Do you think that listing these chords and scales is very useful?

One problem with jazz musicians is that they seek to find scales that help them improvise.

Improvisation is not the main goal of music. One of the side goals. If, instead of making music, you are looking to take your time to find those scales, I can introduce you to thousands upon thousands of them and tell you which scale to use. But I again state that the goal in music isn't scale-matching (jazz musicians' most favorite part).

 

Last edited by a moderator: Feb 5, 2021

Before leaving this forum, I wanted to say something. Something that may be useful to you in the future.

Today's music is based on misconceptions and misbeliefs. Misconceptions that have been passed on to listeners and future generations based on their injections in the form of different styles.

The number of people in this forum who support these misconceptions is not small. Unfortunately, these people blindly support each other instead of trying to correct those often wrong ideas, and neither of them teaches each other the right way to think.

I hope that one day, someone will be found and will teach everyone the right way. Hoping that day...

 

PATHETIC. PATHETIC. PATHETIC.
and the only thing more pathetic than the drivel you wrote above
is the fact that you are totally incapable of seeing how pathetic it is.
Making a coherent constructive contribution of any kind is way beyond your grasp
and your motivation is beyond contempt.

Apologies for me being so polite today.

 

Listen now, tonality and key are vague concepts in modern musicology. It is funny when people start using these words. If you don't believe me, check the new grove encyclopedia of music for the "proper" definition and be terrified.Btw, I have no idea what you think is natural, proposed, works etc - everyone has a different background and esthetics.
About pentatonics - most of them don't work as chord at all, because of false relations in just tuning (this may not bother non-musicians, but is unnacaptable for anyone with developed interval recognition). So, they are really tempered scales.
I find the fact that many Western musicians failing to appreciate pentatonics as scales and the lack of pentatonic theory (outside of Chinese traditions)...kind of disturbing. Like 90 % of world music and Western folk music is pentatonic-based.

 

nobody can say he did not try.

 

Ok, I hear you. So you would tell a singer, or any musician who plays a melodic instrument (those which cannot reproduce harmonies) that tonality and key are simply vague concepts; or better yet, you would make funny of it and offer them instead the New Grove Encyclopedia to rest the case. Freewill, alright.
Aparently it is necessary to clarify or emphasize that what I have introduced/proposed is solely based upon the 12 TET, hence the music made out of such, the designed intruments to cope with such and the organizational method employed over such pitches, the so called cycle of 5ths/4ths. My apologies. I hope I have mended it now.
About pentatonics - "most of them don't work as chord at all" - Above I have shown one example but, there are dozens of others, most importantly, embedded to the 6 scales referred here. Please tell me the difference you are able to grasp amongst a pentatonic and an arpeggio.
Anyway, so you are a musician trained onto just intonation interval recognition? Are most of your instruments (if any) designed upon just intonation? When you play a pentatonic on an instrument you tune it first to just intonation? Do you use just intonation in your compositions?
You then may rest assured I am indeed referring to tempered scales, pentatonics included in our particular case, so there are no false interval relations but, in the worst case scenario, adapted ones to western intruments. That means we may also impart an harmonic perspective over them, thus build chords to represent them as well. Are you against that anyhow?
About your final statement, we could start a new thread about pentatonics. What do you say?

Best regards

 

Last edited by a moderator: May 1, 2021

Burt Bacharach when asked why in a few of his platinum winning tunes radically changed key or a single odd time bar in a couple of works.
He said it was because that is where the melody and tune wanted to go.
('Say a little prayer for you' as but one example).

I'll let everyone else debate the merits of correctness versus creativity versus anything else, but Bacharach was pretty much on the money, so was Keith Jarrett, so was Chick Corea, John Coltrane, Charlie Parker and way too many to list. If a melody or harmony wants to go a certain way, it does not matter whether it belongs in a square box or not. That's a cop-out to a point from me because I do believe in learning any rule before breaking it, but it is actually right and it's a debate that has a lot of answers.

 

Last edited: May 1, 2021

Absolutely agreed.

This gives rise to my opinion (not shared by all) that music theory is not music, it's a tool for analyzing and communicating music. Music is what comes out of a performance, be it live or recorded, improvised or rehearsed.

It's a fantastic tool though to learn but don't let it shackle you.

 

BaSsDuDe and phumb-reh

Thanks for your inputs. I hope you realize that we are on the same page afterall.

 

I just gotta say and am gonna be that guy on my lazy Sunday afternoon...this thread seems like Foster took a smart pill, carefully curated his questions after doing some cursory research on the subject and then proceeded to not actually say anything besides what NOT things are.

So, mister OP, what is the "goal of music" and why are you involved in it?

 

Last edited: May 1, 2021

I don't get it... why do you focus on chords where the root note is out of key, there are many more chromatic chords
The "out of key chords" are usually seen as borrowed from the parallel minor scale so
bIII ionian
bVII mixo
bVI lydian

now bV and bII are missing, you can use another mode than minor (aeolian) to borrow them from
bII ionian (borrowed from major going phrygian)
bV lydian (borrowed from major going locrian)

mind you, people love to play all those scale degrees in lydian since borrowing from minor means going down flats and lydian has the least flats of any mode (actually adds a sharp) so they are both coming towards each other in a logical way

In the case of bV that's even fundamental to do that to not completely cut off the connection to the tonic root note (Bb lydian has an E, the listeners are given a chance to make that connection)

Another example is the phrygian bII, if you play mixolydian over it you lose the connection to the tonic root note and it gains an entirely new quality (bIImaj7 vs subV)

 

Thanks Valnar,

So your perspective of choice is minor, basically Aeolian having Lydian as its relative major which, due its #4 (tritone against the root), allows modulations in 4ths creating a cascade effect of descending 3rds and, whenever the need is felt, Phrygian and Locrian are played over Aeolian for spicing things up. Would you agree that such approach is pretty much typical?

