Pentatonic Scales by Major Third

Lately I’ve been spending considerable practice time on pentatonic scales. So named because it has only five notes, the pentatonic is as basic a scale as you can get. Its fundamental use for jazz improvisers is to provide a down-homey sound that’s great for playing the blues and a lot of gospel and contemporary praise music. Lacking a major scale’s handle-with-care tension tones of the fourth and raised seventh, the pentatonic furnishes a steady supply of consonant notes that work with pretty much any diatonic chord. It’s hard to go wrong using a pentatonic scale!

But once you start exploring its more complex applications, the pentatonic scale becomes more demanding. It is used freely as a source for angularity and a tool for outside playing, and you have to work out its possibilities in the woodshed if you want to use them skillfully in performance.

penta-mode-4-by-maj-3rdThe two exercises shown here take the fourth mode of the pentatonic scale and move it by major third. This approach spotlights tone centers that divide the octave into three equal parts. (Click on the image to enlarge it.)

The exercises don’t lay easily under the fingers at first, but stick with them and you’ll soon be ripping through them with Breckerish velocity. Remember, the key is to memorize these patterns as quickly as possible so you don’t need to look at the written notes. Since each exercise takes you through three tonal centers, you’ll need to transpose the material by half-step three times in order to cover all twelve keys.

Get cracking–and have fun!

If you found this post helpful, visit my jazz page for more exercises, articles, and solo transcriptions.

February 11, 2011 by
Filed Under: Jazz, Jazz Improvisation and Technique, Music, Saxophone Tagged With: , , , , , ,

A Table of Non-Diatonic Tones and Their Common Uses

A while back I shared some ideas on how jazz improvisers can make optimal use of the added flat sixth tone of the major bebop scale. I pointed out that, besides its obvious use as a passing tone that evens out the scale and allows players to move seamlessly from root to octave (or third to third, or fifth to fifth, etc.), the flat sixth also functions readily in a number of harmonic contexts common in jazz.

Yet, useful as the flat sixth (or sharp five) of the major bebop scale can be, it is nevertheless only one of five non-diatonic tones that occur in a major key. In addition, the tonic, supertonic, subdominant, and submediant scale degrees can all be similarly raised a half-step and used in a variety of harmonic applications.

borrowed-tone-applications-002The image to your right  is a table that shows some common uses for each non-diatonic tone in the major scale. (Click on the thumbnail to enlarge it.) The table is by no means exhaustive; it’s just meant to give you a handy reference to harmonic situations you’re likely to encounter as an improviser.

The table is based on the C major scale. In that key, the five non-diatonic tones are C#, D#, F#, G#, and A#.  From top to bottom, the staves begin with a given tone, then show how that tone fits into various chords. The chords are numbered according to their functions and also named (eg. IVmin7, Fmin7). Depending on their application, I may use the enharmonic equivalents of some tones. For instance, instead of A#, I’ve chosen to show Bb, which makes better sense in actual usage.

In stave 1, the VI7b9 and #Idim7 are interchangeable, leading almost inevitably to the IIm7 chord. In the next stave down, the #IIdim7 wants to resolve to the mediant. By adding the scale’s leading tone as the chord root, you wind up with a B7b9, which is the V7 of III. Glancing over the rest of the table, you’ll notice numerous other uses in secondary dominant harmony.

I’m not going to go into detailed explications of every chord, as–assuming that you know your basic jazz theory–the uses of the different non-diatonic tones should be self-evident. Again, the table is not definitive. It’s intended simply to give you a handy reference that can heighten your awareness and help you make more deliberate use of all twelve tones in the chromatic scale. You’re bound to think of other applications not shown in the table.

For practice purposes, you could try working with a single tone. Incorporate it into a major scale to create an eight note scale. Then work out various chordal possibilities that utilize the tone, always keeping in mind the parent major key you’re working in as a frame of reference.

If you’ve found this article useful, make sure you check out the many other articles, exercises, and solo transcriptions on my jazz page. And, as always, practice hard and with focus–and have fun!

November 12, 2010 by
Filed Under: Band, Christian Music, Jazz, Jazz Improvisation and Technique, Music, Saxophone Tagged With: , , , , , ,

Sax Practice: A Chromatic Motif on the Cycle of Dominants

If you want to develop fluency at voice-leading and switching keys, cycle exercises are mandatory and the cycle of fifths is supreme. Taking dominant patterns and licks around the cycle of fifths is a longstanding habit of mine. As with a lot of musical disciplines, at first I delayed, I kicked, I resisted tackling this one for a long time because, well, it was work. Finally I decided to buck up and eat my spinach, and today the circle of fifths is a key component of my practice regimen, particularly for V7 chords.

