JazzGuitarLessons.net Improve your jazz guitar playing with a real teacher. Welcome to podcast 27 on Perspective.
Perspective seems to be a recurring theme throughout my own jazz education. Sometimes it can be called lateral thinking, and it's something that Twitter I was taking lessons from Mike or Jess Williams or other teachers such as Gary Schwartz, and even saxophone players like German, French, Lozano, etc. in Montreal. This is a thing that seems is the most recurring theme because it's so important.
Of course, one of the things that happened in one of my first lessons with Mike Barone, who wrote the great book Jazz Guitar Elements, that you can get on jazz Guitar store and jazz guitar lessons. And then, of course, he showed me his tuner and he held it sideways and said, you know, this is a tuner.
You still know it's a tuner. And he turned it sideways and said, look at this from this angle. If I showed you only this, you would not necessarily know it's a tuner, but it is still a tuner, etc.. And Mike told me that this is one of the first things that make good. Derek told him when he took lessons from me, and I think he probably took only one lesson or something, but that's the idea, is the more ways you can see one thing musically especially and in life also, the more powerful you are at expressing your own ideas.
So of course, when I'm singing about perspectives that if a beginner's ear would listen to a John Coltrane solo, it seems like a million different things, right? But in fact it's only one. It would be like you're walking in a forest and you see one tree after another, tree after another tree, and then you can't really match the forest, which will of course, we'll get to that later.
So often we look at one, we're looking at one thing and then. All right, all right, it seems like a few different things. I'll give you, for example, let's take the C major scale. So for this is not a podcast where we'll have a lot of examples, but I have guitar in hand and I want to share stuff with you.
So just the C major scale. Seems like it's only one thing. But if you heard it in the context implied by, say, John Coltrane on Giant Steps, then you'd realize that, oh my God, he's using this.
So there's arpeggios and there's things. And to the untrained eye and ears, it seems like it's not the same, but it all comes from the same place. So that's really what we want to get at, is to say, okay, if you have one thing that you're practicing, you should be able to extrapolate and find and not not extrapolate in a bad way, and really in a good way.
You have to find new ways to use the same old stuff. And that's what great players have been doing all along since the classical era, even before it's theme and variation. So that was a lengthy intro. I'm sorry, but for today's podcast, I really want to give you three big, big general topics you can talk about when you you want to change your perspectives that are applicable right away, into your own musical life.
And not that many chord changes. Not that many still not. But you know, it's not a podcast where we'll do a lot of stuff, but at least the results from today's podcast can help you, bring forward new, more musical ideas to express yourself. All right, so the first advice and of course, I have musical examples, ideas, and I have to just show you what I mean by changing your perspective by doing it, life.
So there's a lot of things to cover. I always say it's going to be a short podcast, but it winds up being something like 20 minutes, so I'll try to stay brief for now. All right. So number one, your tip is seeing the forest before the trees. This I find happens a lot when people learn jazz solos or jazz board changes.
And we're all I mean, in the beginnings, we're all too close to the page. If you want. We're too close to see the entire thing. So I have a really good example of this is recently there's the Tuna the Month club that you might have heard of on jazz guitar lessons, Ornette, where we cover one jazz standard per month, and it's a great way to to get going to a song you kind of know or that you don't know at all.
So the first one was in July 2015, a few months back. The song was All the Things You Are, and during the written solo, there's a part where you know you have your chord melody, you have a counting study, then you have a written solo, and the written solo goes to the key of F minor in the first bar.
And the pick up sounds like this 0123, or something like that. Then we're aiming for that E-flat note. All right. And then there's a an ornament on the F. So you play any natural you natural gas. Right. But people pay a barber. And I recently received an email and, student, a really brilliant guy, asked me about that e natural note, and he's seeing what's happening with you.
Mark, I thought, you know, there's something not logical. I'm not seeing the big picture because the e natural note does not fit in the key of A-flat. So you look at the key signature and you have for flattery. The key is there's like major, the first chord is F minor, etc. and then the E does not fit. Does it act as the sharp five of A-flat major.
So in my instructor's manual. No no no no, it's not that. It's you know, you're not seeing the force yet. You're just seeing the trees. And that's what's happening in the line. So you have to think of as an ornament e natural g f as an ornament to go to, to the next notes. So you can't look at all the individual notes or all the in the individual chords on their own.
