Chords and Modes

[Osensei]

Re: Chords and Modes

GandLMan, that's not an accurate depiction of what I'm saying. Surely, the beef of the playing should be inside if that's what the style dictates. The question is how do you go about "bluing" up an otherwise diatonic passage. This is done intuitively all the time by jazz, blues and rock cats in the form of either straight melodic runs, grace notes, screaming bending techniques or glissandos and such. The extensions I point out are ment to be used as resolution points that add flavor to the "inside" playing. It gives a point of reference where either half step or whole step resolution can be said to exist within a given central tonality that isn't always obvious to the player. This should help you theortically describe what you are already doing intuitively through experience.

Within the context of "inside" playing these extended harmony notes are what people would otherwise call "passing tones" or "blue notes". They are ment to be quickly resolved to the inside with a few exceptions. I'm not trying to tell anyone to go nuts playing a bunch of wild extensions! LOL! Although the latter is desirable in some contexts.

 

[myxolidian]

Re: Chords and Modes

As for melody, remember this. Modes and scales as commonly practiced by those who lack the facility to probe deeply are just too vanilla if you catch my drift.

Western music is rooted in vanilla. Songs usually revolve around one key signature. Scales are simplistic as are harmonies. Case in point the pentatonic scale. There's nothing wrong with being vanilla if it sounds good!

Some people love avante garde music while others think it just sounds out of key. If you want to go further, why even use something limiting such as a guitar? There's a world of microtones to tackle. But just because it's not vanilla doesn't mean it sounds good.

On a side note, can you post some music that you consider "non-vanilla"? Not trying to be argumentative, just seeing if we're talking about the same thing. :beerchug:

 

[Osensei]

Re: Chords and Modes

Certainly, even western music has been influenced by world music, although you could never tell by listening to what's considered "popular" these days. When the original poster said he wanted to compose, I didn't assume he ment raga's. By the same token, I don't think he wants his stuff to sound like the Camptown Races either.

In terms of what's vanilla and what's not, vanilla went out many centuries ago even in Western cultures. You need look no further than Bach! Yes, while it's true that the Manheim School of Western Music of old imposed strict guidelines on musical composition that dates as far back as the Baroch period, musicians have always stretched the boundaries of theoretical limitations. Just about any fugue of Bach's is full of chromaticism. So in that sense, vanilla went out long ago. Even in the West with it's well tempered clavichord.

 

[GandLMan]

Re: Chords and Modes

GandLMan, that's not an accurate depiction of what I'm saying. Surely, the beef of the playing should be inside if that's what the style dictates. The question is how do you go about "bluing" up an otherwise diatonic passage. This is done intuitively all the time by jazz, blues and rock cats in the form of either straight melodic runs, grace notes, screaming bending techniques or glissandos and such. The extensions I point out are ment to be used as resolution points that add flavor to the "inside" playing. It gives a point of reference where either half step or whole step resolution can be said to exist within a given central tonality that isn't always obvious to the player. This should help you theortically describe what you are already doing intuitively through experience.

Within the context of "inside" playing these extended harmony notes are what people would otherwise call "passing tones" or "blue notes". They are ment to be quickly resolved to the inside with a few exceptions. I'm not trying to tell anyone to go nuts playing a bunch of wild extensions! LOL! Although the latter is desirable in some contexts.

My apologies dude, in retrospect and a re-read, it sounds like we're saying the same things pretty much , just using different verbage . . . . been a long day sorry for sounding confrontational if I did! . . . .

 

[Osensei]

Re: Chords and Modes

No prob, I understood as soon as you said it!

 

[Guitar Toad]

Re: Chords and Modes

It seems to me that you are faced with a two fold problem. The first issue you face is deriving a method for constructing meaningful chord progressions as you interpret them. The second is applying appropriate melodic ideas against the progression that you have derived.

For the first issue, I would refer you back to the "best practices" point I raised earlier. If your goal is to create music within a pre-existing style or idiom then I believe that the better approach would be to familiarize yourself with commonly or otherwise traditional harmonic vehicles (progressions) that are characteristic of that style.