After all, the dominant seventh, more than any other chord, defines the key center; it’s the chord that screams “resolve me!” So it pays for sax players and other jazz improvisers to consistently drill their ears and their fingers with exercises that can build their facility with dominant seventh chords.

sarracenia-alata-redthroat
Here’s one such exercise that I’ve been having fun with lately. Click on it to enlarge it. There’s nothing mysterious about this little motif; I could pull it off easily in a number of keys right where I stand without making a practice issue of it. I’ve practiced enough related material that my fingers already know the way. But spotlighting the figure makes it likelier that I’ll use it in my solos; it ensures that my technique will follow me into any key; and, as with all cycle of fifth exercises, it helps me hear how the pattern lays out in root movements by fifth.

For each dominant chord, the exercise ascends chromatically from the ninth to the third, and then from the root to the seventh. I’ve set it in triplets, but you’ll want to experiment with different rhythms.  I might add, this little motif sounds great in blues solos.

No need for me to say more–except, of course, to pester you to check out more exercises on my jazz page. Have fun practicing!

March 27, 2010 by
Filed Under: Jazz, Jazz Improvisation and Technique, Music, Saxophone Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , ,

Bracketing: Some Chromatic Exercises

In a previous article on bracketing for jazz improvisers, I described the melodic device of emphasizing a note by surrounding it with changing tones. Since bracketing is used extensively by jazz soloists, it makes sense to develop an approach for practicing this technique in a way that can help you apply it readily and easily to your improvisations.

The following exercises will help you develop chops for a kind of bracketing that I’ll call chromatic bracketing because the upper and lower neighbors are often both chromatically altered in order to achieve a half-step approach to the target note from above and below.

More commonly, the upper neighbor remains unaltered, diatonic to its key, while the lower neighbor is raised. You can also have fully diatonic brackets in which no alteration of either note occurs. In this post, however, we’ll deal with chromatic brackets.

Chromatic Intervals

Perhaps you’re familiar with the following chromatic scale exercise:

Chromatic Major Seconds

If not, you’ve got your work cut out for you. Hop to it, Grasshopper! It’s an abbreviation of a chromatic scale workout featuring the interval of a major second, and you need to know it throughout the full range of your instrument–not just the descending version shown here, but the ascending version as well.

“But why? What’s the point of mastering such a dry-as-dust technical exercise?”

Good for you! You’re thinking about practical application, not just building technique for technique’s sake. And when it comes to bracketing, the above exercise is a building block that can help give you mastery. Let’s call it step one in an organized approach to developing bracketing proficiency.

“Great, so what’s step two?”

I’m so glad you asked!

Target notes

Each couplet of notes in the preceding exercise serves to bracket the first note of the couplet that follows it. For instance, E and D bracket Eb; Eb and Db bracket D; D and C bracket C#; and so forth. In each instance, you have a chromatic upper and lower neighbor surrounding a target note, thus:

Target Notes

So…step two: apply this pattern to the entire chromatic scale, up and down your instrument. (This is a great way to go about learning the first chromatic scale exercise shown farther up.)

Got it down cold? Good. In fact, a fantastic achievement for the time it took you to move from that last paragraph to this one. You’ll make Coltrane look like a piker.

Just messin’ witcha! I’ll be serious, now, promise. Let’s say that you have in fact worked through the exercise of chromatic brackets with target notes. The question still remains, how do you apply it to practical playing situations?

Presenting step three, where it all comes together…

Practical application

The following exercise consists of three licks, each of which begins with a chromatic bracket and a target note. I’ve supplied some chords to give each lick a context, but I haven’t tried to create any particular progression from one bar to the next, just offer three examples among a host of possibilities for utilizing the bracketing technique.

Bracketed licks

Note that the last bar leads with not just one, but two couplets from the chromatic scale exercise. You can use as many couplets as you wish in your playing, guided by your own sense of good taste, before resolving the last couplet to a target note that launches you into a new idea.

More options to choose from

The material here has concerned itself with chromatic bracketing based on the interval of a major second. But it’s only intended to get you started. There are plenty of ways that you can expand on the concepts shown here.

You can invert the couplets (e.g. D to E targeting Eb; Db to Eb targeting D; and so on).

Or you can use the interval of a minor third, which can help you get a better feel for brackets that use a diatonic upper neighbor and a chromatic lower neighbor (e.g. D to B targeting C; C# to A# targeting B; C to A targeting Bb).

