Dorian b5 and Mixolydian b9 scales. Why not?

[pamosmusic]

There seems to be conception from today's players that you should preserve the overall harmony of the melody + chords the improvising on the song?

Bop era musicians didn't really do this as far as I can tell. I remember Barry instructing us in class not to worry about that stuff when running scales on Cherokee.

Yeah I mean … it’s a starting place.

If you’re looking for the inside sounds, the tune would be a pretty decent place to start. Be a bit dull if it ended there too.

[Christian Miller]

Yeah I mean … it’s a starting place.

If you’re looking for the inside sounds, the tune would be a pretty decent place to start. Be a bit dull if it ended there too.

I mean I like it as an idea, I do it myself.

But it’s interesting - in many ways I feel jazz has become more inside over time. If by inside we mean ‘playing in the key.’


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[Christian Miller]

Melody of the tune, in the case of All of Me. Transcribing but all my transcribing is bebop or later (except Charlie Christian) so you’d know way better than me about anything earlier.

It’s also a chicken or egg thing … like when you put a 7b9 before a ii chord it sounds more like a tonic minor. So is it a 7b9 because they’re tonicizing the ii chord, or does it sound like they’re tonicizing the ii chord because there’s a b9 in the melody. Hellifino.

Have a listen to this then haha

Aside from the big old A13 arps in the key of Dm and particularly stuck by the way he pays an honest to god A dominant scale line. He plays a couple of scalic things in fact… but he was just a chord shapes guy, right? ;-)


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[pamosmusic]

I don't mean to be a total a-hole but are you actually saying this based on your actual listening, or what you would expect from theory?

I'm genuinely asking, because I don't know. I haven't transcribed many solos on All of Me. I would tend to play b9 there myself, but who cares what I do?

IIRC Sarah Vaughan sings a major dominant on that one, but I might be misremembering. I can feel a rabbit hole coming on...

You know, it also probably is one of those things where stuff tends to be simpler than not. Like listening to big shredder minor tunes, there’s often b9 and b13 over the V chord, but I wonder that’s just an artifact of the lines themselves being pretty conceptually simple, rather than a conscious harmonic choice.

Ive been working on Grant Greens What is This Thing lately, and I can absolutely say that he uses the 7b9b13 over almost every single dominant chord, but that’s probably not an accurate description of what’s going on …. He’s playing C minor scale crap, then Cmaj7 (or 6) over resolution.

EDIT — another one is Coltrane over Softly. But the whole first chorus is pretty much just C D Eb F and G (if I remember right). So I don’t really think he is making a Harmonic Statement over the G7 chord every other measure.

[Christian Miller]

Sorry to do a Ragman, but here’s a Stitt solo

Quite interesting - the first time dominant scale on the III7, later he mixes it up.


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[pamosmusic]

I don't mean to be a total a-hole but are you actually saying this based on your actual listening, or what you would expect from theory?

I would never accuse you of MEANING to be a total a-hole.

[Christian Miller]

You know, it also probably is one of those things where stuff tends to be simpler than not. Like listening to big shredder minor tunes, there’s often b9 and b13 over the V chord, but I wonder that’s just an artifact of the lines themselves being pretty conceptually simple, rather than a conscious harmonic choice.

Ive been working on Grant Greens What is This Thing lately, and I can absolutely say that he uses the 7b9b13 over almost every single dominant chord, but that’s probably not an accurate description of what’s going on …. He’s playing C minor scale crap, then Cmaj7 (or 6) over resolution.

EDIT — another one is Coltrane over Softly. But the whole first chorus is pretty much just C D Eb F and G (if I remember right). So I don’t really think he is making a Harmonic Statement over the G7 chord every other measure.

Yes but you can rely on Grant to go 3-b9-1-b7. It’s comforting


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[pamosmusic]

Sorry to do a Ragman, but here’s a Stitt solo

Quite interesting - the first time concert G dominant scale on the III7, later he mixes it up


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Same w A7 … a B and then all Bbs.

Why can’t there be rules Christian? WHY?

[pamosmusic]

Yes but you can rely on Grant to go 3-b9-1-b7. It’s comforting


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And What is This Thing is at like … 250 or something. So he plays basically the same lick over the ii-V probably four times in as many choruses. We love him. He loves us.

[Christian Miller]

And What is This Thing is at like … 250 or something. So he plays basically the same lick over the ii-V probably four times in as many choruses. We love him. He loves us.

His licks are definitely not too long


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[Christian Miller]

Same w A7 … a B and then all Bbs.

Why can’t there be rules Christian? WHY?

Yeah I meant A7 - it’s in Bb concert key. Sorry confusing


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[Christian Miller]

You know, it also probably is one of those things where stuff tends to be simpler than not. Like listening to big shredder minor tunes, there’s often b9 and b13 over the V chord, but I wonder that’s just an artifact of the lines themselves being pretty conceptually simple, rather than a conscious harmonic choice..

Oh definitely... I just hear Bird in his All of Me (with Tristano) just going - VIm. (Again in Bb.. it's G7-Cm)

The jazz tendency to analyse things by chord tends to make this diatonic minor options look ore complicated then they are. Actually Reg commented on the fact that when he was getting started there was a dominant scale that looked like a Phrygian mixed with a Phrygian dominant. When you bear in mind the only thing you need to do to get from there to a Jazz Nerds International (tm) altered scale is to flat the 5.. well there you are.

And add to that the fact that Gary Burton thinks of altered as having a natural 5 too... yeah, it's interesting.

