The Altered Scale is kind of broken

[equenda]

1) I don't care about alterations in the G7 dominant chord. To me G7#5, G7#9, G7 b5, G7 b9, G7 #5 #9, G7 b5 b9, G7 b5 #9, G7 #5 b9 are all the same: Functioning Dominants Chords.
In my world a piano/guitar player when they are comping with the solist always change the alterations of the dominant chord. It's impossible to tell him: "Play this alteration on chorus 1........this other aleration on bar nr. X.......etc." .
Maybe if you have a SUPER EAR you can hear the alterations played on the piano/guitar in a millisecond and play THESE notes.......but in this way the whole Tension/Resolution effect is gone.

2) Over funcion dominant chords I search for some Dissonant/clashes........so if I play b9 and the plano player play #9 I'm happy anyway. Even better If the accompanist play dominant without 5 and or 9. To me Jazz IS NOT to play ALWAYS the RIGHT NOTES.

3) I don't like scales. I don't like melodic minor/harmonic minor scales. I don't like superlocrian, Lidyan dominant and all these stuff. I play Melodies from arpeggios. And i like it.

4) For 90% , over G7 (altered in some way...) I play Ab Maj9 or Fm9 or Db Maj9 or Bb m9 arpeggios.

Don't play what's there; play what's not there - Miles Davis

Ettore Quenda.it - Sito di Ettore Quaglia - Chitarra Jazz - Vinili in vendita - Home

[rpjazzguitar]

Suppose a tune starts with Dm6 or Dminmaj7 as a tonic sound.

As a practical matter, you play any grip you know for C#alt.

It will work and sound tonic if the bassist has a D.

And, for that matter, the bass note can make a tonic sound like a dominant, within mel min harmony.

I guess I don't understand what makes alt different.

Or why the A7b13 would sound so much like melodic minor harmony because of the C#. Leave out the F and it sounds mixolydian. I guess you could think it's melmin because of the fact that the notes are contained in the melmin scale, but is that what people are going to hear? I think they hear A7, i.e. it's the combination of the C# and the F that makes it sound like a chord generated by mel min.

[pamosmusic]

1) I don't care about alterations in the G7 dominant chord. To me G7#5, G7#9, G7 b5, G7 b9, G7 #5 #9, G7 b5 b9, G7 b5 #9, G7 #5 b9 are all the same: Functioning Dominants Chords.
In my world a piano/guitar player when they are comping with the solist always change the alterations of the dominant chord. It's impossible to tell him: "Play this alteration on chorus 1........this other aleration on bar nr. X.......etc." .
Maybe if you have a SUPER EAR you can hear the alterations played on the piano/guitar in a millisecond and play THESE notes.......but in this way the whole Tension/Resolution effect is gone.

2) Over funcion dominant chords I search for some Dissonant/clashes........so if I play b9 and the plano player play #9 I'm happy anyway. Even better If the accompanist play dominant without 5 and or 9. To me Jazz IS NOT to play ALWAYS the RIGHT NOTES.

3) I don't like scales. I don't like melodic minor/harmonic minor scales. I don't like superlocrian, Lidyan dominant and all these stuff. I play Melodies from arpeggios. And i like it.

4) For 90% , over G7 (altered in some way...) I play Ab Maj9 or Fm9 or Db Maj9 or Bb m9 arpeggios.

Don't play what's there; play what's not there - Miles Davis

Ettore Quenda.it - Sito di Ettore Quaglia - Chitarra Jazz - Vinili in vendita - Home

I think I agree with most of this. I determine extensions by whatever’s going on around the dominant chord I guess. But I sort of assume the other folks are going to do the same thing and we’ll probably end up in the same ballpark. Aside from that it’s all tension and that’s kind of the goal anyway.

And I love the melodic minor scale but also rarely play it as a scale. I just love the harmony and use upper structures from it all the time, which is the same thing I do with any scale, more or less.

[bediles]

Interesting concept. Since Alt scale is a dominant structure built on a diatonic half dim chord it's just a bit funny.

[Christian Miller]

Someone gets it :-)

[Christian Miller]

Suppose a tune starts with Dm6 or Dminmaj7 as a tonic sound.

As a practical matter, you play any grip you know for C#alt.

It will work and sound tonic if the bassist has a D.

And, for that matter, the bass note can make a tonic sound like a dominant, within mel min harmony.

I guess I don't understand what makes alt different.

