6-string Bass 7th-chord Arpeggios

The other night on the gig, I was muddling through the usual way and thinking "what happened to all that stuff I've been practicing at the last two weeks?" Suddenly, some time in the second set it just...dropped into my brain. It was like the moment in The Wizard of Oz where it went from black and white to color. It wasn't "remembering" per se, but a sensation more like being present at the formation of a synapse. Totally made my night! This is what I'd been messing with: 

These can be hard to print off this page, so anybody who likes these may feel free to e me and I'll email you back the Jpegs. Also my at my website, www.countjockula.com you can buy The Big Ol' (USEFUL) Book of Scales and Arpeggios, which is also volume 3 of The Electric Bass Book. It's for 4-string basses, but the ideas there can be applied to 6-string easily enough. 

Arpeggios for Guitar, dominant 7th chords (practice diary 1/14/13)

The very few left hand fingerings are the ones considered "non-optional," the ones I use to orient myself while improvising on these. To continue up the neck, when you come to F7, do Gb7 instead, and go back to the first one, but start on Ab7 instead of G7, and do the whole mess a half-step up. Gb7 to Ab7 rather than F7 to Ab7, just a sound thing...

There's nothing much new about another bunch of arpeggios though maybe the second set with blue notes might be a new way of looking at it. The main thing for me is the order, which seems to work better for retaining the info than doing them in the time-honored cycles of 5ths or 4ths (as I've always done on 4-string bass). This"scale-wise" way of doing arpeggios and scales achieves the same end of going through a set number of fingering patterns in some order that I can cycle through all the positions on the neck. Doing it this way seems to aid my retention better on guitar and 6-string bass, I don't know why.





These can be hard to print off this page clearly, so anyone who's interested in these may feel free to e me, and I'll be happy to email you the Jpegs.

Electric Bass Scales: "Take the A-Train" is in C.

I've always felt that before students learn to play over chord changes they should learn to play properly, that is to say stylistically, over one chord. "Jazz theory" orthodoxy has students negotiating an obstacle course in which each chord is the tonic of its own "chord scale." Thus an analysis of the changes to "Take The A-Train" might go something like:

C6 (C-ionian)(ionian?!?), D7 (D-whole-tone or D-lydian b7), Dm7 (D-dorian), G7 (G-mixolydian), C (C-ionian), A7 (A-altered dominant), Dm (D-dorian), G7 (G-mixolydian)...

…and so on, resulting in a lot of unnecessary labor for the misguided jazz student, and boring solos which display the player's knowledge of "scales and modes" but have nothing to do with how we naturally hear "A-Train." Consider the changes to the bridge:

     F     | F    | F     | F    | D7   | D7  | Dm7   | G    |

And the A-section if you transposed it up a perfect 4th:
    F     | F    | G7    | G7    | Gm7   | C7  | F  Dm7  | Gm7 C7 |

In either case, your "jazz improv I" teacher is probably going to suggest that the F-chords be played in F-major (Jamey Aebersold's "F-ionian"). After all, in the first case the F is approached by its dominant C7, in the second F is the tonic of the tune. In freely, naturally realized performances however, the two F-chords must necessarily be different. In the first example, the key of F-major may have been implied by the preceding C7, but is heard and played in the context of a tune in C. It may have been "one of F" for a second, but can't help acting like a IV-chord. The melody of the bridge is indeed very "C-ish":
                

So as the title says, "A-Train is in C," and certain alterations or additions to the C-scale are all that are needed to make the changes. This is not to say that running a big fat scale isn't a lot of fun. For instance, here's one I love to run over the D7 in "A-Train:"

You just don't want to base your whole approach on this type of thing. 

We're going to use a 7th-position C-major scale pattern, and a couple of solos by Johnny Hodges (http://youtu.be/puC6PCZi7_w) and Ray Nance (http://youtu.be/hRGFqSkNjHk), both longtime members of Ellington's band, to explore the tune. Here's the scale:

Of course this scale only tells about half the story of playing in C. There's a lot of freedom to playing over the tonic chord of the home key, where blue notes are always an option, and as you can see from looking at Hodges' solo he makes frequent use of the blue Eb and even E-half-flat while playing in what we'd think of as "the key of C-major." With that in mind, take a more expansive look at our 7th-position C-major scale.