What if the perspective is mostly major instead? That is what I am proposing here: expanding the "diatonicism" to its limit, avoiding chormaticism in the scales, so that the harmonic/chordal choices are clear and constantly at hand. If you do that, Melodically you can add chromatic notes to taste when improvising.

PS.: I didn't get what you meant by chords with the root note out of key. On the chart provided you may find the scales representative chords so as their "character 5th" chord, both in key.

 

expanding them is a wide field, but as you correctly pointed out in the graphics, there are only 3 interchangable major modes, i.e. only 3 which are made of the same ruleset, which is

find the most equal distribution(s) for 7 out of 12,

or, for the programmers among you, expr ( int((notenumber + 1 + mode) * 12) / 7 + 3 + transpose ) ,

which gives you the main 6 of the traditional 12 church modes, 3 major and 3 minor tonalities, of which 2, aeolian and ionian, are mathematically indentical with modern-major and modern-minor.


i have no idea about the correct sorting or interpretation of that kind of expanded or reduced tone sets, but when i look at them from a mathematical standpoint, it seems almost arbitrary, and i think if you just make up your own and ignore history and tradition, you will end up with scales of a similar quality/usefulness.

it is legal to use a lot of C# tuned events in a C major song, and i am not able to tell when one should call C# a part of the scale and when not, and i am pretty much sure that blues scales all belong into the minor tonality group, but literature partly proves me wrong there.

and many jazz notations announce "ionian" instead of modern-major for a reason i dont understand at all.

note that when you expand a diatonic scale by adding 2 new members, you could as well define that as a "chromatic scale reduced by 2 members".

so, i really dont know if expanding or reducing is a useful concept for "diatonic", and the sme goes for augmenting members, but what do i know.

 

Last edited: May 2, 2021

That is as ambiguous as saying country musicians only buy telecasters so they can get a 'twang', or classical musicians cannot improvise because they're all anally retentive trying to play music that someone else wrote, or rock and metal guitar players use distortion to cover up their sloppy techniques that sound like crap when the guitar is clean, or every reggae musician smokes drugs.... you get the point. None of what I just said is correct as a generalisation.

Jazz musicians use scales for the same reason, anyone, in any other style or genre who can compose, arrange, play and improvise will
- To define the harmony, relationship or direction they may wish to go in and everything that is relative, or not. Then, if they decide to stretch out, when they wish to create and to indicate what is possible so they can explore creatively and implement or try and find something different. This might be closer to accurate and even what I have said in this paragraph is still not every reason or completely right either. Generalisations suck, full-stop. Don't do it, it makes anyone doing it look like any number of things, none which have a nice label.

Most great jazz improvisers learned their scales 30 or more years ago and never think about them when they play and that part is 100% correct. Stick with what you do know.

 

Last edited: May 2, 2021

they are the chromatic notes, basically all 5 black keys in C major: Db = bII - Eb = bIII - Gb = bV - Ab = bVI - Bb = bVII (all root notes don't belong to the initial scale )

 

Thanks Obineg,

To say the least, that was an unexpected kind of insight. I liked it.
I guess in order to properly reply you, I have to present a new chart with premises I think might add to your algo.
Just a reminder: you are dealing with a realm where 4+4 = 6.5 , 5+5 = 9 , 6+6 = 11.5 and so on...
I will get back to it soon.

 

Sure, how dumb of me. Anyhow, it does not matter much once their respective proposed scales carry within lots of altered intervals, serving as replacements to the whole-tone, half-whole and whole-half diminished, but with the advantage that they can be harmonized following the same principles from the major scale. Please also notice that in the chart they were initially proposed to be used in cascading 4ths or 5ths.

 

Last edited by a moderator: May 2, 2021

in case you want to experiment with that i guess i should add that the input to this expression is an array with integers 0-11 (and then you simply filter the doubles out from the result.)

or in other words, it is a naive programming routine to "convert" chromatic to diatonic, which allows all required variables and works likewise for equal temperament and just tuning.

it is like telling a student which keys not to touch.

the numbering of the modes will look strange to you if you are used to the circle of fifths in latin letters.

 

Last edited: May 5, 2021

Alright, pretty nice.

Now, in a very non-academic fashion, let me propose you the following:




What is generally taught


----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

What is generally NOT taught



Please tell me back if you get the point. Does that contributes to a possible algo you may come up with?

 

Last edited by a moderator: May 14, 2021

music theory is required for composing.

to play an instrument, you need to know how to move your fingers, how to read notes, how to count the beat, how to perservere if it still doesnt work after 30 attempts, and you an be sure that this kid knows a lot of this kind of theory.

however, your example is still valid, becuase kids of that age have a completely different approach to theory as a confident adult, kids are never "theorists" like we are sometimes, the just "know" things - pardon me - like a dog.