Or why the A7b13 would sound so much like melodic minor harmony because of the C#. Leave out the F and it sounds mixolydian. I guess you could think it's melmin because of the fact that the notes are contained in the melmin scale, but is that what people are going to hear? I think they hear A7, i.e. it's the combination of the C# and the F that makes it sound like a chord generated by mel min.

I think that’s kind of what I mean?

Chord Scales are kind of a fiction anyway - they are a theoretical interpretation of heard notes within the context seven note pitch sets. That might sound dismissive but a lot of theory is like that actually. That’s why it’s, well, theory. Theory is highly subjective and interpretive.

‘…imaginary guitar notes exist only the imagination of the imaginer….’ Frank Zappa

So you can say, oh the soloist played Bb-Ab-G-F into that chord, that this comes from the altered scale, and you see this in textbooks and so on. But it could be one of a number of scales because it’s only four notes, for instance, including the Gdim scale and Bb dominant (mixo scale). In real terms it’s four notes, not seven.

OTOH playing that note (C# in our examples.) tells the ear it’s not diatonic. It’s a spicy note. This is interpreted through the lens of modern chord scale theory as the chord belonging to a melodic minor scale most often. I’m unclear if that’s how Billy Strayhorn was thinking of it in the 40s, but that sound did certainly stand out from the diatonic chords and had that special Strayhorn special sauce that later composers and improvisers latched onto and developed during the bop era and beyond.

So altered. Reg mentioned this sort of proto altered scale which I demonstrate in the video - combined Cminor for example - C D Eb F G Ab Bb B. We see this scale in Barry harris’s teaching in a different guise, and it emerges naturally from playing the natural minor or minor pentatonic over a V dominant chord. Blue Bossa is the example I use, but there are plenty of others.

Most of the notes stressed I typical melodic minor on altered dominant lines stress these pitches (b9, #9, b13) and not the b5 which distinguishes the altered scale from the proto-altered minor scale. (The b5 is also eliminated from the altered hexatonic scale which I find revealing.)

On the other hand that b5 is not unique to the altered scale either, being present in the true tritone sub (Db mixo), whole tone scale, diminished and even lydian dominant.

Hope that makes sense. I feel like the altered scale is a bit like one of those mythical beasts that has the head of a ram, the wings of a bat, the buttocks of a shrimp and so on

[Litterick]

1)To me Jazz IS NOT to play ALWAYS the RIGHT NOTES.

At last, theory.

[Bop Head]

Despite the hysterical presentation i found this very interesting:

[Bop Head]

1) I don't care about alterations in the G7 dominant chord. To me G7#5, G7#9, G7 b5, G7 b9, G7 #5 #9, G7 b5 b9, G7 b5 #9, G7 #5 b9 are all the same: Functioning Dominants Chords.
In my world a piano/guitar player when they are comping with the solist always change the alterations of the dominant chord. It's impossible to tell him: "Play this alteration on chorus 1........this other aleration on bar nr. X.......etc." .
Maybe if you have a SUPER EAR you can hear the alterations played on the piano/guitar in a millisecond and play THESE notes.......but in this way the whole Tension/Resolution effect is gone.

2) Over funcion dominant chords I search for some Dissonant/clashes........so if I play b9 and the plano player play #9 I'm happy anyway. Even better If the accompanist play dominant without 5 and or 9. To me Jazz IS NOT to play ALWAYS the RIGHT NOTES.

3) I don't like scales. I don't like melodic minor/harmonic minor scales. I don't like superlocrian, Lidyan dominant and all these stuff. I play Melodies from arpeggios. And i like it.

4) For 90% , over G7 (altered in some way...) I play Ab Maj9 or Fm9 or Db Maj9 or Bb m9 arpeggios.

Don't play what's there; play what's not there - Miles Davis

Ettore Quenda.it - Sito di Ettore Quaglia - Chitarra Jazz - Vinili in vendita - Home

Jazz musicians go to music colleges to learn all those ways to play "outside" and then they go to jam sessions and decide together which chord extensions to use before playing. And then there is this large treasure trove of interviews with old masters, many of them already deceased, who tell stories about having gotten roasted by pianists who did a new reharmonization for every chorus and changed key every time ...

[rpjazzguitar]

I think that’s kind of what I mean?

Chord Scales are kind of a fiction anyway - they are a theoretical interpretation of heard notes within the context seven note pitch sets. That might sound dismissive but a lot of theory is like that actually. That’s why it’s, well, theory. Theory is highly subjective and interpretive.

‘…imaginary guitar notes exist only the imagination of the imaginer….’ Frank Zappa

So you can say, oh the soloist played Bb-Ab-G-F into that chord, that this comes from the altered scale, and you see this in textbooks and so on. But it could be one of a number of scales because it’s only four notes, for instance, including the Gdim scale and Bb dominant (mixo scale). In real terms it’s four notes, not seven.

