Rolling Music Theory Thread

Well, the verses in "Trenchtown Rock" worked in that way too, which is why I thought of it. The choruses in that song put the I chord at an obviously accented place in the pattern, though.

Out of curiosity, I just plugged vi-III-IV-I in the form of C: Am-E-F-C into your hooktheory link (which seems to transpose songs automatically since I know several of the results [including "Say It Ain't So"] are not actually in C). Afaict, pretty much all of the results have the I chord at the start of a measure if not at the start of the progression. Some are examples like the one from Muse's "Starlight", where only one section of the song uses this progression.

There's a minor five chord in Don't Go Back to Rockville!

― timellison, Monday, January 8, 2018 12:35 AM (nine months ago)

Strangely, there's one in So. Central Rain, too.

Heading to San Antonio for SMT tomorrow: https://cdn.ymaws.com/www.amsmusicology.org/resource/resmgr/files/san_antonio/program-sanantonio.pdf

Ha, I only noticed now that this is included on the that programme: Friday Evening Concert - 7:30 Kansas plays Point of Know Return (Tobin Center)

San Antonio is beautiful - have fun. Is your paper on the whole album or just on the long title track?

The title track

M3lv1n's the Deadhead and wrote his dissertation on them. He's more of a historian/musicologist (as opposed to theorist), though, and asked me to help with the analysis of this tune, which led to this presentation.

I decided to try and figure out how to "Renaissance Fair" by the Byrds, and man, that song is cool. I think it's really a case where the guitar is playing chords but they don't have the normal function, they're not providing the harmony for anything. They're a contrapuntal element.

how to PLAY

A lot of interesting presentations about popular music at SMT that I think would interest you guys, including a whole panel on ambiguous tonality in pop, ha. I'll get back with more details soon.

No, as the supertonic is lowered in the Neapolitan (Bb instead of B in this example), it needs to resolve downwards, usually to the raised leading note (G#), not upwards to the diatonoc supertonic (B).

― The nexus of the crisis (Sund4r), Tuesday, September 11, 2018 9:20 AM (two months ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

*diatonic

― The nexus of the crisis (Sund4r), Tuesday, September 11, 2018 9:20 AM (two months ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Some theorists would say the Bb is actually resolving to A (the tonic) via G#, which is probably more accurate. The key principle is that altered notes resolve in the direction of their alteration.

― The nexus of the crisis (Sund4r), Tuesday, September 11, 2018 9:29 AM (two months ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Going over some jazz theory and technique today, it occurred to me that it might help JR&tB to compare this movement to the concept of chromatic enclosure of the tonic in jazz playing.

Thanks for that.

Came to post this link about CST:
https://ethaniverson.com/received-wisdom-jeff-goldblum-chord-scales-the-ireal-book-and-kamasi-washington/?fbclid=IwAR0PrHcFLE00BzLATuRF11cJeIx4rnV7DZ10O2HuCLmAFIuIdePLmMn4Kok

Oh, interesting. I have a lot of inchoate thoughts on this, studying and teaching more jazz these days.

(which I will expand on soon)

Cool. I mostly agree with what he says there. Will wait for you to expand before I expand or expound thereupon.

Might not be able to wait too long though ;)

On second and third reading, honestly, it seems more reasonable than I thought on first hasty reading in the grocery store, esp keeping in mind that it was aimed at students. I do find chordscales are good for helping my (below uni level) guitar students break out of rock-based soloing habits. It makes sense that they are a simplified abstraction, in the way that the rule-based method we use to teach 'Bach chorales' is probably different from what Bach was thinking when he was harmonizing hymns (in a language he spoke!) for his church: a useful tool/hack to draw on but not any kind of final word.

Right. Chords scales are a useful first step, as you point out, but often they get taken to a ridiculous extreme, as if there was a one-to-one correspondence between the chord and the chord-scale assigned to it and everybody almost always only ever played that official scale when and only when they saw that chord symbol on the chart, without taking the overall harmonic movement into effect or using chromaticism or even just using other equally valid or perhaps more appropriate scales.

Also you- and fgti, and anybody else- might want to come over to this thread: KNOWER: funky, quirky electro duo with jazz chops Louis Cole and Genevieve Artadi

I spent like five years of high school/college jazz education frustratedly trying to identify/articulate what that ethan iverson piece says, because I knew from day one that chord scale playing just didn't sound anything like good records.

The Bible of CST is the Mark Levine jazz Theory book, which Iverson mentions in the article. In addition to the overall problems with the methodology, there are some clearly outrageous statements in there, like something to the effect that nobody plays the Aeolian Scale ( because it’s corny? I forget) or The Harmonic Minor Scale (!), because it doesn’t fit nicely over any one chord.

Think I posted this critical review of the book -and the theory- at least once before, probably on this very thread but here it is again: http://www.mtosmt.org/issues/mto.00.6.1/mto.00.6.1.rawlins.html

Ted was surprisingly into CST, although from a more sophisticated perspective than Aebersold-type stuff I think. I never really got that deep into it because I couldn't fucking stand it. It was like trying to teach myself to trash everything that made music sound good to me.

Maybe I will try to ask one of his other students about it, well the one who is a nice guy and is still alive.

Think the best, most concise write up of Jazz Theory I ever read was the Lightning Tour at the beginning of David Berkman’s Creative Practice book.

It seems to me- based on a bit of anecdotal evidence- that it is somewhat easier, more cut-and-dried for a teacher just to say “Play this scale!” and perhaps “and play it with this exact fingering!” rather to let you come up with your own ideas, especially in a one-on-one situation. If you are playing in an ensemble hopefully you can play some of what you want as long as you pay some lip service to the pedagogical scale in question.

