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stratocasturbator
Joined: 17 Jan 2007
Posts: 278
Location: Maplewood, NJ
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 Posted: Wed Feb 03, 2010 6:45 pm Post subject: |
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I've found this thread fascinating, particularly as I've made a concerted effort over the past year or two to really get this scale, or rather the sound that this scale creates, more fluid and available in my playing. and it hasn't been easy. I think there is a natural confusion, stemming in part by how it's typically taught (scale/fingering first, application/"sound" second), with the MM usage because of the correspondence to the key or tonality in question--the "overlay" approach, for example Ab MM over G dominant. I've seen texts on this scale that typically suggest four such tonalities, or key overlays, that are said to "work"... so to some extent you do need to know some fingerings, just so you know where all the available notes of a certain key/scale are in a given position. but because of this "overlay" business, it's much trickier to get the appropriate fingering on the fly merely by searching for the fingering and key overlay in real time--so, to really work musically you ought to focus more on the sound. in my own experience, I've found it is a lot more useful if I just focus on the color tones in the scale that comprise the actual sound, and so rather than thinking of the scale as a "scale," I just focus on adding the color notes that this scale licenses one to use. in so doing, I've found that I get back to thinking of G7 as a G7 (with altered tones), instead of Ab MM or whatever is the case at that point in the tune. i.e. a flat 9 is a flat 9, no matter what "scale" it's derived from...
it's interesting that someone mentioned Wes as an example. the first time MM was demonstrated to me by someone who knew their stuff, I immediately latched onto that sound as reminding me of a Wes sound. I don't know why Wes specifically, but that was the impression and it certainly provided inspiration for further study. and since Wes was self-taught and didn't read music, it follows that he was probably trying to focus on color tones to add to chord tones, instead of just running scales. to my ear anyway. but at least to the extent that it's probably more likely that he got the "sound" instead of the "scale"... long story short, once I focused more on the sound than the scale, it made MM a lot easier to use, especially on the fly. and THEN I became much more interested in getting into the various fingerings, because THEN I could hear it better.
I still don't have it down the way I want to, but this change in approach has certainly helped. 
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dirtylobster
Joined: 09 Oct 2006
Posts: 15
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| Posted: Sun Feb 07, 2010 4:44 pm Post subject: |
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Cool thread. I've been working on learning MM the last two weeks. Before this I basically had the intervals memorized and was also familiar with the first mode, lydian b7 and locrian #2. This time I set myself to really get to know the world of MM.
I haven't gone through many keys (basically Cm and Em) but within those I have played all triads, 4th note arpeggios, different combinations of voicings and intervals up and down the neck etc.. whatever I could think of, and I'm finally starting to get the sound of MM in my head and fingers. I've never worried too much about playing everything in every key as the guitar is very versatile in that sense. Besides, you eventually get to play every voicing in every key in the subtext of different tunes.
And to contribute something to the topic I have to say that it takes a different approach for each player to learn something like MM as everyone has different backgrounds. For example, when I first started to learn guitar and theory I was all into scales and modes and if someone would've made me learn MM by for instance playing arpeggios it would've been awfully difficult as I didn't have a firm grasp of them, even those derived from the major scales. That's however not a problem/obstable anymore and my approach is allowed to be different.
/rant |
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Jazz Playa
Joined: 11 Mar 2009
Posts: 344
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| Posted: Sun Feb 07, 2010 9:50 pm Post subject: |
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I think a term Igiro has used a lot in this thread "instrument mastery" is key to this discussion/conundrum/topic. Maybe its a difference of opinion with some here but I think fretboard mastery should be a goal of any serious jazz guitarist.
I really like this discussion we've had here because It makes me realize how deep my knowledge actually goes and how that knowledge really benefits my playing. I'm actually very pleased with my fretboard knowledge of chords, intervals, arpeggios, scales, substitutions, whatever. In a way I've discovered that I'm a far better player than maybe I even thought I was. Knowing all these things forwards and backwards all over my instrument really gives me amazing expressive freedom on my instrument.
