Can anyone make sense of this?!??

[potatohead]

Smitty,
thank you yet again for taking the time and making the effort to convey your understanding on this. Im kinda there with this but feel uncomfortable with it.
I think the overall thing that I think I have learned here is that Ive been too strict with my theoretical application. I have always looked at scales, keys, chords as having to strictly adhere to eachother with no space for error.

I have explored in the past using different scales over a chord progression and have found some interesting things. But when I have taken the time to break them down, they still loosely stick to the rules.

Mainly simple ideas like.....

taking a power chord turnaround like B5 E5 F5 and repeating it as a recorded loop.

then practicing playing over the top in different B rooted scales like Phrygian Dominant, minor Blues, Dorian, Phrygian, Aeolian blah blah blah

Trying to exhaust the possibilities and paying attention to the texture of what I was doing. Also attepmting to creat line which blend these ideas and textures. Ive found this to be both interesting and also helpfull in seeing things in more than one dimension.

But throughout my time playing music, I have always seen the Major scale and its derived chords, modes, inversions etc etc as pretty sternly stuck to there root scale.
The concept which you appear to be conveying through this example is that it is perfectly ok for me to make chords that are loosely based on an 'in key' chord but alter it with 'out of key' notes. Is this what your saying???

If so, then my mind is blown because the potential of this in practice opens an amazing amount of doors. It would be possible to create subtelty and gentle insinuation to texture in a mind blowingly diverse number of ways.

Can you give me an example of a situation where this works and is used regularly?? I must say I havent really come accross this concept before and am excited about it. I am maybe a nerd too but I aint ashamed of it and want to grow as a player (and realise that the only way to do this is truly understand the mechanics of the art form which we aspire to master).

This concept, if Ive not completely missunderstood you, is remeniscent of some of the jazz ideas that were presented when I was studying music at uni and I have to say that much of that stuff was so complex that it switched me off. I just couldnt see the application for some of the things presented outside of the realms of wildly avente Guarde jazz genre. The thought of using these ideas to express the growing need in my own writing to be more subtle and carefull in the way I construct things is something which had you not described this concept would have evaded me completely I think. So thanks for helping and if nothing else, you have forced me to ask serious questions about me whole approach to music and my grasp of it.

my head is gone.


Are you saying that I can take (for simplifications sake) a C maj scale

C D E F G A B C

which would ordinarily give me the

C Maj 7
D min 7
E min 7
F Maj 7
G Dom 7
A min 7
B min7

and start to alter these chords with non-C scale notes???


What about the inversion potential??

Please get back to me on this. If I understand you correctly then my eyes have been opened and I can see things that I previously was never aware of. If Im wrong about what your saying then I am just not grasping how the originally discribed situation was possible as all..

thanks yet again.

Neil

[Smitty]

Haha. You are thinking a little bit too "inside the box."

Yes, you have your arpeggios in the Cmaj scale, and you named them correctly. You've got the right idea there. Meaning that over the ii chord, Dmin7, we play a D dorian scale. But don't think of it as a scale. Or mode, or whatever. Think of it as notes that belong to a chord.
Now, there are only 7 notes that you're using out of that scale, even though you're able to use all 7 modes over all those 7 arpeggios/chords in the key of Cmajor. But what about the other 5 notes?

This is where the ideas of jazz come in. These 5 other notes, C#, D#, F#, G#, and A# (I'll call them C#, Eb, F#, G#, and Bb mostly, because I like those names more. Right now, enharmonics don't matter.)
What scale is that? An Eb minor pentatonic. Woah. That's a trick I stole from Pat Martino.
So now you know that when you play in Cmaj, you've got an Eb minor pentatonic leftover. Now how do you USE it?

