Jazz theorists - please read this post!!

Mike Delaney · Post by **Mike Delaney** » 17 Aug 2002 7:15 am

There have been some very good comments made on this thread. Always a good thing to get some new ideas.

Got to thinking about this, and if we wanted to use a scale that had natural 5th, and b13, what about this?

C7b13=C,D,E,F,G,Ab,Bb

This is the fourth mode of F Jazz Minor. I tried it on the piano, and while it has a bit of an unusual flavor, it seems quite usable.

The triune of F,G,Ab teases my ear into thinking harmonic minor, then fools me with the Bb.

A lick that ends with G,C,Bb,Ab resolving to A works well of course, but I also find myself liking G,C,Bb,Ab,G. That G stands nice and strong over F9 or Fmaj9, and sets up a chromatic line G,Ab(passing tone),A, to start off an F lick.

Let me know what you think.

Jeff Lampert · Post by **Jeff Lampert** » 17 Aug 2002 8:23 am

The triune of F,G,Ab teases my ear into thinking harmonic minor, then fools me with the Bb.

What about the C natural minor? Of course, it has an Eb, not an E, but I use C7#9 to resolve to Fm7 quite often, so it would seem to be ok. Of course, the F jazz minor seems perfect. I'll try it tomorrow after I unpack. BTW, could you take a look at my last post? What substitutions would you use on diminished and augmented chords? Also, what scales do you use for the substitutions? For example, do you use the same scales on a C7 substituting for a C#dim, as you would for a normal C7? Thanks.

Al Marcus · Post by **Al Marcus** » 17 Aug 2002 8:54 am

Jeff- you seemed to have everything nailed down pretty good. I sure would like to hear you play.

I use a lot of suspended chords and subsitutions. I just play 'em without too much thinking anymore. Just Habit...al

Mike Delaney · Post by **Mike Delaney** » 17 Aug 2002 9:23 am

Actually, that's the 5th mode of F Jazz Minor...my bad.

C Natural Minor would certainly work out fine with that bluesy #9 in there. Also gives me an idea for some chromatic lines. How about G,E,G,Eb,D with the D starting an F Pentatonic lick. Also, G,Eb,G,E,F. Double chromatic to the root, play your favorite F lick.

This has been a great discussion, man, has my creative juices flowing.

Jeff Lampert · Post by **Jeff Lampert** » 17 Aug 2002 10:42 am

I guess no one will answer my substitutions on dim and aug chord question. Oh well.

Sam Minnitti · Post by **Sam Minnitti** » 18 Aug 2002 8:16 am

Hi Jeff,

I haven’t got to the computer much this weekend, as we still have guests staying with us. Quickly here are my thoughts…Yes, subs like, Ab7, B7, D7 or F7, would all work well, but they would all be b9 chords. The min7b5’s you mention all work nicely too.

Then you have secondary dom subs you can extract and sub in diminished chords for. For example, key of F…if you see C7, (V chord) you can sub in the secondary dominant chord of C7 which would be G7. (the V7 of the original chord) Then based off of the new V7 chord (G7) you could sub in its diminished chord which is B dim (or Ddim, Fdim, Abdim) So this would be called a dim 7th sub of the secondary dominant

You can also make the I a diminished before resolving to the major.

Dmin7 G7 Co7 CMaj7 (dim I sub)

For a sub on a 7#5, your examples are good. Key of A for example, you might want to try on an E7#5 a G#Maj7#5 instead, it’s a little bit of a stretch, but tends to work nicely when resolving to a Maj 6/9

Bmin7 G#Maj7#5 AMaj6/9

Other subs I like are ‘sidestepping’ subs where you can play any chord ½ higher, then back. This also works a major 3rd below and minor 3rd above. The minor 3rd above works well on a dominant chord that resolves to a Maj 6/9

Dmin7 Bb7 CMaj6/9

Try them out and let me know what you think. One might say that some of these cross the line between sub’ing and reharmonizing, but that is sort of a gray area, and would depend on the particular situation or people you are playing with.