If on the other hand, your goal is to create something new and refreshing then I would still recommend you do the former. Pick a style or group of styles that closely approximate the style you look to create and study those styles commonly used harmonic progressions, melodic motifs and phrasiology. That means you might have to play some covers for a while. From there you can extend, borrow, extrapolate and fuse until you derive the new style that you have targeted. To me this is vital in the sense that nothing new is totally free from the evolution of that which has come before it. People that have tried to free themselves from the constraints of the evolutionary process have found themselves in the relm of the avante garde where thier styles are eventually kicked to the curb.

As for melody, remember this. Modes and scales as commonly practiced by those who lack the facility to probe deeply are just too vanilla if you catch my drift. It's not uncommon for someone looking at a min7 chord to go nuts on a dorian, phrygian, aolian, melodic minor or harmonic minor mode/scale. With the exeption of the harmonic and melodic minor these applications are as I stated earlier, "too vanilla". They seldom provide the accidentals and harmonic extensions absent of bending that are necessary for the tensions and releases that you seek. This means that you must probe beyond the obvious.

Wow, this is an extremely rich post. You're "best practices" points are excellent. I wish to do as you have said. I want to see and play what has already been done via playing covers and studying the pop, rock, blues and jazz records of the many who have gone before me. I do feel compelled know equip myself with a bit of knowledge to understand what I study and play in terms of the covers and learning the blues and rock standards and the chord progressions they incorporate.

I don't mind being vanilla as long as it's a good tasting vanilla. I'm at odds as to how much I need to know formally. Knowledge can be a good thing. It may not. The blues players I think are great examples of taking the simply and making it great. On one hand I may already know enough music theory, it may be the creativity that I may need to learn. It may be a matter of learning the tones and chords and then learning how to associate them with certain emotions and feelings. That may be the real value of doing and studying some of the artists of blues, rock and jazz, guitarists and vocalists.

But, I do want to be able to do stuff like taking the C7 universe and go in any direction. As someone already alluded. the blues and rock writers typically write songs in one key or mode. But jazz is more free flowing such that jazz composers let one thing lead to another rather that lock into a key or mode.

Thanks for raising the bar for me and forcing me to work a little harder than I initially intended. You guys are great coaches. Thank you.

 

[Guitar Toad]

Re: Chords and Modes

Modal applications are not as straight forward as you might think. Take a C7 chord for instance. I start out by spelling the chord along with all of its extensions.

C E G G# Bb Db D D# F F# A

It spells out like this

C = root
Db = b9th
D = 2nd, 9th
D# = +9th
E = 3rd
F = 4th, 11th
F# = b5, +11
G = 5th
G# = +5th
A = 6th, 13th
Bb = dom 7th


This spelling illustrates that many times what people are calling accidentals, blue notes or outside is actually only an extension to the real harmony. These notes can be interpreted as the domain or the place where the C7 chord lives. Now let's place the notes according to thier ordinal positions.

C Db D D# E F F# G G# A Bb

That's practically the whole chromatic scale dude! Now take this C7 universe and see if you can derive from it scales that you already know. I haven't done the math but I see a lot of half steps so I bet there is a phrygian in there somewhere that you would not normally associate with Cmaj. From this chords domain you can piece together lots of modes that you otherwise would not have considered for the key of Cmaj! Who woulda thunk it!

Find a song with a progression you like and craft a solo or melody to it using this method for each chord. Maybe you can post the results!

Good luck!:arms:

I totally what to follow this part of the post. This reveals my ignorance. This may as well be chinese. But, I want to learn. This nuts and bolts part of music is just gonna require some pencil and paper and work to get this down. Just bite off a little at a time and soon, I'll slowly learn to comprehend what b5, +11 means and where it will fit.

Thanks again for setting the bar high. This is very admonishing, encouraging, and inspiring.

Some of those chords simply make my fingers hurt trying to play them. Others seem downright impossible unless I can find a good alternative tuning to make them easier. But, no pain no gain.

 

[Osensei]

Re: Chords and Modes

You don't have to literally finger the chords. What I'm saying is that you need to be aware that those extra extended harmony notes are available to you whenever you craft your melody or solo against a chord.