(each different fingering of the major scale on your bass will give rise to its own set of these melodic curlicues and idioms)

Now here are the solos, Johnny Hodges'  chorus from a live performance with Wild Bill Davidson, followed by Ray Nance's first chorus in a performance with Duke's band.

 

The D7 chord has a couple of interpretations, sometimes occurring simultaneously, but first let's just look at D7 itself. There is only one note in D7 which is not in C-major, the F#. Why worry about assigning it to a "scale?" Why not just play in C-major with an F#? Your ear will guide you from there.

As you can see, this isn't "D-mixolydian," "C-lydian," or even G-major. Actually, the only thing that changed is that the note F got replaced by a pair of notes: F-F#, resulting in a little bluesy "flip" on F#. This chord in "A-Train" is usually written as D7b5, and it would seem that a whole-tone scale was called for originally. D-whole tone? Why not C-whole tone? It's the same 6 notes! Play the scale starting on your same 2nd finger 4th string C.

The root is D, but our ears never leave the tonal center C. Hodges' D7 in the last A-section even gives a strong impression that, conceptually, he's dropped into C-minor:
                  
(also see " the ladder of thirds" below)

Dominant 7th chords in the II, bII, or IV positions are generally played as D7#11, which contains both the natural and flatted fifth (written enharmonically as a raised fourth). I generally think of these as "non-dominant" dominant sevenths, as they are not directly performing a dominant-to-tonic function.

The earlier "D7#11 chord-scale" aside, a 7#11 chord is the IV of the melodic minor scale, and most of the licks it generates tend to be based on the tonic of that scale. 

Try appending this easy-to-remember A-melodic minor shape to your C-major scale:

Note that what might not look good on paper frequently doesn't sound like a mistake in performance. Hodges and Nance sometimes play the whole-tone scale over the D7 while the unaltered fifths appear in the accompaniment, or vice-versa, and the apparent "conflict" passes entirely unnoticed. D7b5 and/or D7#11 both work fine in "A-Train."

Johnny Hodges plays a whole tone lick for D7 (interestingly off a Bb)

and Ray Nance seems to be hearing 7#11 (see measure 3, 11-12)

The II-V-I's

The cadences, and indeed much of the tune appear to be based upon a relatively simple melodic superstructure:

This is reflected in both Hodges' and Nance's solos.
JH, mm 1 - 2

RN, mm 1 - 3

There isn't any reason to think of this as "an Am triad" (except for fingering/visualizing purposes), but rather as a tonic C with 2 notes "in orbit" around it, at the remove of a third. Either or both of the outer notes can also be lowered a half-step, as in the first four bars of the head itself and examples (including the two just above) from the two solos.

RN m 13 - 15

JH m 27 - 28


(Peter Van der Merwe gives a more detailed discussion of what he calls "the ladder of thirds" in his book "The Origin of the Popular Style.")

All that is necessary to articulate the V-chord (G7) is the leading tone B. A half-step approach from the blue-seventh Bb will give it an unmistakable V-chord feel.

JH m 5-7


But it is almost as frequently eschewed, and again, doesn't sound "wrong" at all.

Here's Ray Nance:

and Johnny Hodges:


It's all in C, dig?

The reliance upon motion in thirds gives these solos a basically pentatonic cast, but you also don't want to don't forget the importance of blue notes, bends, glisses, and whatever else you do to give expression to your solo.

Here's C-pentonic, with a little extra on the way back down.

Add F# for D7: 

For Dm7 and Fmaj7 you can add F to the C-pentatonic scale:

then emphasize A to bring out the chord flavor.

Just like Johnny Hodges!

In every case here, you are conceptually, visually, and audibly "in C."

BASS SCALES AND ARPEGGIOS, 4-string

I've noticed I get a lot of visitors here looking for info about bass scales. Here's some pages from "The Big Ol' (USEFUL) Book of Scales and Arpeggios," which covers all the major, minor and pentatonic scales, and all the arpeggios you're likely to ever need. Practicing scales in some kind of productive way is a huge stumbling block with students (and pros!), and so this is also addressed. There are also plenty of hints about putting it all to use in the real world. About 40 pages, available at my website, www.countjockula.com.