You have to take the step back and really hear things for what they are as the whole, the whole, the entire solo. So that's why chromaticism works really well. Because if you hear like great improvisers like Pat Metheny or even Miles Davis, even when they play a lot, they still play only on a handful of ideas in each solo, and they repeat themselves quite a lot.
But they they add whipping cream around. It's, you know, whipped cream, they add ornaments. It had flourishes. But the the basic thing is still the same. Of course.
So what we can do about that is making sure that whenever we approach a new piece of material or something that seems funny or unfamiliar, it's important to take a step back and look at the context. How is this initial note used? Well? Is it really the sharp five of the key of A-flat? Or is this just because the author that's me that wrote the solo would be would find it fun to kind of encapsulate or ornament around the f note, which is only a natural thing to do, right?
Here's the danger, though. If you do that too much, there's a danger in over generalizing, which is the other extreme, which is looking at all the things you are or blues and saying it's all just one big scale, and then you take a rock solo for like 20 minutes and it's all in one pentatonic scale, which is fine. I have nothing against that kind of playing, but if you do that to everything, then you might be missing the point a little bit. So too much of a good thing is still is still not a good thing, right? Do not overgeneralize to trying to look at one, one sequence of chords and saying, oh, I can play on a flat major like this.
The first six bars of all the things you are and just blow on E-flat major. Of course, it is a flat major, but you still have to keep perspective and say it's a flat major with a spin coming from the B-flat minor chords B-flat minor, seven. Suspend from this all you have A25, one K. That's. How does this interact with each other?
Still, we're looking at the context, not only taking a step back. That's only part of the process. So let's look at tip number two. The second perspective thing I wanted to discuss in this podcast is simply to shed a new light on the precise things you are practicing, which is, I'm kind of repeating myself, but you're you're seeing the the picture, right?
If you have an idea, say you're shedding something in that's minor because that's all. We've been talking since the beginning. Maybe this idea on F minor, the liqueur you've been practicing, or the scale or the arpeggio or the whatever you have might also be good on E-flat major chord. Or maybe it's even good on D minor seven flat five chord.
You have to check yourself. You have to confront your idea with, okay, now that's good. What else can it be? You know, is this just a pencil, or can I also use it to, scratch my back when it's itchy? You know, something like that. You say what's what's more use of that piece of information than it is right now.
So harmonically, it's kind of easy to do because you can say, I have a pass, I have a, a line, and it may fit in different chords. So the first place to look is diatonic, and you can even look at other keys. Another way to shed a new light on precise things. It's rhythmic. So you might have heard, how I like to practice Charleston.
So the Charleston figure is simply that dotted quarter note. An eighth note the third, and the one, two, 3 or 1, two, three, four to that. You know, this is very interesting, not only on its own, but when you start displacing it. So you ask yourself, what happens when I take the Charleston and I just move them all one eighth note to the left, or one eighth note to the right.
What's happening to how does it feel? So this is a really great way to shed new light on precise things that you're already practicing. And you can even take lines that you have and say, what if I take this lick and started a beat late or beat early? Rene. Note early. It's really interesting to to hear what can happen and most likely it's going to be much harder than the original thing because you're not used to hearing it.
So that that would be my advice about rhythms. And and lastly, there's something that you can do to shed a new light on the same motifs is, using diatonic patterns. So say you're practicing the song, and that was a tune. The, coming up, coming up in February, in fact. Check it out. It's called My Funny Valentine, one of the greatest songs ever.
And in the version of the tune of the month, it's in C minor and the song goes, my Funny Valentine, right? Ta dah dah dah dah dah dah. Sorry.
I can't play that guitar. Still. See? So this thing.
So you hear. You can reuse that and say, I'm still in the same key.
You can still reuse that motif and say, what happens if I see it in a different way? Diatonic is still the same pattern. But what's fun with that is it allows you to play with the song's original melody, the theme much more so you can play with it for longer. And that's what I hear Pat Metheny do quite a lot, quite extensively.
Sometime his idea is idea after the fact. It's like 2 or 3 notes, but he's using it to death. He's using it and reusing it and reusing it using these different devices. So that's it for tip number two, which is shedding a new light, shedding a new light on precise things you're practicing and lastly, on gaining perspective, my third tip is simply in general, go for absolute relativism.