So if you play a Cmaj7 chord and play and F# in the melody the you have subtly changed the flavor of the underlying chord to a Cmaj7+11. Try it! It sounds so sweet! Other extended notes aren't so sweet but they are invaluable in melodic expression because they can give you nice passing tones that can be resolved to the next chord.

By learning to spell you chord all the way out to the extensions you can learn weave sweet melodies that twist and turn as they follow the progression.

 

[Guitar Toad]

Re: Chords and Modes

You don't have to literally finger the chords. What I'm saying is that you need to be aware that those extra extended harmony notes are available to you whenever you craft your melody or solo against a chord.

So if you play a Cmaj7 chord and play and F# in the melody the you have subtly changed the flavor of the underlying chord to a Cmaj7+11. Try it! It sounds so sweet! Other extended notes aren't so sweet but they are invaluable in melodic expression because they can give you nice passing tones that can be resolved to the next chord.

By learning to spell you chord all the way out to the extensions you can learn weave sweet melodies that twist and turn as they follow the progression.

I was hoping that might be the case that I can use the chord tones to direct melody and solo lines. I may be able to get away with avoiding some of the more difficult chord fingers by utilizing the chord tones of the extended chords. The biggest thing I hear you saying is that one can branch out from the standard major, minor, 7th and dominished chords for chord tone melodies and lead lines for more variations. You may have helped me understand for the first time what passing tones and grace tones are.

Onesei, I can't thank enough for your greatly informative posts. The best thanks may be in the form of making good use of this knowledge that you've been kind enough to pass along. I'm gonna print this thread out and refer to it much and often.

I've taken a some what nonconventional approach to learning modes. I tried to simplify my learning curve by going straight to pentatonics. I was hoping that would truncate the body of knowledge that I need to be a somewhat able guitarist. I just wanted to be a simple blues guitarist. I don't think I've ended up trancating anything, I've simply started and a different place that is usually recommended.

I started with the A pentatonic and focused heavily on the blues scales. More recently I've discovered and learned that the A blues scale is based off the A Aeolean scale which is the 6th scale degree of the C major scale centered around the A root note. I've found that the A Aeolean has been much more melodic scale/mode and is really a bit more useful and more comfortable for than than the simple pentatonics. I really started the thread so that I could understand better how chords are meant or should be used in an Aeolean mode.

All this to say, I've ended up learning much more that I intended. But, I've been happy with this learning experience. It's information that I can really use. Now, as a result of this thread. I'm learning that is ok to know the outline and it's okay to go outside the lines. In fact, sometimes it's necessary. Now, hopefully I'll know how to go outside the lines in an informed manor that will please the ear.

 

[Osensei]

Re: Chords and Modes

Good luck! Just remember that if a picture is worth a thousand words then surely a working example is worth many times more than someone telling you how something should sound theoretically. Balance your theoretical approach by doing some serious listening to good artists.

Always remember that the artist creates the sound and the theoreotician comes up with the theory to explain the sound that they could never create themselves! LOL!

As for blues! Remember that blues is a vocal/lyrical style. The instuments in this style are ment to replace the soul wrenching lamentations of the singer. You have to learn how to scream an you have to learn how to cry and moan through your instrument. That means you have to milk, and I do mean "MILK" every note.

Blues is really, from a different world than what people in European cultures have been raising up thier children to function in. For instance time is not critical. In European cultures time is of the uttmost essence. This one concept has a profound effect on every aspect of Euro/Caucasian living. Music, business everything has to fit within a time structure/itenerary and is therefore objective driven. Hell, the philosophers thought that the universe was a giant clock!

Blues on the otherhand was created by people who lived with a sense of hopelessness. There was the resignation that things would never get better, no matter how hard you try! From that perspective, time only represents how much longer you have to be tortured! So why the hell be urgent! If for example you played a phrase that was supposed to fit a certain chord and the phrase was late then so what! As a matter of fact, blues melodies can often lag behind the chord changes. Check out Billy Holiday! She was famous for that lazy type of, "I'll get there when the hell I feel like it!", type of phrasing.

