Perhaps this is one of the many reasons I consider you a real jazzer
...you are simply at a higher level than I.
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Double Bass Minor II-V question
- Thread starter PauFerro
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Perhaps this is one of the many reasons I consider you a real jazzer
...you are simply at a higher level than I.
Perhaps this is one of the many reasons I consider you a real jazzer
Thanks, but on TB, I never make assumptions! Over the years, folks like @dkziemann (Danny Ziemann), Tom Baldwin, Marco Panascia and others have posted under usernames and I never heard them play until later. And I have never heard you play.
If you do so you do use a special scale named Spanish Phrygian (8-note) on B which are (beyond the D# as the major third) the same notes as E natural minor. The key to this scale is the major third belongs to the chord and sits below the minor third used in melody or chord.
You never use the two thirds melodically one after the other, you need to choose what you want in your melody when passing these notes. Feel free to choose different each time.
Welcome in the rather complicated but interesting world of minor!
Curious about this as I have never heard about this rule/guideline. I hear people using the 3rd and the altered 9ths melodically all the time. One common example is “Cry me a river” lick that has been used over altered chords for well over 50 years.
I think the key is to see it more as a note collection of available colors from which to construct a melody than as a scale. Thinking of scales as ordered events is kind of akin to thinking of the alphabet as having meaning before it is rearranged to form words, or thinking of the colors on an artist’s palette as ordered before the artist decides what picture to paint.
The only way I've ever been able to make theoretical sense of minor ii v's is similar to the voicings @Chris Fitzgerald showed in his handout. Min Maj starting on the 3rd of the ii chord followed by half diminished starting on the 7th of the V chord, and major starting on the 3rd of the i chord. It seems to be the easy for me to hear voice leading using those scales/arpeggios, but anytime I want to channel my inner Charlie Haden I just play harmonic minor for all three chords.
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I might have been a bit strict, but trying to avoid both thirds one after the other in the same harmony is preferable. Chromatic passing notes are not scale notes and can always be used in the melody as such.
If you look how the Spanish Phrygian is used in Spanish music (mostly flamenco), the major third is used in the chord below the melody, but in terms melody the minor third is used above the basic dominant chord. Also the fingering on guitar for the b9#9 is to play the major third on the G string and the minor third on the E string above.
In its traditional use it is a mix of two scales hMin V and Phrygian. The hMin V gives the dominant chord and the Phrygian the minor third.
Scale mixes are typically a switch of color inside a chord. It would often be possible to separate the scales and notate where the switch is, but this is often not practicable. And Spanish Phrygian (8-note) is a special case arisen from a certain culture that is not only western.
Everyone can do with notes what they want and therefor have a lot of options, but rules help to avoid dead ends, even if they can be broken if there is a good reason for it, and give orientation.
My rule for scales is no two consecutive halftone steps in scales (but in melodies chromatic passing notes are allowed). And I find this rule very helpful for scales that are the material for the chords for these scales.
It doesn’t work for Spanish Phrygian (8-note), but by separating the scales from the mix and using either or (except for the chord) it works there too.
I derive my rules from music, not by wanting a rule that is more important than reality. In some cases I might be wrong (like anybody), but I try to do my best.
I know that it doesn’t cover all music, but I try to start from the most structured and natural things going towards the less structured stuff at least as a perspective.
Looking at options is very open but less structured (can allow non-practical combinations) than a list of fitting scales. At the end it is (almost) the same thing from a different perspective.
Varying the options is like switching between the scales. If they don’t change too fast we recognize it as a switch, if it happens fast, we just recognize some disorder or uncertainty.
The highest disorder in the tempered system is the equally distributed use of notes of the chromatic scale.
By emphasizing some notes or removing some of the notes you get more order and orientation.
That’s the other end of the spectrum.
BTW, I had a look at “Cry me a River”, there are no two consecutive halftone steps in the melody on the same chord at the three sheet music versions I have. I could not even identify what you meant, Chris.
