By David Carlos Valdez Jazz Harmony for Improvisation- chord/scales
Making the saxophone bark like a dog, WOOF!
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- Navigate this page:
- Innovation or Emulation
- On being emotionally present
- Articles by Casa Valdez Readers Tim Prices random lines exercise
- Tim Price on the LCCOTO and Jazz Harmony
- How to Memorize Tunes- by Bill Mithoefer
- Varying the Melodic Rhythm- by Dan Gaynor
Making the saxophone bark like a dog, WOOF! There is an entire universe of saxophone multi-phonics and alternate fingerings out there. John Gross, one of Portland's own heavy-hitters, wrote about the most comprehensive book on the subject called "185 Multi-phonics for the Saxophone, A Practical Guide" (published by Advance Music). You can hear John put some of these to use on his recording with drummer Billy Minz called Beautiful You. Bert Wilson is another NW saxophonist who is crazy about multi-phonics. Bert is one of the few cats that only use multi-phonics that make functional chords. Bert plays chord progressions with multi-phonics. I must admit that to my ear most multi-phonics sound pretty harsh and raw, whether they are harmonically functional or not. I might use one now and then when playing free music, but like altissimo, I find that it's best to limit them. I most often use them not for the multi-note effect but as barks. By a bark I mean a note that pops out louder and with a different timbre, used for dramatic effect. The most widely used barks are simply overtones. Check out Lester Young on Jazz at the Philharmonic, you'll hear him use this technique on the A sections on Rhythm changes. Every time he does it the crowd goes totally nuts. He plays repeated middle C eighth notes, alternating between regular fingering and the 1st overtone of low C. Since the overtone C has most of the keys down the sound comes out of the bell rather than the upper stack. When a mic is right in the bell this makes the overtones explosively pop out. This same technique can also be used from middle F up to G# with the second overtones of low Bb to C#. The overtone notes are bigger and darker since more of the tube is being used. The two other barks that I use are multi-phonic fingerings without the extra notes. The first one is a bluesy Bb: Finger Eb with the octave key and without your G key. Relax and tighten your embouchure slowly as you blow, actually it's more of a dropping of the jaw. You'll notice that you'll hear a Bb alternating with the G below it. Rapidly and drastically tightening and loosening your chops can create a minor third shake. Start very slow at first and then faster as you get the hang of it. Phil Woods uses this one a lot, it has a very distinctive bluesy sound. You can use just the top note (Bb) without the shake also; this gives an extra low pitch that woofs. It's great for a Blue seventh or third (the extra flatted 7th really comes from the 7th overtone). The second one is a bluesy G: This one is the same idea as the last one but on a different note. Finger a low C plus the octave key and without the F key (index finger of the right hand). Try the same thing with your chops as above. You can also get a nice multi-phonic with this fingering in the lower octave. Take off the octave key and just relax and blow, a full three note multi-phonic should come out. The way to master these techniques is by practicing overtones. Here are the overtone exercises that Joe Viola gave me. These aren't as extreme as the Sigard Rascher 'Top Tones' exercises and much more practical with a normal saxophone setup. Rascher's school used large bore Buscher horns with very specific mouthpieces and reeds. Joe V told me that those guys all had raunchy sounds anyway. Once you can pop out the various overtones for use to as alternate fingerings, to drastically change timbre. Sit. Lie down. Stay. Speak! Innovation or Emulation? If you learn all the 'rules' and study what you're told to study, you will most likely end up sounding like someone else. The thing to do is start developing a personal way of playing from the start. This is true innovation. You don't need to develop a new system of re-harmonizing two-fives or break out free of time signatures to be an innovator. When I was younger, my dream was to become the next major innovator. I wanted my contributions to reorganize the world of Jazz. My name would be spoken along with Bird, Trane, and Ornette. I wanted to be recognized by musicians hundreds of years from now as a pivotal figure. It's amusing for me to look back on that young aspiring Jazz musician. I still do want to innovate, but that has a different meaning to me now. What innovation means to me now is playing music in a unique way, having your own individual voice. You can incorporate elements from other musicians and still be innovative. I think you're on your way to being an innovator when listeners can tell it's you after hearing