Getting started with modal Jazz

[Maaj12]

Spring is here and I am looking to pick up my guitar again.

What would peoples advise be on getting started with modal Jazz. Best books, courses, et cetera

Am currently listening to horn players like Nat Birchall and Matthew Halsall, are there any guitar players of note in this style of jazz I should be listening too?

[Jazzjourney4Eva]

John Coltrane Omnibook.

Mile Davis Omnibook.

John McLaughlin - “This is the way I do it”.

[kris]

Look for modal jazz standards like So What or Impressions.
Guitarists play these tunes... check on youtube.

[Jazzjourney4Eva]

John McLaughlin “After The Rain”,

and really anything from Big John.

[kris]

[kris]

[Christian Miller]

Ah Wes and his extended arps. It’s a great way in to get away from stepwise noodling

just make sure you play them with three fingers and nice and diagonal across the fretboard for maximum juice!

[ragman1]

Spring is here and I am looking to pick up my guitar again.

You only play your your guitar when the sun shines? Huh, hardly dedication!

How to Play Modal Jazz - Miles Davis Solo on So What - Jazzadvice

[Litterick]

Hibernation is a valid response to winter.

[kris]

[BWV]

Its worth listening to Indian music as its all modal, very rarely, if ever, strays outside the scale notes and does not rely on arpeggios

Here is 45 minutes of nothing but the Dorian mode. The interesting thing is the form of the raag also specifies specific scale degrees to emphasize - in this case its the 2nd and 5th, and characteristic phrases that distinguish it from other raags that use the same scale

While I know they take away your jazz guitarist card if you bend a note that is a primary tool here as well

[Maaj12]

Thanks all for suggestions

Had never heard GG and Wes over So What, thanks for that Kris.

@Ragman1: During the darker months my musical taste gravite to more electronic music, so I play around with synthesisers and that kind of thing.
The trouble is I start to get good at one thing and make some progress, then 6 months later I am on to something else.

[ragman1]

@Ragman1: During the darker months my musical taste gravite to more electronic music, so I play around with synthesisers and that kind of thing.
The trouble is I start to get good at one thing and make some progress, then 6 months later I am on to something else.

Too bad :-)

[AaronMColeman]

Thanks all for suggestions

Had never heard GG and Wes over So What, thanks for that Kris.

@Ragman1: During the darker months my musical taste gravite to more electronic music, so I play around with synthesisers and that kind of thing.
The trouble is I start to get good at one thing and make some progress, then 6 months later I am on to something else.

Musically, I've always been a guitar player. But I had a dozen other hobbies and 15 guitars for various genre and bands, and I did a lot of recording and producing over the years. I've abandoned all hobbies and only play one guitar now. Shockingly, I'm getting better at Jazz Guitar now...maybe focusing works!

[st.bede]

Thanks all for suggestions

Had never heard GG and Wes over So What, thanks for that Kris.

@Ragman1: During the darker months my musical taste gravite to more electronic music, so I play around with synthesisers and that kind of thing.
The trouble is I start to get good at one thing and make some progress, then 6 months later I am on to something else.

That is funny because that has been kinda my life. If I am not working on guitar, I am working on EDM-ish type things. However, I tend to not bounce around as much. Last time I work on the electronic type stuff was during the covid shut down. Everyday I look at my Octatrack and feel a little guilty. I do miss working on that stuff but I have to get my jazz skills more solid before I can make time for other stuff.

[Lionelsax]

I would say two words : "quartal chords"

[DonEsteban]

While I know they take away your jazz guitarist card if you bend a note that is a primary tool here as well

LOL

[Tal_175]

Modal jazz is significantly more difficult than straight ahead jazz, IMO. But that also makes it a great training platform for straight ahead jazz.

Say in the case of So What, you have to comp 16 bars of minor (actually 24 bars if you consider the last 8 bars going back to top) without sounding repetitive. It's also harder to know where you're in the form or just rely on your ears to find where you are when it's just static harmony.

You also have to have sufficiently rich set of language and ideas to play over static harmony for several choruses when you solo.

When the chord changes are more complex (as in bebop), you can sound good by playing simple ideas as your lines are heard against changing harmony. It's also easier to come up with things to say as you can outline chords or guide tones etc. Moreover, it's easier to rely on your ears to tell you where you are in the form when you lose the pulse. When you're comping, you can get away with more limited chordal and rhythmic language etc.

