Author: TDC
Date: 2002-09-30 22:40
I saw a query on this board about "harmonizing scales". I'd like to submit a wonderful drill that Lee Konitz taught me. It offers perhaps, more help to jazz players like myself, but I'm sure its value is universal.
The discipline is, to play a major seventh chord from the tonic up. Then start from the second degree of the same scale and play the same intervals. Then the same from the third, fourth, fifth, sixth, seventh, and finally, if there's enough range (as there is on the wonderful clarinet) the same major seventh arpeggio an octave up from where you started.
Analysis soon reveals its character. Examine it in the key of C. The second chord is Dm7, the next is Em7, the next Fmaj7, the next is the dominant G7th, the next Am7 and so on. There's even a so-called half-diminshed (the seventh degree, I think) which is in reality a diminished with a raised sixth, and it's relative to the same tonality.
If a scale is played on each degree of the same tonality, you can work out all the modal scales as well.
These are marvelous practice, teaching all the chords and modal scales in a given tonality, and enabling not only an understanding of what goes into jazz interpretation but tremendous advancement in playing facility as well. Enjoy! Try it in Gb!
TDC
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