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Harmony & Theory
#39

The way I see it, it depends on several factors.
-How one’s mind operates. For me, I found out, it’s easier to recall , say 7 notes of a particular key or scale than a bunch of different shapes-shapes are always different, the notes are always the same. On the other hand, being aware of the shapes-as many shapes as possible-gives me faster access to the notes I’m looking for. Does that make any sense?
-We’re talking about improvisation, but over what? One thing is imrovising over a one chord modal vamp, a totally different thing is improvising over Giand Steps. For me, the more complex it gets the more impossible is to get away with just knowing the shapes.
-Which musicans are one’s role models? The ones I admire the most, that inspire me to grab a guitar and trying to become better and better are guys that knew their stuff inside out. I aspire to that level, no only chops-wise but having that level of deep understanding of the craft. I want to be able to communicate with other instrumentalists, and to do that we need a common ground-that common ground is not the techincal peculiarities of our specific instruments, instead it’s music itself.
-Another factor is the need one might have to develop new shapes. Maybe the shapes we’ve been taught don’t work with our particular techincal-say, picking-idiosyncransies. Maybe I need to find a way to play that scale pattern or arpeggio or Pat’s (any of them) lick. The thing is, I need to know what is this thing I’m looking for so I can re-locate it, re-finger it and built a new shape around it, so it can work with, say, my preffered kind of pick slanting. Maybe it has happened to you guys, it sure has happened to me.

All the above, of course, is just my personal opinion. I’m aware, and have been a witness many many times, of people that need any of that to make important, powerful music.

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#40

wow… I didn’t expect so much reaction. Sorry ))
I’m not saying that knowing musical theory is unnecesary, I’m saying that it’s not so crucial as many people thinks. (I feel like I’m a devil’s advocate)
It was good examples when you really need to use it - communication. If you’re sitting in a cafe without your instruments and you want to share some ideas - well, it’s obvious you’d use musical theory language. Or when a musical teacher says something to you.
Though “On a V7, just play major triads from the b5 and b6” doesn’t really requires knowing of note names.
And I think what @Ernest_W_Retallack noticed is right: it depends on the way of thinking. For example, in my case: while plying I think “hey, I can add this sweet 9th!” and I know that for current chord it would be THIS fret on THIS string or THAT fret on THAT string. It’s not like I can accurately build intervals on guitar. It’s just because I know how 9th would sound. And I know where on the fretboard I could get this sound.
If I would try to apply it in other way it would be like this: “ok, I can add 9th here”… “what is the current chord?”… looking on the fret… “aha, it’s D-sept major. so 9th would be E”…"where’s E? aha, here and there! ok!"
So for me it would be not just useless, but it’d make me slower because I need to process more information which is, in fact, irrellevant to the fact that I just want to add some decoration to melody. But it’s me… I think for other people it would be easier to use absolute scale.
— updated —
…and I have nothing against scales, modes, shapes,functions, alternations etc. It’s absolute scale (or named notes) which I don’t think is useful enough.

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#41

There is some pretty interesting discussion going on in this thread, and myself to have something to say about this.

A conclusion I have made after watching and applying CTC stuff, is that shapes aren’t the answer.
Let me elaborate :

Let’s say I have learned an arpeggio shape like anyone else, that I know how intervals works, and that I can figure out in <2s the notes names looping over it :
image

If I want to go up the arpeggio by groups of 3, this shape is useless for that, it’s not faisable in string hoping. So you get another “shape” and play it with DWPS :
image

what about going down the triad in groups of 3 ? Well, another “shape” again, with UWPS :
image

Do you see where I’m going ? Every simple concepts on piano/score sas groups of 3, 4, … often generate a new shape on guitar if you want to optimize string changes to play “fast”.
All that labyrinth of “fretboard mapping” needs to involve several instances of “map” to get around several concept ? No way, doesn’t seems like something feasible if you ask me, and if you watch close enough I bet you’ll see every guitar player going around one or two instances of their “map”, but not much more.

My point is, I don’t think “shapes”, “3 notes per strings modes”, etc, are the key to all of this.

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#42

I think the truth is somewhere between. Shapes are not to dictate your playing, but to help playing. Of course, the sound is only matter, whether you use shapes, musical theory or none of them.
Topicstarters question was about improvising. That means you really have no time to construct your melody in a best possible way, but still you have to play it instantly. Learning shapes makes your fingers move automatically, which solves the problem. Moreover, learning another variants as some deviations of known shapes are much easier than strict theoretic approach. In fact, that’s how we typically learn new chords on guitar - as a “strange variations of common major/minor chords”.

#43
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#44

If you learn all your major scales in every position, and also some position shifts, then you will automatically know every mode, including dorian (Martino’s ‘minor’), phyrigian (good for jazz), lydian (good for I chord in jazz) , and mixolydian (good for everything, including blues). These will be your basic mechanical tools.

