The Altered Scale is kind of broken

[Christian Miller]

Well, let's look at it this way: over a post-jam session beer, the musings and anecdotes of musicians who actually played would tend to be considered a lot more relevant and worthy of consideration than those of someone who had not participated. Play (your *ss off) first, opine all you want later. Know what I'm saying?

Well for working players it’s funny when some guy on the internet says ‘play more’. That might have been a thing in 2020 when none of us had gigs…

quite honestly, I don’t post my playing much here any more because I don’t feel there’s much point. I post video lessons (I prefer to think of them as vlogs really) because the forum often inspires me to do a video based on a discussion, and it feels natural to do so. This is a talking shop, and that’s fine.

I think it’s good for beginner and intermediate players, but those players need to bear in mind that a lot of the feedback is from people who don’t have it together themselves.

For working players there are online spaces for playing, such as Instagram or even god forbid Facebook. Not YouTube though, where instructional material gets way more traction. I’m much more likely to check things out on Insta and that’s what I tend to use as a showcase for my playing. Beato does the same thing haha

Here I might be more inclined to post ‘work in progress’ stuff related to a specific thread. It seems more in keeping with how I use the forum.

[Peter C]

Yeah, so I personally wasn't talking about whether one's status is working or semi/non-working musician. People who earn cash by playing pop hits at summer fiestas are "working", correct? Having actual time available to continue developing one's art, whether with or without an audience, would be good.

I'm just not a fan of long, theory-based posts without the playing to back them up, and there seems to be an abundance of that in this forum, unfortunately. This is obviously not your case Christian, even if I don't generally relate to your "style", but that's just a personal thing.

[emanresu]

I've been grinding the alt scale for months now, hoping that it would pop up in a solo some way or another.
No luck
Raised 6th and 7th force themselves when solving to minor. But naturally, no luck whatsoever with alt.
Feels like I should try harder!

alt scale is a tryhard scale!

[Christian Miller]

Yeah, so I personally wasn't talking about whether one's status is working or semi/non-working musician. People who earn cash by playing pop hits at summer fiestas are "working", correct? Having actual time available to continue developing one's art, whether with or without an audience, would be good.

I'm just not a fan of long, theory-based posts without the playing to back them up, and there seems to be an abundance of that in this forum, unfortunately. This is obviously not your case Christian, even if I don't generally relate to your "style", but that's just a personal thing.

Well that is true.

Even if it’s someone who can really play, I might not be that interested because it might take too long to realign my own understanding in their terms, however much I like they’re playing.

OTOH I’m glad I made the effort with Jordan.

It seems to me there’s a lot of people who spend their life knowing a lot of theory but never actually making the jump into playing what feels to them like music. It’s not really their fault, they’ve been sold a pup. They’ve learned about jazz, not learned jazz.

All that said, someone banging on about people needing to ‘play more’ - it’s just a bit of a JGO cliche. Plenty of people post playing here and elsewhere. Those that don’t are quite conspicuous I would say.

This might sound nuts, but I feel I don’t talk about music theory, except maybe to tear it apart on its own terms. it doesn’t interest me at all.

Most of it’s wrong, or at best incomplete. It creates dogma and confusion when taken too literally. People have me down as a theory guy but I kind of hate it, especially the type that tries to explain music. Yuck! Maybe Jimmy Smith was right haha.

A lot of it just naming stuff. Boil this video down and it’s about a sound, there’s just a lot of verbiage explaining (poorly no doubt) what I mean. Talking about music in specific terms tends to generate the ghastly stuff.

For example - in the first part I am trying to help people focus in on how the theoretical concept (melodic minor) sounds. If you can do that the names are irrelevant.

I actually find it quite hard to explain things words believe it or not. I mess it up all the time on camera. I’m not certain that when I find words they are always very clear.

Listening is the thing… People will relate what they read or heard in a masterclass, but not so often what they heard a musician play.

[Peter C]

I've been grinding the alt scale for months now, hoping that it would pop up in a solo some way or another.
No luck
Raised 6th and 7th force themselves when solving to minor. But naturally, no luck whatsoever with alt.
Feels like I should try harder!

alt scale is a tryhard scale!

I started a personal journey to learn to play more interesting (for me) lines over my own tunes, some of which have tricky progressions and modulations (sometimes "jazz-influenced"), so inevitably, I visited the "altered scale" in jazz. A lot of the lines coming off the V sounded like the Lawrence of Arabia movie theme and I was not a happy camper. I have since come to the conclusion that the only way I'm going to be satisfied is by composing my own original lines. Knowledge gathered about altered harmony will hopefully help me out here, when I get the time YMMV

@ Christian: I don't know who's "conspicuous", as I don't spend enough time here and do other people post links to their content? Another thought is that even if someone posts their playing, they may still need to practise a lot more, though it's a good step.

[pamosmusic]

Yeah. There’s also the added twist that (generally) the people who get most involved in all the theory discussions tend to have the most playing out there (Christian and Reg come to mind). So the “no talking; just playing” thing usually comes off as a bit knee-jerk to me.

There are, after all, a few sections of the forum devoted to showcasing one’s skill or talking about the tunes.

This particular section is labeled — ahem — “Theory.”

[Peter C]

@pamosmusic who exactly said “no talking; just playing”?? Anyway, I checked out the clips in your link. Cool stuff, thanks.

[pamosmusic]

@pamosmusic who exactly said “no talking; just playing”?? Anyway, I checked out the clips in your link. Cool stuff, thanks.

Oh nice! Thanks for listening.

And I’ll concede that point. Tired of talking about it, I guess. Due for some playing.

EDIT — I find the built in emojis a little creepy. Otherwise I’d have included a winky face to denote good-natured sarcasm.

(meaning, your point is well-taken)

[rpjazzguitar]

I have a thought or two about getting the alt scale into one's playing.

The alt scale is seven notes. I'd suggest starting with two of them, the b9 and #9. Loop Dm7 G7 C A7 (you have to hear the chords to get this to work). Against the G7 play a simple melodic phrase that includes Bb and Ab. When those two notes start sounding natural you can try a third note, either Eb or B. Do one, then the other.

When you've got those 4 in your ears, it might be worthwhile to think of them as Abm(add9). So, you're playing a minor triad, with an added ninth, a half step above the dominant chord aka Abm(add9) over G7.

Play the chords. When you get to G7 play Db13 instead of G7. Try xx3446. So you can hear the sound. That's an F B Eb and Bb. You can lift your pinkie and get the Ab (3rd finger barre at 4th fret) to hear that.

At some level, the Galt scale could be called G7b5#5b9#9. The foregoing gets you three of those alterations. The remaining one is the b5 (maybe that should be called #11, I'm not sure, but we're talking about Db, or C#). The b5 is often omitted in comping the alt chord, or so I think. Anyway, this exercise gets you to the way the alt scale is often used. Good luck!

[Christian Miller]

I started a personal journey to learn to play more interesting (for me) lines over my own tunes, some of which have tricky progressions and modulations (sometimes "jazz-influenced"), so inevitably, I visited the "altered scale" in jazz. A lot of the lines coming off the V sounded like the Lawrence of Arabia movie theme and I was not a happy camper. I have since come to the conclusion that the only way I'm going to be satisfied is by composing my own original lines. Knowledge gathered about altered harmony will hopefully help me out here, when I get the time YMMV

@ Christian: I don't know who's "conspicuous", as I don't spend enough time here and do other people post links to their content? Another thought is that even if someone posts their playing, they may still need to practise a lot more, though it's a good step.

I think it’s useful for some people to do it. There are also long term members who have never posted their playing. I don’t blame them either. Not all of these people are trolls by any means, conspicuous if probably unfair but I had in mind a few … recurring individuals, shall we say… anyway

[rpjazzguitar]

An aspect of playing over dominants, including alt that just occurred to me - how many beats is the chord likely to last for?

Two? Four? At what tempo? Too long and it's going to sound like a tonic seventh chord, or something.

So, when someone decides to play the alt scale, how many notes are we likely to be talking about?

Would 8 notes be about average? Maybe fewer? Four?

The alt scale is a pool of 7 notes -- how many of them are going to be used, on average?

R 3 b5 #5 b7 b9 #9 --- three of these are chord tones. In Cmajor, the dominant is G7, which contains R 3 b7. So, the alt-ness of the scale is in the other four notes, as juxtaposed over the vanilla G7.

The audience will hear the first three (R 3 b7) in the bass and comping chords.

Making it sound "alt" really takes three notes. Bb Ab and Eb.

So, if the whole thing is going to last 4 beats or two beats, you can, as an exercise, include those 3 notes and supplement them with G7 chord tones, or Cmaj tonal center (white keys) notes or whatever else sounds good to you..

What you don't want to do is to try to play all 7 alt scale notes every time the chart, or the non-musical part of your brain, shouts " play alt!".

[Litterick]

I think it’s useful for some people to do it. There are also long term members who have never posted their playing. I don’t blame them either. Not all of these people are trolls by any means, conspicuous if probably unfair but I had in mind a few … recurring individuals, shall we say… anyway

I would not post my playing because I do not play straight-ahead and I see hostility to twenty-first century music from members who want to party like it's 1959. Not so long ago, I mentioned I was reading Berliner's Thinking in Jazz and someone said I should be learning some tunes. Someone else accused me of being both a troll and a beginner.

The trolls here are not members who do not who do not post music. The trolls are the members behind the freshly minted accounts that spring into contentious threads and then disappear when the argument is over, such as the young woman (probably a man in drag) with very strong opinions about older men who dislike hip-hop.

Another reason I do not post my playing is that I dread someone telling me, "Just remember to have fun."

[Tal_175]

I would not post my playing because I do not play straight-ahead and I see hostility to twenty-first century music from members who want to party like it's 1959. Not so long ago, I mentioned I was reading Berliner's Thinking in Jazz and someone said I should be learning some tunes. Someone else accused me of being both a troll and a beginner.

It was me who suggested that you might be a beginner who is trolling the discussion. I didn't mean that you were a beginner guitarist. I apologize if I didn't state this clearly. You could be a master guitarist and musician in another style of music. There are some long time members on the forum who can be (for all I know) fantastic musicians in other styles of music but they only dabble in jazz. They don't seem to be interested in jazz enough to fully commit themselves to becoming jazz guitarist. Sometimes they get contentions and defensive about what they perceive to be "jazz attitudes" on the forum. They tend to find subjects like reading music, mastering the fretboard, and harmony to be shamelessly pretentious musings. I may have thought that was the case with you in that discussion. I could be wrong. If so, sorry about that.

[Christian Miller]

People have such a weird relationship with the j word. Seems like everyone wants to be jazz player now, whether or not they can play a straightahead gig, while back in the day people couldn’t get away from it fast enough if they spent their earlier years playing My Funny Valentine; or even if they in fact invented bebop.

A lot of people in the wider world associate jazz with pretension and a rarified atmosphere, perhaps old fashioned music that hasn’t changed since 1958 on one hand, or avant garde noise on the other.

‘Jazz is for science teachers and the mentally ill.’

What I couldn’t get my head around is if you play, for example, music that can be described as ‘post rock soundscapes’ (like some Ben Monder records for instance) why call it jazz? Surely that narrows the options and audience appeal. A lot of people would be turned off by the jazz label who might really enjoy Krantz for example. I honestly think if 65daysofstatic had jazz degrees they’d be playing the circuit with the exact same music (which I like.)