For that matter, if you really want to get into it, you can work through the chromatic scale with all kinds of intervals–major thirds, perfect fourths, major sixths…take your choice. You can apply the principles described in this post to all of them. As you move beyond neighboring tones into wider intervals, I’m not sure you can correctly call what you’re doing “bracketing” anymore, but you can darn well call it useful.

One last thing: exercise three showed examples of licks that started with brackets. I wrote them this way in order to help you quickly connect the first two exercises to actual musical ideas. However, brackets can and should be used within lines as well, not just at their beginning.

That’s all for now. I’ve given you plenty to chew on. Now it’s time for me to go and eat.

September 3, 2009 by
Filed Under: Jazz, Jazz Improvisation and Technique, Music, Saxophone Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , ,

Emile De Cosmo and the Byzantine Scale

If anyone embodies the improvisational and technical aspects of jazz education, it is Emile De Cosmo. I’ve had the pleasure of getting to know Emile since the time he contacted me about an article I had written about jazz contrafacts, and I can tell you, the man is deeply knowledgeable, and as excited to share his insights into jazz theory and technique building today as he was back in my college days, when I first bought one of books in his Polytonal Rhythm Series.

Our initial conversation, back in early February, resulted in my adding another of his books, The Diatonic Cycle–a tour de force of the twelve major scales and their relative harmonic minor scales–to my practice library. Last week, after chatting with Emile on the phone, I purchased yet another book coauthored by him and his wife, Laura. A compendium of articles that Emile and Laura wrote for Jazz Player magazine, The Path to Jazz Improvisation is a treasury of insights into the vast array of scales and modes that are available to jazz improvisers today. At $14.95, the book truly is a steal–and no, Emile didn’t give me a free copy so I’d write him a glowing review*. I ponied up the money just like anyone else, and I’m glad I did. I know a fair amount about jazz theory, but there always seems to be something new to learn, and Emile and Laura’s book is proving to be a good source.

I’m thinking right now about the chapter I’ve been reading on the Byzantine scale. In his foreword to the book, David Gibson, editor of Jazz Player, writes, “When I read his chapter on the Byzantine Scale I almost fell off my chair. I had never thought about jazz in those terms. I suddenly realized that jazz improvisation has roots which go back much further than the jazz master of the 1920s, 30s, 40s, and beyond.”

Of course my curiosity was piqued by Gibson’s words. The Byzantine scale? I’d heard of it before, but never explored it. I think I had some vague idea that I had it already tucked in my pocket as some mode of the harmonic minor scale. And indeed, the Byzantine scale is related to the harmonic minor, but it is a scale unto itself, and a darned interesting one.

Probably the easiest way to conceive of the Byzantine scale is, as Emile describes, to superimpose two major seventh chords a half-step apart. For example, if you dovetail CM7 and DbM7 and then arrange the chord tones in successive order, you get the following: C, Db, E, F, G, Ab, B, C.

Another way to think of this is to approach every tone in a major seventh chord with its chromatic lower neighbor–e.g. for the DbM7 chord (Db, F, Ab, C), you would precede the Db with C, F with E, Ab with G, and C with B.

The De Cosmos recommend using the Byzantine scale with major seventh and dominant seventh chords that share the same root as the scale. In other words, you’d use a C Byzantine scale over a C7b9 or a CM7. At least one other application quickly suggests itself to me as I look at the structure of the scale, and that is to pair it with an altered dominant that is based on the second degree of the scale. For instance, by playing a C Byzantine scale over a Db7#9, you get both the flatted and natural sevenths (B and C), allowing the latter to function as a passing tone between the flat seventh and the root of the chord.

I have to say, though, that it may be a while before I dig into the Byzantine scale in earnest. Right now I’m focusing on the diminished whole tone scale, with some forays into both the augmented and diminished scales. Those pack challenges enough. But I think I can see a new area of woodshedding on the horizon. Emile and Laura’s book should prove a valuable resource, and you’ll hear more about it from time to time. I have yet to write about Emile’s concept, the polytonal order of keys, or POOK, for short.

But that’s for another post. As for this one, well…the day is beautiful, and Lisa and I have plans to visit Meijer Gardens. It’s time to get rolling. Happy practicing!

_____________

*Emile did, however, send me a POOK T-shirt and a CD of he and Laura playing tunes that he had written. I don’t mind telling you that the De Cosmos can blow!

August 13, 2009 by
Filed Under: Band, Entertainment, Jazz, Jazz Improvisation and Technique, Music, Saxophone, Tornadoes Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,