OTOH playing that note (C# in our examples.) tells the ear it’s not diatonic. It’s a spicy note. This is interpreted through the lens of modern chord scale theory as the chord belonging to a melodic minor scale most often. I’m unclear if that’s how Billy Strayhorn was thinking of it in the 40s, but that sound did certainly stand out from the diatonic chords and had that special Strayhorn special sauce that later composers and improvisers latched onto and developed during the bop era and beyond.

So altered. Reg mentioned this sort of proto altered scale which I demonstrate in the video - combined Cminor for example - C D Eb F G Ab Bb B. We see this scale in Barry harris’s teaching in a different guise, and it emerges naturally from playing the natural minor or minor pentatonic over a V dominant chord. Blue Bossa is the example I use, but there are plenty of others.

Most of the notes stressed I typical melodic minor on altered dominant lines stress these pitches (b9, #9, b13) and not the b5 which distinguishes the altered scale from the proto-altered minor scale. (The b5 is also eliminated from the altered hexatonic scale which I find revealing.)

On the other hand that b5 is not unique to the altered scale either, being present in the true tritone sub (Db mixo), whole tone scale, diminished and even lydian dominant.



Hope that makes sense. I feel like the altered scale is a bit like one of those mythical beasts that has the head of a ram, the wings of a bat, the buttocks of a shrimp and so on

Thanks. I appreciate the reply.

Some more thoughts.

I have noticed that alt is often played as #9b13. On guitar, for G7 alt, you hear xx3446. And, sometimes you hear the pinkie lifted and the b9 played on top. You don't usually hear the #11, but one reason might be that it's not as easy to play. I'm not sure how pianists think about it, but the #9b13 doesn't clash with what I usually hear. Of course, Mark Levine has the explanation. If everybody is picking notes from the same melodic minor, there's no avoid note and any voicing will work.

The way I understand Reg's scale is that there are a bunch of different minor scales. Not counting phrygian, it's every possible combination of 6 and 7. Dorian, harmonic, melodic and natural. All the same 1 thru 5 and different in 6 and 7.
So, I figure, why not just pick the 6 and 7 you want by ear or by chord tones of whatever chord is being played at the moment? Do I really need four different scale names for that? And, just because I use one 6 (or 7), why shouldn't I use the other?

In this case, Reg has an Ebmajor scale over G7 and is adding in the B. He gets b13, R #9 from the Eb triad. Same notes as we were talking about. Add the B in and it reinforces the relationship to the underlying G7. Simple and effective. The rest of the Ebmajor scale is white keys except for Ab, also convenient, since it's the b9 of the G7. It works. So does thinking "minor triad with added 9th a halfstep up". So, Abmadd9 gets the sound (again without the Db).

As an aside, we have discussed before the naming conventions we use. If we called it a G7b9#9b13 scale we'd get exactly what we seem to think people actually play. I prefer to think that way in many situations. But to unlock Levine's dictum that all melmin chords are the same chord, it helps to think about the underlying minor scale and the chords therein.

This isn't so easy to learn. One way involves learning Levine's basic 7 melmin chords as 7 names for the same thing, sort of. And then get that into your playing in 12 keys plus some enharmonics. At that point, you're ready to find your own tone clusters (any group of notes from within melmin), learn them in groups and then in all the keys.

I think this is a lot of work, but I think well worth the effort. For chords that can be viewed as stemming from melmin harmony it multiples your options for comping chords by at least 7.

So, a shortcut might be to focus on minmaj7, 7#11 m7b5 and alt. Those are all common in jazz tunes and, depending on what band you're in, you might find that you only need a few keys and grips.

Eventually, you get to the second chord of A Train and launch yourself into harmonic outer space.

[James W]

I think that’s kind of what I mean?

Chord Scales are kind of a fiction anyway - they are a theoretical interpretation of heard notes within the context seven note pitch sets. That might sound dismissive but a lot of theory is like that actually. That’s why it’s, well, theory. Theory is highly subjective and interpretive.

‘…imaginary guitar notes exist only the imagination of the imaginer….’ Frank Zappa

So you can say, oh the soloist played Bb-Ab-G-F into that chord, that this comes from the altered scale, and you see this in textbooks and so on. But it could be one of a number of scales because it’s only four notes, for instance, including the Gdim scale and Bb dominant (mixo scale). In real terms it’s four notes, not seven.

