Ear Conditioning

Here's an (IMHO) excellent exercise that trains your ears and works on connecting your hearing and improvising. I forget where I got the initial idea, but this the the procedure I've developed and found helpful:


Take a chord progression (maybe a blues to start, or just I-vi-ii-V, or an easy standard like Autumn Leaves). Play through the whole chord progression on a chordal instrument, very slowly, while singing the tonic of the key over every chord (even the ones where it doesn't 'fit', even if the apparent key changes).

Repeat, singing the 3rd of the key.
Repeat, singing just 1 and 3.
Repeat, singing the 5th of the key. Then combine 1, 3 and 5. Depending on your range, you may add in octaves of these notes as well.

You may be surprised at this point how much music can be made with just those three notes, and that most chord changes can be negotiated by simply switching to one of the other two notes.

Keep repeating the tune (over several practice sessions), adding in the remaining diatonic tones. I recommend the following order: 6th, 2nd, 7th, and 4th, but feel free to experiment.

When you add a new interval follow the following pattern:
1st chorus: only the new interval {x}
2nd chorus: only 1 + {x}
3rd chorus: only 1, 3, 5 + {x}
4th chorus: all intervals

Once you can do this, again it may seem surprising how much you can play and negotiate changes just using the diatonic notes, by hearing which notes work where and how.

Then you can start adding in chromatic tones. I like to start with the "blues notes": b3, #4, b7. Then eventually add #5 and finally b2 (crunchy!).

In all of the above, I'm talking about the interval in the key, not intervals in relation to each chord.

Once you've done all 12 notes, then you can try going through the progression singing the root of each chord, then the 3rd, 5th, etc.

Note that different keys will put different intervals in different parts of your range. Practicing in different keys is helpful so that sometimes the tonic is in the middle of your range, sometimes at the low end, etc.

Maj7#5

Update: I linked some parts to my previous posts on Augmented Scale ideas.

Over at the All About Jazz forum, someone asked for suggestions about how to approach Maj7#5 chords. As this is a sound I'm fond of and have spent considerable time exploring, I posted a rather lengthy response.
I'm reprinting part of my response here, since I think it may be of general interest. It's somewhat off the cuff, so the information is probably not optimally organized, so apologies in advance.

--

Maj7#5 can take some different sounds, depending on context. Lydian Augmented (third mode of melodic minor) is one of the scales most commonly recommended as being compatible with a Maj7#5 chord. It's not the only one, though, and others might work much better, depending on the context.

Here are some other possibilities:

Harmonic Minor, 3rd mode (A harm.minor = CMaj7#5)

Harmonic Major (C harm. major = CMaj7#5)

Harmonic Major, 6th mode (E harm. major = Cmaj7#5)

Lydian #5 #2 (C D# E F# G# A B --this is Melodic Minor #4, 3rd mode, i.e., A Melodic Minor #4 for Cmaj7#5)

Symmetrical Augmented scale (C D# E G Ab B)

Harmonic Major (6th mode) is the same as Melodic Minor #4 (3rd mode) AKA Lydian #2 #5. Just two ways of thinking about it.

What notes will work best over the chord will depend greatly on the harmonic context, e.g. the preceding and following chords, etc.

Try finding some tunes that have the sound in it, substituting it in standards, or writing your own, to experiment with different contexts.

The symmetrical augmented scale is a great sound and can be considered as two augmented triads a 1/2 step apart (contrast with the whole tone scale: two augmented triads a whole step apart). Since augmented chords are symmetrical, any note can be considered the root.

Cmaj7#5: C+/B+ or E+/D#+, or Ab+/G+

You can also extend each triad into a maj7 arpeggio:
Cmaj7, Emaj7, Abmaj7

see: More Augmented Scale

or maj7#9:
Cmaj7#9, Emaj7#9, Abmaj7#9

Or you could construct arpeggios by combining the triad pairs into polychords:

B+|C+
=
C E G# B D# G

Eb+|E+
=
E G# C Eb G B

G+|Ab+
=
Ab C E G B D#


You can also reconsider the scale as a major and minor triad a m6 apart:

C/Abm or E/Cm or Ab/Em

There are a million ways to practice these.