A lot of jazz or jazz adjacent acts now sound like 80s pop with longer solos, which is to say solos of a length that would have been normal for an early 70s rock record. Collier seems to be doing Queen covers now. OK.

and then I realise - jazz is a circuit. It’s hard to break into other areas if that’s where you started. It actually has nothing to do with the style of music, or even the process of the music, but more to do with the people who are knocking around in the circuit. They get booked at the jazz clubs and covered by the errr… jazz mags?

Anyway, I don’t mind it, I actually like it a lot. I generally like music. And there’s enough jazzy jazz out there for me to listen to if I want a bit of that.

(I think jazz might be shedding the stigma a bit. a normal person was enthusing to me about the Ezra Collective the other day.)

[Christian Miller]

Anyway went off piste there. I find a surprisingly large fraction of people interested in jazz guitar to be uninterested in musicians who are actually alive even if they play in classic styles tbh. I don’t wish to scold people for it, but it does seem to be a thing.

[pamosmusic]

I get a lot of students who want to play jazz. The first question I ask is whether they want to play American songbook tunes with bebop vocabulary or whether they’re looking for “the jazz toolkit,” by which I mean the ability to play changes, play outside, and move around pretty freely on the instrument. Most folks are looking for the latter, which is a blast and not a problem at all. But yeah … people kind of grabbing jazz as a genre is an interesting phenomenon.

[Lionelsax]

A lot of people who study jazz don't listen to jazz, when you talk about with them, the only thing they can do is talking about theory, analysing a lonely chord without understanding what's really happening.
They are just repeating what they taught them again and again like if they were giving a conference.
That makes me smile, it's like if they were playing at "who's got the longer" against horses.
A lot of fun !
They don't realise how ludicrous they are.

[rpjazzguitar]

Improvised music is wildly popular, but, for some reason, most of it, arguably, is not labeled as jazz.

[pamosmusic]

A lot of people who study jazz don't listen to jazz, when you talk about with them, the only thing they can do is talking about theory, analysing a lonely chord without understanding what's really happening.
They are just repeating what they taught them again and again like if they were giving a conference.
That makes me smile, it's like if they were playing at "who's got the longer" against horses.
A lot of fun !
They don't realise how ludicrous they are.

This is contrary to my experience of people who study jazz.

[Lionelsax]

This is contrary to my experience of people who study jazz.

Maybe because they played more than they studied.
They did more than their homeworks.

[wolflen]

Improvised music is wildly popular, but, for some reason, most of it, arguably, is not labeled as jazz.

Miles Davis was said to not like the word "jazz" to describe his music..

and as He evolved..many say his music in the later period of his life was far from being .. jazz

when I play for people..some may say..nice jazz chords..well not going to argue with that..for the most part I dont play jazz..

Bop..standards..traditional progressions..

sometime I play the basic "cowboy" C chord and have not heard ..nice folk chord..

[BigDaddyLoveHandles]

Do you think sometimes cowboys secretly play 7b9sus4 chords?

[Bobby Timmons]

I've been grinding the alt scale for months now, hoping that it would pop up in a solo some way or another.
No luck
Raised 6th and 7th force themselves when solving to minor. But naturally, no luck whatsoever with alt.
Feels like I should try harder!

alt scale is a tryhard scale!

It works as well as any other device, you just have to work the crap into your playing using specific exercises if it's not going. Just run the scale, make up little patterns, make up ideas, put them to time on just a 2-5-1, apply them in a song slowly, apply them in a song in time.

[Bobby Timmons]

Do you think sometimes cowboys secretly play 7b9sus4 chords?

I'm sure cowboys do plenty of things in secret. :P

[Litterick]

Anyway went off piste there.

You were on the other side of the mountain.

I find a surprisingly large fraction of people interested in jazz guitar to be uninterested in musicians who are actually alive even if they play in classic styles tbh. I don’t wish to scold people for it, but it does seem to be a thing.

We agree on that, at least.