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AFAIK George Russel invented in 1953 what we call CST today:
In a conversation I had with Miles Davis in 1945, I asked, "Miles, what's your musical aim?" His answer, "to learn all the changes (chords)," was somewhat puzzling to me since I felt-and I was hardly alone in the feeling-that Miles played like he already knew all the chords. After dwelling on his statement for sorne months, I became mindful that Miles's answer may have implied the need to relate to chords in a new way. This motivated my quest to expand the tonal environment of the chord beyond the immediate tones of its basic structure, leading to the irrevocable conclusion that every traditionally definable chord ofWestern music theory has its origin in a PARENT SCALE. In this vertical sense, the term refers to that scale which is ordainedby the nature of tonal gravity-to be a chord's source of arising, and ultimate vertical completeness; the chord and its parent scale ,existing in a state of complete and indestructible chord/scale unity-a CHORDMODE.
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03-24-2024 02:58 PM
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I mean like who cares? If you can sing it and play it…
Originally Posted by rpjazzguitar
Also mode II. 7sus4b9, which also brings us full circle.
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Yeah so when I teach (and often when I improvise) I usually think that less is more. Like it’s difficult to work with too few choices, but after a certain point, it rapidly becomes more and more difficult to work as you add more choices.
Give people a few good options and they’ll learn more quickly.
I don’t think anyone would really disagree with that. The interesting thing is that it can cut more than one way.
Give people scales to think about but generalize chord changes—so they have one scale for Autumn Leaves until they reach D7, for example. So there might be 7 notes but there’s very little to keep track of structurally.
Or ask people to think chord by chord but give them only a small handful of notes to work with—so thinking about every chord in autumn leaves but working w the triad only for each, for example. So there’s only a few notes available at a given moment but things move quickly.
Realistically I figure both are important and to the extent people really consciously make those choices when they improvise, I think a good melody probably oscillates rapidly between the two. Or blurs lines, like outline simple triads from the key even if they don’t make perfect sense over the specific chord. So both of those things are pretty important. CST is kind of the worst of both worlds for a beginner.
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All this isn't really about the failings of CST, it's about the misinterpretation of CST by those who don't understand it. Or who've had it taught to them wrongly.
Try this. It's not nearly as dumb as it's made out to be. There's a section on non-conventional harmony. And this is just the starter version. There's an advanced version too which addresses advanced scale options such as cross-referenced scales, use of parent scales, and synthetic scales along with various application techniques.
It's mostly about options, not rigid rules:
'This discussion on choosing chord scales is
only a general guideline. As mentioned, there
can be many effective choices in the selection
of chords scales for a given chord.'
http://edsaindon.com/documents/chord...ry_article.pdf
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Yes and no. Russell’s theory has some commonality with CST, it also has significant points of divergence. It’s clearly an influence. Originally Posted by rodolfoguitarra
People also cite John Mehegan but looking at the work cited it isn’t CST in its modern form.
The earliest I got for recognisable modernCST is Jerry Coker. Always happy to follow up more historical connections.
According to Peter Ind, Tristano was teaching melodic minor scales on dominants as far back as the late 40s.
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If in the context of G7 you play the note Eb and you can recognize it as the b13, you are chord-scale certified (whether you are aware of it or not).
Note it doesn't matter how you identify the b13, it could be aural, visual or driven from the note names, as soon as you bring in that parallel perspective to the space of notes, you are in the territory of what some people started calling chord scales in the 60's. It's not that this point of view was new. What was new was the naming of it as a distinct concept and making it a central point of jazz education.
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Misunderstanding maybe not, though I think I agree with the rest of this. Originally Posted by ragman1
i think the short version is that with CST you are still responsible for choosing musical combinations of notes. With a chord tone approach, it’s done for you. So the latter would tend to lead more quickly to a musical result.
The obvious limitation of the latter is that when you want more interesting notes, you have to find them somehow. And that’s where I use CST all the time while I’m practicing. It’s a way to start finding other potential uses for those simple melodic structures. Like once a person has some useable vocabulary with a major triad, you can think about chord scales and find other applications for that major triad vocabulary.
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One thing is Russell’s theory uses derivative scale thinking (relating changes to a small number of master scales) rather than parallel (relating the scale to l the chord root) like modern CST.