Triads in the Augmented Scale

One observation:

Of all the different scale choices over Maj7#5, two particular areas tend to stand out for me:

The choice of whether to incorporate a P4 vs. an A4
The choice of whether or the M6 is included (the alternative is generally the P5)

Since these involve half-steps above the determining color tones of the chord, care must be taken with the melodic resolution tendencies.

The choice of A2 vs. M2 (i.e., #9 vs. 9) is a useful color, but rarely obscures the harmony.

1. Lydian Augmented: has #4 and M6. The #4 implies a Lydian sound and can be a sustained tension, but the dissonance of the M6 obscures the harmony and must be used carefully

2. Harmonic Minor, 3rd mode (Ionian #5): Has P4 and M6, both of which can obscure the harmony and require careful use.

3. Harmonic Major (Ionian b6): Has P4, but no M6.

4. Harmonic Major, 6th mode (Lydian Augmented #2): Has #4 and M6, like Lydian Augmented.

5. Symmetrical Augmented: has neither P4, A4, or M6.

Since #5 omits the problematic tones, it may be an easier scale to start with: it is less likely to lead to obvious clams.

One could create another 6-note scale that leaves out both P4, A4 and M6:
C D E G Ab B. Such a scale might be useful. It could be viewed as a C+/G triad pair or (perhaps less usefully) as a C/Abdim triad pair.

There are a couple of hexatonic subsets that leave out P4 and M6, but include the A4:
C D E F# G# B: this is C+/Bm, a subset of Lydian Augmented
C D# E F# G# B: This is C+/B, a subset of Lydian Augmented #2

The following pentatonics can work as well:
E F# G# B D (these notes form an E9 chord)
Ab B C E F# (these notes form an Ab7+5+9 chord)
C D E F# G# (this is a subset of the whole tone scale, omitting the b7, or the Lydian Augmented, omitting the 6 and 7)
E F# G# B C# (E6 chord or E Maj pentatonic)

The last one includes a b9 on the chord, but this can be a great sound on a modern tune, especially if the chord lasts for a measure or more. It usually works better in the upper register, where it sounds like an extension.
__________________


So there end up being four primary 7-note scale and one 6-note scale possibilities, and a number of pentatonic and hexatonic choices. Here again are the five primary types:

1. Lydian Augmented (AKA Melodic Minor, 3rd mode):
R M2 M3 A4 A5 M6 M7

2. Harmonic Minor, 3rd mode (AKA Major #5):
R M2 M3 P4 A5 M6 M7

3. Harmonic Major:
R M2 M3 P4 P5 m6 M7

4. Harmonic Major, 6th mode (AKA Melodic Minor #4, 3rd mode AKA Lydian Augmented #2):
R A2 M3 A4 A5 M6 M7

5. Symmetrical Augmented:
R A2 M3 P5 m6 M7

Not all choices work equally well in all situations.
No warranty is expressed or implied; indiscriminate scale usage may result in clams, tomatoes, or acts of violence. I do not take responsibility for the careless use of the above information.

happy improvising!

Guitar Players: Learn all the notes--update

As a follow up to the previous post about how to learn the notes on the guitar neck, I made a graphic to visually represent the "white notes" on the guitar.  This is what you should 'see' when you look at or think of the guitar fretboard.

Ear Training

Ear training is obviously an extremely important pursuit for improvising musicians.  I spend a significant portion of my practice time on ear training activities, and try to find ways to incorporate an ear training aspect into all of my practicing.

One of the things that makes harmony so complex is that as you add notes, the complexity increasing in a combinatorial way, not an additive way.  For example:

If you hear an E against a C, it's one piece of information: major 3rd.

