Pat Martino Linear expressions

Richard Nelson · Post by **Richard Nelson** » 23 Sep 2013 3:17 am

Has anyone studied this book ? I've been working through the activity studies and find it difficult to understand the chromatic notes in the licks . Are we just expected to learn the licks off without question and then it all magically comes together in the end ? Firstly he goes on at length about the Gm7 chord and then immediately starts activities with an Ab and a F* note which do not fit . Did I miss something ? Can anyone help ?

Mike Neer · Post by **Mike Neer** » 23 Sep 2013 3:51 am

I have worked through this book. Chromaticism is an important part of jazz language. The lines in the book use chromaticism, though it is really pretty common usage. A lot of the chromatic notes used in the line forms presented in the book fulfill the role of passing tones that keep the rhythmic and directional flow of the lines moving.

Also, the line forms are not only applicable over, say, a Gm7 chord--you could use the same line form for Gmin over C7, A7, F#7, etc. By using them in this way, we are really adding tension to the dominant chord and creating a strong need for resolution. If you are interested in understanding this more, you really should work through the book--it is pretty heavy to someone who doesn't understand what's going on, though. Listen to Charlie Parker and bebop and learn some of those tunes if you can. Studying with a teacher will help immensely--jazz is not really music you can learn on your own.

Dave Campbell · Post by **Dave Campbell** » 23 Sep 2013 5:54 am

i've looked at pat's book, and i studied under roddy elias, a canadian guitar player that studied with pat.

i can't say that i've worked through the book, but pat martino's thought process involved boiling all scale applications to their dorian modal parent scale. therefore, when he plays over F major (ionian), he "thinks" G dorian. to achieve some organized chromaticism, he substitutes other parent dorian scales. for instance, playing a D dorian over the F chord adds the #4 (B natural).

pat also organizes a lot of information using diminished and augmented chords, but it's been a while since i delved into that, and my brain is no longer qualified to speak on that theory.

george russell (whose book i have worked through) accomplishes the same chromaticism by relating ("thinking") about the parent Lydian scales.

in essence, they are both ways of organizing the information in your head so that you can recall it quickly while improvising. studying the methods will help you get used to "hearing" more chromatic melodies.

it's worth mentioning that pat is a bit of a savant, so his approach might not make sense to the rest of us.

there's an interesting discussion on his methods here
http://www.thegearpage.net/board/archiv ... 26025.html

Richard Damron · Post by **Richard Damron** » 23 Sep 2013 6:15 am

Richard -

Mike has this nailed - but I would call your attention to, perhaps, the most important phrase that he's written : - "adding tension to the dominant chord and creating a strong need for resolution". This is stock-in-trade for any jazz player. Impart some dissonance - tension - and then release it to something much more consonant - even if ever so briefly.

Christopher Woitach · Post by **Christopher Woitach** » 23 Sep 2013 6:41 am

The activities combine outlining arpeggios, chromatic approach tones, and several minor type scales.

The basic approach Pat uses is to reduce everything to minor. For major chords, play the relative minor (BbMaj = Gm), and for dominant chords play at the 5th, as if playing over the ii of a ii V I (C7 = Gm).

If you work through the entire book, you will not only have a great understanding of one type of jazz melodicism, but have tons of pockets on the steel for your own improvisations

Christopher Woitach · Post by **Christopher Woitach** » 23 Sep 2013 7:24 am

I should add - these were some of the first things I worked on on the pedal steel. Trying to figure out how to play them was pure torture, at first, and I'm still finding better positions all the time. I practice them pedals up, but I'll probably add pedals, sometime

Mike Neer · Post by **Mike Neer** » 23 Sep 2013 9:15 am

I did that, too, Christopher, but I got rid of the book a long time ago, so much of it was from memory. It's amazing to me how long I was able to retain some of these line forms--we're talking 30 years.

My pedals are always up!

Christopher Woitach · Post by **Christopher Woitach** » 23 Sep 2013 9:34 am

I am not in the least surprised, Mike!

The hardest thing for me has been how many of the activities stead out all over the neck on the steel, unlike on the guitar, where they mostly stay in one position. Also, the picking choices for the chromatic runs are always a challenge for me - every day, it seems, a different right hand choice seems to work better!

Guitar is so easy, in comparison

Richard Nelson · Post by **Richard Nelson** » 23 Sep 2013 9:55 am

I can understand the minor for major ideas but he launches into a series of activities that include melodic minor , dorian minor and a few chromatic licks thrown in . It's like he starts with ABC and then goes immediately to spelling words with 11 letters . Going back to what I asked earlier ..... so he just wants us to learn these lines blind and all will magically come together in the end . I'm on activity 3 and I dont see many patterns , just lots and lots of licks

Christopher Woitach · Post by **Christopher Woitach** » 23 Sep 2013 11:59 am

To some extent, yes, but as you play through the book, past the initial activities, he varies them as he plays them multiple keys, so you start to get an idea of how he uses them.

I have, somewhere, a transcription of his solo on Impressions, which really illustrates this. Send me an email - cw@affmusic.com - and I'll send it to you, if you like.

Very interesting stuff, to me

Richard Nelson · Post by **Richard Nelson** » 23 Sep 2013 12:27 pm

Chris thanks done

Ulrich Sinn · Post by **Ulrich Sinn** » 23 Sep 2013 2:14 pm

At what tempo can you take these lines?

I'm asking because I'm having a horrible time playing consecutive whole steps across the strings.

Referring to the visual wholestep rather than the interval.

Stuart Legg · Post by **Stuart Legg** » 23 Sep 2013 7:17 pm

I think itâ€™s a case of finding an egg that has a plain everyday chicken in it but it has been analyzed so much that we are sure itâ€™s going to hatch a dinosaur.
Sometimes on guitar itâ€™s simple mindless playing in simple patterns that when analyzed musically
the explanation is nothing more than an unreliable unintended consequence.
But it sells books.

