funkle

[quote name='bilbo230763' post='562834' date='Aug 7 2009, 03:21 PM']But, as I said, there is no substitute for the grind.[/quote] Amen to that. I'm working through Chord Studies for Electric Bass, by Rich Appleman and Joseph Viola. (http://www.berkleepress.com/catalog/product?product_id=11172). It's what Jeff Berlin was having me start when I was at his school. Every single exercise to be done in all 12 keys. I'm only just today moved to Bb (having done C, F, and D). I am improving, as well as speeding up, and certainly my fretboard knowledge is better, but I'm humbled at the thought of how far there is yet to go (11 more keys!). One day, I will look back and be delighted I'm done with it. But each individual exercise, after being done in all 12 keys for a couple of days, is a little mini-victory as it is completed. Also working on heads of tunes, ii-V7-I exercises (all 12 keys), and playing arpeggios of jazz tunes (in all inversions). It's a lot of work. Results come only very slowly. Jeff used to say 'If you're happy taking a baby step every day, then you've already won'. Basically, persistence will eventually see you right. Nice to see others are also grinding away! All the best, Pete

you're a gent!

any contact details, gents?

subscribed!

I should add here - I have all of Carol Kaye's books, and her DVD on playing jazz too. They are good, but having a better understanding of harmony helps a lot, and I can understand better what Carol means now when I have some different ways of framing it. That said, I can't quite work out why Abmaj (Ab C Eb G) over G7#5#9 (G B D# F A#) works. I'm just on the way out the door to a wedding, so I'll think more on it later. I suspect it is related to the tensions available to both G7#5#9 and Abmaj. Pete

Thanks guys, glad to be of some help. Phil, there are tons of other subs out there based on altering dom 7th chords - e.g. G7 could be thought of as G7b9, then play Ab dim over the top of that. All of the notes are the same; it's a wonderful sub on the way to a resolution (which is what V7 chords usually do). [G7b9 implies minor key harmony though, so you may wish to use your ears to see if it fits your situation. But it's a wonderful sound to my ears.] Neither Carol nor Jeff talked to me about modes. I might ask Jeff that question specifically. But he always emphasised to me it was about chords. Now, as to what chords Jeff is substituting......that's a whole different story. He takes that to a whole other level, and the speed.... As a very simple example (shows you how no0bie I am, relatively), one of my new things I love doing to ii - V's is something I picked up from transcribing one of Jeff's solos. Instead of playing ii - V7, I've started to do IV - V7 instead. Both are strong resolutions, but subbing IV for ii sounds absolutely beautiful to me. Really really simple, but just wonderful. Give it a whirl and let me know what you think. Bilbo, I'm not surprised that there's nothing here that's new - you've been playing a good long time, it's just us newbies to the game who still have to get lot of this down. But I agree having a label for something makes it easier to think about. For me, that's kind of where Carol Kaye lacked a little - she's a player, absolutely no doubt, and she speaks the language of jazz. But sometimes I feel it's hard to understand all of what she says - once I filled in some more theory/written harmony at Jeff's school, my understanding opened up a great deal. Jeff may say it with fancier terminology, but essentially Jeff and Carol say many of the same things. Although Jeff plays at a much higher level, and probably has more to say in the longer run than Carol. But without Carol, I wouldn't have known to go hunting for Jeff.... Pete

The 'Theory and Technique' forum is a great place to hang out these days..... it's about the only forum I'm now hitting regularly! ^_^

I have taken lessons personally with both Carol Kaye and Jeff Berlin, and as you might expect I subscribe to their approaches. ...Which are both based on heavy use of chord tones. Both of them have emphasised this hugely to me. My understanding has now progressed to the point where I look at a scale, work out how to harmonise it, and from that understand what the basic chord tones and chord tensions are, rather than viewing the scale in a straight 'linear' fashion. It's a lot easier, I think, to look at a C maj chord and then think of the possible tensions (9, #11, 13) than always going 'C Ionian, C lydian' depending on what type of C maj chord is written. Although it's important to understand how the scale is constructed and to understand the basis of different scales, I find harmonising scales and working out the tensions for each chord to be more useful than playing a straight scale. It's not that scales aren't important - they are - it's just that viewing them as chords + available tensions is more useful (for me) than looking at them in a linear 'scalar' fashion. It's all the same notes, after all. But hey, I'm absolutely guaranteed to be biased, given who I've studied with. Also, it's one thing to have the theoretical understanding; it's quite another to have practiced it all enough to have it under the fingers. I am a long way from competence yet... __________________________________________________________ BTW, to the poster who says they look at A min and think of E min and C maj - that is an example of what is called a 'primary subordinate substitute'. For a major scale, the primary subordinate subs looks like this: I - iii - vi ( Cmaj7 - Em7 - Am7) IV - vii - ii (Fmaj7 - Am7 - Dm7) V7 - viib5 - ii (G7 - Bm7b5 - Dm7) The 'primary chords' are I, IV, and V7; the 'subordinate chords' are everything else. It is of note that IV - vii - ii here could simply be thought of as I - iii - vi in a different key (F instead of C). That means I and IV can be thought of as always having the same primary subordinate subs, i.e. you could always treat a maj chord as a 'I'. So C maj will always have E min and A min as its primary subordinate subs, whether it functions as a I or a IV. This assumes that you are playing in major scale harmony, though. My harmony teacher at Jeff's school said having these things under your fingers is one of the first steps to opening up your improvisational abilities when looking at chords. He was no small shakes himself at playing.... I'm getting through root, 1st, and 2nd inversions of the primary subordinate subs in all keys for the last month or so. It's slow. I'll add the 3rd inversion in a couple of weeks, in addition to the other stuff I'm doing. I have noted some small differences already. Pete