Learning how to improvise while limiting yourself to just chord tone's is an important learning device for beginners and helps them get the sounds of the chords and progressions in their heads. I went through that whole thing looooong ago. In fact I remember the first tune I did with was Stella. A good player can find lots of interesting things to play with just that. And for any beginners reading this, once you're comfortable with the basic diatonic arpeggios over all the chord types then you need to start working with the arpeggio substitutions over all the chord types. Like I said before its a journey  . I'm in favor of learning ALL the important stuff and having a strong command of it and how it applies to your jazz vocabulary.
Yeah I'm really pleased with how well I can play and my ability to play interesting and musical sounds that I hear in my head. Hmmm maybe I should get in the studio and make a record? |
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sunflower
Joined: 09 Mar 2007
Posts: 572
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| Posted: Mon Feb 08, 2010 8:31 pm Post subject: |
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Definately
I feel a bit queasy ..... I need a little lie down |
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JakeJew
Joined: 30 Jul 2005
Posts: 2018
Location: Boston, MA
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| Posted: Mon Feb 08, 2010 10:36 pm Post subject: |
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| Jazz Playa wrote: | I think a term Igiro has used a lot in this thread "instrument mastery" is key to this discussion/conundrum/topic. Maybe its a difference of opinion with some here but I think fretboard mastery should be a goal of any serious jazz guitarist.
I really like this discussion we've had here because It makes me realize how deep my knowledge actually goes and how that knowledge really benefits my playing. I'm actually very pleased with my fretboard knowledge of chords, intervals, arpeggios, scales, substitutions, whatever. In a way I've discovered that I'm a far better player than maybe I even thought I was. Knowing all these things forwards and backwards all over my instrument really gives me amazing expressive freedom on my instrument.
Learning how to improvise while limiting yourself to just chord tone's is an important learning device for beginners and helps them get the sounds of the chords and progressions in their heads. I went through that whole thing looooong ago. In fact I remember the first tune I did with was Stella. A good player can find lots of interesting things to play with just that. And for any beginners reading this, once you're comfortable with the basic diatonic arpeggios over all the chord types then you need to start working with the arpeggio substitutions over all the chord types. Like I said before its a journey . I'm in favor of learning ALL the important stuff and having a strong command of it and how it applies to your jazz vocabulary.
Yeah I'm really pleased with how well I can play and my ability to play interesting and musical sounds that I hear in my head. Hmmm maybe I should get in the studio and make a record? |
Congratulations...?
_________________
"Inspiration may be a form of superconsciousness, or perhaps of subconciousness - I wouldn't know. But I am sure that it is the antithesis of self-consciousness." - Aaron Copland |
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tonyteech
Joined: 20 Nov 2006
Posts: 83
Location: E London
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| Posted: Mon Feb 08, 2010 10:44 pm Post subject: Response |
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It depends on the person and their musical knowledge and also how they learn best ie visualise by aural stimulation or by shape.
I suggest the Guitar Modes Encyclopedia by Jody FIsher and the Barry Galbraith Harmonic and Melodic exercises. Don MOck has done stuff in this area. Please note all thses books are native American products and totally free from any taint of cheap nasty Chinese imports 
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Piano voice and guitar teacher and bass thumper as well |
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dewey decibel
Joined: 15 Feb 2006
Posts: 1674
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| Posted: Tue Feb 09, 2010 10:52 pm Post subject: |
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First off- I'm snowed in. Which means I have a lot of time on my hands (and vodka), so brace yerselves.
| lgiro wrote: |
I admit to having an opinion but don’t profess to know. I would only offer a word of caution to those students/developing players who may be seduced by the less complete, or shortcut methods. And that is:
Using Wes Montgomery as an example for what you should do is something to consider very cautiously. For one, he practiced a lot. That’s good. And he certainly approached the instrument in a very unique and personal way. But the other part that people like to cite is that he wasn't a deep/formal theory music student and yet became a giant master of the jazz guitar.