If you hear an E and a G against a C it's 3 pieces of information: major 3rd between C and E, perfect 5th between C and G, and minor 3rd between E and G.

If you hear an E, G, and B, against a C, it's 6 pieces of information: major 3rd between C and E, perfect 5th between C and G, and minor 3rd between E and G, major 7th between C and B, perfect 5th between E and B, major 3rd between G and B.

If you hear EGBD against C, it's 10 pieces of information: major 3rd between C and E, perfect 5th between C and G, and minor 3rd between E and G, major 7th between C and B, perfect 5th between E and B, major 3rd between G and B, major 9th between C and D, minor 7th between E and D, perfect 5th between G and D, minor 3rd between B and D.

Et Cetera.

So in order to learn all the sounds, we need to give names to specific combinations, like triads, and ultimately triads with added notes (including 7ths).

I've made a set of audio files (mp3 format) based on an exercise suggested by Rufus Reid.  Each file presents one of the four triads (Major, Minor, Augmented, or Diminished), and alternates with adding one of the twelve available tones to it.  The idea is to learn to hear the sound of all the available notes over each type of chord.

Download file here.

I used triads because once you can identify the sound of the 6ths and 7ths over a triad, then hearing more complex chords is merely a matter of identifying the chord as (Maj, Min, Aug, or Dim) triad+(6, b7, or 7) + additional note(s).

There are more than 12 files for each chord, because I included some notes in more than one octave (specifically, the 2nds/9th, 3rds/10ths, 4ths/11ths, and 7ths).  I did this because these notes can have some additional different characteristics when voiced close to the chord, and these differences can distract you from hearing the essential characteristics.  For these notes, I suggest spending some time going back and forth between the lower and higher version in order to focus on part of the sound that doesn't depend on what octave you're in.

There's a lot here (76 33-second clips), but it's pretty manageable.   There are a lot of ways to work with these files.  Here are some suggested playlists:

All Major Triads
All Minor Triads
All Dim. Triads
All Aug. Triads
comparing 3rds/10ths
comparing 4ths/11ths
comparing 2nds/9ths
comparing 7ths close-voiced or spread
All 7ths (or any other interval) over  Maj, Min, Aug, Dim triads
Compare min chord with added M3 with major chord with added b3: very interesting!
Compare maj chord with added b6 with augmented chord with added P5
Compare min chord with added #4 with dim chord with added P5
etc.

I hope this is helpful!

PS.  There's tons of stuff out there written about ear training, but here are a few of my observations:

-Singing is extremely important.
-Singing over a drone is extremely helpful.
-Deliberately 'hearing' notes in your head before you sing them is very important.  You can also use this to work on mentally 'hearing' more than one note at a time.
-Visualizing notes on your instrument as you mentally 'hear' them and/or sing them is very helpful. Visualizing a piano (if your main instrument is not piano) and written music are also helpful.
-Singing the root motion of chord progressions is great exercise.  So is singing guide tone lines (3rds and 7ths)
-Intervals can be heard two ways: as harmonic events or as distances.  Of the two, it's more important to hear the harmonic event (even when presented melodically). But it's helpful to learn to recognize the sound of a particular distance as well (some people argue that distance-hearing will actually impede your development, but I'm not convinced).
-Testing your ear is not necessarily the same as training it, though it can be helpful.
-One of the main ways we learn to distinguish similar things is through comparison.

Guitar Players only: Learn all the notes on the neck in 5 weeks.

This post is directed at guitar players, all other instruments can safely ignore it.  It's a quick 5 minute lesson that will result in your knowing the whole neck if you practice about 5 minutes a day for 5 weeks.

In teaching, I've found that one of the biggest obstacles for guitar players is learning the notes that they're playing.  It impedes reading skills, chord knowledge and construction, analysis and comprehension, etc.
You can learn a lot by studying shapes on guitar, but at some point you just have to know all the notes on the fretboard.