The first part, shown above, deals with the first five frets, and is laid out sort of like "The Segovia Scales." After this we get into moveable scale patterns and start charging up the neck.

Like I said, all the arpeggios you're likely to need.

There's a thorough examination of pentatonic scales, which start growing little curlicues, until....

 This is from the end of the book, where all the scales and arpeggios get put together and run from one end of the neck to the other. It's my standard pre-gig hand-and-brain warmup. Then as long as my heart and soul show up as well, I think I'm ready to make some music.

Philip Glass and John Cage

Said young Philip Glass to his men,

"That sounded good, play it again.

And again and again

And again and again

And again and again and again."

Inspired by something I read about John Cage saying he considered audience noise to be part of the composition: 

One evening in Paris Cage sat

Down to dinner at Boulez's flat.

But ere they could start,

Pierre launched a fart.

Sniffed Johnny, "I coulda wrote that!"

Playing Bach's Bm violin Partita (courante and double) on bass guitar pt.2

My arrangement of this piece for electric bass is available through my website, www.countjockula.com

   
  A Bach piece usually comes to us without much (from the composer at least) in the way of  direction, an omission which is unfortunately taken all too literally in many performances. Most likely a bit of interpretive latitude was permitted, though it is just as easy to find romantic, even overwrought playing of the same pieces. The question of how much freedom we may take while respecting Bach's intent - or our perception of it - is one we musicians have been grappeling with ever since his era passed into history.

   If an audience is genuinely moved by hearing someone play a Bach piece, it is a "good" performance. A performer's interpretation, and the audience's acceptance of it, will be determined by, among other things, the time and place of its creation. Thus, what we might hear as "overwrought" playing might have been perfectly acceptible for turn-of-the 20th century audiences, while a heavy-metal guitar shredder, playing a fast, high-volume, effects-drenched, but otherwise robotic version of, say, the Chromatic Fantasy may well inspire a crowd of headbangers in a present day arena. Let us however take the position that there is a "best" place from which to start, and that this is a vantage point as close as possible to that of J. S. Bach himself.  How close can we hope to come to what he had in mind?

   We know about what Henryk Szeryng calls the "latent polyphony" of the Bm courante: that in this seemingly monophonic line there is actually a structure of at least three-parts. (Szeryng, 17) Here is how Szeryng prizes apart the voices of the first six bars:

While he rightly states that "our inner ear" will extend the influence of a given note over a longer span than that of its actual written value, his literal rendering of a "latent polyphony" is somewhat of a contrapuntal and rhythmic mishmash:

           

It is less of a stretch to see it as horizontalized choral writing, which even conforms to various voice-leading rules, though this gets us no closer to an idea of how to perform it. An alternative approach is to return to Szeryng's "contrapuntal and rhythmic mishmash" and see if we can impose some kind of order, based upon the unambiguous direction Bach gives at the beginning of the piece: the word courante.

   It is likely that Bach, when writing a courante, assumed that anybody playing it would likely know what that meant, that this one word would activate for the performer a host of associations in much the same way someone today beginning a piece in triple meter with the notation "jazz waltz" would consider that sufficient. Therefore, an investigation into the nature of that dance (though we know his "dance movements" were not written for dancers) should give us a context, however murky, from which to proceed.

  By the time Bach wrote the Bm Partita, the courante had been in existence in one form or another for at least a century and a half, so it's difficult to know what the term specifically meant to him. Dolmetsch states "The courant, or coranto, as its name implies was very rapid about 1600. It had become much slower about 1700." (45)  Johann Joachim Quantz, who during a time of changing styles remained a member "of Bach's school" (Dolmetsch, 62), in his treatise versuch einer Anwiesung die Flöte traversiere zu spielen (1752) declared the ideal courant tempo to be quarter note = 80. We also know that it was originally a pantomimic dance in which three couples played out a scenario of seduction, rejection, and eventually, after some pleading on the part of the gents, acceptance (Sachs, 361ff). Perhaps this seductive, even tender emotional quality, and rather stately tempo could be allowed to inform a contemporary performance of the Bm courante.

   

   There is a rhythmic motif associated with courantes as well:

If we assume that this could have at least been a subconscious part of Bach's sense of the courante and apply it to the piece at hand, we may see a different way that the notes of a given measure relate to one another. Now the implied "voices" take on a new function as rhythmic indicators.