P.S. - Go to amazon.com or iTunes and listen to some clips of Jimmy Smith! Let me know if you like it!

 

[GuitarStv]

Re: Chords and Modes

This is a great topic . . . there should be a theory post like this either as a sticky, or in the vault!

 

[Guitar Toad]

Re: Chords and Modes

I checked out the Jimmy Smith clips on Amazon. That's some cool simple jazzy Hammond B-3 organ stuff. I like it, it's good stuff. But, I can only listen to it in small doses. But, if I were to buy it I could listen to it and play along as long as necessary to learn as much as I can from Jimmy Smith's playing. Billy Holliday on the other hand I can take in large doses. Great stuff there.

From some of the other reading I've done, I may be wrong in trying to start or think in the Aeolian. It's been suggested that one is better off to start all song writing in a major scale and then use the modes for additional coloring within a composition.

I can totally relate to to over emphasis on time in European cultures. I used to always be late for work, 2 or three minutes late. One of the supervisors, not mine gave me a mild rebuke for it, my reply "Punctuality is over-rated!" LOL I may truly be a bluesman at heart. Blues players who I know that I like and want to learn from are Muddy Waters and Magic Sam. I may need to grab some Old Robert Johnson stuff just because he is the root of modern blues. Plus, I'd like to know the stuff that influenced RJ. That would truly be a roots study.

 

[Osensei]

Re: Chords and Modes

Looks like the concept of key signature has you confused. The key signature is just a reference point where musical composition is concerned. The key should in no way lock the composer into using only certain chords for instance. To be honest the key signature in modern music is mostly an object of convenience. It keeps the writer from having to redundantly notate which notes are #, b or natural.

Take for example the tune I'm working on now: Along Came Betty. It's in Ab but it has a ton of chords thats not part of the mode or key. Really all the key signature does in this instance tell what key the song starts out in and what key its expected to end in. Between the begining and the end there are all sorts of key changes.

The process in modern music of picking chords to form the progression of a composition should not be constrained by key signature whatsoever. As I have stated earlier most of these choices are rooted in tradition. I think it would be more useful for you to think of modes/scales in terms of the current chord. That is rather than trying to invision a mode that dictates to the entire composition, treat each individual chord with a mode that fits it.

For example when you see a chord choose a mode that sounds good with that one chord. When you move to the next chord pick a new mode that works with that one. In other words play a different mode for each chord according to which mode has notes in common with the chord's tones. The main key signature has little to do with it. Rather treat each chord as its own unique key center or modality.

 

[Guitar Toad]

Re: Chords and Modes

I plead guilty to the charge of confusion. I've heard guys talk about using scales or modes that fit the current chord. But, at the stage of the process that I'm in I've felt like I needed a bit more rigid guidelines. Perhaps I should really try to embrace the freedom of letting one chord lead to another and resist getting locked in to a Key or Mode? From what I understand the rock and blues players lock into a key whereas the jazz players are more free flowing with their compositions and they let the feel of the music flow more wildly.

 

[Osensei]

Re: Chords and Modes

Blues has much simpler progressions and fewer harmonic variations than jazz it seems. There's not really that many key changes in a typical blues tune. Nevertheless treating each chord as an individual key center will still work fine. The question is will the end result be any different than what you are already doing? And if so will the change be for better or worse?

Its sorta like math (a + b) (a + b) = a^2 + 2ab + b^2. Whether I say (a + b) (a + b) or a^2 + 2ab + b2 doesn't matter. They both mean the same. Keeping that in mind I suspect that trying a different approach probably won't change your playing that much where blues is concerned. Rather the result is likely to be similar to what you are already doing. Nevertheless, its always cool to experiment.

 

[Guitar Toad]

Re: Chords and Modes

oK, what's going on? Every one says that the blues is played with a minor pentatonic, R-1-b3-4-b5-5-b7, is one form of the blues. Others add or include a natural 3rd and/or a natural 7th. then some add a 6th in there.A Blues Scales
But, all the blues chord progressions that I see in the teaching materials ( and GandLman's post earlier in the thread) say that the 12 bar blues is a basic I-IV-V progression: in G that means the chords used are G7, C7, D7, which look more like major scale chords than chords for a minor pentatonic. G blues But, that scale is G blues scale constructed from the 6th degree of the B Ionion. What am I missing? The dominant the chords require a natural third, not the b3 of the blues scale.