All this Eb minor pentatonic scale is used for, in this case, is to get from one target note to another, or atleast it's that way in jazz. The target notes, as I said earlier, are the 3, 7 and any other color note of a given chord.
So you can use a multitude of other scales to get from one play to another, most importantly over the dominant 7 chord, where the half/whole scale and melodic minor works great. Those notes belonging to this Eb minor pentatonic scale are also the altered tones plus a b7, which is quite common in a major scale. So basically, you can play any note you want, as long as you land on the right one ("right" is subjective here...it might not sound "right" to everyone) and you say what you want to say. Thinking of things in strictly scales is very limiting. They go in one direction: vertically. If you think of them in, first, terms of keys, then you can whip out chords, which can stand alone and be used to create melodies using voice leading, or broken up into arpeggios which in turn lead to different tones of different scales.
Scales don't have to belong to each other. The most important part of a solo is the melodic contour, ie how it moves up and down, and how it makes the listener feel. You can achieve this through "tension and release." Example? I can play in major pentatonic over a C7 chord. The Bb in the chord is also the third of F# major, the absolute most tense chord to be used over a C major of any sort. Why not, for a couple bars, add some tension and work my way from...hmm, let's work this out:
Major pentatonic over C7. Nice and melodic. Lots of space.
Change to G over the C7. This gives you a suspended tone when you use the G mixolydian scale over C, and a lydian tone when you use major.
These could lead to F# by taking advantage of that short lydian burst: the F# could lead you up to G#, an altered tone, and the Bb, a chord tone. Of course, you don't just want to run up this scale (which in this case, you could just play an E whole tone scale), you want to play around with the notes, jab weird ones in at fun times, and making the listener INTERESTED. You'll have a huge climax of tension, probably using some polyrythmic feel, like slow triplets or 5s that would be impossible to write out, speeed it up, and land on the note G! or C! There you go. You landed on the tonic or dominant; you either rest, or stop soloing.

Notes are notes. They are all interchangable. They just imply different feelings. Theory is just a way to express what you're saying without inputing the intended emotion.
Smitty

[potatohead]

Smitty,
you have now been given the name Obe Wan and I am going off to Peru to study your last post.
When I return I will let you know how I got on.

Thank you for the inspiring - life changeing - epiphony. I am aghast!!!!

Do you have any material posted anywhere? Myspace? Jemsite?

I am now a loyal Smitty (Obe Wan) disciple!!!

Jaw still on floor. Need time to study!!!

[Smitty]

Haha thanks man. I'm no Obe Wan, not even close, I'm just a theory nerd. In fact, I'm only 17, so I don't have much recorded material...only two Andy Timmons-style tunes on my myspace, myspace.com/alexsmithproject.

I'm going to be a senior in high school next year, and after that is hopefully Berklee College of Music, so I've been intensely studying jazz, but really I'm just scratching the surface. I have gained immense amounts of knowledge, but I'm really having a lot of trouble applying it. But then again, that's what makes it fun.

The best way to apply the stuff I was talking about is find any crappy backing track, probably just a two chord vamp, and figure out the most common scales/modes that work. And then find ones that a similar, and so on, until you figure out which ones cause extreme tension. Then figure out why. Why does this note cause so much tension over this chord? And so on. Take your time, be patient, and you'll figure out why music theory is what it is.

But always remember that music theory is just that: theory, not fact. That's the most important lesson. I forget who said it, but it went along the lines of "music theory is just an attempt to explain what we're doing." It is logical, and it really is the nuts and bolts of music; you can't understand music without studying music theory. It is the language of music and it allows you to communicate with other musicians. But all in all, sometimes, you just need to let it rip. If, according to music theory, it doesn't "work," but it sounds good, play it any ways. And then find out why it doesn't "work" but also what makes this "mistake" sound so appealing to you.

And trust me here, I'm on the same road as you. I have trouble following my own advice sometimes. It's all much easier said than done.
Actually, I'm off to practice right now. Have a good one!
Smitty

By the way, I found out another theory "shortcut" like that Pat Martino minor pentatonic thing I said in my last post. In a I-IV-V progression, all of the alt. tones are found in the minor scale a minor third above the I. So if you the progression is a I-IV-V in C, briefly moving to Eb minor will help you land on some alt. tone. The Eb minor will also help you ease in and out of the augmented, half/whole, and whole tone scales of all of the chords.

I love finding cool shortcuts that allow your mind to rest a little bit!

[potatohead]

Right then.
just before I set off to peru Im gonna go find your myspace, become your friend, and then pack my bags. Alex obe wan smith it is!!!!

Thanks for your thoughts man. Hopefully speak a lot more over the coming months. Im gonna post some stuff up on myspace to see what people think. You comments would be appreciated for sure. Ill get some bits posted over next few days. myspace.com/neilkellowmusic

Good luck with your studying man. At 17 you really know far too much. I think If you were here in the UK we would be kidnapping you and keeping you off the music scene.!!

Speak soon & thanks again

Neil

[The Euphor]

Just my two cents. I would call the second chord Eadd9. And change Gb to F#, Ab to G#. That's the rocker in me. Inversions are your call, the whole idea is to understand what notes is being played, not necessarily in the right order.

Theory is there to make yourself understood by others. As a language it's helpful, and very confusing.