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[Anonymous]

i posted the following comment in the ‘Killer Blues’ querry and it’s not showing page 2

In my spare sax time, i try to fit in improvisation practice when i can, after i’ve done all my sax practice related to my music lessons (that comes first). I can’t afford to waste my cash on private music lessons by not taking them seriously, and being too distracted by doing too many other things on the sax, not enough time in the day.

I am slowly progressing through the ‘Major improvisation’ course, and when i’ve done that , i’ll get back on the ‘Killer Blues’.

So from my point, of view, if and when i get through these courses (bearing in mind, improvisation on my own, is a journey of fun, that never ends).
So if i turned up at your house for a lesson, the first thing i would ask is “What next?”. You would then stick on a backing track, you might tell me the key the backing track is in and say “Ok, lets hear you improvise along to that tune”.

Now if i can’t come up with anything at all, then i’ve failed. There’s no way round it. Thats what improvisation is, you have to go away and experiment. If you find you are too slow in finger movements, then for goodness sake, SLOW down the music track and improvise at a slower speed (this is as good as practicing long tones). Slower track speeds, give you more time to use your brain to hear and think, not only that, you hear the changes in the backing track better, you hear better in times of where you have to come in with chord changes, and also you hear your own mistakes better in terms of ironing them out.

If you’ve failed, look at the course, and point out the areas that you dont understand, these need expanding. Most music tutor books are very condensed in terms of providing practicing exercises, and i would say for every exercise they provide, you could possibly find another twenty similar varying exercises to do. Its just like i practiced three songs in a year to pass my grade 2 abrsm exam, so i got a grade 2, yet after that, there was loads more grade 2 songs i couldn’t even play – what im saying is, its the same with improvisation books, just nailing that one exerice, doesn’t mean you can do play any other exercise at that level. The better the course, the more exercises you’ll find in it, which will give you a better overall grasp
of the subject.

However, if you find, you can manage to play along to the backing track, with your own ideas or Johnny’s ideas, no matter how feeble it sounds.
Then Johnny would probably say “Right we need to go over certain areas or expand on certain areas, of what you need to be doing” – you can ONLY get that by teacher student interaction.

So what you as a student of improvisation, should be doing, is uploading your improvisation work with a backing track (and i haven’ heard many people doing improvisation uploads). This will give Johny a better idea of where, if any, the parts of his improvisation course can be improved. There is no way around it, the student doesn’t have a clue, we need to hear your performance to assess the course.

Like my teacher tells me, performing a piece of music for assessment is just like bearing the soul, you are standing there playing, exposing all your faults to the world (guess what? at the end if the day, no one give a monkeys, thats the funny side of it). So upload, upload and upload…feedback, feedback, feedback.

If on the otherhand i played an outstanding improvisation performance in front of Johhny, then Johnny would problably say “Well done, in that case you can try out some of my more advanced stuff, that i play in gigs”. etc.

Basicaly by uploading your stuff, tells us more about what you can do, otherwise we can only take your word about what you claim you can do.
Harsh but true.

[john]

yes I see what you mean, I’ll have this checked out.

[john]

My question about modes is not showing so I’ll ask it again. At the Hop is in the key of A in my book Second chord is D7. Do I play the C note natural or sharp? that’s the C note in the D7 chord.

[john]

Looks like my post got posted. Talking about hoe the D7 mode is played in the A key signature

[john]

You play a C natural on a D7 chord. The D7 is called a dominant 7 because the 7th is always a natural making it sound dominant as opposed to a major 7th which sounds light and fluffy and jazzy. In this example: D7= D F# A C DMaj7= D F# A C#
play around with both to see what I mean.

[john]

When the D7 is one of the modes in in a song in the key of A. Does the C note in the D7 chord stay natural or does it become sharp since it is played in a A scale

[Anonymous]

Modes only have names like Ionian, Dorian etc… Modes aren’t called D7.

Say a music sheet is Written in the Key (or scale) of C Major, then you would expect all the notes in the music sheet to be C D E F G A B.

