How many tonalities or colors do you try to utilize in a tune?

[Tal_175]

Such as diatonic, blues, dim, aug, melodic minor, pent, altered minor like phrygian or harmonic minor etc.

These are not well defined distinctions. Pentatonic can be diatonic or blues, augmented can be melodic minor or harmonic minor etc. I don't think you thought this through very much. It's important to put some effort formulating questions about topics that have tendency to be vague, otherwise you'll get very impressionistic responses.

[Jimmy blue note]

I did.

Who plays only diatonically? It's jazz. But I certainly don't sit and say "I'm going to access some melodic minor colors now." I mean, if you're hearing a jazz line, there's probably already chromatics, enclosures, altered dom sounds (which you could likely trace to MM) etc...

And if you reharmonize or voice lead with dyads or chromatics, or harmonize in non tertiary chords (4ths or seconds) is that a different colour completely? They're all part of looking at a piece of music and creating a coherent composition out of it. It feels like if you ask a painter which crayons they use in their colouring book, it's missing the point of what they're actually doing. But maybe I'm missing the point of the OP's question too.
To the OP, if you're playing on a given tune, doesn't it limit you in your ability to create an expressive solo to think about things in terms of how many scales you're using? Aren't the notes of a chromatic scale always available for you to pick and choose as tools in expressing the given harmony of a tune structure?
What do you think of when you're picking and choosing your scales? What do scale choices mean to you and how do they relate to what feelings you're trying to convey? Isn't this the real focus of what you're doing? When you look at a painting, do you wonder how many brushes that painter used? Why would it matter even if you're a painter yourself?
I'm just curious and not in a condescending way, but your question makes me realize that we all look at playing jazz in such different ways. You truly are opening MY eyes to this quantifying of different scales.

[ragman1]

What is side slipping?

Playing a continuous line which moves up, or occasionally down, a fret and then resolves back again. It's a way of making an outside effect.

[Jimmy blue note]

What is side slipping?

.

[Brooks]

Kriesberg talked about how he practices taking one idea through all the changes in a song... so that when you are performing you can forget mechanics and just play whatever inspires you.

I struggled w/ my progress a lot when I was younger, as I was surrounded by really badass players at school. The really amazing guys have an unnatural obsession to practice that the rest of us just don't have. At some point in my 30s I finally decided that I was not going to sweat my ability or progress anymore, I was just going to have fun playing guitar. It has been liberating.

Here's something I came up with a few years ago; if you are like me, you are a "lick player". I've heard some people use this as an insult, but there are a lot of great players who repeat licks. My problem is that while I actually know a shit-ton of licks, in a situation where I have to improvise a lot (like when I do my solo jazz gigs w/ a looper pedal at restaurants) I found myself playing the same small group of licks over and over again. So I came up w/ the idea of cataloging licks. I opened a Word doc and started naming my licks ("1\2 whole dim", "Maj triplet", "Dom7 arpg"), sometimes the licks came from other people so that would be the name I'd use ("Benson sym", "Holdsworth 5ths", "Gilbert string skip"), etc... I play a progression from a tune in my set into the looper, then run thru my list of licks to see which ones worked better at which point in the progression; this led to another helpful concept, experimenting by playing the "wrong" lick over a chord, this leads to outside sounds that can actually sound very musical.

The goal is to not think about where to play which lick or concept, but to have them come out organically when performing.

[Lionelsax]

Such as diatonic, blues, dim, aug, melodic minor, pent, altered minor like phrygian or harmonic minor etc.

I'm thinking for jazz, you kind of have to use at least a handful of tonalities to make it more effective.

I've realized that if I slack, a take ends up with about 3. I want to shoot for 4-5. However, I think I am going to start using a practice device of just practicing using as many as possible that way I get used to it.

What say you?

Curiously I think more about forms than scales, tonalities, arpeggios, I don't have to.

[ragman1]

playing the "wrong" lick over a chord, this leads to outside sounds

Yes!

[ragman1]

P.S That wasn't 9 seconds.

[Jimmy blue note]

P.S That wasn't 9 seconds.

Oh yeah? Ask the guy with the shovel. It was an eternity. Let's split the difference.
As I watch and laugh, it's not long enough, like two seconds. I had to keep going back and watching again.

[Lionelsax]

When you stop thinking about these things you can say you play music.
When you never stop it means you don't play music or you teach what you'll never be able to do, hoping they'll one day play music.

[John A.]

I'm actually colorblind (red-green/Daltonian). That's why I play a lot of blues.

[starjasmine]

Chris Cain and Kirk Fletcher for a straight blues vibe.

Cain is the sh--! The epitome of a "singing" tone, always melodic, raw and powerful. As you mentioned Kirk in the same breath, I'll have to check him out.

Incidentally, Chris is also able to play jazz quite well.

SJ

[DawgBone]

Playing a continuous line which moves up, or occasionally down, a fret and then resolves back again. It's a way of making an outside effect.

Got it, and thank you. I am familiar with the technique just didn't know it had a name.

[Degranulator]

Tonalities per take? None, I play atonally. Or... All, when I am playing pantonally. Just kidding, actually I just play the melody over and over, gradually accumulating errors until it turns into something else.