Very dimly I can remember a 9 b9 1 series of notes. But either the b9 is a passing note or the chord/scale changes from 9 to b9.
I’m sorry that I haven’t made clear that the no consecutive halftones is a scale rule only and does not apply to passing notes in the melody.
For me scale notes are the notes of a full chord. They support the harmony (some of them better than others, but all do).
Options due to a not fully specified chord make it possible to switch the inherent scale, but everybody should be aware of the used scale, otherwise there will be audible confusion or a least uncertainty due to scale note mixing.
If the chord/scale changes, the rule in general does not apply because it is not in the same scale.
I understand.
BTW the Cry Me A River lick is a really common descending resolution pattern. In the original, it goes 9-8-5-b3-2-1 over minor. You often hear the same interval pattern over altered dominant, where it remains intervallically intact but the functions change to #9-b9-b13-3-#9-b9 over an altered dominant. It usually resolves down a further half step to the fifth of the minor i chord.
BTW the Cry Me A River lick is a really common descending resolution pattern. In the original, it goes 9-8-5-b3-2-1 over minor. You often hear the same interval pattern over altered dominant, where it remains intervallically intact but the functions change to #9-b9-b13-3-#9-b9 over an altered dominant. It usually resolves down a further half step to the fifth of the minor i chord.
Yes, it is all about colors. But also about targeting these colors and/or chord tones. Sure a natural minor scale works over the whole ii-V-i, but one needs to hear the resolution tendencies. The b6 naturally wants to resolve down to the 5th once you hit the tonic. But the 6th is a great color option, as well as the major 7th. Also the nat. 6th is much more "tonic" sounding than the b7th, which is why I prefer melodic minor on the tonic, rather then dorian. Check out Miles on Autumn Leaves on Cannonball Adderley's "Something Else"
The theory section is probably my favorite place on talkbass, but in the end I always ask myself, "Are you playing with your brain or your heart?"
My ears know instantly...
My ears know instantly...
Why not both?
I'm sure you use both your brain & your heart when you "work" ("play"?) on basses... (It's obvious from the quality of your work.)
IMFO, of course.
Thanks.
Practice with your head and play with your heart? If I'm thinking at all when it's time to play, it's not going to go well.
My personal Yoda teacher in my college days was all about this. If you need to work on something technical, be surgical and dispassionate about it, and go as slow as you need to in order to get it, whether that means 10 reps or 10,000. You are programming neurons firing in a chain in your brain.
When it comes time to play, what’s ready to happen will come out as you hear the music internally, and what isn’t yet programmed is likely to get jumbled on the way out. Thinking while you play is not something she recommended. She described it more as “singing through the instrument”. And you aren’t going to sing well if you are thinking “for this A, my vocal cords need to vibrate exactly 440 times per second….1,2,3,4……”
There are some people who go straight to using their ears. I once played with a guitarist who seemed to know very little about jazz theory. When he improvised, I could see him "sensing" and "feeling" his way around the instrument. He would play a bit, and when he hit a bum note, he would figure out how to make it resolve to something inside the changes. I don't think he knew much beyond one basic scale, but he did very well with just about any tune.
Personally, I have to understand it academically before my heart can do anything with it. When I was studying guitar as a teenager, I had a guitar teacher who couldn't explain any of the theory behind the songs we were learning. When I pressed for more information he said "don't worry about playing anything that is musically right -- just close your eyes and play". That might have been good advice for some people, but that was the straw that broke the camel's back and I quit working with him as a teacher.
Personally, I have to understand it academically before my heart can do anything with it. When I was studying guitar as a teenager, I had a guitar teacher who couldn't explain any of the theory behind the songs we were learning. When I pressed for more information he said "don't worry about playing anything that is musically right -- just close your eyes and play". That might have been good advice for some people, but that was the straw that broke the camel's back and I quit working with him as a teacher.