In practice I think a lot of CST minded people end up using derivative thinking anyway to some extent .
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Yes. What I see is that for many people who start, they tend to think if they match the correct scale with the chord, then the 7 notes of the scale will sound good. Originally Posted by pamosmusic
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Lots of tunes based on MM Modes once you hit the Wayne Shorter area. Originally Posted by Mick-7
And most of these tunes are a mixture of modes and functional harmony...They're not structured like "Maiden Voyage."
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Well no not quite, I think this might seem pedantic but I think it’s actually quite important - the novel perspective of CST is given by nettles and Graf - which is relating those sounds to a scale, a whole pitch set of seven or eight notes. Originally Posted by Tal_175
I remember reading a Johnny Smith article where he talked about using an E triad on G7 as his approach to improvising on that chord to get a certain sound. That’s the way he thought of it. Chord on chord. (Much like Jordan’s approach interestingly - I think this is an older way of doing it.)
CST comes in by relating that to the G half whole or G harmonic major or whatever. A CST person would say the E triad ‘comes from’ one of those scales. This is a leap to an explanation from a purely practical recipe for making a cool sound. We now tend to use CST to justify chord subs - for instance ‘the tritone sub *comes from* the altered scale’ etc (which historically is clearly false so it must be meant in some other way.)
I would go as far to say a degree of metaphysics is baked into this kind of language but that’s yet another tangent…. (Tbf Barry used the same sort of language when talking about his scales.)
The main thrust being, Smith did not make that scalic justification. It was just a rule of thumb.
That’s so baked into the way we learn jazz now it’s worth elucidating. That is a conceptual leap (one Smith disliked saying young players were ‘locked into scales’ - echoing Crook’s comments.)
It’s also worth bearing in mind that theory shifts style. When CST became popular people started to use it more. I mean obvious right? You can hear it in the players.
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The point is that CST is often used as a derogatory term, something to be laughed at or looked down on. I'm saying this is foolish and something put about by those who probably know little of it and probably don't understand what they do know. It is, after all, not simple as that pdf shows.
That's all, and ought to borne in mind next time you see someone suggesting that CST is an outdated and inferior teaching resource. Assuming, naturally, that the someone isn't you :-)
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Who does? Originally Posted by ragman1
I mean I’m going to say CST is for most people a bad way of learning jazz improvisation, that’s a professional opinion I’ll stand by.
Otoh I use CST all the time. I can do this because I am able to play jazz.
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Maybe I didn't say it very clearly but what I meant was not just being aware of one extension (b13) but having an intervallic view of all the notes one chooses to play (or practice). For example, when you play around the G7 arpeggio if you can view your scale note choices around the arpeggio as (say) b9, 11 and b13, you get G7b9b13 (aka Phrygian Dominant). In the way I understand it, if you relate to chords with chord tones and extensions view with respect to the chord root, you are already using a chord scale view whether you name them as such or view them as a mode of Harmonic minor is incidental. Originally Posted by Christian Miller
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Only using cst and going here are the scales to each chord now play jazz is obviously an inferior way to teach a beginner.
However how inept as a teacher do you have to be to not tell the student: if you're going to use scales, you don't run them mechanically, you have to arrange them creatively into viable melodies. And you also have to listen to the music to see how they are arranged into pleasing parts. Also, lines aren't only shaped as scales in 2nds, they're also shaped with arps, and wider intervals and chromatics are included to create further interest.
The greats associate scales with chords and use scales in their playing, so I wouldn't exclude cst from student material. Although yes, for very beginners, grips and licks, or chord tones might be the best introduction.
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This is a good case in point. E triad against G7.
G B D F E Ab (and another B). G13b9.
When you start from chords you often end up with 6 chord tones or highly consonant notes. As a rule of thumb, a dominant with a b9 is likely to take the #9 as well.
Now you have, reordering, G Ab Bb B D E F. One short of a diminished scale. Db is the missing note, which, to my ear, changes the harmony.
The point, which may already be obvious, that just thinking about the chord name gives you most of the CST scale name -- and the missing notes may not really help anyway.
Another simple example is Cmaj7 in a chart. C E G B. Typically, A and D are going to be quite consonant. 6 notes again. The missing note from C Ionian is F, which is the note most likely to make the harmony more ambiguous. Same thing if you start with G7 and add E and A. The missing note from Gmixo is C, which is the ambiguous note. Not that you can't make it sound great, but you're putting some nuts into the vanilla.
