It looks like you're new here. If you want to get involved, click one of these buttons!
Subscribe to our Patreon, and get image uploads with no ads on the site!
Base theme by DesignModo & ported to Powered by Vanilla by Chris Ireland, modified by the "theFB" team.
Comments
I use scales and arpeggios to allow me to play melodies.
Melody is what matters.
Studio: https://www.voltperoctave.com
Music: https://www.euclideancircuits.com
Me: https://www.jamesrichmond.com
I like Greg Howe’s writing very much as he combines highly chromatic and runs with incredibly angular passages with a lot of wide leaps, both of which sound really exciting and fast and free, but he doesn’t think in scales and arpeggii as such, he just thinks in tunes!
Supportact said: [my style is] probably more an accumulation of limitations and bad habits than a 'style'.
Whether it’s a worked out solo, or off the cuff, I like to start by quoting the melody, and then wander off, changing phrasing, and adding other notes. What I look for is note movement from chord to chord. Can I run a lick over a chord change, targeting a note in the next chord? Are there adjacent notes in the two chords which emphasise the change, eg moving from A to E I might target the g#.
A trombone player from the 50s, whose name I’ve forgotten, said “start low and slow, and finish high and frantic”. That’s always struck me as good advice. Although it’s good manners to calm down for a bar or so before handing over to another instrument, or to make space for the singer to re-enter.
I think for really good players, after a while, they stop thinking about any of this stuff, and they are simply making melodies. But somewhere in the background, from their years of practice, is scalar knowledge, chord tone knowledge, knowledge of the melody of the song, etc.
One of my favourite quotes is from Ben Webster, the great tenor sax player, who once stopped playing mid-solo. Someone asked why, and he said, "I forgot the words."
N.B. I'm a pretty rubbish improviser when it comes to jazz playing, so we are talking a big leap from 'really rubbish' to 'quite rubbish', but it was a genuinely massive step forward for me.
If you're playing single notes then 99% of the time you're in the middle of a scale or an arpeggio by definition, whatever you're playing. But I doubt there are many players who are generally accepted to be "great" who are thinking "right, now I need to move to a flat 5th and then modulate to the whatever", they're just thinking "la la la la ba ba ummmm *now a quiet bit* da da do do..." etc etc
The defined scales and arpeggios are just how you would talk about it after the fact, but the important thing is the creative bit where a melody is born because it sounds good - that isn't led by theory.
Having thought about it, I'm not even sure if I can describe what I'm thinking about when I'm playing solos. I'm probably thinking about melodies and chord tones. If the chord changes were flying past then I would maybe go into arpeggio mode and try to outline the chords as best I could.
If I want to play a fast run or something then I'm thinking about scales and shapes that I am familiar with.
Of course, failing that, I just do something involving a major 7th. "It's my style!" I'll declaim to the empty rehearsal space.
What my approach is now is to practice improvising with scales and arpeggios and sing as I play, what im realising is that as I get to know these shapes more, they become second nature to play and more importantly i feel, is that my intervallic awareness improves..
Im using pentatonic shapes and arpeggios... I feel with these shapes i can play all the surrounding notes and develop my awareness of their sounds which will enable me to use them when i improvise.
My question would be now, how can I benefit through learning different scales and going into modes? If i experiment with pentatonic and arpeggio shapes and adding in chromatic tones will this not serve the same purpose?
Supportact said: [my style is] probably more an accumulation of limitations and bad habits than a 'style'.