As we continue the saga of MM (aka Melodic Minor), our “Major Modal Mutant”, and cast a brief glance over our shoulders for a quick recap, we remind ourselves that: MM was formed by lowering the 3rd degree of a Major Scale, which altered it’s internal intervalic relationships. Whereras Major has 6 perfect fourths and one tritone, MM now possesses 4 perfect fourths, a diminished fourth (Maj. 3rd), and 2 tritones. MM contains substantial pieces of both the whole tone, and diminished scales. … Read More
Monthly Archives: February 2013
In Pt. 1, we saw how M.M. was created from the ribs of a Major scale by simply dropping the Maj. 3rd a half step, and in the process, changing the interval relationships (and therefore the tensions) within the scale itself. Using C Melodic Minor as an example, the sound of MM is now darker and more mysterious than Major, due mainly to the added whole tone (creating an augmented triad, (Eb-G-B), and the diatonic presence of two diminished triads (A-C-Eb & B-D-F), meaning that our new scale now possesses two tritones (A-Eb & B-F). Besides the tritones, we also … Read More
Friend and fellow tenorman, Chicago native and long time NYC resident, Russ Nolan features a very concise and insightful look into some of the processes that go into both jazz composition and improvisation, as well as highlighting similarities of bot Russ refers to composition as “improvisation out of time” and improvisation as “composition in real time”. Being an accomplished composer as well as a world class improviser, he knows well of which he speaks. Check out his 3 part post, and learn more about Russ. … Read More
The scale and it’s harmonic system known as Melodic Minor (aka: Jazz Minor, Ascending Melodic Minor, Ionian b3, etc.) is probably the most misunderstood and under digested of the traditional diatonic derived scale systems being used in improvised music. Many students, and professionals alike, tend to freeze up like they saw Frankenstein when presented with chord symbols or mode choices native to Melodic Minor, or for that matter, not native to Major. Most of us have been taught to view any altered chord type as an altered form of it’s Major counterpart. … Read More
The idea for this post is the merging of an exercise I posted previously on playing 5 Pentatonic modes from a common tone (it’d probably be helpful to check it out first), with formula #1 from the book “Inside Improvisation Series, Vol. 2 – Pentatonics”, by the eminent saxophonist and guru, Jerry Bergonzi. In this book, the Gonz presents 8 different formulas (4 descending and 4 ascending, based on steps and skips up or down), for creating pentatonic lines. What we’re doing here this time is taking Bergonzi’s pentatonic formula #1 (which is (x) skip step down (x) step down … Read More