Perhaps depends on the kind of music. There were a few years when Coltrane would play scales in their entirety over chords, and not long after you had modal jazz, Kind Of Blue etc. So Chord Scales are not so much a fiction as simply attached to a particular kind of jazz, which is then applied, perhaps not altogether appropriately, to other kinds of jazz - just like Roman Numeral analysis being used for Baroque music.

[Reg]

Yea Rick... it's not so much any grip or note can works....with MM as it's to how or what type of chord movement your playing etc.... the Tonic subdominant or dominant things. What is the functional Reference of notes, chord or chord pattern. Personally, and I performed with Mark many times.... you can't just play anything or any grip etc...
The functional target or functional Tonal target is usually implied, established or will be... It's still much better to use MM with standard harmonic practice. Subs, tritone, diatonic or what ever type of movement, non-movement or Function.

The labeling thing about altered from MM is the chord is naturally spelled as a type of -7b5 type of chord... and we enharmonically spell it as a Dom7 with b9, #9 and b13 .

Deciding on what works or doesn't etc... usually is about the 5th or b5th. Most choices have a nat. 5th except... Altered and half-whole dim. And the V7susb9 chords from phrygian There is in the last 20 or 30 years... the III and V chords from Harm. Maj.....

The thing about Altered from MM .... it's one of the few mechanically derived choices that's almost natural. Almost logical. Works easily when arranging for larger ensembles. I'm not saying better ... just easy.

[BigDaddyLoveHandles]

4) For 90% , over G7 (altered in some way...) I play Ab Maj9 or Fm9 or Db Maj9 or Bb m9 arpeggios.

All four of those chords has two notes in common: Ab and C. You must like the Phygian (suspended) sound!

[Christian Miller]

Perhaps depends on the kind of music. There were a few years when Coltrane would play scales in their entirety over chords, and not long after you had modal jazz, Kind Of Blue etc.

You know that’s not even a matter of style of music. Trane plays the half-whole scale in the dominant chord, you work it out and go - ah well that's the half whole scale there. It's using the simplest explanation for the thing it is. We also know Trane was into that sort of thing on a conceptual level.

Trane of course didn't invent the half-whole. We kind of have this nonsensical idea that jazz developed its harmonic sense in isolation, when in fact, of course musicians were checking out all sorts of stuff. Debussy's influence on jazz does not begin with Bill Evans for instance.

If someone shows me an example of someone using a half-whole scale in jazz in 1933 or whatever and it is very clearly that thing, that's what I'll call it. It's going to be impossible to know what the player thought they were doing (obviously some versions of the half-whole scale can be derivations of neighbour tone patterns on diminished chords so there is a little ambiguity.)

This is straying way off topic really, but you do get things like this throughout the history of recorded jazz. There's that funny bit in Levine's Theory Book where he presents a transcription of Louis Armstrong and it breaks all his assumptions about the way jazz was played in that era, and he hand waves it away saying 'well, Louis was very progressive' which he was kind of by definition, but since EVERYONE copied Louis it just just leaves me thinking he hadn't really checked out that much pre war stuff (fair enough, but don't make sweeping statements about it lol*.)

The history of jazz is full of this sort of thing. We have loads of example of things like melodic minor modes, upper extension playing, exotic scales, quartal harmony and all types of things appearing long before they were nailed down as concepts in jazz education - or even when they are ‘meant to’ in jazz history - quite a lot of these things in Django's recordings alone haha. For example when Grappelli (not noted as an especially harmonic soloist) plays Limehouse Blues, he flats the B on a G scale to cover the C7 chord. (If it was Prez he might not have bothered lol.)

40 seconds in if the time stamp doesn't work

G-F#-E-D-C-Bb-A-Bb
So what, in all good faith, do you call that? It certainly sounds like C lydian dominant to me. But if you are a primarily diatonic player altering the scale to fit the chord, are you really hearing that tonality? Maybe G melodic minor. Ok. He’s not really leaning into the F#.

I don’t think Stephane would have actually been interested or able to answer that from what I know of him (and Ive chatted to a few people who played with him, he had such a long career)

TBH I can’t even say for certain that Cannonball would have thought in those terms when he plays the same tonality on his Limehouse Blues recording. (Btw what Trane plays on that Cannonball recording…. It’s nuts.)

In terms of chords, Strayhorn et al were using what we think of today as 'melodic minor' sounds long before the term surfaces in literature. I prefer to think of these sounds as what they are - voicings, often in Strayhorn's case arising from chromatic appoggiaturas and so on, but rapidly acquiring independence in the bop era.