just a few notes. There are many young players today coming out of music institutions with high levels of musicianship and technique. They rarely come out as unique stylists. They usually sound like several of the Jazz greats. Sometimes their major influences can even be counted on one hand. Sometimes a style can even be traced to a single record by one musician (I heard a tenor player once who had based his entire style on Brecker's 'Cityscapes' album). One of the reasons this happens is that students are over encouraged to transcribe and learn licks. This is positively reinforced when they are praised for sounding like Trane, Benson, or Brecker. Audiences usually respond well to this type of playing because it's already familiar to them. Some people say that lick playing is just crowd pleasing and some think that it's respecting our rich Jazz heritage. American audiences, in general, are more focused on the final result rather than the creative process. To me, the creative process is much more important. I would rather listen to sloppy exploration that contains a few gems than to a clean, but derivative, performance. I can accept a fair amount scuffling and kacking if I think the player is trying to go somewhere new. Unfortunately the masses aren't really conditioned to accept this type of musician. The new crop of younger Jazz players is clean to a fault. They don't usually push for the impossible, choosing instead to be content with the possible. When I was younger I often played out of Joe Pass's Guitar Styles book. Joe's lines were woven through the changes like a fine oriental silk rug. This book got me thinking about longer lines, but I didn't want to play the exact same lines as Joe. My solution was to take a pencil and write crazy alterations right in the book. The original lines were straight-ahead vanilla bop lines. By the time I was done with them no one would have ever suspected that they came from Joe Pass. This same thing can be done with any book. Don't be afraid to learn from musicians who play different instruments than you. This will broaden your style and your sources will be harder to trace. Always keep your influences broad. Don't focus too much on any one player. One of the topics I have written about in this blog is chord/scale theory. This is about finding the correct scale to fit any given chord. If you take this theory as fact you will find yourself limited to a linear and 'un-chunky' way of playing. You will end up sounding clean, but not very personal. One of the 'theories' that we accept in school is that scales can all be defined in one octave and that each octave is the same as every other octave. Music theory is taught this way because it's convenient and less confusing. In actuality, scales don't have to be limited to one octave at all. They may have a range of five octaves or just a tri-tone. A flat nine sounds very different when played in another octave and an A=440 is not really an A=880 at all. It's just the note that sounds the most similar out of all the other notes. It has a completely different personality and resonant quality. Jazz improvisation theory needs to be adjusted for the range of the individual instruments. A baritone saxophone playing upper extensions over chord changes will be dealing with a totally different harmonic environment than a piccolo. Consider the fact that an altered dominant scale may be played differently in different octaves. You might want to try using a Lydian dominant scale in a lower octave and an altered dominant in a higher octave. It also depends on the range of the comping instrument. Slonimky's book deals with symmetrical scales. The first of these is a tri-tone scale (C-F#-C2-F#2-ect). Eventually he gets into symmetrical scales that span several octaves. The symmetrical scale of 2:3 is a two-octave scale that is divided equally into three parts, by minor sixths (C-Ab-E-C2). This is related to the 1:3 scale (C-E-Ab-C2) but it is also very different. Try writing some of your own scales that are not limited to just one octave. Try composing some of your own licks. Playing your own licks is always more interesting and rewarding than playing someone else's. The chord/scale approach has a tendency to lock you into playing only the scale notes over a chord. The scale should only be thought of as consonant notes. All twelve notes should be available to you over any given chord. The non-scale notes each have their own 'tonal-gravity'. They only sound wrong if you don't know where they want to resolve to and you don't deal with them correctly. A good exercise is to sit down at a piano and play chords while experimenting with every note over each chord. Listen to where each 'avoid' note wants to resolve. Try things like a major third over a minor seventh, a natural 11th over an altered dominant chord, a natural fifth over a half-diminished chord. Be thorough about this process and take notes as