[rpjazzguitar]

Record a D drone. Get it in your head as the tonic. Think all white keys on a piano. Use just those notes to start. D dorian. The F note makes it minor. The B and C distinguish it from other minor scales, natural, harmonic and melodic (phrygian is different). Make a melody using whatever methods you usually use. You might notice that there are a bunch of commonplace triads within the all-white-keys D dorian scale and you could move from one to another if you can't think of anything better.

To comp, try this. Play E A D xx223x. Then move each note to the next note in the D dorian scale (all white keys) on the same string. So, the next one is xx345x, then xx556x and so on. Work out all 7, which requires 3 different shapes. (Advanced: move the note from the D string to the note an octave higher on the E string). Then comp by moving from one to another of those, making a simple melodic statement with the highest note in each voicing.

Then, record an E drone and do the same thing, but this time with E in your head as the tonic. This should produce a characteristic sound in flamenco.

Then F (you'll hear a lydian sound), G (mixolydian), A (aeolian) and finally B, which is harder to hear as a tonic.

Tip: don't forget the drone, it's essential.

[Tal_175]

I think you can work on language for pretty much any harmonic situation over a minor chord.
Say over D min:
- Dorian. As tonic minor.
- Dominant family: G7, Dmin, Bmin7b5, Fmaj#11. These can all be used interchangeably for phrase ideas over Dmin (or any of the other chords in the family).
- Melodic minor. Also as tonic minor
- Major family: Fmaj, Amin7, Dmin7.
- Altered dominant family: G7#11, C#Alt, D melodic minor, Fmaj#5, Bmin7b5#9 etc. These can all be used interchangeably to create lines for Dmin as well as other chords in the family.
- D minor and G minor blues scales.

For comping, diatonic quartal voicings that rpjazzguitar suggested is a good idea. You can also use minor turnarounds and secondary dominants. Or any of the members of the two families above. Your minor comping language so to speak.

[Jazzjourney4Eva]

Modal jazz is significantly more difficult than straight ahead jazz, IMO.

Disagree. Everything about that statement is counterintuitive.

(1) Modal tune forms are usually simpler, and (2) the harmonic rhythms are slower and hence likewise - simpler.


If it's difficult for players to improvise melodies over slow moving and simple harmony (Mi7), how "easy" is it going to be to play over faster harmonic rhythms chock full of direct modulations - and - frequently at higher tempos?

There were reasons Bebop was used for knocking "the swing boys" off the bandstand, there are reasons jazz players prefer to "stretch out" with post-bop and its descendants, and there are reasons rockers can play two chord jams all night.

[Tal_175]

Disagree. Everything about that statement is counterintuitive.

(1) Modal tune forms are usually simpler, and (2) the harmonic rhythms are slower and hence likewise - simpler.


If it's difficult for players to improvise melodies over slow moving and simple harmony (Mi7), how "easy" is it going to be to play over faster harmonic rhythms chock full of direct modulations - and - frequently at higher tempos?

There were reasons Bebop was used for knocking "the swing boys" off the bandstand, there are reasons jazz players prefer to "stretch out" with post-bop and its descendants, and there are reasons rockers can play two chord jams all night.

If by improvisation we mean noodling with a scale that doesn't clash with any of the changes, then yes modal jazz is easier.
But if by improvisation we mean musical application of a language that does at least some justice to the jazz tradition, then modal jazz is a harder style to master in my experience for the reasons I outlined in the last paragraph of my post (and the second).

[mr. beaumont]

Yes, It's hard to say something worthwhile chorus after chorus on a simple modal tune. That can be true for a functional tune, too, I suppose.

But not all modal tunes are "So What" and "Impressions." Modal harmony influenced a lot of post bop stuff, writers like Hancock, Shorter, Tony Williams...check out his composition "Pee Wee" and tell me that's easy!

[Reg]

Do you understand how Modal Music works. How to use functional concepts in modal contexts.

Do you understand characteristic notes etc...

[Jazzjourney4Eva]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. One man's noodling is another man's historically artistic masterwork.

Jazz educator/trainer after jazz educator/trainer, from informal to very formal (including artists doing a little "education" on the side), across multiple continents and decades, start improv students out with fewer - as opposed to more - changes and key centers.

To think that humans can handle more of a thing as opposed to less of that same thing when learning it for the first time is borne out neither by experience nor common sense.