All of Me - A7 on measure #28 (9th?)

[Mick-7]

The 7b9 sound is often articulated as a dim7 arpeggio in lines. Mixob9b13* scalar lines are also common. ... *I hate this scale name but people get all hoity toity about Phrygian Dominant lol.

Are you referring to Harmonic minor or ?? For example, D hm over A7.

[Christian Miller]

I would've thought E13 can't have A in it. I propose to call that E mixolydian

*puts on pedant’s hat*
Proposal rejected! :-)

It’s an E13 chord because of the way it is ordered - in thirds. The A is usually considered an ‘avoid note’ and therefore avoided in actual chord voicings drawn for these notes*. For solo lines it’s perfectly fine.

The E mixolydian scale or as I prefer to call it, the dominant scale (I ain’t calling nothing no Greek lol), is a stepwise ordering of the same pitch set.

(Don’t ask me what I’d call an ordering in any other interval because I have literally no idea.)

For me there’s value in distinguishing the two things.

*Takes off the pedant’s hat*
The actual reason I included the A is to make clear that it isn’t a E13#11 sound. Which you could also use, perhaps!

Anyway, I briefly discuss this at 6:08 onwards and give some examples

* except for Brad Mehldau and Bill Frisell


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[Christian Miller]

Are you referring to Harmonic minor or ?? For example, D hm over A7.

Yeah, but I tend to avoid saying harmonic minor because the scale is based on the Vth. You use it differently from harmonic minor, and you want to bring out different notes.

In the same way as dominant/mixo scale is mode V of major/ionian but there’s value in dealing with the same pitches from the dominant/V for playing bop etc. it’s easier to get the right harmonic/rhythmic emphasis for lines working off the 5th.

There’s not a good name for the harmonic minor equivalent. Mixo b9b13 is horrid (but standard for Berklee I think), Phrygian dominant is better imo (but jazz geeks turn their nose up at it.)

Especially if you add in the #9 (from natural minor) you get a very useful jazz scale. Reg characterised that as a sort of ‘proto altered scale’ which I like. It also emerges from Barry Harris minor ii V I line construction and can be seen in many tunes and solos.

I’d like to call it the minor dominant but I don’t think people would know what I was on about.

I mean even less than normal.


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[Mick-7]

Harmonic Minor (or it's modes) is not even on Steve Swallow's scale list:

[pamosmusic]

The E mixolydian scale or as I prefer to call it, the dominant scale (I ain’t calling nothing no Greek lol), is a stepwise ordering of the same pitch set.

… says the guy who just used the term “mixob9b13”

[alez]

*puts on pedant’s hat*
Proposal rejected! :-)
[...]

Ha ha, I was sure you had your reasons. But I don't think many would agree that E13 still has an A in it. After all, it's (mostly) standard notation, like for example NRB's:



Indeed notation software won't include an A in their output if you input E13.

The actual reason I included the A is to make clear that it isn’t a E13#11 sound. Which you could also use, perhaps!

Anyway, I briefly discuss this at 6:08 onwards and give some examples

Point taken re. #11 and I really enjoyed the video and this 4-fold connection between chord qualities, thanks a lot.

[...]
I’d like to call it the minor dominant but I don’t think people would know what I was on about.

I mean even less than normal.

I totally don't understand what's wrong with "5th mode of harmonic minor".

[Christian Miller]

… says the guy who just used the term “mixob9b13”

That’s not Greek that’s Berklee-ese

I don’t hear no Plato arguing to ban no mixob9b13 from the plebs*

I will accept dominant b9 b13 may be a pretty good name because at least it goes with the chord symbol.

*due to the intense sense of problematic cultural stereotyping it promotes among the lower orders


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[Christian Miller]

Ha ha, I was sure you had your reasons. But I don't think many would agree that E13 still has an A in it. After all, it's (mostly) standard notation, like for example NRB's:



Indeed notation software won't include an A in their output if you input E13.

It’s the nanny state Alez! They’re censoring my rubbish voicings.

If you don’t include an A it messes up the third structure. Besides Wes plays that arp all the time.

Point taken re. #11 and I really enjoyed the video and this 4-fold connection between chord qualities, thanks a lot.

Thanks

I totally don't understand what's wrong with "5th mode of harmonic minor".

It’s five words. Needs a short name that people actually understand.


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[alez]

You all just dislike adopting anything that comes from Berklee Seriously though, I think the way harmony is taught there may have changed significantly over the years. I have a copy of what I believe to be their standard book for this stuff at present, which came out a few years ago only, and I like it very much, maybe the things you don't like have been changing over the years and are no longer there. (It's a new text, not just the latest edition of an older one.)