you go. Once you realize that you can play anything over anything you will be able to relax a little. You won't be so worried about playing wrong notes because you will have the skills to adapt to any possibility. Remember that you make the decision to innovate or emulate every single time you sit down to practice. On being emotionally present I had a gig recently that really made me aware of the effect that emotional interaction has on Jazz performance. I felt like one of the musicians on the gig wasn't emotionally available. I know that this sounds like a talk that your needy girlfriend might want have with you but hear me out. A musician may physically be playing appropriately or mentally be thinking about what he/she is playing. If you're focusing more on the hot cocktail waitress than you are the music, then mental distraction is the result, this is musically crippling. If a musician that you are playing with is emotionally withdrawn or depressed, you won't be able to converse on an emotional level with them. I don't just want the rhythm section to react to the musical ideas that I'm playing; I need them to project and respond to strong emotions. You might even call what I'm talking about emotional comping. They have to be willing and able to contribute vital feelings to the mix. A musician depressive musician will have a hard time expressing joy and optimism in his playing. He might not be able to feel excited if the crowd isn't clapping or paying attention, if at all. I really want to feel palpable feelings of joy, sorrow and excitement emanating from the musicians I'm playing with, or else the gig feels like I'm screwing with a condom on (sorry kids). Give me something to work with please. Wake up and feel MUTHERF*#@%s+!! You have to be willing to play like your life depended on it, like it's your last day alive, like your balls are on fire. Otherwise go get a job as a parking lot attendant or an accountant (sorry all you accountants out there). Being a Jazz musician requires intense emotional exertion. What if a pro football player didn't bother to run at full speed when he got the ball, or a brain surgeon who didn't bother to really concentrate all his attention to the job on hand? Playing Jazz should feel like a matter of life and death! If everyone doesn't give 200% then the music will die on the operating table. If you never sweat or feel wiped out after a gig, then I'd say you're trying hard enough. Even if your life totally sucks ass the time you spend playing Jazz needs to scream," I LOVE MY LIFE!!!!” Some bandleaders won't notice if you're phoning it in and are just trying to get through the gig, I do though. The thing that separates the truly great players from to mediocre players is the ability to attain non-ordinary physical, mental and emotional states. When I go to a gig I know that I should be prepared to enter a higher mode of being from my everyday state. I try to be open to experiencing a level of emotional intensity that rarely happens when I'm not playing. Even if the gig is in a Yuppie bar in a Yuppie shopping center. I don't think of myself as a particularly moody person, but I want to be as moody as an expectant mother or a rapid cycle bi-polar hypoglycemic. You must be willing to radiate waves of joy and then the deepest blackest sorrow in a split second. Clinging stubbornly to the mask of your ordinary persona will make you emotionally impotent and boring as hell to listen to. Hey, would the audience clap and hoot while you load the dishwasher or scoop the dog poop in the back yard. NO. No one is impressed with mundane personal chores; so don't make playing music one. I sometimes refer to emotions with terms like radiate and emanate because when you strongly project feeling and emotion with your music it should make the listener feel as if they were a McChicken sandwich under a heat lamp keeping warm at McDonalds. If no emotional intensity is achieved then it feels like you're trying to catch a tan from a 50-watt light bulb. Chinese medicine sees all types of human experience as different manifestations of a life energy called Qi. This energy needs to circulate freely throughout the different energy bodies in order to maintain good health- emotionally, mentally and physically. Qi energy can become stagnant or blocked and all types of ailments start to set in. * According to Chinese medicine there are seven emotions that a person can experience: joy, anger, worry, pensiveness, sadness, fear, and fright. These are normal emotions that are reactions to various life circumstances. Only when they come on suddenly and intensely, or continue for a protracted period do they lead to pathological consequences. It should be remembered that diseases caused by the emotions arise from the interior and directly affect the corresponding organs. This is different from, for example, the Six Excesses, which cause disease by entering the body from the