My expectation was that I would find that blues based on minor pentatonic scales would use minor chords exclusively. But that clearly is not the case is the above example of a I-IV-V progression using G7, C7, and D7 chords. What is the explanation? What am I missing or overlooking?

 

[GandLMan]

Re: Chords and Modes

Yah, this is a great topic, Osensei . . . you a jazzer?

Personally I love this stuff, as for the "locked into modes and key's" idea, once again, I venture back into knowing what key your in and what mode your playing over said chords as certain guidelines for venturing outside of stock harmony become easier . . . . take for instance this progression . . . .

Emaj7 C#m7 Dmaj7 B13 Emaj7 . . . . . . . in the key of Emajor . . . . . .

First off . . . Dmaj7 doesn't exist in Emajor, so its considered a substitution. When dealing with these "outside" chords, there's a hierarchy of Inside to outside in terms of tonality . . . in this case and in every case lydian gets chosen for major chords that are outside of the given key (as a refresher, lydian is a major scale started on the 4th degree . . . so in this case its an Amajor scale started on the D (which is the 4th degree, but we say the root of the scale we use, so instead of A major, we say Dlydian) The reason we use this scale is because it only introduces one new note "D" as the scale is D E F# G# A B C# D . . . . . now a Dmajor scale/arppegio is cool too, this is just the more "inside" choice. The reason modes or what they call "Scale Tone Relationships" is because it allows you to play a matching game with scales and develop an easier strategy for tunes and improv's that start to stretch much farther outside that stock songs. So a great place to begin practicing this stuff, is to a) learn the nomenclature of the modes, Ionian, Dorian, Phrygian, Lydian, Mixolydian, Aeolian, Locrian and b) Learn how those names relate to the different scale positions of your major scale you've learned.

Then what you can do is begin looking at songs that say have one or two chords outside of the existing key and begin stretegizing soloing . . . .

I hope this helps too

Ty

 

[Guitar Toad]

Re: Chords and Modes

That's a most helpful post GandLMan-Ty. Thank you again. I can relax now.

 

[Osensei]

Re: Chords and Modes

Interesting that you mention the 6th in the chord! When I was in the University Jazz Ensemble many moon ago we used to play a lot of Chicago style jazzy blues. Needless to say there is more than 1 style of blues.

There is the "rot-gut whiskey, my woman left me for my brother-in-law" blues and there is the Northern/Chicago style blues often played by the likes of Duke Ellington and Count Basie. I really can't speak autoritativley cuz I'm not a "Blues" player per se, but the Blues within the context of Jazz often used the 6th while leaving the 7th in the chord an octave lower. To hear that sound just play your standard 7th bar chord. Then play the same chord but this time use the pinky to finger the 6th instead of the 7th on the B string with the 7th still being fingered but an octave lower.

By playing both the 6th and the 7th you have changed the chord from a dom 7th to 13th chord. The 6th and the 13th fall on the same note by the way. This sound is often used for Freddie Green style guitar comping in Chicago Blues styles. Its a perfect example of the chords extensions at work. As to whether or not this will also work for Southern styles ... I'll leave that up to your experimentation.

I would say I'm a jazzer! I'm coming back after a 20 yr lay off working for corporate America. Part of my comeback strategy is to tackle some serious jazz before moving on to other styles.

 

[Guitar Toad]

Re: Chords and Modes

I'm an impressionable guy. The more I hear guys talk about jazz vs blues, the more drawn to jazz. At least as a learning tool. I love the Rippingtons and David Sanborn jazz styles. If I could do with a guitar what those players do with their jazz, then I'll consider myself a true musician. I love the blues feel, but most of the lyric content plainly doesn't relate to me. I connect to the music, but not the words. It may be left to this generation to produce some identifiable music. But, I perhaps that has already happened and they called it rock and roll.