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www.samminnitti.com
[This message was edited by Sam Minnitti on 18 August 2002 at 09:17 AM.][This message was edited by Sam Minnitti on 18 August 2002 at 09:17 AM.]

Jeff A. Smith · Post by **Jeff A. Smith** » 19 Aug 2002 4:17 pm

Other subs I like are ‘sidestepping’ subs where you can play any chord ½ higher, then back. This also works a major 3rd below and minor 3rd above. The minor 3rd above works well on a dominant chord that resolves to a Maj 6/9

Sam, although I can't say I've done much with this as of yet, this sounds like something I've read about Parker and Coltrane doing: Parker apparently liked to play stuff on the intervals of a diminished chord (minor 3rd,) and Coltrane may have have developed the same sort of idea with the intervals of an augmented chord (major 3rd.) Have you done much with this sort of thing, and do you have any suggestions for beginning to work with it?

On the secondary dominant idea: Is there anything special to keep in mind for using a 7th chord a fifth above another 7th chord? It's a common thing to play minor 7th stuff a fifth up, but I haven't really encountered the idea of using seventh chords and scales in the same way before. I imagine that somebody could go back and forth, making 1/2 step modulations between this and b5 tritone substitution stuff?

Thanks,

Jeff S.

Marty Pollard · Post by **Marty Pollard** » 19 Aug 2002 6:11 pm

G,C,Bb,Ab resolving to A

This little thing is similar to the first melody notes after the head in Night in Tunisia.
FWIW
And a melodic fragment I heard Wes Montgomery play but I can't place it.[This message was edited by Marty Pollard on 19 August 2002 at 07:14 PM.]

Sam Minnitti · Post by **Sam Minnitti** » 20 Aug 2002 9:00 am

Hi Jeff S.,
I think you are talking about improvising using symmetrical scales. I would say that Coltrane used this type of improvisation heavily at points in his career, and was one of its pioneers; Bird too, but more melodically, less angularly. This type of playing invokes what you might call the ‘modern sound’ and was developed further by saxophonists that came along post Coltrane, like David Liebman. Of course this is used today by lots of jazz players, saxophonists and non saxophonist alike. I do like to incorporate elements of it, but if used exclusively in improvising, then it starts to sound ‘too outside’, so think of it more of a way too add color to the more diatonic stuff.

I think the first step would be to learn the common symmetrical scales and chords each works best on.

Whole-Tone Scales (major 2nd intervals; 6 tones) - good on Dom7 alt 5 chords
Augmented Scales (minor 3rd- minor 2nds intervals; 9 tones) -- good on Dom7 alt 5 chords
Diminished Scales (starting major 2nd- minor 2nd intervals; 9 tones)-good on dim, and ½ dim
Diminished Scales (starting minor 2nd - major 2nd intervals; 9 tones)- good on altered Dom7th’s

Next, record yourself playing the chords on a ii V I progression over and over, preferably through a key cycle of some kind (4th, 5th, 3rd, etc) so you have something to practice the scales with, then try them out, get them in the ear, then start to play around with them and come up with melodies.

Also, with the secondary dominant idea and chording/comping, same holds true, good to use sometimes, but if used all the time it’s effect actually diminishes
because the listeners ear adjusts too much to the new key centers, and it no longer sounds that interesting. Hope this helps.

Sam

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www.samminnitti.com
[This message was edited by Sam Minnitti on 20 August 2002 at 10:01 AM.]

bob grossman · Post by **bob grossman** » 20 Aug 2002 11:13 am

I could drive myself nuts trying to apply all this to the steel. Where do you guys learn all this? Is there a book?

Were these jazz musicians (Monk, etc.)that knowledgeable-or did they do it by the sounds? I really want to know.

Sam Minnitti · Post by **Sam Minnitti** » 20 Aug 2002 12:11 pm

I am primarily a 6-string player, who is attempting to start to apply this stuff to C6. It’s not easy in either case. I went to music school, so that along with hanging out and playing with musicians is where I got a lot of it.