I mean take this as a line and apply to a bop II-V-I say (from Carulli)
:
If you put that all over an E7, you'd get a "#9". This is the sort of thing that may well happen if you are improvising and less careful about the vertical aspect. It probably happened back in the Baroque era when people were improvising together.


As a Everything Music Nerd I think I can hear the roots of the altered scale in the Neapolitan sixth - that enclosure Bb-G#-A you get in Am for example from
Bb/D E7 Am

You just crunch it into the V7. The sound is another VERY BEBOP THING. Segment springs to mind. (But also that Brahms 4 finale theme.)

Altered is very much out of the tonic minor to my ears. Darkened with a Phrygian note and a spot of blues.

[pamosmusic]

The jazz tendency to analyse things by chord tends to make this diatonic minor options look ore complicated then they are.

Yeah this is totally a thing … and even applies to simpler stuff like that A7 chord (I’m just going to call it that because the transposition puts it in the key I usually play it anyway) in All of Me. I doubt it’s coincidence that the B natural over A7 is on its way up to C# and the Bbs resolve down to A. Melodymelodymelodymelodymelody.

You could obviously talk about the harmonic options in that part of the tune, based on what Sonny Stitt plays there, but it seems secondary to what is actually happening.

[Christian Miller]

Yeah this is totally a thing … and even applies to simpler stuff like that A7 chord (I’m just going to call it that because the transposition puts it in the key I usually play it anyway) in All of Me. I doubt it’s coincidence that the B natural over A7 is on its way up to C# and the Bbs resolve down to A. Melodymelodymelodymelodymelody.

You could obviously talk about the harmonic options in that part of the tune, based on what Sonny Stitt plays there, but it seems secondary to what is actually happening.

Shush, you are talking like a solfeggio guy. All melody is just an embellished scale, mi and fa, all that stuff.

[pamosmusic]

Shush, you are talking like a solfeggio guy. All melody is just an embellished scale, mi and fa, all that stuff.

I absolutely NEVER have solfeged standards to help myself memorize the melody.

[Christian Miller]

I absolutely NEVER have solfeged standards to help myself memorize the melody.

Solfeggio is not solfege and solfeggio people would be very offended. Moveable do solfege is their arch enemy.


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[pamosmusic]

Solfeggio is not solfege and solfeggio people would be very offended. Moveable do solfege is their arch enemy.


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Fixed do is absolutely absurd and don’t even bother, Christian, because I will die on this hill.

And are you talking about mystical frequency stuff here?

[Christian Miller]

Fixed do is absolutely absurd and don’t even bother, Christian, because I will die on this hill.

I mean it's just the names of the notes in Romance language speaking countries. Is it any worse than naming the notes of after letters of the alphabet? TBH I don't have a dog in this fight...

And are you talking about mystical frequency stuff here?

Nononono

Old Italian solfeggio in so much as I understand it was an adaptation of Guido's original hexachordal system - apparently it makes sight singing from weird clefs super easy and so on. I don't really understand that bit.

But the hexachordal aspect of it means that the half steps are usually given by the syllables mi and fa. So you sing the major scale
DO RE MI FA SOL RE MI FA

If I descend using a b7 to 6, I sing the b7 as mi and 6 as fa. And so on. (This is what Bach meant by the motto FA MI, et MI FA est tota Musica: Fa Mi and Mi Fa are the whole music" Also his name BACH in German notes is Bb A C B is also FA MI MI FA. It's a whole thing. Also it's the cross.)

(It's also the melodic structure of the quiecenza - C C7 F/C G7/C C - which come to think of Bach uses a lot in his music.)

LOOK Bach gets stupid, OK. Let's not talk about Bach. We'll be here until the heat death of the universe. Let's talk about something simple - such as any other musician.

The bit that's more relevant is you learn to embellish simple patterns such as scales with other notes improvisationally. So a simple melodic figure like LA SOL FA MI can become complicated melodic sequences and so on, but still sung to the syllables, La Sol Fa Mi. In fact, many jazz standards melodies like Autumn leaves would fit this kind of logic - anything on a cycle 4.) There's also puns you can do on the hexachords. Nicholas Baragwanath has a book. I don't understand it. But it seems like it was a central part of baroque and classical compositional and improvisational technique.

Here's a demonstration and explanation.

The hat and bow tie - I'm not sure that's optional. These is very much a Special Interest.

Dariusz Terefenko's adaptation of the Rule of the Octave to Jazz seems to have a sniff of this approach.

[Christian Miller]

You know, I'm not fully convinced Bach was actually a person.

[pamosmusic]

We'll be here until the heat death of the universe.

Heat death is absolutely absurd, Christian, and don’t even try to convince me. I’m a Big Rip partisan and I will die on that hill.

[pamosmusic]

You know, I'm not fully convinced Bach was actually a person.

Is this one of those “actually the monks are Shakespeare” situations?

[Christian Miller]

Heat death is absolutely absurd, Christian, and don’t even try to convince me. I’m a Big Rip partisan and I will die on that hill.

Big Rip ain’t a thing bro. It’s ruled out observationally. Heat Death all the way, made even more depressing via accelerating expansion.


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[Christian Miller]

Is this one of those “actually the monks are Shakespeare” situations?

I think Bach is aliens


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[pamosmusic]

Big Rip ain’t a thing bro. It’s ruled out observationally. Heat Death all the way, made even more depressing via accelerating expansion.


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What do you know?

got a degree in this or something?

[Christian Miller]

What do you know?

got a degree in this or something?

Nah I just watch YouTube videos like a pleb


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