"Gloria's Step"

[deckard]

Greetings -

I play fretless & most Monday mornings I get together with a pianist pal of mine & we read through Real Book charts for about an hour & a half...

That said, I'm having a heckuva time with LaFaro's tune - I can walk & solo over the "A" part just fine, but when I get to the "B" section and those minor 7 flat 5 chords I choke up.

Any suggestions or ideas would be most welcome, esp. re: soloing...

Thanks!!!

[PostBop]

I'm interested in finding a good pattern to solo over in this part, any suggestions?

[davidAaronCarte]

Avoid patterns - they'll only sound like patterns
Make sure you're really solid on the melody and can play the chord tones
The notes in the melody will give you all the sound you need for blowing on the tune, and knowing the chord tones will give you a couple other notes to choose from
Play what you can hear and don't sweat wrong notes, it all follows from that

[slybass3000]

xmin7(b5) chords are actually an inversion of a dominant chord with the third in the bass. Like Amin7(b5) can be consider as a F7/A. So the chords in the b part could be played with the mixolydian bebop scale (8-7-b7-6-5-4-3-2-1) in this order: F7/C7/Eb7/Bb7 for the amin7b5/ emin7b5-gmin7b5 and dmin7b5. The other thing to consider is that these dominant scales are also related to their own major scales: Bb/F/Ab/Eb. So playing with your major scales would be a nice and easy melodic approach also.

One thing that I did notice is that the chord progression is kind of related to some F scales all thru the song, so the bridge could be thought as different F scales like: F Lydian for the Emin7 and f Maj7, F7 mixolydian for the Amin7(b5),F maj for Emin7(b5), F min7 Aeolian for Gmin7(b5), F min Dorian for the Dmin7(b5).

This kind of approach make you aware of the new notes and important targets that are moving in the harmony.

Hope this helps,

[MalcolmAmos]

Generic pattern for minor 7 flat 5 diminished chords - R-b3-b5-b7.
After the root just flat everything else. It's just a minor seventh with a b5. We do not see it all that much so we do not have it in muscle memory.

Spend some time with it. Get it into muscle memory like all your other chord tones.

Good luck.

[PostBop]

Wow, this helps tremendously, thanks.