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This is circular reasoning.
Heres my definition of chord scales.
Doesnt that apply to everything?
Not according to Charlie Parker.
Did he actually say that?
We don’t know.
And what does it have to do with chord scales?
Heres my definition of chord scales.
Doesnt that apply to everything?
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08-14-2024 12:07 PM
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Originally Posted by charlieparker
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Originally Posted by charlieparker
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Originally Posted by pamosmusic
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Originally Posted by brent.h
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Originally Posted by Tal_175
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Originally Posted by charlieparker
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Originally Posted by charlieparker
And I also think it's useful to bring back what Christian said about a concept of "chord-scales" really being dependent on what someone conceives of as "the chod of the moment" in the first place. The classic example being that Parker was pretty well know to treat ii-Vs as a block.
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Originally Posted by brent.h
(I call this applied minor.)
Tristano WORSHIPPED these two musicians. It wouldn’t surprise me if the melodic minor stuff came from his studies of them, as well as Bird of course. (Which by the way works a bit different from modern chord scale theory.)
The augmented on b7 sound I associate with Billy Strayhorn and A Train and Chelsea Bridge. Put minor with augmented and you just about have it. I’m not sure when the next step - using a minor scale to join up the chord tones comes in, but again to go by Peter Ind, Lennie had it in the late 40s.
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Originally Posted by Tal_175
Otoh, according to Ritchie Hart at least, chord scale theory started as a way to teach horn players who didn’t play a chordal instrument about harmony. Makes sense - put it in a scale, easier for a melodic instrument to understand.
So, no extended chords =/= chord scales. They seem to be conceptually distinct in the minds of musicians historically even if it seems obvious to link them today.
But linking chords and scales is the basic conceit of chord scale theory, right? As Nettles and Graf put it ‘two sides of the same coin’. That was an innovative idea at the time.
(Barry was a rare example of someone who thought primarily in scales and not in extended chords otoh.)
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Nb - both the Lydian Chromatic Concept and Tristano school include scales with more than seven notes. I think the seven note chord scale thing is probably a later development.
Otoh Jerry Coker’s Improvising Jazz (1963) includes a recognisable form of chord scale theory that notably omits the melodic minor modes while at the same discussing the extended and altered dominants and also the diminished scale. It also has no discussion of avoid notes. I would say it reflects post-bop playing practice, actually.
(Also some cite Schillinger as a sort of proto CST system.)
My educated guess is that while players used scale concepts in playing, I think it probably took until Berklee’s accreditation in 1970 until all these threads were integrated into CST proper.
Sent from my iPhone using TapatalkLast edited by Christian Miller; 08-14-2024 at 01:48 PM.
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Originally Posted by Christian Miller
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Originally Posted by Christian Miller
Originally Posted by Christian Miller
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Originally Posted by Tal_175
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Originally Posted by Tal_175
“Chord-Scale Theory is an approach to improvising that relates chords to scales. The name “Chord-Scale Theory” comes from the idea that the notes of a thirteenth chord can be rearranged as a seven-note scale.”
So if we use this definition, no, not necessarily. These notes could be conceptualised purely as part of a chord, not as part of a scale. So E G B in this understanding are also chord tones.
We could make inferences on the exact nature of the line in question, how are the notes arranged for example?
Which is your cue to give us some musical examples I suppose, and get away from the meaningless hypotheticals.
The rearrangement aspect but may seem obvious but is not a conception that all or perhaps most musicians seem to have used before the current era (since 1960s/70s)
Without that rearrangement aspect you have, well, chord theory.
Older musicians would certainly say that’s a necessary aspect of chord scale theory. (That and silly names for everything.)
Again it seems like the sort of thing you would do if you wanted to teach extended harmony to horn players.
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Originally Posted by Tal_175
But in a real sense, I also don’t care.
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Originally Posted by Christian Miller
It seems like you were saying that to a modern eye, it is natural to see them as linked.
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Originally Posted by Christian Miller
So the person who said, "I just realized that I really like the sound of the extensions over minor chords. So over Dmin7, I utilize the notes E, G and B along with the chord tones and it sounds awesome." would be talking about a different concept than chord-scales because they didn't describe it as a 7 note scale?
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Originally Posted by Tal_175
I hope the historical info I have given may help give some context to the discussion but when it comes down to it, I don’t ascribe much importance to the quote, and I don’t think it provides any more information than we could glean from, you know, looking into his music.
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Originally Posted by Tal_175
I mean maybe on one level it’s potayto potahto, but i do think CST influenced players have a quite specific approach compared to more old school players that shows up in the lines.
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Originally Posted by Christian Miller
Everything is contrived unless you're going to go with "it's all the same twelve notes, baby." Anything else is an arbitrary framework, and how you contrive it is the interesting part.
I mean ... here's a Dmaj9(#11). You say it's a lydian chord and that calling it an E/D is just a way of articulating the lydian chord. I say it's E/D and the "lydian scale" is just the helpful addition of that missing C# as a passing note. It's a chicken or the egg situation, and the interesting thing is how one of those interpretations leads to a different result than the other. Which is correct or original is kind of a red herring.
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To me the key notion of a chord-scale is the chord centric view of the available scale notes in the context of a chord. So if Charlie Parker said he liked using extensions of a chord (along with the chord tones) over a chord, what we learn from that is that he had a chord centric view of the available notes as opposed to seeing these notes from the point of view of the scale that defines the key (whether that's always evident in his playing is a different story).
It seems like some consider the notion of chord-scales as a package that comes with a certain mindset and language. I think that's because the notion was crystalized in the 60's so it's associated with the more modern language. But chord-scales are agnostic of how one melodically or harmonically uses them. I find them very useful for bebop style arpeggiations from upper chord tones for example. One could use the chord-scale view just as easily to play over chords of non-functional tunes. They are completely neutral to how one uses them.
Of course Charlie Parker used these available notes differently than many modern players but that was because of the stylistic differences of his era. In other words Charlie Parker could've had the notion of the dominant scale and still played his lines the same way. There is no contradiction there. He could still use upper arpeggios for line building with that view. Ask Barry Harris (well, you can't now).
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Originally Posted by Tal_175
Chord scales being a scale-centric view of the available notes in the context of the chord. Otherwise … why take the time to organize them and conceptualize them as a scale.
Again … I think in a very chord scale way to play bebop stuff so I’m with you as far as their being sort of agnostic as to how you choose to use them. But I think your orientation here is counter to most other jazz players
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Originally Posted by pamosmusic
But then there’s plenty of players who claimed not to have a theoretical model at all. Which is super interesting when analysing Blue Mitchell’s lines on Nica’s Dream. Blue was purely an ear player. Yet every single time he plays the melodic minor etc. So, there’s a philosophical conundrum.
I tend to go with what seems like the simplest explanation of what’s going on. I don’t see much in the way of chord scales in Birds playing. Plenty of chords, some of them extended and plenty of scales going up and down, but not so much chord scales in the sense that Allan Holdsworth used them or whoever.
People who are really into bird and bop exclusively tend to not be chord scale people fwiw. It’s not really relevant to that music. Raney seems to confirm that chord scale ideas were not really in place or ‘fully worked out’ at least until later.
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Originally Posted by pamosmusic
So what I mean by chord centric is this.
D7b9 -> Gmin
Here the chord centric view of D7b9 would be seeing the scale notes as they relate to the chord D7 (some would call it Phrygian dominant).
Scale of the key view would be G harmonic minor.
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