of weeks for that rule to start to become internalised. It’s slow going.
The theory can be written on the back of an envelope but it can take ages to become intuitive.
As a teacher I start with three or four main connections for this type of applied playing…
Dm/G7 (ii V or important minor)
G7/Db7alt (tritone)
Bm7b5/G7 and/or Bm7b5/Fm6 (less commonly discussed for some reason?)
(Major chords stand apart…)
But coming out of this are compound applications like Dm on Db7 (‘tritone’s minor’). You can make a decision about how to frame this; for instance you could do all minor. Barry harris does dominant and minor… If you use strictly melodic minor you get common melodic minor modes (I think John Stowell does this style of thing?), if you keep it a bit freer like I do it’s more boppier, and so on.
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What about chromatic embellishments on the lower tetrachord? Seems like #4 is the most common, flat 2 less so then after that the maj 3? Of course in major the b3 is common (and in classical music as well as a leading tone to the third - Little Town of Bethlehem for example), but the maj 3 an ‘avoid’ note in minor (at least over a i chord)
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I'm delighted that what I've said seems to be intelligible
I've found it thrilling discovering this different way to describe standard changes
and not because it is intellectually interesting to discover that there is another way to talk about a standard tune
I have a way of doing what most people call arpeggios as sets of nested triads. I use Dm7 (1-3-5 phrase; 3-5-7 phrase; 5-7-11 phrase; 2-11-13 phrase) to unpack the harmony of both Dm7 and Fmaj7 (Garrison Fewell taught me how to do this - borrowing from Wes)
I've voiced these patterns everywhere and in three octaves wherever possible as well as in 2 and 1 octave.
When I combine what these 'arpeggios' give me with this non-diatonic, everything maj or min approach - I seem to generate the most wonderful freedom - a freedom which captures all the harmonic nooks and crannies I'm after but which allows me to be hugely relaxed especially about the timing of the changes.
I got this through a kind of combination of BH - god bless him - and Garrison Fewell. (both of whom have been popular on the forum.) I am nowhere near finished internalising it all - and it keeps on delivering the goods!
so I'm just stressing the practical value of this reduction of the number of chord-types and scale-types you are using for improvisation.
another thing I like is that it makes sense of lots of characteristic chord sequences in the songbook:
those involving II7 and also a half-dim chord on the flat fifth of the tonic sound.
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tried it out?
I'm livin' it man!!
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I haven’t read the whole thread, but this sounds a lot like Pat Martino’s ‘convert everything to minor’ approach. Which makes sense, I sometimes think along similar lines.
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Linear Expressions - Pat Martino – 1983
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Originally Posted by ragman1
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Originally Posted by ragman1
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Originally Posted by ragman1
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Originally Posted by ragman1
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Originally Posted by Groyniad
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Originally Posted by Groyniad
So it definitely works, just ask Pat Martino!
(and I don’t think you need to prove it to anybody...)
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Originally Posted by Christian Miller
A lot of people think of something like melodic minor as a... erm... melodic variation of minor. I get that, especially since that's how it's treated in traditional classical theory. But that means that people tend to treat "altered" lines as coming from the same place as playing Dmin(maj7) over a Dm7. Same pitch collection, yes, but different functions entirely.
I think it's better to think of it as either:
- tonic minor (with either 7, b7, 6, b6 depending on what colors you want)
- "altered" lines do not come from melodic minor a half step up, they come from the bII7 (tritone substitution of V7), which means that the melodic minor is really the "important minor on the 5th."
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Originally Posted by ragman1
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Originally Posted by ragman1
Since I use it a lot, you can listen to my playing if you like.
For the record, I have hardly ever practised scales or thought about theory much. I like simple things much more than complex ones.
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