Pentatonics and Pentatonic Voicings (13:44)

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En provenance du cours de University of Rochester

The Blues: Understanding and Performing an American Art Form

305 notes

University of Rochester

The Blues: Understanding and Performing an American Art Form

305 notes

The blues is an American art form and the most important musical form in jazz. Although there are other formal paradigms of the blues, such as 8-bar or 16-bar, this course focuses on different incarnations of the 12-bar blues. There are considerable differences between Early Jazz blues, Swing blues, Bebop blues, Modal blues, and Post Bop blues. Each type has its unique harmonic syntax, melodic vocabulary and, associated with them, improvisational techniques. While other aspects of jazz performance practice have been constantly changing from one stylistic convention to another, the blues has never lost its identity and expressive power, and continues to exert a powerful influence on the harmonic and melodic syntax of jazz. This seven-week course explores important aspects of the blues, blues improvisation, basic keyboard textures, jazz harmonic and melodic syntax. Topics include: (1) Blues Progressions; (2) Blues and Other Scales; (3) Improvisational Tools, and others. This course will also cover valuable theoretical concepts enabling the student to master the art of jazz improvisation. Each topic will be introduced from a practical perspective with the clearly stated goal: to improve one’s improvisational skills. Jazz improvisation is rooted in spontaneity, creativity, self-expression and, at the same time, self-control and order. A unique pedagogical approach based on a one-to-one musical interaction conducted with different instrumentalists will help to reinforce many of the concepts introduced in this course and realize its stated objectives.

À partir de la leçon

Improvisational Tools

Lesson 5 introduces 3 more jazz standards for analysis: “Mr. PC,” “Mr. Day,” and “Isotope.” Tritone substitutions are examined, and pentatonic scale as tools in improvisation are introduced through exploration of their construction, typical voicings, and voice-leading principles.

Lesson 5 Introduction (2:39)2:39

“Mr. PC” Progression – Analysis and Tritone Substitutions (10:49)10:49

Pentatonics and Pentatonic Voicings (13:44)13:48

“Mr. Day” Progression – Analysis (3:36)3:36

Pentatonic Voicings – Voice-Leading Principles (7:20)7:20

Pentatonic Voicings – Practical Exercises (6:09)6:08

“Isotope” Progression – Analysis (8:00)7:59

The Drop-Two Voicing Technique (12:48)12:47

Rencontrer les enseignants

Dariusz Terefenko
Associate Professor of Jazz Studies and Contemporary Media
Eastman School of Music

The harmonic properties of the minor Blues allow us to introduce a new concept,

that of Pentatonic scales.

And it enables us to generate

new voice information and explore them while improvising.

One of the main characteristics of Pentatonic's

is the absence of semitones from the pitch structure.

This characteristic removes any traces of harmonic tension from the pitch structure.

When you listen to the sound of major or

Minor Pentatonics, you can see that on the screen.

You can hear that they sound neutral, tranquil and

without any immediately noticeable tonal associations.

So, let me play some games with you.

I like to play a Major Pentatonic.

[MUSIC]

Major second. [MUSIC]

Major second.

[MUSIC] Minor third.

[MUSIC]

[MUSIC]

Major second.

[MUSIC]

You can see there are two notes missing from the pentatonic,

four and five have created the trident that very corrects that

pungent interval that is present in major scales, but

it's totally absent from the pentatonic,so see what happens.

I mentioned earlier that there are not immediately noticeable traces of,

tall traces in the collection,.

Of course you can hear it as a major.

[MUSIC]

But if I play a different rote,

[MUSIC]

It sounds all of a sudden this is minor.

[MUSIC]

If I play yet another root.

[MUSIC]

It has a completely different status.

[MUSIC]

So, I can experiment with different routes

while using the same pitch collection.

This characteristic will be very important to kind of kill

a few birds with one stone, so to speak.

Now, the structure of Minor Pentatonic.

[MUSIC]

And again, it doesn't have any semi tones.

The sound is totally neutral.

Sounds like a minor.

[MUSIC]

Sounds like major.

[MUSIC]

Sounds like extended minor.

[MUSIC]

Sounds like dominant.

[MUSIC]

So, it has a lot of potential applications.

Now, the pitch structure of dominant and

suspended pentatonics is also shown on the screen.

And the main difference between the two

is the absence of major 3rd from the suspended pentatonic.

The invervolic structure of pentatonic is less

predictable than that of other scales.

That feature renders them ideal for modal harmony, and modal improvisation.

So, here's the structure of Dominant Pentatonic.

[MUSIC]

Right, so here you have that triton because the dominant is

ultimately associated with the interval triton.

[MUSIC]

And the suspended pentatonic replaces one note.

The third is replaced by the four.

Let's talk about pentatonic or modal voicings.

Pentatonic skills, and by the way there are far more pentatonics

than our major, minor, dominant, and suspended.

