The Jazz Guitar Chord Dictionary
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  1. #26

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    Quote Originally Posted by Groyniad
    My concern is that there might be some connection between a certain picture of harmony and a way of playing that I am consistently put-off by - and that there might be many people wanting to learn to play 'mainstream' jazz who are suffering because their only theoretical framework is CST.
    You know Groyniad, this is a very thought provoking thread. Thanks for starting it.
    I do get what you're saying, and it's a real issue, but I tend to think that the culprit, in this case, may be mistaken. You see, I LOVE Hank Mobley and Lee Morgan is one of my greatest inspirations. There's something in their cadences, the strength of their play with the beat and the drive and drama of their lines that I don't hear in contemporary playing. I miss it but I wouldn't have it any other way.
    The blue note aesthetic is a powerful marker of what defined an impetuous and youthful period of jazz, our nation and the New York of the day. It speaks to a zeitgeist of the 50's. But exiting the 50's the sounds of the young players, the sonic environment the new generation grew up on reflected a different urgency. The songs, tunes and compositions no longer stayed in Tin Pan Alley if you were being honest.
    Yeah, people listened differently, and the rhythmic drive of the blue note era became a harmonic search for the harmonic expansion of Wayne Shorter. Your point that CST isn't well suited for the tunes of the blue note sensibility seems a little broad to me. It feels more like a new generation didn't hear show tunes the same way because the light that illuminated those vehicles was very different to someone brought up in a music world that didn't listen to Cole Porter in their movies, but maybe Bernstein, Copeland, Takemitsu or some soundscape of life between the Beatles and The Buzzcocks.
    Chord Scale Theory is the paintbox availed to the contemporary musician. It's one of many. The paint brushes and tools for applying that paint are the rhythmic cadences of a different world. The subject matter of the young searching improvisational sound artist is a world very different from Fred Astaire and Gene Kelly's dance syncopations. But this world we live in, as different as it is from the era of classic blue note, does have the ability to embrace the Hank Mobley aesthetic, if it wants. That's the point I'm making: CST is not tantamount to the drive away from blue note aesthetic, but a part of a larger sonic soundscape wherein Blue Note is just one part.

    I listen to some younger players who have chosen to embrace a swing sense of an older era, Kurt Rosenwinkel, Max Light, Josh Redmond come to mind. They have modern vocabulary for sure but there's swing to spare.

    I had an interesting conversation with sax player Jerry Bergonzi. He noted that every era has its own swing, that a swing sense evolved through time and the history of the music. He called them era dialects. He saw swing as the embodiment of melody, harmony, time and the specific drive and urgency that pulls it all together.
    I guess a good realized musician these days has to use a lot more filters in coming up with a style that's honest and personal. Advanced harmonic lexicon is a given on many bandstands. Hank Mobley is just one option.
    I love Brecker, and Bob Berg, and Kenny Garret because I hear the tie to Blue Note in their playing, and they're no strangers to Chord Scales and their uses.
    Just a thought anyway. Thanks for the springboard.

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  3. #27

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    Quote Originally Posted by bako


    You are free to like or dislike, draw inspiration from or ignore whatever to choose.
    It was a bad example in my opinion to present these compositions and Coltrane
    as the driving force behind the evolution of what you don't like in recent jazz academia.

    If so inclined, check out some of the limited Coltrane interviews available and
    you will find an incredibly soft spoken, kind and humble person committed to
    pursuing his personal vision. He worked hard and gave us the best he could.
    It is my hope that many will follow such a beautiful example wherever it leads
    and the world will be a better place for it.
    Coltrane was much larger than the sessions he is documented by. What Impulse decided to represent him as is one small part of the musical soundscape he created. Good friend of mine told me Coltrane was booked for a week. My friend went to see him almost every night. Impressions of the first night: Huh? This is interesting, but am I missing something?
    Next night: Something is happening but it's exciting and rough.
    About 3/4 though the week: THIS is what I know as Coltrane, and it's more lyrical and stronger statements than I even suspected.
    By the weekend at the closing: I have NEVER heard anything like this and it really SWINGS. Why is this not being recorded?
    Of note, the last night, he left after the first set. He said it was overwhelming and he had to go home to try to process what he had just heard.