So the question is - are we all Wes? Do we have his talent and knack for making music? Can we take his personal approach and be successful with it too? I think that in the aggregate sense the answer is closer to no than yes. (i.e. low probability)
So if you want to maximize your probability of success/mitigate the risk of non-success, you should think about your approach carefully |
I agree. But that's just the thing, my method (and I say my lightly) isn't less complete or a shortcut. You still need to understand the scale, it's modes, and it's function. You just don't need to memorize it verbatim across the entire fretboard.
My approach is that you don't really need to memorize anything. To me, this memorization is more of a crutch than anything. This is what I see necessary in order to "master" the guitar:
-You need to have an understanding of music and music theory
-You need to have a way to view the fretboard
-You need to have the technical facility to play what you hear
The rest is just the experience in putting it all together (the hardest and most important thing, and where the majority of your time should be spent). But the above are 3 separate things. The problem is many (not all, but many) guitarists combine them. For instance, rather than learn how melodic minor sounds and works they'll learn the scale all over the neck. Not the same thing. I guess you'd argue that in order to learn how it works you need to do this. I don't agree. I'd argue that if you can hear the scale and know how it works, and have an understanding of the fretboard, it takes nothing to be able to play it in any position. Can I run it in 32nd notes at blah blah blah bpm? No, not with some practice. But I can run it fast enough for what I need to do. And as I said before, it's not a sound/scale I'd often being running verbatim anyway.
And I also feel that doing something like learning MM all over the neck and practicing that hinders you from hearing how the scale really works. This is subjective, just something I've noticed from listening to players that have done just that. They can wail over a min/maj7 chord, but they don't hear how the sound fits over other chords (7b913, 7alt, 7#11, susb9, etc), they don't accent the right notes. More so, they don't accent the right notes in order to get from one chord to another. In a ii-V-i they don't connect the ii to the i. What they play over the V sounds disjointed from the rest.
Wes had talents beyond anyone on this forum for sure. But there's no mistaking how hard he worked. And how did he start out? Learning Christian's solos note for note, by ear. Then getting on the bandstand and playing them. He learned through the music. While no one here is as talented, we all have our own talents and we must learn to exploit them. If you're talent allows you to learn scales all over the neck verbatim quickly, then do it. But to me it's more like monkey work that gives players a false sense of security. If you learn through the music, you can rest assured everything you learn will be of use. When I listen to jazz (the jazz I like) I hear nothing going on that tells me I need to learn MM all over the neck. |
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dewey decibel
Joined: 15 Feb 2006
Posts: 1674
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| Posted: Tue Feb 09, 2010 10:55 pm Post subject: |
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| stratocasturbator wrote: | I've found this thread fascinating, particularly as I've made a concerted effort over the past year or two to really get this scale, or rather the sound that this scale creates, more fluid and available in my playing. and it hasn't been easy. I think there is a natural confusion, stemming in part by how it's typically taught (scale/fingering first, application/"sound" second), with the MM usage because of the correspondence to the key or tonality in question--the "overlay" approach, for example Ab MM over G dominant. I've seen texts on this scale that typically suggest four such tonalities, or key overlays, that are said to "work"... so to some extent you do need to know some fingerings, just so you know where all the available notes of a certain key/scale are in a given position. but because of this "overlay" business, it's much trickier to get the appropriate fingering on the fly merely by searching for the fingering and key overlay in real time--so, to really work musically you ought to focus more on the sound. in my own experience, I've found it is a lot more useful if I just focus on the color tones in the scale that comprise the actual sound, and so rather than thinking of the scale as a "scale," I just focus on adding the color notes that this scale licenses one to use. in so doing, I've found that I get back to thinking of G7 as a G7 (with altered tones), instead of Ab MM or whatever is the case at that point in the tune. i.e. a flat 9 is a flat 9, no matter what "scale" it's derived from...
it's interesting that someone mentioned Wes as an example. the first time MM was demonstrated to me by someone who knew their stuff, I immediately latched onto that sound as reminding me of a Wes sound. I don't know why Wes specifically, but that was the impression and it certainly provided inspiration for further study. and since Wes was self-taught and didn't read music, it follows that he was probably trying to focus on color tones to add to chord tones, instead of just running scales. to my ear anyway. but at least to the extent that it's probably more likely that he got the "sound" instead of the "scale"... long story short, once I focused more on the sound than the scale, it made MM a lot easier to use, especially on the fly. and THEN I became much more interested in getting into the various fingerings, because THEN I could hear it better.