Your ear is faster than your mind. It knows the sound instantly, like recognizing “red is red” or “That taste is mustard.” The first thing we had to do in theory class was name every interval,as it was played on a piano, instantly, by ear. We had contests. If you can hear it, then you can name it.
You had to name it in order for anybody else to know you know it; otherwise, no contest.
But in reality, I know what a major third sounds like, and what it looks like on a guitar, and how to get there from any finger, on any string. You don’t really have to “name” it to know it and do it. I suspect many “ear” players are like this.

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#45

I was watching a Pat Martino video, and he goes to an area of a chord and plays riffs in that area, and never mentions scales. He plays melodically, and it all sounds like him; ideas that are riffs or melodies.
This might be more suited to jazz than rock or blues, but even rock pentatonic riffs could be considered “melodies” or at least “riffs” insofar as they are linear ideas, and not just scales.
Maybe we should all just learn riffs from songs, and go back to learning stuff by ear off records if we really want to build our musical vocabulary. Or think in terms of riffs, not scales. I don’t know if a “map” has as much meaning to me as a riff does.
Anytime I learn a riff, it invariably morphs into something else; it never stays intact. I always transpose them and try them in different places. Eventually, they blend in to my style, totally assimilated like the Borg. Even in “heavy” rock, there’s a Tal Farlow riff I learned which has become part of my rock vocabulary. You can hear it in my solo on “The Messenger.” (soundcloud link in my bio)
As far as fast jazz be-bop changes, I love to hear sax players play through tunes with a chord change on every beat, but I have never liked playing that stuff. I notice also that the guitarists I like, Pat Martino for one, plays tunes that have longer changes, like 4 measures of a chord, then change. This seems more “guitaristic” to me. I like more modal music with slower changes.
So, maybe there’s only so fast we need to be in improvising; a limit, determined by what kind of material we want to play. Unless we really want to show off with “Giant Steps,” which is possible on guitar (Wolf Marshall book). But for rock players, they just need riffs and some speed now and then.

#46

In Randy Vincent’s book Cellular Approach he talks about using melodic cells to solo over very fast changes. For example you might have a cell that goes descends the 5-3-1-b7 of a minor 7th chord and then ascends 3-5-7-b9 of a dominant 7th chord.

There is way more to it than this, including a set out method of how he thinks when he’s playing these cells, but they work for jazz, rock, pop etc.

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#47

Hey, I’ve posted a YouTube channel just discovered. A long time student of Barry Harris demonstrating the application of the Harris method on guitar…

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#48

I noticed that Mike Stern provided some 2-note “chord cells” that he uses to play over Giant steps. I consider this “cell” or dyad method to be well-suited for chord fills, but melodies? Riffs?
I wonder why playing through extremely frequent chord changes is generally considered to be a challenge for the guitar. Perhaps this is due to its “mechanical nature.”
With a keyboard, the entire spectrum of notes is linear, proceeding sequentially left to right. Each pitch or note in a particular register is unique, such as middle C. On a guitar, this is not the case; the guitar has a linear dimension, like on one string, but also has a vertical dimension, in which “middle C” could be found in more than one place. This causes lines to “zig-zag” and deviate from a linear dimension.
Saxophones are also pretty-much like a piano in that each pitch is unique.
Perhaps there is something about this “unique pitch” quality that allows such instruments to more easily play melodically. Perhaps not.

#49

I really think it’s the lack of obvious fretboard organization strategies and the picking matters of CtC. I remember the instructor in college asking pointedly why the guitarists weren’t able to play the heads we’d written for the ensemble class… Ouch. (On the plus side, they liked what I wrote and told me I should use it.) Years later, I view everything pretty linearly. If only I knew then…

When I studied with my mentor, a pianist, he pointed out that through the ages guitarists and pianists have had a profound impact on each other in the jazz canon. No need for any guitarist to have low improvisatory self-esteem these days!

#50

The classic cell pattern that Coltrane used was to play the 1 2 3 5 of the chord. E…g for a C you’d play C D E G. Play a 1235 cell over the Coltrane changes and not only will you reconigse the sound, but you will discover its hard ne of the easiest ways to play over this porgressin.

#51

It’s one thing to play a head, since it is a melody which can be memorized.
I wonder whether be-bop (in particular) is a “guitaristic” style of music or not. Pat Martino can improvise fluidly, but it always seems to be over tunes with at least one-measure per chord. On tunes like Joyous Lake’s “Song Bird,” Martino solos over a series of altered dominant chords fluidly, but each chord lasts eight measures.
Even listening to the be-bop recordings Miles Davis did with Parker, he seems to have had trouble keeping up. Then, later on he ushered in the modal style of “Kind of Blue.”
Maybe I’m just complaining about be-bop.