There are lots of books out there I’m sure, some good, plenty bad. My professors at the time, who are all accomplished Jazz musicians tended not to use books and taught from their heads.

I do think that all the greats really knew what it was they were doing in addition to having tremendous talent, creativity and very good ‘ears’. Keep in mind though, Parker, Dizzy, Monk, Coltrane were the inventors of modern be-bop, therefore their prospective on it is very different than someone who comes in to learn it after the fact.

An example they always used was John Coltrane’s recording of Giant Steps, a very difficult tune. Coltrane comes in and plays all the changes perfectly and melodically. Then comes in the late Tommy Flanagan for the piano solo. Undisputedly one of the great piano players at the time, really struggles and basically just drops out in the middle of his solo because playing by ear was not enough to make it through something so fast and complex. Then….hear Tommy play Giant Steps again on a subsequent recording a year or two later, and he blows it away.

So despite what these things were called back then as it was all coming together, I think that everyone spent a lot of time checking it out and practicing, getting it in their ears, with the goal of not having to think about it while playing.

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www.samminnitti.com

Dave Birkett · Post by **Dave Birkett** » 20 Aug 2002 3:08 pm

I think Sam has it right. All those guys could "run the changes," but the more familiar they were with the changes, the better they ran them, hence Sam's remarks about Tommy Flanagan.

Jeff A. Smith · Post by **Jeff A. Smith** » 20 Aug 2002 3:13 pm

Thanks for the response, Sam.

I think you are talking about improvising using symmetrical scales

Not really so much playing those scales, but maybe taking a certain idea and modulating up and down according to the intervals of the diminished and augmented chords. That was what I thought you were kind of getting at with your ideas of moving a major third below, or a minor third above or below.

Using chords, I learned a Miles Davis two chord vamp from a Robben Ford video that could be moved up and down the diminished chord intervals at random. I don't remember what it was right now, but it involved a common ambiguous quartal guitar voicing.

As far as how this might apply to scales and single-note improvising, I picked up a Mel Bay book (!) that discussed things like taking a certain melodic idea and modulating up and down with it, according to the intervals of the diminished or augmented chords.

The book didn't really go into it in much depth, but this is where I got the idea that Bird did one and Trane did the other. I try this stuff with 7th chord scales a little bit now and then, but so far I haven't taken it very far.

As far as "side slipping," I've never learned Coltrane's solo to "Bessie's Blues," but if I could go in and out of "out" keys like that, while staying perfectly melodic and soulful, that would be something.

I've never heard of what you call the nine-tone "augmented scale," consisting of minor third-minor 2nd intervals. I'll have to mess around with that. [This message was edited by Jeff A. Smith on 21 August 2002 at 05:42 PM.]

Jeff A. Smith · Post by **Jeff A. Smith** » 20 Aug 2002 4:19 pm

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:<HR>I could drive myself nuts trying to apply all this to the steel. Where do you guys learn all this? Is there a book?
Were these jazz musicians (Monk, etc.)that knowledgeable-or did they do it by the sounds? I really want to know<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

I remember thinking that jazz players must all be absolute geniuses to be able to come up with all this wierd stuff out of thin air, and be able to play over chord changes so well. At one point, as your typical blues-rock guitarist, I thought everybody probably just did what I did, which was to steal licks from records and sometimes add stuff to it. When I found out that there were tools these guys used to help them create,(chord-scale relationships), that was all I was interested in for quite some time.

Being primarily a guitar player, like Sam, it's pretty easy to find books that discuss this stuff. From being on here awhile, I've gathered that there isn't much written from the viewpoint of steel guitar.

One thing I've found is that everybody seems to have a different way of looking at this stuff, and their favorite approaches evolve according to that.