I still don't have it down the way I want to, but this change in approach has certainly helped. |
XACTLY!  |
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dewey decibel
Joined: 15 Feb 2006
Posts: 1674
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| Posted: Tue Feb 09, 2010 11:17 pm Post subject: |
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| Jazz Playa wrote: | .
I really like this discussion we've had here because It makes me realize how deep my knowledge actually goes and how that knowledge really benefits my playing. I'm actually very pleased with my fretboard knowledge of chords, intervals, arpeggios, scales, substitutions, whatever. In a way I've discovered that I'm a far better player than maybe I even thought I was. Knowing all these things forwards and backwards all over my instrument really gives me amazing expressive freedom on my instrument. |
Yeah, OK. IMO what you know and don't know has nothing to do with how good a player you are. It's not what you know but what you do with it. When it comes to fretboard knowledge, I've forgotten much more than I know. I'm serious, I used to practice scales all over the neck, 6 string arpeggios, etc. What happened was I was learning all this extra stuff, but I realized it had no use in my playing. I was still gravitating towards the same ideas, just in different positions/shapes. What I realized I needed to do in order to get to new ideas was start at the source- the music. To me it's not about being able to play these things, but being able to hear them. And if you can hear them (and I mean really hear them) it doesn't take much to play them. The reverse doesn't seem as easy.
| Quote: | | Learning how to improvise while limiting yourself to just chord tone's is an important learning device for beginners and helps them get the sounds of the chords and progressions in their heads. I went through that whole thing looooong ago. In fact I remember the first tune I did with was Stella. A good player can find lots of interesting things to play with just that. And for any beginners reading this, once you're comfortable with the basic diatonic arpeggios over all the chord types then you need to start working with the arpeggio substitutions over all the chord types. Like I said before its a journey . I'm in favor of learning ALL the important stuff and having a strong command of it and how it applies to your jazz vocabulary. |
That's just the thing, I'm limiting myself (or anyone else) to ANYTHING. When I talk about using chord tones or arpeggios it's not in a limited way, those are just your guide. In the same sense a scale is limited- it's only 7 notes. With the chord tones as a guide you have all 12. It's the same with how I hear music and see the fretboard- the chord tones are a guide. From those I can build any scale, arpeggio, chord shape, etc I need. And I can alter them to get new chords/sounds. How limited is that? As I see it, that's about as open and stripped down as you can get. But it takes a lot of hardwork and trust in your ears and your ideas to get rid of those crutches. |
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dewey decibel
Joined: 15 Feb 2006
Posts: 1674
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| Posted: Tue Feb 09, 2010 11:36 pm Post subject: Re: Response |
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| tonyteech wrote: | It depends on the person and their musical knowledge and also how they learn best ie visualise by aural stimulation or by shape.
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Hmmmmm.....
That's just the thing, in the end you HAVE to learn by aural stimulation. And I can tell you right now, I'm the opposite- I learn quicker by shape. I takes me a long time to be able to hear these things. And that's why I feel mindlessly running these scales is not just unnecessary, but maybe even a hindrance. You start to get that sound ingrained, but it's the sound of the scale, not the sound of the mode. I did that with the melodic minor 1/2 up over a dom chord, I was running that scale over and over and while I could hear the scale I couldn't hear the sound- I couldn't hear it against the chord. The only thing that did it was learning actual lines which focused on an extension or two (and not the entire scale).