[DawgBone]

Cain is the sh--! The epitome of a "singing" tone, always melodic, raw and powerful. As you mentioned Kirk in the same breath, I'll have to check him out.

Incidentally, Chris is also able to play jazz quite well.

SJ

Chris is a talented guy, one of the top living blues guitar players in my estimation. Part of what I love about him is he maintains that raw blues feeling without a lot of window dressing. When he lost David Matthews on keys to Santana and hired the current player I felt like the band lost a lot of the fire as the new guy is much more mellow and laid back in approach. David really drove Chris with an intensity that I really enjoyed.

Kirk is a great player as well, definitely worth checking out. Also sticks pretty closely to that raw sound but definitely has his own voice. If you like Kirk I would also suggest this fella that gigs in NYC pretty often named Saron Crenshaw. He is probably my favorite current mostly unknown blues guitaris/singer. I really liked Lucky Peterson as well, if you are familiar with him, smoking guitar and B3 player but he died in 2020. His old man used to hang out at Mahuffers the Wurst place on the beach so Lucky would show up to the jams somewhat frequently.

[Litterick]

If you were to select ten songs in the style of jazz you want to play, and analyse them to find the number of 'colours' each contains, then you would have some firm evidence. The number and types of colours might be consistent across the songs, or might vary widely. You might also find an average that you could use as a target, if that is how you want to play.

[Jimmy Smith]

^ Good suggestion.

When you stop thinking about these things you can say you play music.
When you never stop it means you don't play music or you teach what you'll never be able to do, hoping they'll one day play music.

You have to internalize mechanics. If you don't know what you're doing you don't really play music either.

[Lionelsax]

^ Good suggestion.

You have to internalize mechanics. If you don't know what you're doing you don't really play music either.

Do you analyse every word you say or write ? Do you draw something before doing it ? Did you learn grammar before learning how to speak ? How comes I speak English ? I speak English because I do ! I don't analyse what I say or write because I know it sounds good ! Same thing with music.
Sure, story tellers would say : "You should do this... When I was touring in Antarctica with George Benson... I know someone who knows someone who knows someone else... Ah sorry I was talking about you... This someone is the someone of the other one... And it's you... OK, so when I was touring in Antarctica..."

[Jimmy Smith]

^ Lionelsax, that isn't true. You have to get skills together to be able to play well and ultimately play music artistically.

These are not well defined distinctions. Pentatonic can be diatonic or blues, augmented can be melodic minor or harmonic minor etc. I don't think you thought this through very much. It's important to put some effort formulating questions about topics that have tendency to be vague, otherwise you'll get very impressionistic responses.

I know. Devices can use diatonic notes but still have a different color like pent over a minor tune. While devices can use notes outside the key and still not have a very outside sound overall. You know what I mean. I try to be clear in my ops, but I'm not going to write 3 drafts to appease the hordes. Just read the thread.

[Lionelsax]

^ Lionelsax, that isn't true. You have to get skills together to be able to play well and ultimately play music artistically.

First of all you have to PLAY !
You can analyse whatever you want, if you don't want to, others will do it for you.
The most important thing is to PLAY !

[ragman1]

Got it, and thank you. I am familiar with the technique just didn't know it had a name.

I would have been surprised if you hadn't known it

[Jimmy Smith]

First of all you have to PLAY !
You can analyse whatever you want, if you don't want to, others will do it for you.
The most important thing is to PLAY !

Are you ok? :P. You can play all you want but without skills and knowledge it doesn't help much either. Both are important.

[Vihar]

Are you ok? :P. You can play all you want but without skills and knowledge it doesn't help much. Both are important.

You can learn more playing skills by trying to figure out on your instrument how to play music that you hear in your head, than trying to acquire that kind of knowledge through discussion, be it written or spoken langue.

1. listen 2. attempt to imitate. If you can't hear what's going on, slow it down, keep listening to it over and over, until you can hear/reproduce it in your head clearly. Then patiently find the notes on the instrument.

[Jimmy Smith]

I do that. They're not mutually exclusive.

[DawgBone]

It's easy to get locked into patterns i.e scales. They kind of get taught as a formulaic way toward achieving a certain sound and so it's easy to get tunnel vision and neglect other possibilities that are within that framework, right under your fingers, like chord tones or passing tones.

Maybe I'm off base, and undoubtedly I have crap theory understanding since I quit theory once we started doing four part harmonies, yuk, but I want a 7th as a passing tone in my blues scale. Same for #5 since it's right under my fingers. One could argue it's kind of a "bum" note but so is the b5 but somehow it's included? Or how about a 3rd since it's part of the I chord arpeggio and functions as a passing tone when it's not the I chord? Also right under my fingers. Same for a b9. Add some of them and you get a scale pattern that flows a little more smoothly, at least, to my ears on a guitar. Also offers more ins and outs and general lick-age within the pattern.

It's likely my theory is more piss poor than I already imagined it was but I still wonder why so much is omitted on a basic blues scale, especially for guitarists considering many of the fingering patterns where these notes are right under where my fingers are already headed.. Could've saved myself a lot of time and experimenting if I could've had the whole enchilada from the get go.