    We listen to Coltrane on record. That's one hour of a story that it took a week to tell, for those who cared to listen. Who knows how history would be different if he chose to show another side of himself on his Impulse recordings?
    Something to think about.

  4. #28

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    Quote Originally Posted by Christian Miller
    Groynaid
    I wish you’d stop calling him that Christian, it makes me wince.

  5. #29

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    So re Giant Steps, looking at the first few choruses of the solo I was struck by the fact that it’s the same stuff Barry Harris teaches. Bop scales, 1-2-3-5 figures, triads and so on. Which is not to say Barry had a monopoly on any of this stuff, but Trane did visit his class in the late 50s. Just saying.

    Nothing to do with CST; outlining the changes using boilerplate bop techniques. Just very very fast.
    Last edited by Christian Miller; 01-08-2022 at 04:25 PM.

  6. #30

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    I have transcribed the whole solo, it is all entirely logical.

  7. #31

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    Quote Originally Posted by grahambop
    I have transcribed the whole solo, it is all entirely logical.
    You could use it as an object lesson for basic changes playing, right?

  8. #32

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    Quote Originally Posted by Jimmy blue note
    You know Groyniad, this is a very thought provoking thread. Thanks for starting it.
    I do get what you're saying, and it's a real issue, but I tend to think that the culprit, in this case, may be mistaken. You see, I LOVE Hank Mobley and Lee Morgan is one of my greatest inspirations. There's something in their cadences, the strength of their play with the beat and the drive and drama of their lines that I don't hear in contemporary playing. I miss it but I wouldn't have it any other way.
    The blue note aesthetic is a powerful marker of what defined an impetuous and youthful period of jazz, our nation and the New York of the day. It speaks to a zeitgeist of the 50's. But exiting the 50's the sounds of the young players, the sonic environment the new generation grew up on reflected a different urgency. The songs, tunes and compositions no longer stayed in Tin Pan Alley if you were being honest.
    Yeah, people listened differently, and the rhythmic drive of the blue note era became a harmonic search for the harmonic expansion of Wayne Shorter. Your point that CST isn't well suited for the tunes of the blue note sensibility seems a little broad to me. It feels more like a new generation didn't hear show tunes the same way because the light that illuminated those vehicles was very different to someone brought up in a music world that didn't listen to Cole Porter in their movies, but maybe Bernstein, Copeland, Takemitsu or some soundscape of life between the Beatles and The Buzzcocks.
    Chord Scale Theory is the paintbox availed to the contemporary musician. It's one of many. The paint brushes and tools for applying that paint are the rhythmic cadences of a different world. The subject matter of the young searching improvisational sound artist is a world very different from Fred Astaire and Gene Kelly's dance syncopations. But this world we live in, as different as it is from the era of classic blue note, does have the ability to embrace the Hank Mobley aesthetic, if it wants. That's the point I'm making: CST is not tantamount to the drive away from blue note aesthetic, but a part of a larger sonic soundscape wherein Blue Note is just one part.

    I listen to some younger players who have chosen to embrace a swing sense of an older era, Kurt Rosenwinkel, Max Light, Josh Redmond come to mind. They have modern vocabulary for sure but there's swing to spare.