My hesitance here is because people like Jimmy Raney and so on just didn't have a fully worked out system. Quite often they just played sounds or voicings they liked. On the other Barry Harris people (including me) come in with the certainty of 'this is how bebop should be played' but for all that Barry may have influenced the second gen and post bop scene, he was still piecing it together from recordings himself.

With Bird, for all that I think 80% of his stuff drops out of the kind of things you have in the basic Barry Harris soling materials (so dominant scale stuff) he does use things like lydian dominant, for instance on the bridge of Moose the Mooche solo (Am(maj7) on D7 etc), and I find myself thinking 'hmmm... if it quacks like a duck, am I not being a bit dogmatic to not call it a duck?' I don't think I'm doing the music a violence to use that neologism. And then all the Barry devotees pile in and say IMPORTANT MINOR!!! Sure. But that too is a neologism where Parker is concerned.

The important thing is there is a G# on that D7 chord. Perhaps Parker nicked it from A Train and had no conceptual notion for it beyond 'that's a juicy note, I LIKE that note'.

And I think 'I remember that time when Barry suggested we play the 'Db major scale with a G natural' on Dbmaj7 in ATTYA.... I think I can can use the term lydian? Most people know what that is now.

So Chord Scales are not so much a fiction as simply attached to a particular kind of jazz, which is then applied, perhaps not altogether appropriately, to other kinds of jazz - just like Roman Numeral analysis being used for Baroque music.

Well one difference is that we have a very good idea of how C18 musicians taught harmony. We have written records of lessons given by Handel and Mozart, for instance. We also have treatises and theoretical texts. We a decent sized scholarship of historical teaching practice. Furthermore Roman Numeral Analysis was designed (during the C19) to deal with 'tonal music' (meaning the music of the C18 common practice). In the end it did end up affecting the way harmony was written, apparently, but that was not its primary aim.

And TBH if I've learned one thing about C18 improv from people like Michael Koch, it's actually very useful to be able to refer to the function and roots of chords sometimes. It has its uses.

OTOH chord scale theory AFAIK started of as resources for progressive musicians, Trane and the generation after him. This became a nailed down system and was used at Berklee because in the 70s most of the students there were interested in playing modern music like fusion, the post-fusion jazz that was starting to develop (such as Steve Swallow's music) and so on.

For some reason this type of harmonic approach began to be used in pre-modal music. And I have to say, while 90% of the time I think there are better approaches, you can certainly find that stuff in that music all the way back to the 20s….

*TBF to Levine, tradders say the exact same sorts of stuff about early jazz.

[Christian Miller]

Thanks. I appreciate the reply.

Some more thoughts.

I have noticed that alt is often played as #9b13. On guitar, for G7 alt, you hear it xx3446. And, sometimes you hear the pinkie lifted and the b9 played on top. You don't usually hear the #11, but one reason might be that it's not as easy to play. I'm not sure how pianists think about it, but the #9b13 doesn't clash with what I usually hear. Of course, Mark Levine has the explanation. If everybody is picking notes from the same melodic minor, there's no avoid note and any voicing will work.

The way I understand Reg's scale is that there are a bunch of different minor scales. Not counting phrygian, it's every possible combination of 6 and 7. Dorian, harmonic, melodic and natural. All the same 1 thru 5 and different in 6 and 7.
So, I figure, why not just pick the 6 and 7 you want by ear or by chord tones of whatever chord is being played at the moment? Do I really need four different scale names for that? And, just because I use one 6 (or 7), why shouldn't I use the other?

In this case, Reg has an Ebmajor scale over G7 and is adding in the B. He gets b13, R #9 from the Eb triad. Same notes as we were talking about. Add the B in and it reinforces the relationship to the underlying G7. Simple and effective. The rest of the Ebmajor scale is white keys except for Ab, also convenient, since it's the b9 of the G7. It works. So does thinking "minor triad with added 9th a halfstep up". So, Abmadd9 gets the sound (again without the Db).

As an aside, we have discussed before the naming conventions we use. If we called it a G7b9#9b13 scale we'd get exactly what we seem to think people actually play. I prefer to think that way in many situations. But to unlock Levine's dictum that all melmin chords are the same chord, it helps to think about the underlying minor scale and the chords therein.

This isn't so easy to learn. One way involves learning Levine's basic 7 melmin chords as 7 names for the same thing, sort of. And then get that into your playing in 12 keys plus some enharmonics. At that point, you're ready to find your own tone clusters (any group of notes from within melmin), learn them in groups and then in all the keys.