And in fact as you learn in later lectures,

any five-note collection can be classified,

qualified as pentatonic.

And pentatonic collections are extremely useful for

the generation of the so-called Quartal Harmonies or Quartal Voicing.

They are called Quartal, because the main intervolic characteristic

of these voicings, is the interval of the fourth.

So, the first thing, we will do, while creating modal, or quartal voicings,

is to verticalize, all the notes form the underlying pentatonic collection.

In such a way, that the initial voicing projects strong quartal characteristics.

So, it has more force in its structure than other intervals.

So, if we, let's take, for instance, our minor pentatonic.

[MUSIC]

And we are going to verticalize this linear collection in this minor.

[MUSIC]

You can see on the screen, there are fourths out the bottom,

fourth, perfect fourth, and major third,

so there are three fourths and one third to kind of provide a nice balance.

[MUSIC]

So, there overwhelming a presence of the fourth.

So, what we are going to do while generating quartal voicings or

model voicings, we're going to use that scale unfolding in the bass.

[MUSIC]

And think of it as five note voicing that moves

to the next note from the underlying minor pentatonic collection.

So, when we transfer these voicings up we're going to have

five unique pentatonic.

[MUSIC]

Let me play.

[MUSIC]

So again, the process of generating this voice is very logical.

And would be simple, we generate the opening voicing and

we move to the next note of the pentatonic skill and fold it in a base in each line,

each note gets to the next note from the pentatonic collection.

And as a result, we have this wonderful collection of five

voicings that can function as substitutes for your C minor harmony.

So, we have five different voicing and I'm playing the bass note.

So, you can hear that, right?

[MUSIC]

And they are considerably different from voicing that we've discussed earlier.

The presence of the fourth gives each voicing that

kind of natural character which offers a lot of

potential applications, harmonica applications.

Given the Dorian Pentatonic shown on the screen.

[MUSIC]

The reason why this particular collection is called Dorian Pentatonic.

That is because first of all it is minor, and the Dorian mode is minor.

And the main characteristic of the Dorian mode is the presence of the natural 6th,

a beauty mark we kind of call it, right.

A natural sixth, so that pentatonic collection utilizes the most important

bridges from pentatonic, from the Dorian mode.

So, we will use that pentatonic to generate yet another collection of

voicing that we can use in conjunction with our minor pentatonic voicing.

So, we do the same thing, the Dorian Pentatonic unfolds

in the base, in the lowest voice.

But unlike our earlier examples,

we're going to provide the remaining notes from the Dorian mode,

from the 7th note, from the Heptatonic scale.

And the reason why I want to do that is to show you

kind of iconic voicing from the 1959 Miles Davis recording

Kind of Blue voicing that bel eves make immortal.

[MUSIC]

So, these are the so called so what voicings, so now,

again our scale unfolds in a bass and we are kind of generating

out opening sonority which uses more folds than other intervals.

And we basically move to the next note from the Dorian scale, seven note scale.

[MUSIC]

And again, just listen to the sound of this.

[MUSIC]

All of these voicings can be used are substitutes of one another.

And there's two voicings

[MUSIC]

In that order or in the original key.

[MUSIC]

Okay, so now, let's look at the pitch structure of the dominant pentatonic,

because what we're doing now, we're kind of generating voicings Muggle voicings

that we can use, to realize our minor blues progression that we are working on.

So now, we have to take care of the dominant harmonies, right.

So, let's look at the pitch structure of the Dominant Pentatonic on G.

And, in order to provide, harmonic support in measures nine and ten, alright.

So, here is your Dominant Pentatonic,

on G, and here is your Dominant Pentatonic on A flat.

So again, in keeping with our methodology of generating quartal voicings,

just making sure that we have some kind of attractive structure, right?

[MUSIC]

Right, and one more time.

[MUSIC]

And A flat.

[MUSIC]

Again, we have like five, different voicings that we can freely use,

as substitutes of one another.

All right. So, since we have covered all

the harmonies, of the minor blues, along with their pentatonic formations,

let's put them to practical use and realize the entire, progress.

First of all, we have to realize that there are a lot of options for

different harmonic realizations.

Remember that each voicing from a pentatonic collection, and there are five

in total, can be implemented as a possible harmonic formation.

So, on the screen you can see on of the many possible

realizations so for C minor we'll use-

[MUSIC]

And then, on C seven, we'll use voicings from the C seven pentatonic.

Same thing, we'll have to transpose our voices to F, F minor.

[MUSIC]

And C minor with our voicings.

[MUSIC]

[MUSIC]

And A flat, G and C minor.

[MUSIC]

So now, when I play it with a metronome and use some liberties as far as

rythmic placement and implementing some of the fifths in my left hand.

I can make it sound highly idiomatic.

One, two, one two three four.

[MUSIC]

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