    I had an interesting conversation with sax player Jerry Bergonzi. He noted that every era has its own swing, that a swing sense evolved through time and the history of the music. He called them era dialects. He saw swing as the embodiment of melody, harmony, time and the specific drive and urgency that pulls it all together.
    I guess a good realized musician these days has to use a lot more filters in coming up with a style that's honest and personal. Advanced harmonic lexicon is a given on many bandstands. Hank Mobley is just one option.
    I love Brecker, and Bob Berg, and Kenny Garret because I hear the tie to Blue Note in their playing, and they're no strangers to Chord Scales and their uses.
    Just a thought anyway. Thanks for the springboard.
    I think that about all the NYC fusion era players - a direct line from Cannonball. The language was very present.

    this is not always true of todays ‘advanced’* jazz improvisers. It isn’t so obviously true of Lage Lund for instance; I know he is an accomplished bop improviser. It’s more that the allusions to bop in his music are more sideways than the very obvious bop vocab in Mike Stern’s playing for instance.

    * I always have to use this is scare quotes because I dislike that progressive/modernist narrative the idea that later music is more developed than earlier era’s. Miles did think 80s musicians learned faster than those of his youth though. It certainly seems that way on the web. So maybe there’s capacity to absorb more, although the community of practice has withered on the vine leading to a loss of context?

    But Bach is not less advanced than Debussy; just different (although Debussy did win the Prix de Rome for fugue so could do to a high level the type of thing Bach did TBF) There’s only so much stuff anyone can learn in a few decades, and what you choose depends on your surroundings; your era’s swing I guess as Bergonzi would put it.

    (Now it seems much more post modern; eclectic. neoclassical even)

    So for instance, to me it’s immaterial Bird couldn’t play countdown in seven; if he’d had to as part of the community of practice of the time he would have got it together. But there’s no question his rhythmic imagination was as advanced as anyone before or since.

  9. #33

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    I agree with bako and Jimmy blue note on Trane, also. I do think it’s true that elements of Tranes music were taken as a template for jazz education materials; but obviously not the totality. People who don’t really like Trane often portray his music is technical which I find baffling. I mean Giant Steps, sure, but that was one chapter.

    Trane was getting ideas from all over anyway; bop, harp manuals, Hindustani music, Slonimsky etc etc

    Jazz edu was driven by its own internal logic that had not that much to do with the artistic journey of an artist like Trane.

    At the end of it what you are dealing with is Tranes sound, swing, spirit and energy and they can’t teach that on a syllabus. Which is why Trane can play a simple minor pentatonic melody on a single chord and take you to another world.

  10. #34

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    Quote Originally Posted by Clint 55
    Did someone say cst was a substitute for vocab and other essential topics?
    People make that assumption constantly, yes They assume that CST is a full blown improv method. They also assume it’s a style of music.

  11. #35

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    Quote Originally Posted by Donplaysguitar
    People make that assumption constantly, yes They assume that CST is a full blown improv method. They also assume it’s a style of music.
    Well isn’t that rather the OP’s point?

  12. #36

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    Quote Originally Posted by Donplaysguitar
    People make that assumption constantly, yes They assume that CST is a full blown improv method. They also assume it’s a style of music.
    Oh dear

  13. #37

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    Groyn aid is very bad

    the whole groin vibe is very bad

    can’t change my identity now though

    it is meant to be a mis- spelling of the classic typo mis - spelling of the newspaper ‘The Guardian’

    I have forgotten what that piss-take of ‘The Guardian’ is !!

    meant to be a jazz version of a version thing

    serves me right for trying to be clever that I made myself sound like something to do with willies

  14. #38

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    Thank good for Barry Harris

  15. #39

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    Sixth on the fifth is where it is at

    so glad to hear someone making Christian’s point that Debussy is not more advanced than Bach

    Parker seems to me to be the great unappreciated genius of modern jazz (joke)

  16. #40

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    Quote Originally Posted by Christian Miller
    Well isn’t that rather the OP’s point?
    No offense but the OP started with a troubled assumption, then made a troubling second statement. So, it really twisted itself around the axle right out of the gate.