I think this is a lot of work, but I think well worth the effort. For chords that can be viewed as stemming from melmin harmony it multiples your options for comping chords by at least 7.

So, a shortcut might be to focus on minmaj7, 7#11 m7b5 and alt. Those are all common in jazz tunes and, depending on what band you're in, you might find that you only need a few keys and grips.

Eventually, you get to the second chord of A Train and launch yourself into harmonic outer space.

I think you are looking at it from a conceptual viewpoint- what can I do with this material, how can I apply it?

That’s sort of a separate thing from what I’m talking about in the video which is - how do I get this sound?

For example, from your perspective, Charlie Christian could be thought of as an early MM guy. He like to apply the m6 (or m7b5) arpeggio and voicing much in the way you and Levine describe.

He would put it on dominants, half dim chords, all sorts.

But most of the time he was not extending that chord up to the seventh, so you don’t get that ‘spicy note’. (That’s something you hear more with Strayhorn’s use of the augmented triad, not Charlie.)

But conceptually it’s a really short journey from there to applying melodic minor on chords. Just add the the other notes, most obviously maj7. That’s what Tristano taught and he was a huge Charlie fan. The maj7#5 sub seems to have been a thing by the time George Shearing wrote Conception (1950). (Weirdly, bill Evans missed the #5 on his version.)

It’s also easy to see how Wes was able to take the same step (but I would quibble with Wes being a melodic minor guy, because while he certainly used the sound I think conceptually he was more ‘mixing it up.’)

interestingly from the solos I’ve done of Charlie haven’t had any tritone sub/altered use. There’s more of that in Django honestly.

As for the xx3446 chord; I’m pretty sure that’s a tritone sub originally. Django had this in the mid 30s (listen to the exactly like you shout chorus)and it was commonplace by the 40s. You can hear Al Casey playing it on Fats Waller’s Jitterbug Waltz IIRC and Oscar Moore on No Moon At All with Nat Cole. It’s not of itself a uniquely melodic minor/altered sound for the reason you point out, but it can be part of melodic minor concept if that makes any sense at all.

Levine might be conceptually using melodic minor to tie this sort of stuff together but that’s not the only way you can come up with these subs, obviously. Also bear in mind from the actual music, those musicians weren’t terribly concerned about avoid notes.

I would regard that melodic minor chord thing as an example of an ‘application based’ approach - ‘how can I apply what I already know to this situation?’ Imo the more you ask that question and the more answers you find to it, the easier playing this music becomes. I would say I first learned that lesson from Charlie’s solos, but it’s a far reaching concept that you can see in very contemporary players, the Lage Lunds and Ben Monders of this world.

Regarding what you are saying about the 6 and 7 of minor, this makes for an interesting exercise -compare what Junior Cook and Blue Mitchell play on the m(maj7) chords of Nica’s Dream. I think that’ll teach any student of this stuff more than any amount of my dry verbiage.

[Tal_175]

I just want to clarify as simply as possible a recurring component of this type of discussion. A lot of what we play and how we play has to do with what we consider to be distinct entities and whether we internalize them as such aurally and visually. For example a dominant and its major (say G7 and Cmaj) share the same set of notes. But if you want to achieve expressive freedom with harmony at a high level, the fact they share the same notes isn't as helpful as it should be. In fact when you think of them as distinct entities, they stop sharing the same notes more often than not.

Of course scales and chords overlap. There are only 12 notes. It seems like these overlaps should be taken advantage of pedagogically but our minds just don't work that way. At least not without introducing a low ceiling to our freedom with these concepts. The major and melodic minor scales are only one (half) note apart, we all know what a curveball that is. A lot of who we are artistically and how much artistic control we have over our tools of expression has to do with what we consider to be distinct entities. In that sense, altered chord as a distinct entity vs altered chord as melodic minor from the 7th are very different things.

[princeplanet]

I think you are looking at it from a conceptual viewpoint- what can I do with this material, how can I apply it?

That’s sort of a separate thing from what I’m talking about in the video which is - how do I get this sound?

For example, from your perspective, Charlie Christian could be thought of as an early MM guy. He like to apply the m6 (or m7b5) arpeggio and voicing much in the way you and Levine describe.

He would put it on dominants, half dim chords, all sorts.

But most of the time he was not extending that chord up to the seventh, so you don’t get that ‘spicy note’. (That’s something you hear more with Strayhorn’s use of the augmented triad, not Charlie.)