I don’t hear no Plato arguing to ban no mixob9b13 from the plebs*

[Christian Miller]

Harmonic Minor (or it's modes) is not even on Steve Swallow's scale list:

OK



(some stuff I put down for a video, I don't just transcribe stuff to make a point on JGO.)

(yet)

Bird liked this sound a lot.

TBF, I think Steve Swallow's (and for that matter Berklee in the 70s) main focus in on post-modal music anyway, they'd moved on from bop. HM stuff is rarer in that music.

But it's all over older jazz like... well, All of Me.

[Mick-7]

o.k., but do we know that he was thinking in terms of a scale there vs. playing b9ths over the Am7b5/D7 chords? - it's perhaps the most common altered tone for these chords.

[pamosmusic]

o.k., but do we know that he was thinking in terms of a scale there vs. playing b9ths over the Am7b5/D7 chords? - it's perhaps the most common altered tone for these chords.

Yes, we do.

“I used fifth mode of harmonic minor on Billie’s Bounce”

- Charlie Parker

[Mick-7]

ok P. but call me skeptical, I'd like to see the source of that quote.

[pamosmusic]

ok P. but call me skeptical, I'd like to see the source of that quote.

Man you can’t live your life that way

[Christian Miller]

You all just dislike adopting anything that comes from Berklee

Hey, you take take back! Some of my best friends are Berklee graduates!

I'll use the Berklee terms if I know what they are because that's lingua franca. I will even say mixolydian scale lol. It's important for me to be understood, believe it or not.

OTOH the Berklee chord scale type syllabus is its own thing. It's a way of doing things. It sounds a certain way. There's a distinct Berklee way of playing jazz. It's a style.

It doesn't encapsulate the way everyone played/plays jazz, and I find the exceptions interesting. The music itself and its history is very rich, much richer than a systematic harmony syllabus could ever hope to be. But such things are not without value.

The problem is when people think this stuff is more important than it is.

Seriously though, I think the way harmony is taught there may have changed significantly over the years. I have a copy of what I believe to be their standard book for this stuff at present, which came out a few years ago only, and I like it very much, maybe the things you don't like have been changing over the years and are no longer there. (It's a new text, not just the latest edition of an older one.)

It's likely.

One thing, as I understand it, that has changed is in the 70s Berklee was not in the business of teaching jazz. It was in the business of expanding musician's musical horizons and helping them make professional connections as a "finishing school" as jimmy blue note put it, and its focus was on the contemporary jazz of the time (i.e. fusion, post modal etc). The OG Real Book gives a good picture of that. It's full of Chick Corea, Keith Jarrett, Denny Zeitlin, stuff like that. As much of that as standards. The harmonic approach, chord scale theory, all that stuff needs to understood in this context.

(The problem is a lot of that stuff got shoehorned into the function of being a 'how to jazz' method via various popular methods and books. It's not 'how to jazz' it's 'how to stack notes on chords'.)

These days, as I understand it, Berklee is very much in the business of teaching jazz to students who need it and have signed up for it. The world has changed,. Players no longer get early training on the bandstand, they no longer pick up straight ahead jazz via the community and informal aural learning like Reg did, for instance. They have to be taught it. It would be pretentious of me to say I know much about the syllabus for that. But transcription is a BIG part of it for sure.

[pamosmusic]

Hey, you take take back! Some of my best friends are Berklee graduates!

I'll use the Berklee terms if I know what they are because that's lingua franca. I will even say mixolydian scale lol. It's important for me to be understood, believe it or not.

OTOH the Berklee chord scale type syllabus is its own thing. It's a way of doing things. It sounds a certain way. There's a distinct Berklee way of playing jazz. It's a style.

It doesn't encapsulate the way everyone played/plays jazz, and I find the exceptions interesting. The music itself and its history is very rich, much richer than a systematic harmony syllabus could ever hope to be. But such things are not without value.

The problem is when people think this stuff is more important than it is.

Yeah these are useful points. I usually tell students that theory is not the knowledge in the books, but it is the Dewey decimal system.

Maybe Chicago Manual or AP (or whatever the heck you Brits use) is a better analogy.

Lots of guidelines for how to communicate what you know, none of which are terribly important so long as everyone’s using the same ones

[Christian Miller]

o.k., but do we know that he was thinking in terms of a scale there vs. playing b9ths over the Am7b5/D7 chords? - it's perhaps the most common altered tone for these chords.

Potayto potahto? BTW, there's a clear b13 there too, in case you missed it.

Yes, we do.

“I used fifth mode of harmonic minor on Billie’s Bounce”

- Charlie Parker

Sounds legit!

In seriousness that's a profound point about musical analysis. No of course not, and anyone claiming they know what Bird was thinking when he played x is probably selling something. (I mean, I'm selling something, but I'm bad at it.)