Mike Neer · Post by **Mike Neer** » 23 Sep 2013 8:11 pm

Stuart, are you familiar with this book?

Ulrich Sinn · Post by **Ulrich Sinn** » 23 Sep 2013 10:43 pm

the (somewhat) trivialized explanation is,

in red 1: every whole step can be connected by a chromatic note.

in red 2: every whole step can be connected by a chromatic note, here embellished (don't know the proper term in english, but it could possibly be stretched to call it a cambiata).This figure just screams Pat Martino!

in blue: ascending melodic minor. The F# works like B-C in Cmajor --> leading note into the root. E is there because the Eb from the G minor natural scale would create an augmented second interval with the F#. which is an abomination unto the lord.

everything else is diatonic.

Richard Nelson · Post by **Richard Nelson** » 24 Sep 2013 1:56 am

Ulrich , that makes sense to me , I'm starting to see a pattern now . Many thanks for that gem . If you move some of the 2 bar sections up an octave they become a lot easier to play . The whole tone bits become easier after a bit of practice . I found when I started playing C6 in earnest many years ago it really improved my intonation on E9 . Tempo wise .... ? I love that PF quote ..from knowledge comes technique

Richard Nelson · Post by **Richard Nelson** » 24 Sep 2013 4:24 am

OMG it's opening up the whole fretboard , all those little triads from the harmonised scale and the way the scale shapes all link up . Eureka !

Clete Ritta · Post by **Clete Ritta** » 24 Sep 2013 4:54 am

Stuart Legg wrote:...Sometimes on guitar itâ€™s simple mindless playing in simple patterns...

You're kidding right? Or perhaps just never listened to Pat Martino? Simple is certainly not a word that would be used to describe his style!

Christopher Woitach · Post by **Christopher Woitach** » 24 Sep 2013 5:12 am

Yes, Ulrich!

I wouldn't call that "trivialized" - it's quite clear,

These activities are tricky to play on the steel. Activity 1 is much easier up an octave, for sure. I have them tabbed out for Bb6. I'll post them here when I get a minute

It makes my day to see this discussion on the Forum

Richard Nelson · Post by **Richard Nelson** » 24 Sep 2013 10:53 am

I've just noticed whilst doing this study that the G melodic minor is made up of 2 major scales Bb and D . So in Bb maj if you play scale notes 67123 its the 1st 5 notes of the Gmm scale then if you play 12345 scale notes of D maj you get the scale notes 56712 of the Gmm . Now theres a pocket I've been missing .
Christopher Woitach sent me this reply to my misgivings on playing jazz at all, I'd like to share it with you hep cats out there.... I found it inspiring

The time and effort? It's all worth it, even if there is a small audience. This music is one of the highest art forms humanity has produced, and to strive for understanding, and the ability to play it, is an act that displays a character worthy of the greatest respect, in my opinion.

Mike Neer · Post by **Mike Neer** » 24 Sep 2013 5:23 pm

Richard Nelson wrote:I've just noticed whilst doing this study that the G melodic minor is made up of 2 major scales Bb and D . So in Bb maj if you play scale notes 67123 its the 1st 5 notes of the Gmm scale then if you play 12345 scale notes of D maj you get the scale notes 56712 of the Gmm . Now theres a pocket I've been missing .
Christopher Woitach sent me this reply to my misgivings on playing jazz at all, I'd like to share it with you hep cats out there.... I found it inspiring

The time and effort? It's all worth it, even if there is a small audience. This music is one of the highest art forms humanity has produced, and to strive for understanding, and the ability to play it, is an act that displays a character worthy of the greatest respect, in my opinion.

Richard, what you are seeing there in the melodic minor scale is the reason we use them to begin with: the V7 of Gmin is D7. You could not spell a D7 chord from the notes in a G natural minor scale. The 7th degree is F, which yields D-7. So, we use the harmonic and melodic minor scales to create a dominant chord to fulfill the tension/resolution need.

What's even more interesting is when you begin to fool around with the different modes of the melodic and harmonic minor scales.

Think about this: if we took every G minor scale based on our common scales (major, melodic minor, harmonic minor) and their modes, we would encompass every one of the 12 tones except for B natural (which appears only in the case of the superlocrian modes, which are the 7th modes of the melodic and harmonic minor scales--essentially Ab minor scales).

G Dorian (an E in there)
G Aeolian (an Eb)
G Phrygian (contains an Ab)
G Locrian (contains a Db)
G melodic minor (an F#)
G harmonic minor

Stuart Legg · Post by **Stuart Legg** » 24 Sep 2013 10:27 pm

I should not have voiced my opinion on something I have not researched that well.

I went strictly on what I heard on youtube.
It seemed to me to be just scale wise single line playing with pre-selected chromatic notes and very few of those.

The beauty of it seems to me to be the no break in timing little stutter between phrases.

This is pretty much what I got out of what I heard..
The 5 #5 6 is notes with the #5 as the passing or chromatic note etc..

Richard Nelson · Post by **Richard Nelson** » 25 Sep 2013 5:04 am

My head is starting to melt ..I'm going surfing

Mike Neer · Post by **Mike Neer** » 25 Sep 2013 5:41 am

Sorry, Richard, I didn't mean to confuse things even more--I was just thinking aloud. Basically, all I wanted to say is that if you can hear it, you can make any notes work, and the beauty of jazz is that lines move throughout different changes and harmonic cycles even if the rhythm section is vamping on one chord.

Steve Hinson · Post by **Steve Hinson** » 25 Sep 2013 7:11 am

I'd just like to know what all this has to do with Ray Price.