The main reason is when we use MM in jazz we don't use it in a static situation. It's not the same as the modes from major scale harmony where you have a whole section that can be thought of as simply dorian. It's more often used as a gateway sound- leading from one tonality to another. Sure you can record a vamp of a dom7th chord and practice the different sounds over it (#11, b9/13, alt, etc) but doing so hasn't done much for getting them into my ear. You got to learn some actual lines over with these sounds in order to get it. IMO of course! |
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sunflower
Joined: 09 Mar 2007
Posts: 572
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| Posted: Wed Feb 10, 2010 5:10 pm Post subject: |
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Wisdom here
DD you are right on the money .... |
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Jazz Playa
Joined: 11 Mar 2009
Posts: 344
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| Posted: Wed Feb 10, 2010 10:03 pm Post subject: |
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You guys are freakin retarded.
Hey I'm a fantastic advanced level player and I'm really happy with where I am with my playing, nuff said! |
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JakeJew
Joined: 30 Jul 2005
Posts: 2018
Location: Boston, MA
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| Posted: Thu Feb 11, 2010 1:29 am Post subject: |
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| Jazz Playa wrote: | You guys are freakin retarded.
Hey I'm a fantastic advanced level player and I'm really happy with where I am with my playing, nuff said! |
Huh?
JP I don't really get it. Why do you keep on telling us you're such a great player? Regardless of whether that's actually true or not, I don't see the relevance to this conversation.
Would I or DD be posting if we didn't feel at least a little confident in our abilities to play jazz guitar? So how does the fact that you consider yourself to be at such an advanced level really change anything?
What the hell does "advanced level" even mean?
_________________
"Inspiration may be a form of superconsciousness, or perhaps of subconciousness - I wouldn't know. But I am sure that it is the antithesis of self-consciousness." - Aaron Copland |
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JakeJew
Joined: 30 Jul 2005
Posts: 2018
Location: Boston, MA
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| Posted: Thu Feb 11, 2010 2:36 am Post subject: |
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Sorry, I can't resist being a snark.
JP, here is your introductory post back in March
http://www.playjazzguitar.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=4532&highlight=
So you went from being "kinda new" and "intermediate" to fantastic advanced level in under a year?
I'm really not trying to be an a**hole but let's get real here. If you want to stick by your approach and methodology then that's fine but your arrogance is obviously misplaced...
_________________
"Inspiration may be a form of superconsciousness, or perhaps of subconciousness - I wouldn't know. But I am sure that it is the antithesis of self-consciousness." - Aaron Copland |
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Jazz Playa
Joined: 11 Mar 2009
Posts: 344
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| Posted: Thu Feb 11, 2010 5:59 pm Post subject: |
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Well yes I have progressed a great deal in a relatively short amount of time that is true. Yes I also have the utmost confidence in my skills as a player now because I listen to my playing and many others whom I hear. Hey if you wanna call it arrogance then fine, I'm calling it confidence in myself. Yes I have confidence in myself and I am not ashamed of it. I'm not an jerk about it however I am very confident in my playing now, my hours and hours of dedicated study and practice have really been paying off, that's what I'm saying.
You see I think you're being arrogant because you can't seem to admit that any method besides your method will work for becoming top notch jazz guitarist. I can at least accept that your method might work for you and even your students. If you have any? I not being arrogant here because I can at least acknowledge that there is more than one methodology for thinking about/studying the guitar that will allow a student to achieve their desired results.
A great example is from what we were discussing in another thread recently. The Oberg vs Bruno online jazz schools. Both have very different approaches to playing and also thinking about how they play guitar but both are fantastic pro-level jazz guitarists who are able to make a nice living from music. Bruno is quite a bit older and more experienced and his site seems to have more content right now but you can still learn great things from both.
One last thing, if you look at Jimmy Bruno's "pitch collection" thing he teaches. You'll notice that he does have his "pitch collections" mapped out in every position all over the neck for every different "collection". Okay so he prefers the term "pitch collection" rather than scales or modes. That's fine with me however that can also be viewed as really just semantics too. Just because he chooses not to call them scales they could just as easily be called scales by another player. Still the fact remains he knows them all over the neck like I said I know mine. So there  |
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