So in each of those examples excepting a couple of chromatic lower neighbours we do kind of have most if not all of the notes of the G harmonic minor scale in each case. Occam's razor would suggest the simplest explanation is most likely to be the case, so it seems compelling to me that it's harmonic minor.

Furthermore, I would say that there are more obvious examples of Bud and Bird - and other bop era musicians - literally playing a straight harmonic minor scale through those chords, so it seems reasonable to assume they had that sound in mind. These scales have been around for hundreds of years, and whatever you call them*, they are part of the DNA or Western harmony, which is one of the constituent elements of jazz.

OTOH I doubt he was thinking literally "mode V harmonic minor". I don't think they had that sort of terminology back then. He would have known what a harmonic minor was though. He played scales, etudes etc. That terminology has been around since the C19. Modes of the melodic minor? Not so much.

The man who probably checked out as much Bird as anyone alive or dead, Barry Harris, talked about "running the F7 scale to the third of D7", which gives you same notes with the right harmonic emphasis. Again, I doubt Bird had that concept. It's an analysis.

*this may be a bit of a rabbit hole. Did Bach have the term 'harmonic minor?'

[pamosmusic]

I’ve also read numerous times (accurate, I’m not sure) that Bird played and listened to a good bit of Bach, in which case those pitches in a minor cadence would’ve been his vibe for sure, regardless of what he called them.

[pamosmusic]

*this may be a bit of a rabbit hole. Did Bach have the term 'harmonic minor?'. I honestly don't know. When I ask the nerds they start talking about hexachordal solfege and my head implodes. I think.. maybe not?

Oops. Jinx.

[Christian Miller]

I’ve also read numerous times (accurate, I’m not sure) that Bird played and listened to a good bit of Bach, in which case those pitches in a minor cadence would’ve been his vibe for sure, regardless of what he called them.

It sounds like he did to me. Many melodic devices, especially in the minor key, are reminiscent of Bach. They may have been semi quotes, for all I know.

And then there's stuff like this that he was checking out:

[Mick-7]

"BTW, there's a clear b13 there too, in case you missed it."

Played over the IIm7b5 chord (b9th), not the V7 chord. This is, the b9th of the IIm7 chord = b13th of the V7 chord. Like I said, b9th is commonplace over those chords and it would come to mind without reference to any particular scale.

And I've never seen an interview with Bird in which he discussed music theory.

"this may be a bit of a rabbit hole. Did Bach have the term 'harmonic minor?"

I seem to recall a discussion here re: the ascending/descending melodic minor scale that led down such a rabbit hole - don't think we ever saw, let alone caught, a rabbit either.

[Bobby Timmons]

You guys are goin to town with the pedantry.

[Christian Miller]

"BTW, there's a clear b13 there too, in case you missed it."

Played over the IIm7b5 chord (b9th), not the V7 chord. This is, the b9th of the IIm7 chord = b13th of the V7 chord. Like I said, b9th is commonplace over those chords and it would come to mind without reference to any particular scale.

Ah yeah fair, so that's my Barry thing coming in, I basically ignore the II chord as just a suspension of V. But you can look on it as two separate scales on roots A and D instead of one on D if you find that easier. Some people do that. I personally don't.

I put the A-7b5 here is to indicate the context of a minor II-V-I to G- more than 'he's playing over these chords'. Maybe I should just lose the A-7b5 for the video, to make it clearer.

b9 on IIm7b5 is considered a bit of 'funny one' in CST FWIW (probs not much.)

But anyway, that's just what I think from listening to Bird and Bud play over those chords and it jumped out at me right away back in 2011 or whenever I started doing it in anger. Boom, harmonic minor.

And I've never seen an interview with Bird in which he discussed music theory.

No never specifically. And the terms are actually just labels. For scales, that we know he practiced. He played them though, as did Prez.

You can call it Basil the Friendly Octopus if you like, but you won't necessarily be clear to other people. Harmonic minor is understood by most musicians. And I do get the feeling Parker would have known what one is in fact.

I seem to recall a discussion here re: the ascending/descending melodic minor scale that led down such a rabbit hole - don't think we ever saw, let alone caught, a rabbit either.

Yeah I'm not quite sure what people were so exercised about. It's mainstream music theory stuff that can be readily understood by looking at any undergrad level classical theory textbook if interested. Despite the fact that the melodic minor in classical music is most often practiced with the descending natural minor, it doesn't mean that's the way it always is in actual classical music. Bach is quite a well known example.

(Of course in jazz improv it is used totally differently.)

In Bach's time, in so much as I understand it, they would simply see all of this stuff as chromatic alterations of the prevailing mode. But the way they conceptualised these things is generally .... a bit weird?

[pauln]

Did Bach have the term 'harmonic minor?'

I bet he didn't know what the triangle was supposed to mean

[Bop Head]

I bet he didn't know what the triangle was supposed to mean

No one knew before Trane.