On another thread, I was watching the discussion about harmonizing the major scale to create chords built on each scale degree, and how beginning the scale on each of these different degrees creates a different "mode" to go with the given chord. For me that's the starting place. Staying within the harmony of the scale, anything that is derived from it can in theory be substituted for anything else in that scale's family. Of course certain things work better than others. The harmonic minor and melodic minor scales (and even a few others) can be treated in the same way as the major. I doubt many people are as intimately familiar with each mode of these other scales as they are with the major modes, but a few modes from these other families come up a lot. Stuff from these three scales is interchangeable to a certain extent, and it's helpful to learn about their points of useful intersection.

Then you have the diminished scale and the whole-tone scale, and maybe a few other symetrics, like the ones Sam mentioned. Since those scales are symetrical, they don't create these families like the major, harmonic minor, and the melodic minor do.

In a nutshell, that's the way I personally conceive of music from the view of improvising. Staying within a scale family when playing a song based on the harmony of a certain scale, and borrowing elements from similar scales where the families intersect takes care of most of what I do, along with chromatic passing tones between the scale notes themselves.

I'm still pretty fascinated by the idea that you can get a lot of neat sounds by approaching the same family of notes in different ways. Instead of playing G mixolydian for example, I'll play D dorian, F lydian, and B locrian. Those work really well because you are still rooting your scale substitution on chord tones of G7. It's very common to just play the C major scale for G mixolydian, but I don't personally like that as well, since you are basing your scale on the 4th of G7, which needs resolution. I'll stay on the C major scale when I'm just playing a quick G7 five chord in a typical major-derived progression, but if the 7th chord lasts awhile, I'll usually use one of the other ideas. This is still playing the same notes as the usual 7th chord mixolydian mode, but when you approach it differently, and throw in four-note arpeggios and chord forms, you can sound different but not too far out.

Some of the substitution methods discussed here are less related to any scale's basic harmony, and the further out we get, the less I know.

I'm not as obsessed as I used to be, but I still scarf up as much information as I can on this subject, because it all has some unique slant. I keep notes, even on stuff I'm not really into yet, because someday I might be. In my area, while there are some really good players, I don't know of any deep theorist that I could study with, so I've been pretty much on my own.
[This message was edited by Jeff A. Smith on 20 August 2002 at 05:34 PM.]

William Steward · Post by **William Steward** » 20 Aug 2002 5:32 pm

Here is a project for one you of you guys...maybe there is room out there for a book that addresses jazz theory issues from the unique perspective of a steel guitarist. I am a pianist and like someone learning a foreign language, I tend to translate everything back into the piano keyboard in order to understand it on the fretboard (computer people might refer to this as musical 'thunking'). While the basic 'theory' issues are not really different between instruments, there are differences in application. On the piano for instance, I know at what point I can no longer play a certain voicing in the bass clef because it sounds too 'muddy'. As for Bob's question about theory books I keep coming back to the following: "Hearin' The Changes" (Coker, Knapp, Vincent), anything by Mark Levine, "All the Right Changes" (Hyman) and for my retirement project, "Thesaurus of Scales and Melodic Patterns" (Sloniminsky). Personally I am having fun just going back through some of these 'theory' threads and picking out the gems regarding steel guitar.

Jeff Lampert · Post by **Jeff Lampert** » 20 Aug 2002 8:32 pm

Here is a project for one you of you guys...maybe there is room out there for a book that addresses jazz theory issues from the unique perspective of a steel guitarist

Oh yeah. That'll be a real money-maker.

William Steward · Post by **William Steward** » 21 Aug 2002 4:06 am

OK, it was a dumb idea. I know the fascination for this instrument for most players is it's huge financial potential.