    I would propose to first characterize/describe swing and bebop music and compositions, plus the GASB, and then the content of the typical jazz lines of the most notable players in those styles. Who knows, maybe…. Charlie Parker? An emphasis on fast harmonic rhythm plus key center changes in particular should be a focus. You could look at it like a style with formal/compositional, tonic, and harmonic “constraints” and how the characteristic masters of the art worked within those constraints. In short, unless one elected or elects to play in a very sparse, minimalistic, lyrical style then they will be busier, and if they’re busier they will need to outline the changes, and with so many changes may come to feel a bit… handcuffed.

    So maybe a certain someone in or around 1959 decided to shake things up a bit and take the straight jacket off, so to speak. Fewer chords ( a lot fewer chords at first), were held longer, set an intended mood and invited more expansive, exploratory and expressive improvisation. (Jam time, folks.)

    And maybe notice was taken. Maybe influence was widespread, and even continues to this day.

    Well, that would introduce a need for a new set of jazz language rules, or at least guidelines and practices. The established practices would not be abandoned but would need to be expanded upon. Put another way, if you outline a chord effectively but it will be held longer what are you going to do next, outline it 10 more times and in the same manner? It was only logical that Jazz lines would take on more steps together with skips (and a lot of other devices, depending on player preferences). Some of that extended jamming worked for fans, and some of it bored them.

    Thats all an oversimplification of course.

    Its also true that jazz studies programs increased in number in the USA during the post bop - and fusion - periods. A lot of things were changing fast and in parallel for the baby boomer generation. Some were related, others more coincidental.

    When approaching post bop and modal, and assuming one is not intending atonality and outside playing on steroids, one needs some guidelines just as they did before. At its simplest, CST guides the composer, arranger, and soloist with logical choices. In some circumstances there are more choices than in others. (I’m only referring to scale/chord pairing, not the shape and total content of jazz lines).

    One unintended consequence of the above is that any given pop, rock, blues guitarist may become bored and want to “do more”. They never learn swing, bebop or even post bop practices, but instead cut straight to jamming on modal tunes. They make certain that they know at least one logical, consonant sounding scale to play with each chord. Mode based noodling ensues from there, and CST gets blamed.

    What gets overlooked is that CST can be applied to any era. When one plays bebop it’s not just arpeggios and chromatics. There are other notes to play. So which other notes, why, and how do we know? The chord scale or scales inform us.

    Barry Harris had his scales. People get pretty dogmatic about it. When we choose a Barry scale for a certain harmonic scenario, that’s a chord scale by any other name. So maybe “the genuine bebop theory” is it’s own CST.
    Last edited by Donplaysguitar; 01-08-2022 at 09:03 PM.

  17. #41

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    I have a simple but profound example to show you. It's Yngwie demonstrating scales. Does he only run them like exercises? No. He makes them into musical passages. That's what you're supposed to do! The definition of theory isn't running exercises and calling it music, it's using it to help you be musical. If people can't figure that out, they're doing it wrong! Listen to what he says at 1:50. He says "figure it out, listen." Subtle but profound. You're supposed to do both. Understand how the structure can help you and listen and use your intuition to make musical ideas out if it. Theory and musicianship aren't inversely proportional.


  18. #42

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    Quote Originally Posted by Groyniad
    it is meant to be a mis- spelling of the classic typo mis - spelling of the newspaper ‘The Guardian’
    I kind of assumed it was a reference to the ‘Grauniad’.

    But this is all getting a bit much - Christian mis-spelling your mis-spelling of a mis-spelling...

  19. #43

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    I'm just glad Groyniad found the shift key for capitals.

  20. #44

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    Quote Originally Posted by Christian Miller
    You could use it as an object lesson for basic changes playing, right?
    yes, in fact I think Giant Steps represents Trane taking changes playing about as far as he could. After that I think he changed direction and increasingly went down the modal route.