exterior. Thus, symptoms caused by emotional disturbances often manifest very soon after onset. Furthermore, the immediate result is a disturbance of the Qi mechanism, which if untreated causes further disharmonies depending on the affected organ(s). * "In this [western] culture, there’s this idea that if you suffer from depression, you should not talk about it. That makes it even worse. You’re suppressing emotions, and this causes energy to stagnate. If it’s blocked, you start to see symptoms, either physical or emotional. These are all manifestations of an imbalance of qi. The key thing is to eliminate that blockage and promote the energy flow in the body, to help the energy flow smoothly. In some cases one acupuncture session or just a good lay can help a musician more than a week of shedding. Others who are more seriously emotionally impaired may need to see a shrink for a script of mood stabilizers or elevators in order to regain emotional dynamics in their music. You can't always just woodshed your way to the next level musically. Many young players make this mistake. Spending 12 hours a day in the practice room will not bring emotional balance and vitality to your playing. Only truly experiencing life's tribulation and victories can make you more emotionally mature. From now on I won’t hire players who don't put out emotionally. They had also better have their qi flowing freely. Articles by Casa Valdez Readers Tim Price's random lines exercise Here's an exercise from Tim Price's blog (www.timpricejazz.com/). Garzone used to have me do this one. It's a great way to get comfortable playing outside; it's also a way to discover new and interesting lines. * "Here’s another exercise that may help you to find some other stuff to play: choose a tempo and start to play in a swing feel with no tonal center. Let the rhythmic focus be your guide; that is, play rhythmic phrases typical of jazz phrasing, but with a random choice of notes. Try to throw in some really large intervals. Play any note! In fact, the more outrageous the better. Tape yourself and see what happens. There may be some highly musical and personalized notes in there. By experimenting with intervallic and sequential playing you can eventually develop a vocabulary that will enable you to move from note to note. This is a really spontaneous way to improvise, and results in some pretty wild stuff that you may have never played before." Once you are comfortable with a high degree of randomness in your playing (of course we can never truly be totally random) you will be able to start introducing small amounts into your soloing. As you practice playing lines over changes slip a bar or two of totally random notes in, then jump right back to following the chord changes. Now try just a few beats of randomness. As you practice playing 'random' notes be aware of trying to use different and wider intervals and direction. Direction is an important element of free/outside playing. Experiment with lines while focusing on just this one element; don't play more than a few notes without changing direction. Next introduce wider intervals into the mix. Don't stop swinging as you are doing these things. If you're swinging really hard the listener will accept these far out lines as being musical. The farther out you go the harder you need to swing. If you mess with the rhythm of a cliché Bebop line it will sound much more outside than a freaked out random line that really swings hard. Tim Price on the LCCOTO and Jazz Harmony Speaking of George Russell, here's some food for thought. In George Russell's "Lydian Chromatic" you get this same scale sound by playing the "Lydian Augmented" scale built on the THIRD of the Dominant 7th chord (in other words, play an E Lydian Augmented on your C7). It gives you the same pitches as the "Altered Dominant Scale". The thinking is a bit more focused with the Russell- via modern stuff. I feel. BTW, I find the Lydian Chromatic way of looking at things extremely useful, particularly when looking at chord voicings. Most extended chords can be boiled down to some kind of Ma7 chord over a bass note. Sometimes the chord is a Ma7b5, sometimes a Ma7#5, sometimes a Ma7, but it can almost always be seen as some kind of Ma7. Once you figure out what chord you're really dealing with, the Lydian Chromatic thing becomes really easy. It also gives you a way to pivot into a whole bunch of nice substitutions. Without referencing the LCC it's a very good idea to look at the ways that the various chord types can be voiced as one of the maj7 family of chords.
1 b3 5 7
1 3 b5 7 1 3 #5 7
1 b3 b5 7 1 b3 #5 7 1 4 5 7
