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songs based on major scale

#41
wade_b said:
Actually I prefer this convention.

To me, it's more well thought out and respects musical truths in favor of idioms.

A secondary dominant gives a clue not only about its own function in the tune, but also where the resolution will be.
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With respect, IMO it's not nearly as well thought out, for the reason I mentioned above. It's trying to apply the analytic practices of classical theory (which BTW are not "truths" but local conventional practices) to a music that does not function 100% according to those practices. You end up with kind of pointless results. For example, if you want to claim that the I7 is actually the V7/IV7, you can't explain why the I7 has the tonic (or tonal-center) force that it clearly has in a blues, and why the IV7 is not heard or experienced as a tonal center. The idea of the IV7 as the V7/bVII7 makes even less sense to me.
 
#42
ericw said:
haha.

I kind of agree. Wouldn't it be better to transcribe and then, by recognizing the intervals and tonality, understand the key center - whatever it may be?
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I think it's just better to learn the scales, modes and pentatonics. Becoming very familiar with them is "just a matter" of taking any given diatonic pattern and taking it through all the possible permutations.

When you play a pattern, say like a 2 note diatonic pattern (broken 3rds) or a 4 note diatonic pattern (steps of 4), there are 8 possible permutations based on the fact that you are either ascending or descending notes in the pattern while at the same time, either ascending or descending the chords (or strings, if you will) of the scale you are working on. So you pick say five patterns and you take each of them through the 8 permutations. But wait there's more. You have to do this for each mode. Do the math. It's a lot of work. The interesting thing is that after a couple years of this, you'll be able to hear nearly any bassline and pretty much know what's going on with it, within a few seconds. What all this does really is teach you to solo on the bass, but more importantly, I think it teaches you to get around the fretboard

People say they don't want to sound like a pattern player but if you actually engrain the patterns, (which was good enough for Coltrane, Miller, and nearly any jazz guy) it just starts to show up in your playing. It won't sound like a pattern. It will sound like music.

I'm not there yet as I haven't been playing that long (about a year and a half), but I can hear basslines pretty easily and can learn songs fast with no tabs. Just my ears. I've been told that I play very well for such a short time, and I have just had very good instruction and I do what he says. And I practice a lot. A whole lot...

Then I think transcribing will make more sense because you will have built a foundation to work from. My opinion, anyway...
 
#43
Richard Lindsey said:
With respect, IMO it's not nearly as well thought out, for the reason I mentioned above. It's trying to apply the analytic practices of classical theory (which BTW are not "truths" but local conventional practices) to a music that does not function 100% according to those practices. You end up with kind of pointless results. For example, if you want to claim that the I7 is actually the V7/IV7, you can't explain why the I7 has the tonic (or tonal-center) force that it clearly has in a blues, and why the IV7 is not heard or experienced as a tonal center. The idea of the IV7 as the V7/bVII7 makes even less sense to me.
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So we can agree that the blues is slang and can't be analyzed acording to western music theory as I mentioned earlier. So I was right and didn't realize, it, lol. I remember a guy telling me awhile ago that the "blues don't have no rules."
 
#44
Spin Doctor said:
So we can agree that the blues is slang and can't be analyzed acording to western music theory as I mentioned earlier. So I was right and didn't realize, it, lol. I remember a guy telling me awhile ago that the "blues don't have no rules."
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Well, to call something slang tends to imply that there's something substandard, or not quite right, about it. (I'm not saying you necessarily meant that, just that the term is often taken that way.) IMO that wouldn't be a very productive way to think about other musics. It's not that they're somehow failing to meet the standards of <insert one's preferred musical frame of reference here>, it's that they're working according to their own standards.

That said, it's not as if blues is utterly alien to standard western musical theory either. It's not as if there's absolutely no common ground. For example, according to one school of western harmonic thought, there are only three fundamental harmonic functions: tonic, subdominant, and dominant. You can hear these functions illustrated in some fashion in blues, even if not in the same way as would be the case in Harmony 101.
 
#45
Richard Lindsey said:
With respect, IMO it's not nearly as well thought out, for the reason I mentioned above. It's trying to apply the analytic practices of classical theory (which BTW are not "truths" but local conventional practices) to a music that does not function 100% according to those practices. You end up with kind of pointless results. For example, if you want to claim that the I7 is actually the V7/IV7, you can't explain why the I7 has the tonic (or tonal-center) force that it clearly has in a blues, and why the IV7 is not heard or experienced as a tonal center. The idea of the IV7 as the V7/bVII7 makes even less sense to me.
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Right.

But my original point was: calling a I7 a "dominant" just doesn't seem to make sense; it implies a resolution that as you point out, may not occur.
 
#46
wade_b said:
Right.

But my original point was: calling a I7 a "dominant" just doesn't seem to make sense; it implies a resolution that as you point out, may not occur.
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I know what you mean, but it's just down to a fuzziness in the nomenclature. "Dominant" is used to refer to harmonic function, but also, right or wrong, it's been used to refer to any 7th chord that's constructed the same way that the common or garden 7th on the V usually is. That is, 1 3 5 b7. Maybe that shouldn't be the case, but often it is anyway. The term is often used to refer to both function and "flavor." (Personally, I just call these 7th chords, but that's how I was taught.)

So you end up with the admittedly confusing situation that a chord may have what is widely conceded to be a dominant construction, or a dominant flavor if you like, but it may not have a dominant function. Thus in blues you would have a I7 chord that is dominant 7th in construction but basically tonic in terms of what it's doing in the tune. (It's true that blues doesn't fit neatly or completely into western functional harmony. But as I said above, it's not totally alien either--you can generally still see some measure of tonic, subdominant, and dominant functionality happening, even if you're "breaking" the diatonicity of the nominal major key.)
 
#47
Hey, practice writing Ionian mode songs as well... for instance:

PUNK LINE

KEY: C major

CHORD PROGRESSION: Cmaj to Gmaj6 to A min to Fmaj

G ----00------------| ------------------|
D --22--22-----0022| -----22--33333333|
A 33---------22-----| 0033--33---------|
E ---------33-------| ------------------|

*all sixteenth notes
 
#48
Spin Doctor said:
People say they don't want to sound like a pattern player but if you actually engrain the patterns, (which was good enough for Coltrane, Miller, and nearly any jazz guy) it just starts to show up in your playing. It won't sound like a pattern. It will sound like music....
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I would take issue with this and say that patterns in Jazz as played by horn players are not the same as artificial patterns on the bass fingerboard. Plus there's so much more to Jazz than this, that it makes this comment meaningless! :eyebrow:

Jazz players start off with melodies and try to create alternate melodies in their solos - patterns are a very small part of some players' art and I think this is a red herring in this context.
 
#49
Bruce Lindfield said:
I would take issue with this and say that patterns in Jazz as played by horn players are not the same as artificial patterns on the bass fingerboard. Plus there's so much more to Jazz than this, that it makes this comment meaningless! :eyebrow:

Jazz players start off with melodies and try to create alternate melodies in their solos - patterns are a very small part of some players' art and I think this is a red herring in this context.
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The patterns on bass I'm speaking of ARE jazz patterns. Maybe you thought I was talking about shapes? I'm not sure what you have issue with. I've heard horn players speak the same way of patterns.
 

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