Melodic Minor

I’ve been looking at Stella by Starlight and the Keith Jarrett version for the past couple days. I started working on the transcription of Jarrett’s intro while also working on understanding and improvising over the form on my own. I’m working through the Mark Levine book and practicing my melodic minor modes. I’m using a different approach than the book suggests. I’m learning the Alt. Dominant and half-diminished scales as entities unto themselves rather than derivative modes of the melodic minor scale. It makes more sense to me this way and I know where the chord tones are. We’ll see how it works in the long run. Because of all this work, my ability to play through changes is better. I have to admit I was pretty poor when it came to min7b5 chords and diminished chords. Mark noted in his book that there are only 3 diminished chords. All of the inversions are all the other chord voicings. I don’t know why I didn’t know this before, but I was glad to learn. It got me working on my minor 3rd arpeggios and diminished scales. I’ll try to put of a recording of some improvising through Stella soon.

What?

The past couple of days I’ve been working on daily transcribing exercises. I started with Keith Jarrett’s Koln Concert, then moved to his trio version of Stella By Starlight. I worked on the harmonic movement with the Koln concert and it I started playing with a dropped-D tuning to get the most out of the voicings. When I was looking at Stella By Starlight was learning only the melodic lines of his intro to the piece. It reminded me of Bach’s cello suites in that the melody contained so much harmonic motion. When the trio fully went into the piece I was kind of at a loss as what I wanted to look at and after a couple of days I went to iTunes to find more inspiration. I downloaded verisons of Stella by: Joe Lovano, Chris Potter, Bill Evans, Miles Davis & I added a version that I have in my own collection: Tuck Andres. I took all of these tunes and burned them onto a CD. I did this yesterday and I had a chance to transcribe the first chorus of the Chris Potter version. I forgot that I also did some work on a Phillip Johnston solo. It’s got wild harmonic movement and I’m just looking at the solo right now. It’s quite intriguing. It’ll take me a little while to get through.

All of these exercises have been great work for my ear as far as recognizing intervals and understanding melodic direction or intention. I’m working on the playing on one string exercise over the chords to Stella By Starlight. I like this exercise because the available melodic notes changes throughout the pieces, so I really have to listen to get it right. In fact, when I use my intellect, or think of a note by it’s letter I frequently wrong. But if I’m just cruising along and listening to my ear, it all works out.

I’ve been working on ear training exercises as well, but I haven’t been writing down the results. I think I’ll get back to that soon.

All in all, I’m seeing progress in my ears, and I recognize some of the extra work I need to make more of an impact: recognizing intervals, and hearing intervals before I play them.

Improvs

I've added two quick excerpts of some recent improv. Quite sponateous and full of mistakes, they are quick snapshots of what I'm working on in July '05:
Vamp1
Vamp2

Schback

I seem to be at a more regular practicing and developmental schedule right now. I’m not making monumental breakthroughs at every practice session. I’m more often making subtle epiphanies or the same epiphany over and over again: play with your ears, know the tunes, know the changes, etc. It’s been the same old stuff for years. I’m definitely happy with my progress and encouraged to take to another level of challenge. The past two days I’ve been working in Dropped D tuning to work on Keith Jarrett’s Koln Concert. It’s been a revitalizing and exciting experience. First off, Jarrett is amazing and it’s wonderful to get in touch with his playing. And secondly, playing with the dropped D has opened up a lot of colorful voicings. I remember playing in drop D a couple of years ago and retreating quickly back to standard tuning. Now I’m thinking about making the transition permanent. I think it’s neat what a couple years of development can do.

Lately, I’ve been working on primarily ear exercises and transcribing. I haven’t felt inclined to "journalize" the experience for a while now. Part of it is because I’m not always working on exciting things, and another part is that I work on a lot of stuff and I’m not sure how I should be writing it out. Is it necessary to write down everything that I do when I sit down to practice? I’d like to restructure my practice sessions so that I can jot down a quick synopsis afterwards. I like the idea of posterity and the ability to learn from my mistakes and past experiences. Writing down what I’m doing helps me really clarify what is working and what is not working.

Ear

I’ve been continuing my work on my ear exercises. Lately I’ve been using my delay pedal and my loop station as a challenge for me ears and creativity. First I start by playing a chord or a quick melody on the delay pedal and loop it. The delay pedal only has a 5 second loop so it’s not a very long vamp. I make the effort to put my fingers in strange positions and not to look at the neck so I don’t know exactly what I’m playing. While still not looking, I use my ears to choose notes the notes to play and improvise over the loop. Then after a while, I look down and see what key I’m in and then come up with a chord progression that works with the first loop. The first loop then usually serves as one bar of music and I use it as an ostinato over the chord progression. I put the chord progression (along with the ostinato) into the loop station and then improvise of this new structure. My improv ideas then take shape from my ear and/or the harmonic progression. It’s an exciting exercise and a fun use of my effects pedals.

Other times I’ll use a drone to improvise over, again using my ears, and make decisions on what tonality to create and/or whether the drone is the tonic or another note (sometimes the drone would unintentionally be the 5 for some of the exercises).

I also took a little time and worked playing off triads and trying to find the chord tones by ear. This what harder sometimes. Harder than I thought.

It’s been an interesting past couple weeks. Truthfully, I’m a little overwhelmed on the shift in perspective that I’ve made for improvising. The ability and skill of playing by ear is one that is incredibly simple and immense. It’s an amazing thing to think that just hearing or singing what you want to play can be such a profound, valid and important way to improvise. It makes a lot of sense in my understanding of the music I listen to and I’m a little curious on how it’s affected me. I’ve been working in different direction for so long that I’m surprised with this perspective because this is where I started, and frankly, was very good at it when I was doing. It’s like a profound shake in my belief system.