All of these intervallic structures share the characteristic of the Maj 7th interval, which becomes a min 2nd interval. Players like Bill Evans and writers like Oliver Nelson and Gil Evans owe their style in no small way to voicings that lots of tension in them often achieved by selecting chords that have min 2nds on the inside voices and or maj7 intervals somewhere in the chord. Just imagine how any one of those maj7-type chords would function with a different note in the bass. CHECK IT OUT: Cmaj7/Db: sort of Dbdim-ish but not a commonly used sound Cmaj7/D: D13sus4 Cmaj7/Eb: sort of Eb7#5(b9,13)-ish Cmaj7/E: just an inversion of Cmaj7 Cmaj7/F: Fmaj7(9,#11)(no3rd) Cmaj7/F#: D7(11,13) Cmaj7/G: just an inversion of Cmaj7 Cmaj7/Ab: Abmaj7#5#9 Cmaj7/A: Am9 Cmaj7/Bb: Bb9(b9,13)-ish Cmaj7/B: just an inversion of Cmaj7 or B7sus4(b9,b13) Cm(maj7)/Db: Cm(maj7)/D: D13sus4b9 Cm(maj7)/E: Cmaj7#9/E Here are some interesting Triad-Pairs Over C7 use C Maj triad - C, E, G- and Bb Aug triad -Bb, D, F#- for a sound that is whole-tonish... Over C7 use F# Maj triad -F#, Bb, C#- and E Aug triad -E, G#, C- for an altered/tri-tone sound. Over C7, (normal dominant or altered), use Db- triad and D Aug triad Over Dmin7b5 use Bb Maj triad and Ab Aug triad Over CminMaj7 use F Maj triad and Eb Aug triad. How to Memorize Tunes- by Bill Mithoefer A lot of these are stolen from different people who gave me tips over the years. I will credit Hal Stein, Jerry Bergonzi, Kenny Dorham, Sonny Rollins, Sonny Simmons and Hafez Modirzadeh. They are all spun through my own twisted system. 1) Rewrite the tune, laid out on the page, in 4-bar sections. This might seem trivial to some, but in my mind, it is very helpful, as it makes it easier to visualize the tune in blocks. (2) If you're having even remote troubles with the changes, simplify, simplify, simplify. (3) The first step is to determine the form, is it a 12-bar blues or any of the many variations of this form?? (Cycle blues, minor blues, major blues, etc.) Is it a typical tin pan alley 32-bar AABA, like "I Got Rhythm?" If so, it's as simple as the blues, as you really only have 2 8-bar sections to memorize. Is it modal? Again, this might make it simple, particularly if the quality of the chords remains the same. Some of Wayne Shorter's tunes, such as "House of Jade," can seem quite complex until you recognize a modal slant to them. Similarly, a composer like Thelonius Monk may not have the tonic chord appear until half way through the A-section, or even the end of the tune. Often, recognizing the tonic will make the harmony make sense. Obviously, there are many forms, ABAA', etc. What I'm suggesting is that you first familiarize yourself with the structure of the tune (the "big picture") and figure out how to break it down into 4-bar phrases if possible. Some tunes might need 2 and 8-bar phrases. (4) Now, if like myself, you play a single-line instrument, such as the saxophone, you will want to find ways to hear the harmony. I'm a big fan of using numbers for the chords, but I've met people who use moveable solfege (Do-Re-Mi,) fixed solfege (like the French, Do = C, Mi = D, etc.) and even the Hindi Saregam system (see W.A. Mathieu, "Harmonic Experience") (5) I'm assuming that you've learned the melody fairly well. To start, the simplest thing to do might be to just play the root of each chord. Now, try playing (singing) the root and the third, and successively adding the fifth, seventh, etc. This step can be done in many different ways depending on your personal preference. You might play 1-2-3-5 of major and dominant chords, 1-b3-4-5 on the minor, 1-b2-3-5 on dominant (b9) chords and 1-b3-4-b5 on minor 7 (b5) chords. (I credit this helpful approach to Jerry Bergonzi.) 6. This is a continuation of the last paragraph. Just different single-note approaches to the changes. Hafez Modirzadeh taught me Sonny Rollins and Sonny Simmons old method of learning changes, which was to run down the basic triads in quarter note triplets through the harmony of a tune. This like the preceding approach can be extended in several ways, through variation of the order of notes and, on a tune with 2 to 4 measures of, say DMaj, one could alternate with either AbMaj (tri-tone) or maybe use the EMaj, F#Maj or BMaj once you have the changes fairly "wired." 7. Try to run a guide-tone line through the tune. As I learned, the typical guide tone will either start on the third or the seventh and you try and move chromatically or in major sevenths depending on how far the tune travels harmonically. 