What about Fourths?

How did I ever forget about fourths? Used to be, I was getting a fairly decent handle on the Angular Interval, but in the course of practicing other material I forgot all about it.

Then yesterday, as I was pondering what else I could do to help me get more deeply inside the key of F# (which I continue to practice religiously–you’d think I’d have it down by now), suddenly it dawned on me: What about fourths? What better way to break away from the tedious predictability of tertian harmony than to reacquaint myself with the spacious, somewhat stark-sounding quartal sound.

So last night I began the process, and tonight I tightened down on what I started yesterday and then added onto it.

In my experience, fourths are more difficult to play diatonically than as sequences of straight perfect fourths. I’m not talking about fourth diads; those are fairly easy to get one’s chops around. But start stacking fourths and then taking them stepwise up and down a scale, and from a standpoint of technique, suddenly the job is no longer quite so simple.

And that’s perfect. Becoming truly fluent in an odd key such as F# is challenging, and to really unlock it, you’ve got to hit it from every angle. Practicing fourths can help you break out of the box, introducing angularity to your playing and helping you to land on notes you wouldn’t ordinarily think of in relation to other notes.

But of course you’d rather find out for yourself than listen to me talk. Since there’s no better teacher than experience, here’s a little exercise that will help you to experience fourths for yourself. It’s one of the patterns I was working on earlier tonight, set in the key of Eb (another key I’ve just started tacking onto F# as one I want to saturate myself in).

Now, it’s late and I’m lazy, too lazy to actually write out an exercise and go through all the hassle of scanning it. So I’m just going to tell you the pitches, okay? They’re arranged in groups of three, which you’ll play as triplets ascending and descending the Eb major scale. Here they are:

Eb-Ab-D, F-Bb-Eb, G-C-F, Ab-D-G, Bb-Eb-Ab, C-F-Bb, D-G-C, Eb-Ab-D; D-Ab-Eb, C-G-D, Bb-F-C, Ab-Eb-Bb, G-D-Ab, F-C-G, Eb-Bb-F, D-Ab-Eb.

That’s it for tonight. I’m tired and more in the mood to read and drink my Dark Horse Raspberry Ale than to write. I’ve already done my heavy lifting on my horn for today. Now it’s your turn.

June 14, 2010 by
Filed Under: Jazz, Jazz Improvisation and Technique, Music, Saxophone Tagged With: , , , , ,

Using Angularity in Jazz Improv

If you want to add interest and color to your jazz solos, anglify them. “Anglify” might not be a real word, but it ought to be, and it is now as far as this post is concerned. Word coinage is one of my prerogatives as a word wizard.

Anglify. It’s easy to get caught up in linear playing, weaving scales up and down like a stock market graph, but that approach will get old fast unless you mix it up with other melodic devices. Angularity is a good one. Wide interval leaps grab attention; they stand out like bold letters and exclamation points in a sentence.

Writing about angularity forces me to consider exactly what it is. If I were to define it, I’d say it’s the use of two or more consecutive interval leaps of more than a third in any direction. Fourths and fifths are commonly used in angular playing, but any large interval qualifies. The point is, you’re no longer playing notes in a straight line; you’re breaking up the melodic terrain into hills and valleys, moving out of the flatland and into the mountains.

Pentatonic scales are a rich source of fourths and fifths when you start doing interval exercises with them. You can also do exercises on fourths and fifths, or on any interval, using any scale or root movement.

Starting a line with an angular approach is a good way to say, “Listen to this!” Here’s a little diminished whole tone lick I’ve been woodshedding lately. It begins with a leap of an augmented fourth followed by a diminished fourth (aka a major third) up to the raised fifth of the D7 #5, #9 chord. (For ease of use, I’ve shown that note on the staff as Bb rather than A#.)

angular

Note how the arpeggio in the second half of bar two further breaks up the very linear, chromatic flow. The combination of linearity and angularity engages attention.

As always, take the above lick through all twelve keys. Try moving it through the circle of fifths to acquire facility in a lot of playing situations.

August 14, 2009 by
Filed Under: Jazz, Jazz Improvisation and Technique, Music, Saxophone Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , , ,