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Jazzwee - I do have a question on your example for the F#m7b5 chord.

F# G G# A -- I'm assuming it is OK now to play the 9th (G#) on a downbeat. (previously, you wanted only 1,3,5,7 on downbeats.)


F# G G# A A# B C -- on this one, I'm seeing A# on beat 3. This is OK to do now?

G# A A# B C -- If I start G# as an upbeat approach note, I land on B at beat 2. If I start G# as beat 1, then A# is on beat 2.

(Going down)
A G# G F# E -- G is on beat 2

I'm anxious to get started using chromatics, but I won't start until I hear from you.

deeluk - I heard those upbeat accents. Nice progress there

Sorry to tell you Babs, but since you've already posted here, you are now officially considered "weird". You might as well join us. There is really no race to keep up with anyone. We are all plodding along on our own pace.

Guess I did totally forget about the chromatic ideas you gave us a while back. I will definitely work that into my practice. I've been feeling very repetitive lately. This will spice things up for sure. I'll try more eighth runs too. I did try to make one of the runs span 2 octaves in my last post. I think I may have even ended up close to the right spot when I stopped to breathe. I need to work more on downward runs as those don't seem to come out as smooth as upward for some reason. This is so much fun!

Like Gm pentatonic? G blues? E blues? Or do we go modal? I am curious what the next step is...

Ha, lucky I didn't see this last night. You would have had me up late again. No worries. I can post it again if you like. But first, I have to go to a "Littlest Pet Shop" thing.

Hi Guys, the reason for my chromatic examples is that the scale for F#m7b5 actually includes G# and the scale for B7b9 also includes G#. When you're playing on some of these 'special chords', there's more room to manuever as there's not a real chord tone on these scales.

This is why AL is interesting because the Major ii-V-I (Am7-D7-GMaj) is more susceptible to standard chord tones but F#m7b5-B7b9 is a minor ii-V and uses ALTERED tones.

I will get into all this shortly. But many of examples start on a real chord tone as you are familiar with and a short little chromatic run of 2 to 4 notes should still keep you in synch most of the time, and you can combine them with the other moves like arpeggios and such.

Rosa, yes you can approach not just my example but any chord tone with a chromatic neighbor tone with a pickup from above or below.

Anyway, chord/scales will be mind boggling and you will discover new sounds. It's good to have gotten used to the G Scale for the entire AL.

Now you will discover that the G Scale actually includes several WRONG notes...

Just thought I'd drop in. I had a computer meltdown - total hard drive failure - so I've found the info two kind souls gave me a while back, plonked it into the computer my son has passed on to me. I'm happy to say that the algebra doesn't look like algebra anymore and I'm starting to understand what people are talking about. Still lurking. At the moment I cannot scan, listen, or record until somebody in the household figures out this computer for me.

Always good to see you drop by Keystring

Lesson 12 - Solo - What to Play on a Maj7 Chord

I thought about just listing each chord and all the appropriate scales to play on each but I thought this would look like Algebra. So we're going to keep it simple by discussing this by chord type. I'll post a tidbit at a time because it can be a rather long discussion.


Major 7 chords typically function as the I chord (as Gmaj7 in AL), or the IV chord (CMaj7 in AL). Since these chords are scale degrees (I and IV respectively) of the G Major scale, it would seem logical that the scale to use would be the notes of this scale.

G A B C D E F#
1 2 3 4 5 6 7

But as it turns out, something doesn't sound good. The Note C (4 of the scale), is dissonant against the GMaj7. Just like F (4 of C scale for CMaj7) is also dissonant.

So the rule is, do not play the 4 of the Maj7 chord except as a passing tone. Never on a downbeat. This is called an avoid note.

Instead of the 4, in Maj7 chords functioning as a I or a IV, you can instead play the +11 (which is the same thing as +4, see notes in italics below). In GMaj7, this is the C# and in C Maj 7 it is F#. Fortunately F# is already in the G scale so this is already an available tone for CMaj7 in the past discussions. However, the C# on a Gmaj7 would be a new sound.

This +11 sound is referred to as 'Lydian' in reference to the Lydian mode. So as your first modification to the pool of notes in AL, feel free to add C# to GMaj7. Or in general, to add the +11 when playing a Maj7 chord, and avoiding the 4 or 11 of the chord.

So our modified scale for GMaj7 in AL is now

(G Lydian Scale)
G A B C# D E F#
1 9 3 +11 5 13 7

CMaj7 continues to use the same scale as before

(G Major Scale Starting from C)
C D E F# G A B
1 9 3 +11 5 13 7

This is also referred to as the C Lydian Scale.

So in both cases, we have sharpened to 11 or 4 of each chord.

For purposes of using standardized lingo matching jazz texts, sharpened notes will be referred to with a + instead of a #. So sharp 11 will be +11 instead of #11

Hi Jazzwee and fellow jazzmates,

I tackled Chromatics today. I tried to keep that in my brain along with remembering to do even eighth notes while accenting the "and", leaving some space between phrases, and cutting those ending eighth notes short.

So, all this is in my brain, and I have to sound 'RELAXED" as I play!

Oh well, here I am again asking poor overworked Jazzwee to take a listen and offer advice.

http://www.box.net/shared/8u4ijrukgo

Nice work Barb. I think you accomplished everything you set out to do there!

Deeluk and Barb: Terrific! Both of you are making progress in leaps and bounds...Good for you!

I'm off to practice some more!

Alene

Here's a MIDI version of my last solo:

http://www.box.net/shared/3l479v60wc

Deeluk and Barb-- I just dropped in and listened to your solos. Startin' to sound sweet. I'm curious tho, are you both just comping the RH and letting backing tracks or BIAB do the rest? Would you at some point add the LH back in? And if so, doing what? 1/7s?