8. An example of this with an elegant song form such as "Ladybird:" Cmaj /Cmaj /F- /Bb7 / Cmaj /Cmaj /Bb- /Eb7 / AbMaj /AbMaj /A- /D7 / D- /G7 /CmajEbMaj /AbMaj DbMaj/ It's 16-bars, and it easily divides into fairly symmetric 4-bar sections. One could probably get in some arguments about how to think about the form, but the main thing is to own your particular method. I personally think about it as AA'BC. Each section being only 4 bars long instead of the normal 8, but you could think about it as AB in 2 8-bar phrases, or a couple of other ways. A guide-tone line starting on the third would go E/E/Eb/D E/E/Ab/G G/G/G/F# F/F/EEb/CC Because of the turnaround, a smoother line results from using the tonic of the EbMaj chord towards the end. In any event this can be repeated starting on B, the 7th of the C chord B/B/A/Ab, etc. etc. 9. There are probably an infinite number of ways to "play through" the changes, which will force you to hear them. It's also important to hear how they relate to the melody of a tune, and another approach is to play a phrase of the melody, and then respond with the next couple of chord changes, articulated in a melodic fashion. Really, the important thing is to figure out what works for YOU, which will probably change over time. The Sonny Rollins/Sonny Simmons approach can be heard on "Sonny Rollins and the Contemporary Leaders," on an alternate take of "How High The Moon" when someone left the tape rolling during a run-through. 10. Think about the changes visually in your head or recite them while trying to hear them in your head. I use "Ladybird" as an example, as you have a number of harmonic moments that happen in any number of other tunes. The first change goes up a fourth (or down a fifth,) to a minor chord. Listen to the sound. We now have a II-V in Eb, but go back to the CMaj. You then go down a Maj. 2nd to a II-V in Ab. The AbMaj moves up a 1/2 step to an A minor, which becomes a II-V. Now the V chord changes quality to a minor chord, with the D7 becoming a D- which makes a II-V with the G7 giving us a full cadence to the CMaj, which begins a turnaround (up a minor third, up a 4th, up a 4th.) The final DbMaj drops down chromatically to the CMaj. These are all very distinctive and easy to hear changes. 11. In a more diatonically oriented tune, for me personally, I find chord charts harder to memorize. For approaching these types of tunes, just using some basic harmonic ideas can be very helpful. Any seventh chord that does not contain the (4) or the (7) of the parent key, is a tonic chord. In G Maj, you have (1-3-5-7) (G-B-D-F#), GMaj7, the I chord, (3-5-7-2)(B-D-F#-A), B-7, the iii chord, and (6-8-3-5) (E-G-B-D), E-7, the vi chord. Any chord containing the (4) is a subdominant chord. So in GMaj, you have (2-4-6-8), (A-C-E-G), A-7, the ii chord, and (4-6-8-3), CMaj7, the IV chord. The dominant chords contain the (4) and the (7), which produce the tension of the unique tri-tone present in said major key creating a dominant tonality. So in GMaj, you have (5-7-2-4)(D-F#-A-C), D7, the V chord and (7-2-4-6) (F#-A-C-E,) F#-7b5, the vii chord. If you work your way through a diatonic tune such as "There Will Never Be Another You," (not my favorite tune, but it will have to do until the real thing comes along) playing the chords from the tonal center, that is focusing on playing them from the (1) or the (7) in the tune, you can pretty quickly train your ear to hear how the harmony of these types of tunes deviates from the tonal center of the song. I suggest that with many of these types of tunes, you can train your ear to work through the tune much faster than you should waste the time of memorizing the changes. 12. In the final analysis, one wants to eventually try and just "know" the tune without even thinking about the changes. You might try learning guitar or another chordal instrument, as for myself personally, despite years of struggling with the piano, I've always been able to find my way around a guitar a lot easier, even though most music educators seem to like the piano because of its visual aspect. I prefer the guitar because it's easier to forget the notes and simply focus on the sound. But finally you just have to use a large multiplicity of approaches and choose whichever one(s) work for you "in the moment." Sometimes the bright moments will only happen when you feel like you're falling through some harmonic elevator shaft. Cheers, Billy Varying the Melodic Rhythm- by Dan Gaynor I've been practicing over here. I'm taking a melody (with no accompaniment) and playing it over and over with phrasing variations, taking care not to repeat myself. I'll delay the melody and catch up later or add passing tones and various things. After a certain point I found it convenient to try rhythmic variations on the melody I was trying. I'd play the entire melody as triplets or sixteenths and keep the form by starting in the right place (accounting for new rests). Then I tried playing the whole thing an eighth note forward or backward from the original. Obviously this applies more to tunes with a lot of rhythm, as opposed to, say, All the Things You Are. I'd imagine one would have a lot of fun with Oleo, Moose the Mooche and Donna Lee, this way. In fact, on Lee Konitz and Warne Marsh, when they play Donna Lee, Lee is a quarter note away from Warne, so I'm sure they practiced this sort of thing. Regardless, finding personal ways to phrase melodies is practically synonymous with being an artistic improviser, so anything you can do to stretch your mind around how should be helpful.  
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