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That was our pay once
I've been fired from a free gig at a coffee shop.
I was hoping someone else would ask first...how did you manage that? Drank too many lattes?
Heh, well there was no you're fired moment but not asked back. :) Too loud I'm thinking, fun band though. I got to play my tunes with very good players. At those prices you gotta have fun.
Ha, flat white and b13 didn't form a happy marriage.
What I liked from Bruno's lesson is that he's calling positions what are essentially modes of the major scale. The reason I like it is modes never really made sense for me. Even though for a while I practiced them a lot. But whatever mode I played, it always sounded major. Or put another way, every mode always sounded like a part of the major scale (which it is essentially), when I played in succession starting with the major scale, it didn't have its own distinct sound .
That is until I heard Frank Gambale say you need to practice modes from the same root. Then, when I tried, the lightbulb went off, "oh, now it sounds different". And I had to learn the modes all over again. Or in other words, I realized that I didn't know the modes as well I as I thought when I had to play each mode starting with the same note. I couldn't rely on that major scale continuity any more to lead the way. Only then, each mode had its own distinct life.
If you never tried this, try it. It's very cool.
@Buco As to the playing modes from the same root, QUESTION--if you were playing C Ionian and then C Dorian etc, on the C Dorian are you thinking Bb major (Ionian) starting on the second note C and so forth (Ab major starting on the 3rd note for C Phrygian...) for the rest of the modes? Like you, I never really (and still don't) understand modes. Not theoretical understanding but more practical usage and how they sound. Several years ago, Rick Beato made some nice videos on each mode and the moods they convey, but I never tried to seriously incorporate it into any playing exercise.
From the other thread, sometimes I think the value of playing on the circle of 4ths/5ths is that you aren't just sliding up one fret and repeating patterns, etc. You have to think about where you are going. Even more challenging is to stay in the same place on the neck (say between 5th-9th frets or thereabouts) and then go through the different scales without just sliding up the neck. Means you have to access different patterns in the same area of the neck rather than just copy/paste higher or lower on the neck.
I'm not Buco & somebody will probably torch me but as he mentioned exactly above, I think this is where people jumping into learning modes go wrong, not really wrong & I think most people go through this (I did) but...
>>if you were playing C Ionian and then C Dorian etc, on the C Dorian are you thinking Bb major (Ionian) starting on the second note C and so forth<<<
As a way to figure out what the actual notes are in C Dorian, yeah...as you wrote above but to do that each time you want to play C Dorian, you're already at a disadvantage, the song's going by and you're thinking okay, "C Dorian's Bb major starting on the second scale degree etc etc etc." Too late, that chord is gone. 😀:
That's why learning them starting from the root is a good thing, not to mention as Buco wrote, you hear the differences that way.
Ionian: 1 2 3, Dorian: 1 2 b3, Phrygian 1 b2 b3 blah blah blah or however one goes about it: Whole Step, Whole Step, 1/2 Step.
YMMV of course.
@billyshakes I'm not relating them to their relative key. Just listening to them as they are. Each one becomes its own root.
Christiaan Van Hemert has a good method for learning scales: don't.
It took me a lot of reeducation to realize I think he's right. Learn a lot of vocabulary and learn how to use it. I think I'm making a lot more progress this way. Hard to know. But it's more fun to play material that sounds good then to play scales. It's also pretty hard to work on swing and feel while focusing on scales.
I feel like if I could really regurgitate a lot of vocab in an authentic way that going back and examining chord theory stuff might be really valuable but I think the vocab should be the priority.
In my opinion, use of modes becomes a bit more simplified to the dome when you think of them sometimes as less strictly adhering to key and more for "color" to spice up your improv; using Django as an example, he would sometimes raise the 4 while improvising in a major key and if we were to take playing over a C major chord (CM/CM6/CM7) as an example of this, that would mean playing a Gb instead of an F, which could be viewed modally as substituting in C Lydian instead of C Ionian - a one note change can add quite a bit of tonal "color" to a solo, if not even additional emotional impact. Not to mention you can absolutely use both modes during the same improv if that's what you're hearing.
Another way to view modes in GJ is to look at a song like Minor Swing and mentally substitute the chords from more of a scale perspective and how they can help to "spell out" the modes; for instance, the Am6 can be viewed as a D7/D9 (and the Dm6 as a G7/G9) -- why could this be helpful for some? Because for those who may have trouble "hearing" the Am6 chord, a D7 might be helpful in better visualizing the full scale, which from a modal perspective would be A Dorian or D Mixolydian. And once viewing the mode behind a minor 6 becomes more natural, going back to the Am/Am6 in Minor Swing, add in the A minor "blues note" or the Eb in conjunction to the A Dorian and now you've also introduced a diminished arpeggio into the scale; put differently, think Gb-A-C-Eb and for some this may help to better "hear" how the tritone in the Am6 can be extended (for a quick Am6/D7 diminished arp picking exercise, starting with fifth fret C on the G string, play C-Eb and sweep to Gb on the B string and again into A-C on the high E string and then continue that same picking/fretting progression up in minor 3rds i.e. starting on the Eb on the G string as next).
Last, modes probably help in GJ even more as a way to view arpeggios - for a quick example of this, take the C7 to A7 in Limehouse Blues; from a modal scale standpoint, we could view this as playing in C Mixolydian over the C7 to A Mixolydian over the A7...or from an arpeggio standpoint, playing C7 arps to A7 arps. But that's kinda boring...so how about substituting the complimentary arp from each scale? Which in the case of dominant 7th chords/arps within a scale, would be the half diminished chord/arp from the scale. Back to Limehouse, this would mean playing an E half diminished arp (or full) over the C7 and a Db half diminished (or full) under the A7 (modes would be E Locrian and Db Locrian). From an economy standpoint, this can be pretty helpful if you're starting a solo on/near the C on your low E for the C7 because instead of jumping down to the A note for the A7, you could instead shift up a half step to the Db on the low E and play a Db half diminished arp (or full) and stay relatively within the same position (in fact, going next to the GM6, you could even that as another half step to D on the low E or the 4th in G major).
And that's not even getting into melodic minor, the modes of melodic minor and the altered scale...
Anyway, I think my brain is broken enough now for today...need to put down the caffeine lol. And my apologies if I broke anyone else's brains with this post - hmu if I can help to clarify on any of the above.