When you practice you have time to do things slowly and also to think about note choice/scales etc. You can make errors and correct them and get a feeling for good note choices by ear that way.
On stage or playing in the rehearsal room, the brain is soften too slow to think about scales. You might identify chord series that you are already familiar with, then you can use either your ear for note choices or immediately nail the scales to be used.
As Chris said, do things slow, check and correct errors and repeat the correct thing until you have internalized it (at least for the moment). If it runs well you can speed up as long as it does not introduce errors.
On stage or playing in the rehearsal room, the brain is soften too slow to think about scales. You might identify chord series that you are already familiar with, then you can use either your ear for note choices or immediately nail the scales to be used.
As Chris said, do things slow, check and correct errors and repeat the correct thing until you have internalized it (at least for the moment). If it runs well you can speed up as long as it does not introduce errors.
Groove Master
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Among the heptatonic scales there are 8 of them:
1. major scale = 1 2 3 4 5 6 7
2. lydian mode (= 4th mode of major scale) = 1 2 3 #4 5 6 7
3. melodic minor scale = 1 2 b3 4 5 6 7
4. 3rd mode of melodic minor scale = 1 2 3 #4 #5 6 7
5. 3rd mode of harmonic minor scale = 1 2 3 4 #5 6 7
6. 6th mode of harmonic minor scale = 1 #2 3 #4 5 6 7
7. 4th mode of harmonic major(*) scale = 1 2 b3 #4 5 6 7
8. 6th mode of harmonic major scale = 1 #2 3 #4 #5 6 7
(*) harmonic major scale = 1 2 3 4 5 b6 7
Groove Master
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I forgot to mention which minor scale....
It was just a reminder for the OP about the melodic minor scale ;-)
I haven't read all the comments in detail but I'd point out that the whole choice of which note collections to use over each of these chords depends very very heavily on context. Unlike major ii-V7-I patterns, minors are more complex.
Right off the bat, that half diminished chord at the beginning can actually call for three different note sets, which would be for the A half-dim chord, equivalent to G natural minor (Bb major), G harmonic minor (its big step between Eb and F# adds tension), and even G melodic with its 6th and 7th degree left up (that "raise going up, lower going down" business is BS in my opinion). The last one, of course, the E natural clashes with the Eb in the A half-dim chord, but try it and you'll se that it can work.
For the second chord D7 b2, I'd suggest the notes of the G harmonic minor, which appears to be same as the video guy says. But I suspect there're some other choices. That b2 could also end up sounding a lot like a b9 which often carries a #9 with it (F natural) rather than the F# on the third of D7, so the G natural minor note set might sound good depending on what the chord instruments are doing.
And finally, for Gm6, it seems to me that any of the G minors could work as well as Dorian.
It's all going to be on context. If I were playing saxophone (my other instrument) and wanting to really nail this kind of progression whenever encountered, I'd shed it using all the potential note collections as well as some off-the-wall ones just to see what effect the different ones might give. Then context will rule. If this shows up on a trad-jazz gig where everyone's playing the vanilla changes, ESPECIALLY if I'm on bass, I'm unlikely to pull out a side-slip thingy where I go A-Ab-G with some upper extensions; if it's the advanced bebop gig and I'm on saxophone and the pianist is one of those "pile substitution on substitution till no man may know the changes" types, it'll be Katie bar the door. And of course what everyone says - you shed the stuff with careful attention to what you're playing, so that when you're actually playing, you don't have to go through the mental gyrations, you just think "I want this sound here" and you apply it. If you're playing second base and a hot grounder gets hit right at you, you don't go through a thought process "now squat, now move forward, etc." nope, you just field the ball and send it where it needs to go, because you've done that maneuver a thousand times in drills.
@Whousedtoplay on the G7 chord I spelled the #9 as a b3 and also used the B natural to show how those notes function in key of resolution. Put another way, spelled as forest rather than trees. The specific placement of the accidentals is a Sibelius thing.