But conceptually it’s a really short journey from there to applying melodic minor on chords. Just add the the other notes, most obviously maj7. That’s what Tristano taught and he was a huge Charlie fan. The maj7#5 sub seems to have been a thing by the time George Shearing wrote Conception (1950). (Weirdly, bill Evans missed the #5 on his version.)

It’s also easy to see how Wes was able to take the same step (but I would quibble with Wes being a melodic minor guy, because while he certainly used the sound I think conceptually he was more ‘mixing it up.’)

interestingly from the solos I’ve done of Charlie haven’t had any tritone sub/altered use. There’s more of that in Django honestly.

As for the xx3446 chord; I’m pretty sure that’s a tritone sub originally. Django had this in the mid 30s (listen to the exactly like you shout chorus)and it was commonplace by the 40s. You can hear Al Casey playing it on Fats Waller’s Jitterbug Waltz IIRC and Oscar Moore on No Moon At All with Nat Cole. It’s not of itself a uniquely melodic minor/altered sound for the reason you point out, but it can be part of melodic minor concept if that makes any sense at all.

Levine might be conceptually using melodic minor to tie this sort of stuff together but that’s not the only way you can come up with these subs, obviously. Also bear in mind from the actual music, those musicians weren’t terribly concerned about avoid notes.

I would regard that melodic minor chord thing as an example of an ‘application based’ approach - ‘how can I apply what I already know to this situation?’ Imo the more you ask that question and the more answers you find to it, the easier playing this music becomes. I would say I first learned that lesson from Charlie’s solos, but it’s a far reaching concept that you can see in very contemporary players, the Lage Lunds and Ben Monders of this world.

Regarding what you are saying about the 6 and 7 of minor, this makes for an interesting exercise -compare what Junior Cook and Blue Mitchell play on the m(maj7) chords of Nica’s Dream. I think that’ll teach any student of this stuff more than any amount of my dry verbiage.

FFS Christian, how do you get to know all this stuff?

[Christian Miller]

FFS Christian, how do you get to know all this stuff?

Mostly I listen to records and try to work out what’s going on on them.

But a lot of listening, much better than any theory book. There’s plenty of people who know more than me have listened WAY more. And I get my ass kicked sometimes, usually New Yorkers on the web lol, call you out publicly for getting things wrong, but they always do it based on the recordings. Brits are very lackadaisical about this stuff by and large but it’s a real thing in New York. I have to respect that! And it’s great, really helpful long term even though it can be embarrassing (maybe because.)

Of course Barry was the KING of that sort of stuff. I remember Barry casually saying things like ‘Bird never played G7 in bar 1 of a rhythm changes.’ And you’d look through and of course, he’s right. Imagine the listening that he did. And he’d tell you off no problem haha.

Tbh I think one thing I do which is a bit weird is try to establish a sort of historical context. I think I got into that when listening to Django, Charlie, Louis and Prez when I was learning to play pre-bop jazz. I wanted to know the difference between that and bop. There’s a few harmonic things, but mostly it’s phrasing.

But yeah, that period jazz world too. If you are trying to play in a style. I have a friend Duncan Hemstock, great clarinetist who’s done some stuff with Jonathon stout etc, once said ‘oh there’s this scale Lester young seems to like - like a harmonic minor but with a major sixth, I call it the Lester young scale’. I told him about Barry’s scales and he’d never heard of them. People like him really go hard on the study of records. Much harder than me.

it’s all there on the records.

[AllanAllen]

15 minutes a day adds up over the years.

[Christian Miller]

15 minutes a day adds up over the years.

Indeed, although I figure I probably threw a few thousand hours at this stuff between 2010-2017 (I'm too tired to do it now haha, kids)

But for the fifteen minutes thing - try troubleshooting transcription. Say you want to be able to play over a specific tricky bit of a tune, a few changes that are giving you grief or pause for thought. Go to the recorded versions and transcribe just those few bars. Do a few different recordings. Great for your vocab, great for your ears and it solves a problem way better than any jazz manual.

Then you to will be able to say pretentious/impressive sounding things like 'Duke Ellington favoured the whole tone scale on the D7#11 chord in A Train'. It's not really a big deal

[Reg]

yea... its also good to actually perform the tunes with actual players and see where it goes.
Using WT on the D7 of A train... is for vanilla entertainment... for $.

Most seem to be missing the point..... most of the info from MM, the altered scale etc... is not what to play.... it's to help one become aware of the possibilities of how to musically develop and organize what you want to play. How to use blue notes or Blues concepts, modal concepts etc... TAL_175 I believe was hinting of this... Reference, relationships and development of them...There are always many possibilities of how to verbally talk about what's going on musically... but that part of playing Jazz..... it's not in stop time.