This can seem like a daunting task: after all, there are six strings with 12 notes each (assuming that you can at least identify the 12th fret and higher as repeats of what happens in the first 12 frets), making for a total of 72 notes to learn (compared with 12 on a piano or most other instruments).

Fortunately, it's not as big a task as it seems at first.  You just have to break it down in a manageable way. 
Here's how I learned all the notes on the guitar:

1) First of all, you only have to learn 5 strings, because two of them are E strings and have the same notes.  So already we've cut the total information to be learned down to 60 notes.

2) You don't actually have to learn all of the notes on the fretboard to know all of the notes.  You only have to learn the  "white" notes, i.e., notes that are white keys on a standard keyboard and thus don't require accidentals in written sheet music: CDEFGAB.
From there, the "black" notes are obvious.  Since you only have to learn 7 notes per string, we've now reduced the total amount of information to 35 notes, which is less than half of what it seemed like at the start.

3) The "white" notes have a pattern.  Learning the pattern makes learning the notes much easier.  How do you identify a C on a keyboard? It has a white key to the left and two black keys to the right.  If you can learn to 'see' that pattern on the guitar fingerboard, then you are halfway to knowing the notes.
From C: W W H W W W H (W=whole-step, H=half-step).  So there are two "natural" half-steps among the "white" notes.  Learn where those are on each string. Since you know that the notes in between are all whole steps, you can start internalizing the pattern.
So you can make a good start with learning the location of the 2 half steps on each of the 5 strings, which is only 10 pieces of information.  Much easier than 72!

So here's the practice routine:
work on one string a week for 5 minutes a day.

on each string, first locate the BC half-step and the EF half-step.  Play only on that string and play only those notes, saying the notes to yourself as you play them.
When you can do this comfortably (for most students it seems to take about 1-2 minutes the first time), then try to play up and down from the open string to the 12th fret and back, using only the 'white' notes, and saying them as you play them.
When you can do that comfortably, you can try to improvise, again using only the 'white' notes.  It's very important that you don't use any 'black' notes!  You are internalizing the pattern at this point, and anything outside the pattern will interfere with that all-important process.

Repeat this, on the same string, every day for the rest of the week.

Next week, start with another string and do the same thing. On the 7th day of the week, make sure to spend some time reviewing the string from the previous week.

Do the same for the remaining strings.

In five weeks, you will be amazed to find that you simply 'see' all the notes on the fingerboard, without even thinking about it.

You're welcome!

PS. By the way, this lesson was heavily influenced by ideas presented by Mick Goodrick in "the Advancing Guitarist', which is an amazing book.

UPDATE!
I've made a graphic to help visualize the white note patterns on the neck.

Starting and Ending Phrases, Cont'd.

One specific idea for using wider intervals in the beginnings and endings of phrases is to land on a chord tone and leap two chord tones up or down.  This is effective at both the beginnings and endings of phrases or as a standalone melodic motive.  All the great improvisers use this idea. 

The example below shows what I mean.  Over a C major chord, you could play a C and jump down to E (skipping the closest chord tone, G).  There are three notes in the triad, so there are only six possibilities (R down to 3rd, 3rd down to 5th, 5th down to root, root up to 5th, 3rd up to root, 5th up to 3rd). 

There are also many ways to embellish this idea, with approach tones to the first note or to the second note.  Any of the typical embellishments can work on either note (diatonic or chromatic approach, enclosure/encirclement, neighbor tone, etc.).  I show a couple of basic examples below.

A good exercise is to pick a particular leap and practice it with a particular approach or ornament through all the changes of a tune. Trying to land directly on "1" each time also helps practice forward momentum by hearing and directing your lines toward a conclusion.  Here's example showing one variation, using a common chord progression:

 

Of course, you would want to create further variations, using the other possible leaps and varying both the approach and resolution.