And, as in E over G7, you can get these sounds by juxtaposing a triad on the chord. Like, to take a simple example, G over C6.
It ends up seeming to me that you do pretty well thinking of chord tones with consonant extensions. You usually get 6/7ths of the way to the CST scale and the other 1/7 may be the worst note of the bunch.
So, for major types you think 6, nat7 9. For minors you think 9, 6 7 or both, maybe 11. For dominants you think about alterations.
Of course, you can't take a chord in isolation. So, the other part of this is seeing the tonal center and the flow of the harmony. But, if you decide to think of scales and greek mode names this is an alternative.
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christian i ask you your opinion about this. I dont want to open a post just to ask you the question fast. One guy told me this was jazz harmony, and the other guy told me it was debussy style. Both were musicians in terms of both made conservatory studies, so not amateurs. Its a simple piece that I composed long time ago, but i think the harmony mades it interesting, if I would have harmonized it in a traditional way I wouldnt like it at all. Originally Posted by Christian Miller
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you'd think, right? Originally Posted by Jimmy Smith
And yet.....
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Haha
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Well if that's you understanding of CST, Bach used CST, by writing 6 #4 2 (#4 2 for short) as a figure for what we would today call a third inversion dominant, even where this chord is diatonic to the prevailing key signature. And, it is interesting, how this root based (or really bass based) understanding of music in baroque music echoes parallel CST. As a guitarist I really feel it when putting a pattern through the key, it's hard for me not to think, Ionian, Dorian, Phrygian etc as I go. Originally Posted by Tal_175
So why do I say he didn't use CST?
The - ahem - metaphysics of CST it is in relating intervals that is there to other notes that aren't there, and calling that the source of a given set of intervals. That's the "value add" of the theory if you like - and in jazz/modern harmony, we can add those notes (where they are not avoid notes) to the harmony to enrich the sound as a sort of heightened consonance.
Bach obviously did not do this - in baroque music theory, anything outside of the perfect and imperfect consonances is understood as a dissonance - a binary distinction, and at least theoretically be considered subject to certain rules*. He writes plenty of 'jazz chords' but they all follow a specific baroque grammar.
CST does away with the horizontal grammar and focusses on the vertical sounds of these types of harmonies.
I suspect in jazz a lot of the development of CST be traced back to chord symbols. One thing I'd love to nerd out about but probably won't is the differences between older charts and newer ones. The way that chords are spelled even can give information bout how certain composers or arrangers heard things.
*there is evidence that improvisers of the baroque era may have been much more relaxed about the use of colour tones like 9ths, which is really very interesting to me. But there's less info on that than composed music, for obvious reasons.
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Can you reply to me?please. I really need to solve that doubt. Cmon please you are the harmony gurú here (no sarcasm here, and note fake ,else I wouldnt b asking you). I like your enthusiasm for music man. I admit It humbly Originally Posted by Christian Miller
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Come on, I've been here since 2007 and CST has consistently been put down, and not gently. Originally Posted by Christian Miller
See my next post to Jimmy.I mean I’m going to say CST is for most people a bad way of learning jazz improvisation, that’s a professional opinion I’ll stand by.
Precisely!Otoh I use CST all the time. I can do this because I am able to play jazz.
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You haven't been reading it. I was addressing that point made by others, it's not my stance. I think all the raw material should be taught, but with proper explanations and in tandem with the real music work. To me, associating scales with chords is indispensable, not a friggin destructive practice. Originally Posted by ragman1
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You haven't been reading it. That's not what it's saying, that's the point. It's about options, not rigid instructions. Originally Posted by Jimmy Smith
I've said that too.The greats associate scales with chords and use scales in their playing, so I wouldn't exclude cst from student material. Although yes, for very beginners, grips and licks, or chord tones might be the best introduction.
But can anyone show me where it says CST should be taught straight away to beginners without any prior teaching? I haven't seen that anywhere. I suspect it's yet another assumption.
In fact, I'm certain it is. Without some knowledge of chords, music, notes, tunes, rhythms, etc, etc, how on earth could they just dive into the complexities of CST? Absurd.
By the way, I don't use CST, fwiw. All that theoretical stuff just boggles my mind :-)
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