Major scales for Ukulele, 2 octaves, all 12 keys.

All 12-keys. Obviously we can't run "doe-to-doe" over two octaves in every key, but these all cover the entire 2-octave compass of the neck. The arrows indicate ascending or descending through the scale. These all start from the lowest root and go to the highest possible note; then you want to descend to the lowest possible note, and then back up to end on the starting note.

After you have "played" the scales, then "play WITH" the scales!

3-octave scales for 6-string bass

I use a low C instead of B, so for the very few notes that occur on the 6th string, just add 1 to the fret number. Fingerings are above the TAB staff, and the brackets indicate notes within a position. Probably redundant, but for me it's a helpful visual aid.

Jazz and Soul Mandolin - comping 7th chords

The Mandolin Diaries - some hip 7th chords to use on "Assanhado"

Jacob do Bandolim's "Assanhado" is one of those tunes - like "Sweet Georgia Brown," "There Is No Greater Love," "Lazy River" et al - that can be a veritable study in dominant 7th chords. The tune is in A, but sooner or later you run through Bb7, F7, C7, G7, D7, A7 and E7. What with all the chord voicings available on mandolin in GDAD tuning, there's a lot to explore. Here's some hip 7th and 9ths for the B-section.

Then some arpeggio exercises which should be self-explanatory. You can also do these diatonically.

"Here's That Rainy Day" chord solo for mandolin

A chord-melody solo on an old jazz ballad.

The Mandolin Diaries - major scales

Feeling as I do that there's way too much emphasis on using "scales" to organize musical thoughts, I waited as long as possible before "learning all my scales." But now it's unavoidable. Permutations to follow as I work them out. The hollow circles represent the lowest roots, and the numbers with "^" over them are the scale degree. Note that these patters have a compass of exactly two octaves, one more thing I love about GDAD tuning.

6-string bass scales - another way to think about "Harmonic Minor"

Most of the cases in which you would deploy a "harmonic minor" sound are in the ii -V part of the minor cadence. Once you reach the target minor chord you are free from a specific mode constraint.  The scale tonic is actually rather insignificant until the one-minor chord has been reached.

Here's a scale exercise that reflects this aural reality. You'll notice two different ways of altering a major scale to sound the relative minor.  

scales for guitar - Another way to think about "harmonic minor"

Most of the cases in which you would deploy a "harmonic minor" sound are in the ii -V part of the minor cadence. Once you reach the target minor chord you are free from a specific mode constraint.  The scale tonic is actually rather insignificant until the one-minor chord has been reached.

Here's a scale exercise that reflects this aural reality. You'll notice two different ways of altering a major scale to sound the relative minor. 

Lester Young on "Back Home in Indiana"

I lost the CD I originally heard this stunning solo on, transcribed it off a youtube video which was subsequently scrubbed. There's a few versions of Prez doing "Indiana" on there, but I can't seem to dig up this one so I can't post the URL at the moment.

It always makes sense to transcribe Prez' version of the head, that's the first chorus in Ab, after which he modulates to F. He actually takes 4 or 5 choruses on this cut, though I only did the first and a couple of bars of the second.

Quarter notes whether on or off the beat should generally be understood to be held for less than their written length, but using the articulation (^) would in most cases be giving it too heavy an accent. The chord changes are the generally understood stock changes for "Indiana." There might be some variants in the recording (I think the piano player is Teddy Wilson) but again, I don't have it to hand to refer to. In any case, while making lead sheets I believe in providing the simplest possible version of the changes.

I love the leisurely ascending line at the top of the first blowing chorus. Note also how bars 42 - 49, three distinct phrases, are tied together by the stepwise line F-E-D-C. The way he articulates dominant 7ths - or doesn't - is worth a look. Only once does he play the third (E) of the dominant C7. He is much more likely to play something "chord specific" over the secondary dominants G7 and D7. My own observation is that playing to the actual chord of the moment only becomes more necessary - if ever - the farther you go from the original key.  

However, the main thing I'm picking up from this solo is how each phrase is kept within a relatively small range: see for example the two phrases between bars 58-61, and 62 (starting beat 4 of 61) - 64. I would actually say that this phrase extends through the half-note rest in bar 65. Tightly focused phrases like these make it more possible to connect one to another, the way these two are. 

I remember my first whack at taking down this solo. I loved it of course in kind of an "awww, ain't dat sweet?" sort of way. Before long upon being struck by the level of deep organization and craft that went into this seemingly tossed-off gem, I quailed I'LL NEVER BE ABLE TO DO THAT!! and - I admit, using Lester's own words  - "so I went away and shed my little tears, you know?"  

Boston

At times like this, those of us who consider ourselves "artists" of one sort or another may do well to remember our potential to put beauty somewhere it isn't. A powerful weapon indeed, and one that in some places takes real actual courage to deploy, as opposed to, say, putting a bomb in a trash can.

New Banjo Piece

It's called an "Etude," but it's as much of an etude for me as anybody else, as it pulls together a couple of things I've been trying to assimilate.

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."