So I think this is really funny, saying absolute relativity. But let let's put it this way. There's a sentence I say often in all areas of the music and often in the life also. And I say something like this, it's like, yeah, that's one way to do it. So there's more than one good answer. So in general, keep this in mind always that, it might not be your favorite way, might not be the fastest way, might not be the most efficient way.
But you can still say, well, in relative terms, that is one of the options we have. And it reminds me of scientists, telling us that, in fact, there's so much signal that our brain gets processed. So, for instance, I'm recording this podcast now, but there's a dust, a particle of dust, right in my scope of vision.
I know it's there. I can see it. If I focus on it, but it's not going to get my attention or attention is very small, or else we basically go crazy. So let's think about this. We capture less than one, 1 in 1,000,000 piece of information happening at every single moment. Let that sink in a little bit.
So next time you're soloing or next time practicing, or next time you're driving, or next time you're you're discussing or thinking or reading that, keep this in mind. Whatever happens, you're only seeing a tiny fraction of it, only the fraction that we're allowed to see because of our human condition. That's a biologic but biological body we're in. We have eyes, we have ears.
We smell, we feel. We, you know, we think we I don't know, we snore and we cough and then we we're hungry and etc.. So there's always more than one good answer. And what you see, it might just be just one part of it. And for another person that sees completely differently, you're about like the book person. So.
Right. Both people are absolutely right. And the way they see things. So, if you keep their relativity and all you learn, musically speaking, it's going to help you a lot. A good example, one simple example, whenever you learn a tune, you learn a chord progression. Look at the Roman numeral analysis. Say what's happening? The tune, not because I wanted to look at F-sharp minor seven, five, five.
The F did this or that, not in in absolute terms. You just have to look at it in relative terms and you'll gain insights. I mean, personally, I think it should be mandatory if you want to call yourself a jazz guitarist and say, all right, you want to play blues, you want to play jazzy blues, you have to play that in any of the 12 keys you start.
That's it. It's blues. If you can't really play losing G flat or in in D-flat or in, well, E major is an easy one for a guitarist, right? Or E7 or whatever, or E minor. But if you can't do it in all of these, it means you don't really have the full picture of the blues because it's all relative, you see.
So that's it for the, my my general tip, the third one, which is go for absolute relativism. And my advice before I get into the examples that you can get created in your practice, you can force yourself to see the same materials. You're practicing in a new light. And I mean different fingers, different fingerings, different positions, different ways of speaking, a different speed.
What if you take all the stuff you're practicing out now and just half the speed and then double the speed? See if you can put a new chord progressions, change every major chord to minor, you know, change every dominant chord to something else and see, just see what happened. And don't don't be boxed in by by the so-called rules.
And you can change the rhythms also. And that's one thing I was discussing in lesson last night with a private student in Maine. And, I just came to a point to tell the student, look, when I personally play and there's just a personal story, I just go and play it. Even if we're a jam session, we're playing a standard, we're playing a blues, something that's very familiar.
I don't restrict myself. The reason I don't play by the rules, because that's not what I am. Therefore, when you're when you're practicing, you're tying yourself, which is a good thing. You're constraining yourself to things that are logical, that you can take a small piece of information, chew on it, digest it. That's what you do in practice. But when you get to play, you can jam and really play at any note counts.
Anything goes. And I think you should devote a little bit of your your practice time to jamming completely freely and seeing what if you turn on the jazz radio or any radio and start soloing with it? You don't know the song, you don't know the key, you don't know the rhythm, you just go for it. And that's really, I think, what music is all about.
So let let's jump into a few examples before I let you go. Let's look at a few chords and things that, yeah, it'll be a few chords because I really love chords. I love counting and stuff. So let's think of the song such as, the there will never be an another in the key of E-flat, which is the, the key that people play played in the most.
Sorry. There was a chair, that people played in the most in each life major. So you play in E-flat major and eventually around bar five. Now on bar five, you'll be on C minor, so you don't. Here's the thing. You don't have to memorize this whole thing saying, oh my God, you have five bars of music. So we have this chord, then you have D minor seven flat five to G7 and going to C minor, you don't have to memorize the whole thing because all you can say is I know my key signatures.
