Tag: #musictheory
-
The next note is never more than a whole-tone away
I first learned of the exercise of running different scales into each other from Barry Harris. You start near the top of your instrument, and as the chords change, you change your scale but keep going in the same direction. Relatively easy on a tune like Autumn Leaves, pretty difficult on a tune like Giant…
Categories: Music TheoryTags: #musictheory -
A fun way to derive the melodic minor scale
This thought just occurred to me as I was listening to the audiobook of Frank Wilczek‘s excellent Fundamentals: Ten Keys to Reality. The melodic minor is a 7 note scale consisting of only semitones or whole tones, but with no 2 consecutive semitones (put another way, it is “locally diatonic“) The whole tone scale is…
Categories: Music Theory -
The “Minor 6/9 Shape” Harmonized
During our weekly jam session this week, my friend Tony and I got into a discussion about a harmonic topic we’ve both been looking at. It’s an intervallic shape that’s pretty useful harmonically and melodically, and has a good ‘modern jazz’ feel to it. You can see the shape in example [A] below. You might…
Categories: Music TheoryTags: #musictheory -
A few tidbits on the melodic minor
Thoughts on using the melodic minor in different harmonic contexts.
Categories: Music TheoryTags: #musictheory -
Tidbit: Locally Diatonic Scales
I was reading an article by Dmitri Tymoczko this morning, Stravinsky and the Octatonic: A Reconsideration, and came across a useful term: locally diatonic. This refers to a scale whose seconds are all minor or major, and whose thirds are all minor or major. This includes the following scales: major, ascending melodic minor, whole-tone, and…
Categories: Music TheoryTags: #musictheory -
Quartal Harmony: Dyads
More follow-ups to my recent visit to the Aebersold Summer Jazz Workshop. I attended master classes with four great jazz guitarists: Corey Christiansen, Dave Stryker, Mike Di Liddo, and Craig Wagner. All four of these musicians gave me things to work on. One of the discussions that we got into with Corey was about quartal…
Categories: Music Theory -
A Mode For Every Day Of The Year
I just got back from two weeks at the Jamey Aebersold Summer Jazz Workshop. It was amazing, as always, and especially important since this is the final session before Jamey retires after running the “camps” for over fifty years. I sat in on Pat Harbison‘s advanced music theory class, and I got some great ideas…
Categories: Music Theory