It may be tempting to compare the courant pattern to the clave of Afro-Cuban music. However, the alternation of measures - the two "sides" of the clave pattern - in the latter is absolutely rigidly adhered to, while Bach's relative freedom in alternating or repeating the two "sides" also relates notes within a measure, one measure to others, builds phrases, regulates tension within phrases, and syncopates the call-and-response rhyming of the two sides of the pattern. The following is my admittedly subjective idea of a "rhythmic map" of the entire piece.

PHRASING

You must not separate ideas which belong to each other, and, on the contrary, you must divide them when the musical sense is finished, whether there be a pause or not.

 -  J.J. Quantz (quoted in Dolmetsch, 24)

The first six bars display three regular occurances of the rhythmic pattern, but Bach also finds various ways of prolonging a pattern. The fourth pattern extends over four bars (m7 - 10), with a two-bar hemiola inserted between the two measures. Bars 11 - 14 and 15 - 17 may be seen as only two patterns, with the second side being played three and two times respectively. Hemiola crops up again in the last two bars of the first section as a closing gesture (which is often employed in triple meter pieces).

A clue as to how this might be translated to actual performance comes, again, from Quantz (quoted in Dolmetsch, 25):

The player must try to feel in himself not only the principal passion but all the others as they come. And as in most pieces there is a perpetual change of passions, the player must be able to judge which feeling is in each thought, and to regulate his execution upon that.           

The more harmonically and rhythmically active second section can also be seen as a set of "thoughts," with the harmonic and tonal movement confirming the clues we get from the rhythm.

Measure 48 marks the beginning of one of those "changes of passion:" twelve relatively sunny bars in D-major, whose new mood is reinforced by a more regular repetition of the rhythmic motif. The end of the passage is marked unequivocally by the two-measure hemiola gesture at mm 58-59. While bar 60 serves as a transition back to the B-minor sonority and the prevailing darker emotional color.

RHYTHMIC ALTERATION IN BAROQUE PERFORMANCE

Eighth notes in slower tempos were frequently allowed to "swing" a little (see Dolmetsch, 53ff) and the issues arising from this are surprisingly similar to those encountered in playing and scoring jazz. For instance, the inequality of the notes is not properly expressed by using triplets or dotted eighth-sixteenth pairs; the use of unequal eighth note pairs is situational and extremely subtle. Thus, it made more sense, as it does now, to simply notate eighth notes and trust the musician to properly interpret the rhythm. Indeed, taken alone, the rhythmic motif of the courante might have been played:

Whether unequal eighths are expected in a Baroque courante however, is open to debate. Some of the criteria are met, though sources are somewhat unclear (to this reader) about its application in triple meter.  Experimenting with unequal eighths (the term "swing eighths," while convenient shorthand, calls up an inaccurate association with Swing) in the case of the Bm courante had the surprising effect of seeming to flatten out the rhythmic play discussed above. Therefore it seemed best to stay with even eighths, per current practice.

One other bit of rhythmic play merits our attention: the closing gesture at mm 76 - 78. While it looks like we have a very interesting 4 - 3 - 3 - 2 pattern of eights notes against the ¾ measures, actually "bringing this out" in an overt manner

seems to have the opposite effect (note however Szeryng's bowing).  More rhythmic interest is generated by simply treating these three bars as the closing hemiola they are, and allowing the irregular eighth note pattern to play out against it.

Other aspects of the courante are best investigated along with corresponding occurances in the Double. When we consider the various characteristics of the double we find an amplification of Bach's compositional process for the courante. Not only is the bass line and harmony almost identical to that of the earlier movement, but we also find he preserved chord voicings from one movement to the next, along with corresponding musical and emotional characteristics. Our interpretation of the double may then be linked to that of the courante. 

REFERENCES

Dolmetsch, Arnold: The interpretation of the music of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, 1972, University of Washington Press.

Piston, Walter: Counterpoint, 1947, W.W. Norton, New York, NY

Sachs, Curt: World history of the dance, (translated Bessie Schönberg) 1937, W.W. Norton, New York, NY

Szeryng, Henryk (ed): Sonatas and partitas for violin solo (J.S. Bach) 1981, Schott Musik GmbH, Mainz