major and minor key or major and minor scales?

[jancivil]

I like having my big vocabulary, I use it. But no, I don't go to 'IV' and think of lydian as a scale during improvisation. I am well aware that people believe they need to do this. It's retarded, it's literally slower than it needs to be, to have more than one name for one thing.

You can't think and play at the same time.

[jancivil]

Robben Ford video

- as an argument hoping to support 'modes belong to key' or 'modes belong to chords' that's a non sequitur. He's talking about SCALES.
EG: half 'diminished scale'/half 'whole tone scale' or 'melodic minor of Ab'.
G Ab Bb B C# D# F (Ab Bb Cb Db Eb F) over a G7 [V7/IV]; and arpeggiating the pertinent color tones when he goes to b13. //#9 b9 1 b13 3//.

And mixing it with blues moves; in order to convey his own thinking.

[Jafo]

Oh, and you can also get into modes, altered scales, non-diatonic scales, atonal music, and all sorts of stuff. Throw in microtonal tunings and such, and you have entire worlds of possibility. In this light, we barely have words to describe what's going on.

Oh, I have a word to describe it: Anarchy (or maybe noise).

That's as good a term as any, but the reality is that it's just a different way of breaking up the octave to get evoke different effects. The Western music game ain't the only one in town, and in fact can sound very strange, even frighteningly alien, to people from other musical cultures.

The distinction between key and scale can be useful, except when it isn't.

I'm sure it isn't to you, based on what you described

Heh. Depends on which effect I'm after. If what I want can be best evoked by major/minor tonality, I'll use them. If something modal or atonal or with microtones is best, I'll use one of those. And sometimes pure abstract soundscapes are the most direct way to work. The music doesn't worry, so why should I?

What you wrote is basically "anything goes". Question is: "Anything goes" where? It would be like what I hear over and over - people playing notes up and down, trying to play as fast as they can, without going anywhere. As someone once said: "When they play too much notes, it's because they don't know what notes to play". Very much true.

"Anything goes" is the polar opposite of what I wrote. I'm talking about differing rule sets and systems, many of which do not rely on a tonal center at all, each of which is fully as systematic and valid as anything in Western music. My apologies for not making that explicitly clear... I tend to go off on fanciful flights when writing prose; if only my composition were as fluid.

And agreed a thousandfold about too many notes! There are too many people just running arpeggios and scales. I guess that doing so reinforces a tonal center, but it's like reading a business letter: "I'm going to bludgeon you with words/notes, so give me money, and be happy about it." Sheesh.

[Jafo]

Somewhat OT, but maybe relevant nonetheless, there's also the phenomenon of "playing the changes," as practiced by a lot of jazz and country guys. Instead of playing the notes of the overall key/scale (do what thou wilt with those terms) over non-tonic chords, you play the notes belonging to whatever chord as if it were the tonic.

Fine. But that playing the changes gets taken to the point of "G mixolydian because G7" when the tonic is C. Again, you now have up to seven names for one thing.
And you get people that never make this distinction. G mixolydian is a world of its own. it does not sound like C major. It isn't C major.

The B in it vs the 'flat VII' F has a tension that belongs in Mixolydian; you go B-A, it's a #4-3 deal. There is a whole world opened up by understanding what the thing IS.
It's interesting in itself.

Agreed. I was being more descriptive than normative (and probably more universal than helpful in pointing out other possibilities, alas).

[Jafo]

I like having my big vocabulary, I use it. But no, I don't go to 'IV' and think of lydian as a scale during improvisation. I am well aware that people believe they need to do this. It's retarded, it's literally slower than it needs to be, to have more than one name for one thing.

Heh, I wish you'd written the lead rock guitar books we were told we had to read in the '80s.

You can't think and play at the same time.

I don't think it's appropriate to raise one's limitations to a universal law. Guys like Bach, Mozart and Beethoven were fully aware of what they were doing when they improvised, and were capable of doing it polyphically, and that's just in the Western game.

[jancivil]

I don't think Sonny Rollins is especially limited as to musical intellect. He is saying more or less what Miles told John McLaughlin 'I want you to play like you don't know how to play guitar'. The point I want to emphasize is thinking of scales for chords in jazz. You have to have it at hand, if you don't know what the f**k to do on a dominant type of harmony without referring to your books, you need to go back home and woodshed.

You're actually saying the same thing if you think about it. They knew. If you're composing in real time, there is no time to think and second guess.

Like that Robben Ford //#9 b9 1 b13 3//, I know what that is without any guess or extraneous process at all, first time I hear it. It isn't so much an intellectual process, it's having enough vocabulary to speak extemporaneously. The synthetic scales or what-have-you, you better know what it means to the climate, now your muscle memory can be called up.