The difficult bit students fail to understand, When you play the melody of a song, there is only one note out of those 7 notes that melody is based around. So if you were to play around with the melody, and go down the scale, you would stop at that note, if that note is a C, then the song is written in the Ionian Mode, if the note was a D, then song is written in the Dorian mode etc…

So if you want to be precise, for example, you could say a song is written in the Lydian Mode of C Major.

What is the reason for having modes? (each mode sounds different)
To help understand why, you need to play all 7 modes.
If you stick to playing around with the C Major Scale.
If you start on C (Ionian mode) and go up and down the scale, it sounds ok to return to the C note.

However if you were to start on the 2nd note of the C Major scale (Dorian mode) and go up and down the scale, it would now sound ok to return to D instead of C. Also you should now notice the C Major scale sounds different in the Dorian mode than it sounds in the Ionian Mode. Some people who are into modes, will say each mode sounds like you are in a musical different world, when it comes to improvising (which is true). In reality, when you are playing the melody of a song, you are actually playing in a specific mode of the scale.

When it comes to improvising, the rules vary by teacher, you can break the rules and still sound great, but for novices, there are some basic rules for novices to stick to, to play safe, before they become more adventurous and explore the more colourful side of improvisation. (get the major improvisation course and learn more).

When you see a chord named in a bar (or measure), it doesn’t mean to say you have to play all the notes in a chord. You need to experiment with the backing track, and start out by hearing how different the improvisation bar sounds, when you just play the 1st note of every chord, compared to just playing the 3rd note or 5th note or 7th note of the chord.

You must start out just playing the root note of every chord in the music sheet, then repeat the process with the 3rd note and hear how different your improvisation sounds, then try out the 5th and 7th notes. What you will find depending on the song, you might have preference to one of those notes (1st, 3rd, 5th or 7th). Sometimes, each chord might sound better on a different note.

If you are a novice, play safe and just play the root note of each chord at the start of each bar.

I’m not going to describe what to do next, just to say you need to experience the feeling of how the improvisation siunds by just playing one note per bar, before leaping into 2 notes per bar, going all the way up to 14 notes per bar….

[john]

Thanks sxpoet,
I’ll review a few modal things from Aebersold, from Johnny’s improve course, and compare it with your response and blast it against some sheet music. Thanks again for your response. You got me back on track

[Anonymous]

Another question students ask, is why chords are important to improvisers?

The simplest answer that i know of, is you can divide a song or a band into two separate parts, one section plays melody and the other section plays harmony.

You can recognise the song a lot easier from the melody and probably not from the harmony.

If you were to improvise to the song, then you dont want to copy the melody, otherwise you’re just playing melody, so go and sit in the melody section of the band, the same thing applies if you play harmony, go and sit in the harmony section of the band.

So where does the improviser sit?
He sits alone in a third section of the band alongside with the Chords.
The Chord sits on the fence, he can blend in with the melody, and he can also blend in with the harmony, you can argue all day long as to which section the chord belongs to. To me personally, the chord can harmonise with either section or both but doesnt sit in either section.

So Mr Chord helps you improvise with out sounding too much like melody or harmony but fits in on the music scene.

to help you under chord relationships, listen to two people. One singing a song and the other person just strumming the chords on a guitar. Play the wrong chord and you ruin the performance, so play safe and stick with the right Mr chord when improvising.

[john]

Thanks Johnny, sxpoet, and Jeff. What I did was write out a major scale, any major scale.
For example A Major, A Ionian, B Minor (Dorian), C# minor [Phyrgian]. D major w/#4 [Lydian], E7 dom.7th mixolydian, F# Aeolan, and G# Locrian. I laid the major A scale out on paper and wrote out each mode scale starting with the Dorian in this case B minor etc. So if I’m playing a mixolydian mode/scale I don’t have to think about whole step half step. The intervals will be determined by the major key in which I’m working. E.g. A Major 3 sharps; Key of E Flat 3 flats .Key of F sharp – 6 sharps, etc. Technically instead of saying sharps or flats I should say raised or lowered so many semi-tones. Thanks guys. I have a bit to study with the horn

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