E-flat major is the relative of C minor. There is this minor third relationship that's very important to know. So right there you can absorb about 20% of the song only by remembering that you will be alternating in between the major, kinda minor key. Lots of songs do this autumn leaves as this, all the things you are does this, there's too many to name, but basically so far all the tunes in the tune of the Month Club do that, and it's a good way to, to to to be relative and to say, yeah, if you were in C major we would go to A minor.
You know, that's the whole this the thing Capitol records to a minor is just that's there. So if you see this relationship already you can cover a lot of repertoire, a lot of great songs. Due to thing that I want to look at this check this one out like a C major. Like now I'm going to go up to a NE flat major seven.
And again, you. Now if you just think of those two chords as unrelated. So. Well they're a reminder sort of part, which is true, but it's not the whole truth. If you want to see my opinion, you can say, well, if it would have been C minor, we would have went to the relative major. So what we see is that if you establish a key C major, what's your doing by going up there is borrowing an idea from your key of C minor, if you see what I mean.
So you're still thinking of it like from C it's relative. It's not just C major or it's not like those chords that that are diatonic in the key of C major it's C, the E-flat. So you can even have that.
What did I just play? I've led two, five, one to E-flat, so I don't know the C, c, c, C, then two five, one, two E-flat, F minor seven, B-flat, seven, the E-flat. So you see, it's not just a shift. It's not just a jump. It's like, well, it works well because there's still a strong link between C and E-flat, and that link is a relative minor.
So even if you don't have the C minor chord, a C major chord, you're kind of borrowing from your minor counterpart. That's how they say it in classical music, you're borrowing. Or in French we say mud mixed. So mixed mixed mode. Another one that I really like to do too is C major, seven to A-flat major, seven. I do this all the time, but it's like, oh, that's interesting.
I say, yeah, what's the link between C major in A-flat? I don't really see it. Well, if you start from C, you'll be stuck and you have to start from the perspective of A-flat. What's happening in A-flat. So if you have chords, you have C major seven, B five, 47, C myself like, oh, once again we have a C minor appearing.
So what you're seeing is well, C minor is the third chord in the key of A-flat major. So once again we borrowed something. It's borrowed from. I don't like to use this terminology, but I will anyways. It's borrowed from C Phrygian, so.
I just played C scale, A-flat major scale from a C root. So when I do this, as soon as I go there, my ear still picks up on that C tonality. But it it hears the C as being a Phrygian. So it's kind of another. They call it modal interchange also in jazz. Here's also let's go and do A25 before the A-flat major.
Ready for this B-flat minor 73597357 A-flat. Then G7. Back to C major. Notice things like that to hear in songs or in introductions to songs. And it's not really hard. It's just you have to see things in their own context, in their own perspective. One last one for dessert, because we we've just been above the 20 minutes, 20 minute mark.
I'm sorry. I really love podcasting. I think I told you already, if you've been following the podcast, it's my favorite thing to do in the world. Well, we'll get if we can talk about this several times. So here's one chord I want you to look at. If you want to get it in guitarist terms. So it's xxs 75447544 on the top four strings.
Well actually if you want to put a root under it, you can put an A-flat root. That was a chord played by Ed Baker. And of course somewhere that's so bigot ish or Galbraith ish.
But go and look at the chords, then I'll let you go with that idea. It can also be a D7. The. That A-flat flat nine A47 flat line becomes a D7 flat nine, flat five.
And now if you use it in a progression where you need the D minor seven. So, you. I forgot what it was. It was an Ed bigger thing. Anyways, so here's a minor idea. You need a D7 chord, but you will use an A flat seven because it's a tritone. But not only is it a triangle and so is this voicing you would never use as a D7 or I before seeing this, I would never be like, oh yeah, here's D7, but it is functioning as a D7, a certain context.
So it's always interesting to look at how what other context can work for this. And you can probably find other uses for it because it works in minor thirds. So it can be A-flat, can be B, can be D, it can be F, but all with different sorts of extensions and some of them will sound better than some of the other ones.
All right. So that's it for today's podcast. Of course my mate. My name is Mark from Jazz Guitar Lessons dot net improve your jazz guitar playing with a real teacher and I'll see you in podcast 28. Take care.