So you can hear the difference when performing tunes. Not just what "you" want to play...but when someone else is soloing you don't step on their shoes.

Of course one should transcribe... that was one of the main sources for learning when I was a kid... and then the actual playing part... which was the real thing. The actual speed of jazz. Which is why I've always pushed .... Get your chops together... so you'll have a chance to hear and see etc...

Yea the 15 min a day will not work...I liked Christian's comments about trouble shooting transcription... but disagree with the manual aspect. It really helps when your aware of theoretical manual concepts. It's not one or the other... I transcribed and did copy work for a living while in college... all that manual type of BS really helped. There wasn't slowdown or computer programs back then, no slow or stop time etc... (disclaimer..I'm old but do still perform).

[princeplanet]

The indefatigable Professor Miller, keep 'em coming!

[rpjazzguitar]

One quick exercise that made an impression on me was this.

There's a tune called Rapaz De Bem. Starts with two bars of Fmaj7 followed by two bars of Bb7#11.

When I read Levine's passage about all mel min chords being the same chord, I thought about that Bb7#11.

I often played it as 6x675x. But now, per Levine, it occurred to me that it could be considered to be generated by Fmelmin.

And, because of that, any other chord from Fmelmin (using Levine's 7 voicings) would work.

So, I tried them. Fm6, Fminmaj7, Fm9, Gsusb9, Abmaj7#5, C7b13, Dm7b5, Ealt. Every voicing I could think of worked, at least to the level of sounding interesting. Then I tried random groups of notes from Fmelmin. Some worked and a few didn't, to my ear.

With this much theory, I could now play four chords with nice voice leading for each of the first two bars of Rapaz. One beat per chord, (thinking here in 4/4 although the tune is 2/4, so it's really one chord per eighth note).

So I played xx798x xx556x xx355 xx323x for the Fmaj7. And, then, it occured to me to try xx315x, which I thought sounded great -- followed by xx2113 xx3554 and maybe xx6576.

So, if I understand Reg's organizational terminology, the reference is Fmelmin, or maybe Bb7#11. The relationships are built on the chords of Fmelmin and the development is finding voicings that have good voice leading and a simple melody in the soprano note of each chord. Apologies to Reg if I have misunderstood him.

I might note that the next bar of the tune is Fmaj7. I tried preceeding with C7 as the fourth chord on Bb7#11. The notes are all within Fmelmin, but I didn't care for the sound. So, it's not all automatic.

[Christian Miller]

yea... its also good to actually perform the tunes with actual players and see where it goes.
Using WT on the D7 of A train... is for vanilla entertainment... for $.

Most seem to be missing the point..... most of the info from MM, the altered scale etc... is not what to play.... it's to help one become aware of the possibilities of how to musically develop and organize what you want to play. How to use blue notes or Blues concepts, modal concepts etc... TAL_175 I believe was hinting of this... Reference, relationships and development of them...There are always many possibilities of how to verbally talk about what's going on musically... but that part of playing Jazz..... it's not in stop time.

So you can hear the difference when performing tunes. Not just what "you" want to play...but when someone else is soloing you don't step on their shoes.

Of course one should transcribe... that was one of the main sources for learning when I was a kid... and then the actual playing part... which was the real thing. The actual speed of jazz. Which is why I've always pushed .... Get your chops together... so you'll have a chance to hear and see etc...

Yea the 15 min a day will not work...I liked Christian's comments about trouble shooting transcription... but disagree with the manual aspect. It really helps when your aware of theoretical manual concepts. It's not one or the other... I transcribed and did copy work for a living while in college... all that manual type of BS really helped. There wasn't slowdown or computer programs back then, no slow or stop time etc... (disclaimer..I'm old but do still perform).

Well perhaps I slightly more balanced way of saying it might be that listening to the music allowed me to use what I'd read to understand it. Before then it was all fairy stories.

That said - I know a lot of great players who don't really do theory. But they tend to be lick guys. Nothing wrong with that.

15m a day on ONE SPECIFIC THING can do wonders for that one specific thing. But has to be REALLY specific.

[rpjazzguitar]

I think most really fine players have transcribed quite a bit. Some even obsessively.

But, there are some great players who will admit, perhaps only privately, that they actually haven't transcribed very much.

Similarly, not every great player has practiced a lot with a metronome. Even those who recommend it to students.

My guess is that people who transcribe a lot don't find it overwhelmingly difficult because of the gift of great ears.

For the rest of us, a lot of patience and perseverence is very helpful.