A lot of q's, I know, but I'm only giving AL a few minutes every few days, so it's hard to keep up.

Hi bluekeys - For soloing, it's RH only for now. There's just too much to think about. I've tried hands together once and it doesn't work at all yet.

When I'm ready, I'll add those LH shells of 1/7, 1/3 ... jab them in at the right times. (That's another hurdle, I guess)

Looking forward to you joining us here. We are having a blast.

Very nicely done Barb! Grade A! I can see all the elements in there. Accenting, chord tones, chromatics, space, short eighth endings, a little laid back.

So stick to this, it's working well. For now just build up your speed so you can do the same thing at a slightly higher tempo. A little at a time of course.

Looks like you're in time for the next series of lessons.

Bluekeys, it'a too much to think of RH soloing with LH Charleston. So either do shells with whole notes, or have no LH. Shells are good to remind the RH of what chord you're on though.

Eventually these two separate exercises will meet and comping can be natural, but as long as both are practiced, there's no particular rush to combine them. In fact, it's not a bad idea for those doing recordings to add comping separately to your solo as another track for that practice.

Do not think of doing LH/RH combined as a priority at this stage. Ths priority is to learn how to solo and you can see that pretty much everyone that has started in the last 2-3 weeks have already shown massive improvement.

I think it's moving a little faster because each person is getting immediate feedback. No need to wait a week for the next teacher's lesson.

Still RH only soloing for me too. I try every once in a while to add the LH, but it still doesn't work. The recordings I've been posting have prepared drum and bass tracks. Then, I added a 2+3 chord track when we were learning that. Since then, I've also added some rootless comping chords to another track. And of course, I have a melody track.

Lesson 13 - Solo - What to Play on a Dominant7 Chord

In Jazz, one of the more important chords that provide that Jazz sound are the dominant chords which are the chords that provide the TENSION to a progression. HIGHER TENSION gives a feeling of more satisfaction when RELEASED on the tonic chord. It is the contrast between TENSION and RELEASE that defines Jazz IMHO.

It is quite common in Jazz to reharmonize a lot of standards by changing some chords to Dominant 7's. This gives more opportunity for even more tension than was available in the original tune. Altering dominants means adding tones to the 1,3,5,b7 of the dominant chord which are not in the scale. Examples of alterations to dominants are b9,+9,+11,b13. Altering dominants is something we will discuss more fully later.

Instead of altering the dominants, the other approach to increase tension in the chord is to play a solo underneath the dominant chord that implies a completely different chord. This raises the dissonance level and increases the tensions. However, since dominants are already tense by nature and already contains a dissonant TRITONE interval (3 to b7), playing notes not in the scale of the original unaltered dominant (D7 in AL), just raises the tension a little bit and does not sound dissonant to modern jazz listeners.

For this approach (raising the tension by playing non-scale notes), one can play different scales against the dominant 7 chord, with each scale having a different effect.

In AL, the Dominant 7 chord we will discuss for now is the D7 (which is a V of the G Major Scale). What we have learned to play against the D7 is the G Major Scale starting from D. The regular scale characterized by a b7 is called a Mixolydian Mode.

(D Mixolydian)
D E F# G A B C
1 9 3 11 5 13 b7

Nothing new here so far because this is what everyone has been using. Now I will introduce other scales you can play against the D7. I will bold the altered tones in each scale that you'll need to pay attention to.

1. Half-Whole Diminished Scale

You can imply a D7b9 chord over a regular D7 chord by playing a Half-Whole Diminished Scale against the chord. A Half-Whole Diminished scale is a scale made up of alternative Half and Whole step intervals starting from the root. It is an eight note scale. This is a very interesting sound and any note in this scale is valid against the D7 and there's no specific chord tone to worry about. They can all work. Thus any note in this scale can be played on the downbeat or upbeat.

(D Half-Whole Diminished Scale)
D D# F F# G# A B C
1 b9 +9 3 +11 5 13 b7

Another way of describing this scale is that it is a regular diminished scale starting a half step above the root of the chord.

Diminished scales have special functions in jazz. There are only THREE diminished scales so by learning this particular scale, you already know 1/3 of the possible options.

2. Whole Tone Scale

The second scale you can use against a D7 is the Whole Tone Scale. This scale is used a lot by Theolonius Monk. It is not entirely dissonant sounding other than for two notes, the G# and A#. The whole tone scale is only made up of six notes. Because there's such a small pool of notes to choose from here, this can be overused and is much to recognizable when played as a scale.

(D Whole Tone Scale)
D E F# G# A# C
1 9 3 +11 b13 b7

3. Altered Scale

The third new scale you can play over D7 is the altered scale. Or also known as Diminished Whole-Tone. It is called this because it appears like a combination of the above two scales. The first tritone interval of the scale is the same as the Half-Whole Diminished, and the latter half looks like the Whole Tone Scale.

Altered Scale
D D# F F# G# A# C
1 b9 +9 3 +11 b13 b7

Notice that this has the most dissonant tones among all the scales. When Playing the altered scale over the dominant seventh chord, you are completely implying a different chord which in this case is Ab7 (the Tritone Substitute).


SUMMARY

This is a lot to take in all at once. The easy practice is to start investigating the Half-Whole Diminished Scale first. There's only 3 scales like this so it's easy to imply to any dominants.

And using this scale first against the D7 has a side benefit: this is the same exact scale we would need to use for the B7b9, another AL Dominant 7 chord (which is already altered with a b9). We will discuss the B7b9 separately but feel free to use the same scales on it as presented here.

Pretty much every tone has been included as a possible note to use against a D7. The only exception is the maj7 interval from D which is C#. This is not used as this implies a tonic chord. So this is an avoid note on downbeats and should only be played as a passing tone (such as in the Bebop scale).