  21. #45

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    If you want some Coltrane patterns here’s 111 pages of them.

    http://valdez.dumarsengraving.com/PD...nePatterns.pdf

  22. #46

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    jazz is about breaking patterns

    playfulness, irreverence even

    patterns....schmattens

  23. #47

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    of course there has to be at least an implied pattern in order for an irreverent breaking away from it even to be possible

    there has to be a spelling in order for a playful mis-spelling to be possible

    and thanks for reminding me graham - it was always called 'the grauniad' when I was small...

  24. #48

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    Quote Originally Posted by grahambop
    yes, in fact I think Giant Steps represents Trane taking changes playing about as far as he could. After that I think he changed direction and increasingly went down the modal route.
    He went pretty wild. Maybe he and others thought that they had done just about everything that they could with more traditional forms and expressions.

    That extreme stuff was/is a sure fire way to shrink one’s fan base. But hey, it’s a free country.

    Will Metheny be most remembered for his album with Ornette? There’s no way.

  25. #49

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    About Coltrane's transitions: Listen to him on those recently released bootlegs of his last Europe tour with Miles. He's clearly very restless playing things like Green Dolphin and Oleo. He runs changes like he does on Steps, which was a year earlier. On some takes he starts playing substitutions and passing cord arpeggios at crazy speed, getting more and more out. He starts messing around with multitone overblowing stuff, and playing things that... well things that no-one else would think of doing. Really pushing the limits. And the audience encourages him while he's at it. The biggest rounds of applause at introductions and solos are usually for him. He's much more musically 'reasonable' on So What. One some of the other stuff he seems a little out of touch with the other guys in a way. Curious to know what they were thinking...

    I think it's pretty clear he's had about as much as he can take of 'running changes'. Kinda worn that out, and is more interested in what I might call a bigger expression of the heart. He goes on to albums like Favourite Things, Live at Vanguard, and then he comes back with Coltrane and Hartman. And then Supreme. What a guy!

    No point to make really. If you're interested in Coltrane those tapes should be listened to though. You can really hear something happening with JC.

    On topic: I don't actually know what CST really means in the schools, but I think it might just be a way of defining a palette of notes to work with. If that's it, I've been using it since '70. Unfortunately I couldn't attend music school, since I dropped out of school in the 10th grade to try to play jazz. I was allowed to audit the Portland State stage band for a few semesters though. Met a few life-long music buddys there. That's one of the big plusses of music school.

  26. #50

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    Quote Originally Posted by ccroft
    About Coltrane's transitions: Listen to him on those recently released bootlegs of his last Europe tour with Miles. He's clearly very restless playing things like Green Dolphin and Oleo. He runs changes like he does on Steps, which was a year earlier. On some takes he starts playing substitutions and passing cord arpeggios at crazy speed, getting more and more out. He starts messing around with multitone overblowing stuff, and playing things that... well things that no-one else would think of doing. Really pushing the limits. And the audience encourages him while he's at it. The biggest rounds of applause at introductions and solos are usually for him. He's much more musically 'reasonable' on So What. One some of the other stuff he seems a little out of touch with the other guys in a way. Curious to know what they were thinking...

    I think it's pretty clear he's had about as much as he can take of 'running changes'. Kinda worn that out, and is more interested in what I might call a bigger expression of the heart. He goes on to albums like Favourite Things, Live at Vanguard, and then he comes back with Coltrane and Hartman. And then Supreme. What a guy!

    No point to make really. If you're interested in Coltrane those tapes should be listened to though. You can really hear something happening with JC.

    On topic: I don't actually know what CST really means in the schools, but I think it might just be a way of defining a palette of notes to work with. If that's it, I've been using it since '70. Unfortunately I couldn't attend music school, since I dropped out of school in the 10th grade to try to play jazz. I was allowed to audit the Portland State stage band for a few semesters though. Met a few life-long music buddys there. That's one of the big plusses of music school.
    Thanks. I need to check that out. Saw a video of him playing at Newport in ‘66 where he was playing like a wild man.

    Favorite Things and the album with Hartman were quite reasonable. Vanguard too, love it. Supreme does nada for me.