Jeff Lampert · Post by **Jeff Lampert** » 21 Aug 2002 6:44 am

OK, it was a dumb idea

Actually, William, it's a GREAT idea. Unfortunately, great ideas have to be tempered with a dose of reality most of the time. The work that would be required to round up a number of great C6 players, interview them, listen to loads of records, analyze the data, add the ideas of our own Forum members, categorize and organize it, edit, provide a lot of tab musical examples, etc. etc. could easily produce a volume of minimally 100 pages, and maybe 200 pages, take 1.5 - 2 years. And then at $29.95, how many people will even buy it. I have MANY times lamented the fact, on the Forum, and privately to a few friends, that there is no book on how to APPLY jazz theory to steel guitar. When you go to Barnes and Noble, there are books on jazz theory for 6- string guitar, jazz theory for piano, etc. But where's ours? There is no way for a jazz player who wants to play steel to find out how to do it! So it's sort of a Catch-22. Without the dissemination of information (books, classes, professional instruction, other players), we can't develop many jazz players on steel (especially at early ages, when it matters the most), and if you can't develop players, then you won't have enough innovation and instruction to give to newcomers, who will probably give up quickly. Anyway, that's my take. At least there are a few threads on this Forum to help spread some ideas.

William Steward · Post by **William Steward** » 21 Aug 2002 9:40 am

Jeff---I think it is clear that such a pedal steel jazz study would not be a runaway best-seller. You might be surprised to find the number of people out here that would pay $100 or more for a cerlox bound set of photocopies if they were worth studying. If it is really brilliant you might even get a pedal or knee lever named after you. I suspect a few of you guys have done most of the homework already. Sam pointed to the largely aural tradition of jazz learning which is still important and no book or course will replace that completely. I keep learning on the bandstand from my clams as well as happy accidents. Anyway it is good to take some of these ideas back to the guitar and piano to see what they mean as music. The online theory lessons are appreciated - don't go changin'.

Jim Smith · Post by **Jim Smith** » 21 Aug 2002 9:53 am

there is no book on how to APPLY jazz theory to steel guitar.

Years ago I bought an Arnie Berle jazz book and Harry Guffee's companion book with all the exercises transposed to pedal steel. I'll have to look up the name when I get home though. It's probably out of print by now.

Jeff Lampert · Post by **Jeff Lampert** » 21 Aug 2002 10:27 am

it is good to take some of these ideas back to the guitar and piano to see what they mean as music

I tend to take ideas I hear from guitar and piano, and bring them to the steel. In fact, I feel that the musical dynamics of jazz piano are what we should attempt to clone on the steel. This is nearly impossible to do, but it is a standard to strive for. Jazz piano is the standard IMO.

Dave Birkett · Post by **Dave Birkett** » 21 Aug 2002 11:07 am

Jeff, I see your point but can't fully agree with you as regards the piano. IMHO, the harmonic structure of jazz from the late 30s on is only part of the nature (to use an Aristotelian term) of jazz. The trait that has helped define jazz since its inception has been phrasing. This may be a bit off the wall, but when I listen to Jimmy Day's phrasing on "Steel and Strings," I hear how Johnny Hodges would have played these country standards. I think that, if he and the Duke would have heard this recording, they would have said: "Man! This cat's got the spirit!"

Jeff Lampert · Post by **Jeff Lampert** » 21 Aug 2002 11:36 am

The trait that has helped define jazz since its inception has been phrasing

I was really only referring to the musical dynamics with respect to the choices or harmony. Phrasing is not something limited by the capabilities on an instrument, whereas harmony is.

Jim Smith · Post by **Jim Smith** » 21 Aug 2002 5:43 pm

The books I have are Arnie Berle's "Complete Handbook For Jazz Improvisation" published by Amsco Music Publishing Company in 1972, ISBN 0-8256-2805-9. Harry Guffee's book is called "Jazz Improvisation Workbook for C6 Steel Guitar" and consists of Supplementary Tablature Diagrams for Arnie's book, but there is no publishing company or ISBN number listed in it.

Sad to say, I've had both books for all these years and haven't sat down with them yet.

I think it's time to start!

William Steward · Post by **William Steward** » 22 Aug 2002 4:47 am

Jim..I see that the Arnie Berle book is still in print - I may check that out. I am guessing the Guffee companion for C6 was never formally published but a good idea to make a steel guitar companion to a standard jazz text. No point in repeating all the basic theory. As Jeff pointed out, Harry Guffee was not destined to become rich from his steel guitar companion...but it appears his singing math book for kids is a big success.