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#52

That’s a good idea. C-D-E-G is just one note short of a pentatonic, and I tried something similar using Steve Khan’s Pentatonic Khancepts book and CD. Ther’e’s an exercise where you move a pentatonic up chromatically, and it works over the changes.
I then realized the reason this works is because pentatonics can be seen as partial parts of 7-note scales.

I then realized that every 7-note diatonic scale has a “leftover” pentatonic scale, just like the black notes of a piano C-scale.

I then realized that 7 + 5 = 12! Duh!

But yeah, pentatonics are a great way to get rock players into jazz.

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#53

dasein noted above that Pat Martino was a “riffs” player rather than a totally free player:

I can certainly see this, as there are “Martino-isms” all over the place in his playing; but what if what we are hearing IS the way Martino sees the guitar; he has made areas out of the neck, and he can fluidly travel through them, and this is based on what he sees as the mechanically easiest (most “guitaristic”) way to do this. In other words, he is not thinking primarily in terms of what is possible musically, which is an almost infinite area which includes “impossibilities”, but what is possible in mechanical terms. This mechanical aspect would necessarily mean that his musical ideas are, in part, determined by the demands of the mechanical nature of the guitar. I’ve heard Troy touch on this. The same thing, with the way Frank Gambale “altered” the major scale to accomodate sweep-picking direction change.
Being able to be totally musically free, as in following the dictates of one’s imagination, may be biased more towards the theoretical than the practical, and is fine for a composer or someone who wants to be free of instrumental baggage; but my goal is to be a guitar player, and this sometimes runs in a different, but parallel, direction than being a “completely perfect musician” who can pass every conceptual test.

#54

I don’t think that wanting to be free of “instrumental baggage” is necessarily biased towards the theoretical. That state of freedom kind of describes Holdsworth and Gambale to me, and both are/were extremely practical about their approaches to musicality.

And fine to want to be who we are!

I think it’s worth distinguishing between “theoretical” and theory. Physics on the bleeding edge may be called “theoretical,” and represents active expansion of the limits of theory. On the other hand, established practicalities of twentieth century music used in the course of improv fall under the category of applied “theory.” I think Gambale encourages folks to not have blocks about the same, but it certainly doesn’t mean that folks should be forced to do anything. There is no passing a “conceptual test.” Have a great evening.

#55
#56

Maybe you should do a seminar on this, as I’d pay money to understand how this is done if it’s as efficient as you say it is.

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#57

To answer the OP, I know the diatonic chords in a key and some common substitutions like “borrowing” the iv from the minor key and the secondary dominant to the V. I can understand a lot of chord progressions pretty quickly, which is hugely important if you want to improvise. I know major and minor triads all over the neck. I have major/minor/dominant 7 chord and arp shapes pretty well down. I can find major and minor scale patterns anywhere on the neck, but I’m definitely more comfortable in some keys than others. I know a bit about modes. Enough that I can find the notes by thinking about the relative major scale and then emphasizing the b7 if it’s Mixolydian for example.

There are lots of good answers in this thread but I’m giving mine too because I went from basically knowing nothing other than E minor because I was so influenced by Metallica growing up and everything I played was a riff with a palm muted E pedal tone. Then I went to some jam sessions and realized how clueless I was so I learned to play the 5 pentatonic patterns in any key. That held me over for a while since they sound good over almost anything. More recently I learned the rest of the stuff I mentioned. I feel like I’m in a pretty good place now, without a huge amount of time invested in learning theory. I’m kind of at a point of diminishing returns of learning new stuff and want to keep honing what I know, focusing on hitting chord tones, actually listening to the chord changes as opposed to wanking away.

If you want to play jazz you probably need to learn a lot more…altered chords/arps, extensions, etc. but for a rock guitarist I’m pretty happy with the way I went about it. Much better place and overall musician than I was a few years ago.

#58

You must know the sound before it comes out is absolutely critical.

I think GG is right and that GB has mental notes that “play” in his brain and immediately feed to his mouth and fingers, and he “hears” each note three times, (1) when he first thinks of it, and then very shortly thereafter (from his [2] mouth and [3] guitar, going in via his ears). I’m sure that GB uses negative feedback to make sure that his physical guitar is matching his “mental guitar” (that plays first).

I know that top classical concert pianists have a “mental piano” that “plays” just before their physical piano hits their ear, and it took me a long time to figure that out. I think that anybody looking at shapes on a guitar neck will NOT have a mental sound that they immediately produce on the physical instrument, hence they will be using a different technique than the top musicians do.

Disclaimer: I think that improvisation is poison for most people, as they don’t learn great pieces of music and just randomly play shapes, and this is why walking into Guitar Center can be such a painful experience.