 The Clarinet BBoard
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Author: GawenT
Date: 2024-10-30 21:15
Hi,
Clarinet newbie, just getting started and could not find the topic I am startingso apologies if I did not look hard enough!
I am going to go through Grd 1- 5 with a tutor to get a solid grounding and then see if 6 -8 are worth the time,
My ambition is although I love the clarinet to crossover and play soprano saxophone, to play jazz.
Can anyone advise on the method for 'learning' jazz scales.
My background is jazz guitar and I do have a good grounding in musin theory.
My question is I know if you start on the major tonic, say second position you are playing the Dorian mode, third position Phrygian etc,
Apart from harmonic minors, melodic minors, pentatonics etc is there a recommended method to learning, jazz scales?
'Scuse the blurb, any advice would be welcome
:))
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Author: Philip Caron
Date: 2024-10-30 23:18
I've benefitted from "Pick up and Play Scales for Great Solos" by Alan Brown and Jake Jackson. All modes in every key, plus blues, wholetone, pentatonic and other scales, are represented in both traditional and TAB notation, with suggestions of other scales that each works well with, and in many cases references to songs that use particular scales.
For example, under B Mixolydian it says "This scale works well with B, B7, B9, E, Bsus2, B7sus4, and F#; Jerry Garcia's solos in The Grateful Dead's 'Sugaree' use this scale."
The intro chapters describe each type of scale, how it is derived, and the notation for it, including variants such as bebop, neapolitan, octatonic, half diminished, etc. The writing is straightforward descriptive, not deeply theoretical.
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Author: brycon
Date: 2024-10-31 01:58
For most types of jazz, I would skip learning the modes. In my opinion, they aren't much more than academic overthinking. D-, G7, C is simply a cadence in C major. Why think about D dorian, G mixolydian, C ionian or lydian when you can just play in C major the entire time? I suspect modes, like Roman numerals in classical theory pedagogy, are the result of the institutionalization of music education, i.e. they teach you about music, not how to do music (compose, improvise, or play).
Clearly, early traditional jazz musicians weren't thinking about modes (if you look at their solos, they're much more chordally-oriented than those of the bop and post-bop eras). But according to Barry Harris, bebop musicians didn't think about modes either. There's a video with him saying that, on a gig with Charlie Parker, Bird expressed that the modes were nonsense. The sound of bebop is the major and minor scales with particular chromatic passing tones inserted to keep chordal pitches lined up on the beats.
If you want to learn jazz, I would learn from recordings: studying the language from fluent speakers as you would learn a first language. No one's really learned jazz from a book (just like how no one's learned French from a textbook and felt comfortable speaking it in Paris). There are, however, a ton of video resources on YouTube of Barry Harris and his teaching. Barry was a bebop guru and played with Bird, Sonny Stitt, Sonny Rollins, and all the greats. He taught the music as a first language, so maybe those resources could be helpful!
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Author: lydian
Date: 2024-10-31 06:18
I agree with this. To me, modes just add a layer of complexity. In the heat of the moment there's no way I'm going to work out the correct mode. There's no fretboard for different positions like on guitar. I have to be able to recall every note. So I think key centers and chord tones and alterations and extensions. There is no mode that has the tasty enclosures in a typical bebop line. That's all based on chord tones, neighbor tones, enclosures and voice leading.
But we're all different, so if modes help you conceptualize better, then stick with them. They just have no practical value for me.
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Author: lydian
Date: 2024-11-01 08:21
Haha! Touche!
ghoulcaster wrote:
> “They just have no practical value for me”
>
> …except for usernames
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Author: kdk
Date: 2024-11-02 16:39
I'm feeling somewhat validated as I read these comments. I've always felt like some kind of troglodyte basing my improvised jazz solos, as I first learned to do back in the 1960s, mostly on the content of the chords and the scale of the tune with bits of the tune itself thrown in. When I hear most of the jazz people around me discuss improv or hear from students who have taken jazz improv lessons with local jazz-based teachers, all I hear about are modes. I'm glad to read here that I'm not so far out in left field as I thought.
Karl
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Author: David Eichler
Date: 2024-11-05 00:32
You have your terminology wrong. The modes to which you are referring are not "jazz" scales. They were used in music long before jazz. What might be called jazz scales are scales that involve interpolating chromatic notes into the traditional scales and modes at strategic points in the scale, for which I think Barry Harris's concepts probably provide the best overview.
As for learning modes, I suggest learning them as scales in their own right, as opposed to only learning them as derivations of the basic major and minor scales.
Above all, you must learn to hear these scales and modes, learn how do develop ideas with them, not to just play them by rote formula and just relying on licks and patterns. This comes primarily from copying ideas from the masters, off of recordings and learning to play those ideas on your own instrument. Learn the pre-bebop language or Louis Armstrong, Lester Young, and Benny Goodman first, and then progress to the Bebop of Charlie Parker and Bud Powell. Only after doing that should you progress to explore the modal playing that Miles Davis introduced.
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