Getting fresh arpeggiations and melodies over repetitive chord structures?

[1 Bass Psycho]

This is a great place and John's a great moderator.

Anybody play any gigs tonight? I was on a gig with a guy that's an old friend of Doc Severnsons. Flugel (and trumpet), Piano, and Acoustic Bass. (I was on bass) He knew all the OLLLLLLLLLLLLD tunes. Lot's of fun! The piano player played with Bobby Vinton for a while.

How many Easter gigs are you guys playing? I've got rehearsals tomorrow. They use electric on a lot of the new stuff. Very sad. The string bass parts are rather slow but it pays cash money and that buys a bunch of cheap cheeseburgers and fries!!!

Here's the nurse. Gotta go.

B.P.

[Intrepid]

Guess I'm the only one that thought Psycho was hilarious...just get back on subject instead of ranting about a joke you didn't get....

[Monte]

Originally posted by Intrepid
Guess I'm the only one that thought Psycho was hilarious...just get back on subject instead of ranting about a joke you didn't get....

If you like his stuff, he pops up about once a week on the 2xbasslist (instructions on joining this list are on Bob G.'s page). I usually find him pretty funny.

Monte

[lermgalieu]

I noticed early in this thread Don's reaction to the Ron Carter statement about seeing a chord and knowing he's got 4 note choices. Don replied that he disagreed:

"I was responding to Ed's quote of Carter's comment about having four choices on beat one, four on two, etc..."

I think we need to take Carter's statement with a grain of salt. I have been going through his book lately, and he actually is one of those players who tends to notate chord progressions in many different ways. Some are more detailed, notating tritone chords for chromatics and such, but some just don't take note whatsoever of chromatic or non-chord note choices. So I think what he's saying is kind of incomplete as it pertains to his approach. He's playing non-chord notes all the time, so I guess he's missing the end of the sentence - it should go something like this: "When I see a chord I know I have four possible note choices plus whatever other notes I hear, and heck, not even all four tones in the chord might be appropriate based on what everyone alse is doing and what the melody is." Heh.

[meltsakana]

Don, you say paul chambers used the 1-2-4-2-1 in one position--could you elaborate?

[lermgalieu]

sounds like a chromatic up and down of 3 notes - but I am just an innocent bystander here.

[Sam Sherry]

Originally posted by meltsakana
Don, you say paul chambers used the 1-2-4-2-1 in one position--could you elaborate?

I'm not Don and don't play one on TV, but a classic Chambers-oid lick over bars 1-4 of C blues would be something like:

C C# D C# | C Bb A Ab | G A Bb G | Bb B C Gb

If you listen for the chromatic pattern you'll hear it often in PC's walking and soloing. Remember, though, that PC was reacting to the context not trying to force-fit a lick.

[Chris Fitzgerald]

Bump.

[gnulnx]

Sorry to stoke this thread any higher. First off let me explain that I'm a guitar player. I learned everything from a scale based perspective initially. I am now in the process of forcingmy self to think about improvisation from the chordal point of view.

There is one post that chris made that is the perfect answer;

"Another point: CMaj7 9 11 13 Vs. a C Maj scale?
They're both just philosophical contrivances for choosing notes that please YOUR ear. Right?"

That's it. The benifit to being able to improvise from a chordal point of view is that you can switch keys more easily. The draw back is you have to spend ALOT more time in the shed to get this ingrained. Most guitar players can learn scales and start improvising in a few weeks. Learning to improvise with focus on chordal tones and extensions takes years. At the end of the day it boils down to this. If I'm trying to make melody I want to improvise with a chordal focus. If I'm preparing the crowd for lift I usually drop into a straight up scaler method of thinking.

Just to repeat what chris said one more time:
CMaj7 9 11 13 = C Maj scale?"

If you play a CMaj7 arp and include the 9 11 and 13 extensions you have the entire CMaj scale to choose from.
9=2 11=4 13=6

Cheers...and great forum by the way.

[All_¥our_Bass]

Try playing in the different modes of the key that would go with a chord. Say we have 12 bars of a Cmaj7 chord. You could play C major, D dorian, E phrygian, F lydian, G mixolydian, A Aeolian, B locrian. You can also try altering some of the chord tones to add some extra flavor.

[BassZen]

I don't know if this has been discussed previously (hadn't noticed it anyway), but I figured I'd throw this in. The way I see it when there's one chord for several measures or I'm playing a modal tune, I start to think melodically rather than just harmonically (I think this way with more rapid chord changes too, but less so). You don't want to be so strong as to challenge a soloist, or confuse the harmony, but you can definately start to interact melodically with the soloist.
All that's not to say that you should think from a scalar point of view and throw harmony out the window, but rather than you could work within the intersection of the two. Use chromatic and scalar passing tones and the melodic/harmonic tensions within the key you are playing in. But I've definatly found that concentrating on creating a melodic, flowing line, will help create a lot more interest when a chord is held for several measures, rather than just thinking about triads and whatnot.