Carol Kaye - Chordal Notes

[MalcolmAmos]

:

I've never been hired to play a scale.... True!

+1.

 

[ErikP.Bass]

Can anyone who has taught with or learned a lot from Carol's books / method talk a little bit about their approach?

 

[Basshoofd]

I like her material and it has helped me very much with understanding music. I don't really like her teaching, pedagogy-wise. She's simply incoherent at times and she doesn't always explain everything very well. But the information she teaches is very valuable, especially for jazz.

Her method in a nutshell is 3 elements: chord tones, chord patterns (~licks), chord substitutions.

1. If you want to learn her material, start with learning chord tones very well. Know the basic chord types so well that you can automatically play them all over the neck (major, minor, 7th, diminished, augmented).

2. Then build a collection of stock patterns or licks for each chord type. So when you see any major7 chord, you can pull out a pattern from your major7 pool of patterns, same goes for any of the basic chord types.

3. Last step is chord substitutions. This spices it all up. She teaches you how to do some very common jazz substitutions, like Ab diminished for G7. Very easy to learn why the subs work and they should become automatic.

So what you get in the end is knowledge of chords, substitutions and bunch of stock licks/phrases/patterns for each chord type. That means, for every chord you encounter you have a ton of different possibilities for playing a nice bassline or solo.

chord tones, chord patterns (~licks), chord subs

 

[MaHei]

^
Add the concept of approach notes / note targeting to the above and you will rarely be thinking in terms of scales any more.

 

[MalcolmAmos]

Can anyone who has taught with or learned a lot from Carol's books / method talk a little bit about their approach?

I picked up a few pointers from her Music Reading DVD on counting out the beats, i.e. take some time looking over the sheet music, before starting to play the music. Count out the beats - get a feel for the music first. That turned out to be a great lesson in itself.

Agree you have to over look some things with Carol, but, there is a lot of good "stuff" in what she offers. And the price is right which makes up for the spare bedroom production look the material has.

Over look some things and there is great value there.

 

[Bass Mentor]

Can you talk about how you teach a student with her materials? How you work through the books, in what order?

Many times I get a bassist that has been gigging for a time and find that they are not hearing the chord or even what note are in a stated chord...and all of the better jobs pre -suppose that skill....yes and very important in the studio too ..( I do that for a living)..
We begin with the diatonic chord scale-- building chords off of each degree of the scale ( in thirds) then how chords function off each other in a progression...how music works, if you will...
I will give you two examples based on the above that i have shown my students after they grasp this concept

if you were to play all the notes of a G7b9 chord ( G,Ab,B,D, and F-- remember the Ab is the b9-- and then just play an Ab diminished chord ( Ab, B, D, F) you would see that it can ''substitute'' for that altered G7-- it is the very same chord minus the root....

Stacking triads .......if you were in the key of G and played the C chord ( 4 chord) and added the A ( 2) on the bottom it would then be an A-7th ( A, C, E, G,) if you stacked an 6- ( Eminor triad) on top you would then have an A-9 chord ( A, C, E, G,B) notice that you are stacking a c major triad then an e minor triad to get all of these notes........Whew -- sorry to get a little technical but you go slow with this work so you can hear this -- how well you hear determines how well you play.....
sorry for taking so long to get back to you as I have not been on Talk Bass for awhile...
Best to you all....what a wonderful site for bassists of all stripes to exchange ideas and creativity... Steve

 

[Bass Mentor]

And please explain us how can we appreciate a pattern based on a substitute chord if we don't hear the original chord as in "Pro Jazz Phrases".

IMHO the harmony-melody link is missing in her method... I would prefer listening the pattern played on the piano with the right hand and the original chord played with left hand...

Reposting this from above in case you could have missed it: Hope this helps
you could use a looper to lay down the chords, also record progressions in your DAW...or have a guitarist or keyboardist play the chords... yes, very important to hear the chords and how these patterns sound with these.........Listening is paramount -- all of my students do this and after a time hear the changes as well as the tension and resolve of the progressions and recognize them in music they listen to...
Best to you, Tumbaobab!

 

[pnchad]

and I got a lot out of it - she is a very good teacher

I've been playing jazz for 35 yrs - never been a great soloist but this advice really helped look at things differently

what I took away was the idea of making chord tones 'target' notes when improvising

so, you know when soloing, you usually end up back at the tonic or MAYBE the fifth - what she's saying is that all the chord tones & extensions can become 'target' notes - it works - chromatic approaches from either direction or by 4ths or by 5ths

really a Bebop concept - she learned from the originals