Yeah, also given the fact that Ted was ultimately my teacher for only two semesters that were in themselves very broken up by hospital stays, other students are better suited to speak to how he taught it than I am.

A v close friend and constant collaborator Thom Gill plays with Knower, but I haven't ever listened

Everybody should listen to Thom Gill though, really, everything is amazing, this is the song that I'll have playing at my wedding though

https://isthisthomas.bandcamp.com/track/triumph

(the song is a kidding-not-actually-kidding love song to Bieber btw)

"the posturing of one world / becomes the intent of another" is a very beautiful lyric imo sorry for some non-theory related posts I just really like Thom ok I'll go listen to Knower now

Enjoyed that song, thanks

It seems to me- based on a bit of anecdotal evidence- that it is somewhat easier, more cut-and-dried for a teacher just to say “Play this scale!” and perhaps “and play it with this exact fingering!” rather to let you come up with your own ideas, especially in a one-on-one situation. If you are playing in an ensemble hopefully you can play some of what you want as long as you pay some lip service to the pedagogical scale in question.

― Spirit of the Voice of the Beehive (James Redd and the Blecchs), Sunday, January 6, 2019 10:50 PM (eleven minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I've never really remotely tried to flesh it out, but I've had this grain of an idea in my mind for a while of a different way to teach jazz theory as an "in motion" concept rather than a static concept, with much more emphasis on how to connect chords rather than what to "play over" specific chords, and much more emphasis on the interplay between melody, harmony and rhythm (including an understanding of how landing on or passing over a certain note has a different effect at different points in the bar). Maybe this has already been done.

Okay, I guess the thing about the Aeolian is that he came up with a weird chord to go with it.

Are you saying that professional jazz educators are telling people to think of playing over e.g. mm. 5-8 of "Autumn Leaves" strictly in terms of Locrian - Mixolydian b9b13 - Aeolian or Dorian instead of e.g. also thinking about tendency tones (e.g. leading note-tonic and/or submediant-mediant resolution at the cadence)?

I don’t have first hand experience of that but I believe quite a few do, yes.

Most people would say to play Locrian natural 2 (natural 9, or sometimes confusingly called #2 or #9) for the first one though, sixth mode of the Jazz/Melodic Minor.

Actually, maybe I did have experience of this long ago.

What I have been told recently is to play the V7 bebop scale (adding passing tone of a major 7th) over the whole thing, at least the first two bars.

And resolve to a chord tone of the i chord, of course.

What I don’t remember being told to do but what I do over the i chord is to play what some call the Composite Minor, which I believe you might be familiar with it.

Another thing about out-of-box CST is that it is all seven note ( heptatonic) scales/modes, no mention is made of pentatonic scales major or minor ( maybe they figure these are already known from rock!) or hexatonic scales -blues scale, major scale without a fourth- or bebop scales- modes of major, Natural Minor or Harmonic Minor with an added passing tone.

Minor scale with both the natural and raised ^6 and ^7, I assume?xp

Yup.

Also the bebop scale I have been instructed to play over the turnaround in Autumn Leaves is the fifth mode of the Harmonic Minor of the tonic - which has a b9 and b13, as you said- some people call it a Phrygian Dominant, I think, plus the passing tone of a major seventh.

I mostly use Jim Grantham's Jazzmaster's Cookbook, which does get into those other scales early on and devotes a chapter to melodic structure, along with charts and recordings, classical principles of melody and harmony, and stuff like Matt Warnock's page. I also refer to Terfenko's textbook, which doesn't get to CST until Ch. 8.

xp Oh yeah, Grantham calls the Phrygian Dominant scale the Mixolydian b9b13 scale.

But I mean, I just think of all these scales as hacks to help your fingers find a more intricate melodic line that works over the chords on the spot. The overall tonal movement is still the main point. Passing notes are, like, passing notes.

Yes, exactly. Which is the problem with a naive approach. Really you’ve got to find a good mix of chord tones, (possible) scale tones and chromatic tones.

I like what I’ve seen of Matt Warnock’s page, don’t know those other sources, will take a look.

Sometimes, often actually, I try to think of playing some of these scales as fingering exercises rather than musical musts. For instance it is interesting to me that if you add the major seventh to a regular Mixolydian scale you get a four note chromatic run from the major sixth to the root, whereas if you add it to the scale we just mentioned there is a four note chromatic run from the (flat) seventh to the flat 9. In any case, playing such scale trains the fingers to get comfortable playing those chromatic runs within the context of a larger scale and hopefully trains the ear to hear how they fit in. Things that make you go hmmm...

Hard to get fingers to do chromatic runs when they are so used to the spaces between notes. Like walking instead of running

I'm not qualified to talk about jazz theory but I like that article. And when I was in Richard Davis' classes, I don't remember him ever talking about what to play over a certain chord (except for once talking about Monk's use of the whole tone scale and how it works over anything). His whole approach seemed like an attempt to create a non-pedagogical environment (like the one he came up in) within the university, which some people clicked with and others really didn't. It was more about fostering a certain mentality and approach to the music, and he would most likely tell a story about some musician or other for you to glean the right lesson from. Also, of course, a lot of taking students who were trying to show off or play way beyond themselves and breaking it down to the important basics (singing the melody, learning the lyrics when possible, thinking about the 'why' of the music).

I just consulted my spreadsheet and it tells me that for homework you had to call Richard Davis’s answering machine and sing scales (but did you have to chop wood for him?) . Do you remember what scales those were?