Today, a short John Coltrane/McCoy Tyner Style unison jazz quartal guitar line/ jazz head/riff.
This line starts with an anacrusis/upbeat. From here we employ a short pentatonic scale phrase that leads to quartal harmony that resolves down a minor 3rd interval.
I am starting this on an upstroke with strict alternate picking guitar technique.
The key to the first phrase is that it plays upon this “Motif” as it gets imitated up the octaves:
From here, we create contrast by descending with a pentatonic scale and push hard on a sextuplets feel for rhythmic colour and drive.
To complete the first part of this phrase, we round it off with two chords of Ab and G9
We, will now ascend and frame some interesting intervallic sounds: Opening with 5ths to 4ths with chromatic movement:
Finally, we will play the motif up a semitone one more time and ascend up in semitones to complete the phrase:
FULL EXERCISE:
Alternate Picking starting on an “Upstroke”
IN CONCLUSION
This was just a brief look at what can be done with this modal pentatonic quartal jazz style.
It’s a style very well suited to the guitar in terms of fretting and picking and it’s amazing what interesting music you can easily make from this even just by means of imitation.
Robert Fripp Cross Picking Guitar Technique Lesson
Please watch video above for detailed info:
Hi Guys,
Just a short blog to explain what I mean by employing the “Down Down Up” guitar picking technique.
If we look at the patten below we can see the “Down Down Up” Picking pattern:
This is a very useful picking pattern/device that will hold you in good stead: But the key is to employ it sparingly.
Why is this?
This is because sometimes the rhythms we see and sometimes feel can be different than our natural inclinations when picking/plucking the strings.
So, if we look below we will see that the picking hand/subconcious wants to pluck a group of 5 notes and 3 notes to make up the 4 and 4 groups of 16th notes.
This is because of the “Crossing” of the strings, the order of the notes or the way the actual groups of notes on the guitar fingerboard work out:
EXAMPLE:
OR:
Notation Example:
PICKING STROKES:
The other reason to put this “Down Down Up” into what would otherwise be an alternate picking pattern is because:
“Sometimes where you have adown stroke you may want an upstroke to complete the phrase”.
This can be because of one note that has to be played on a down or upstroke specifically otherwise the whole passage is awkward to play. So, to execute “Down Down Up” for that one part makes sense.
FULL EXERCISE:
Below, is the full exercise that deliberately mixesup“Down Down Up” and “Down up” Alternate Picking”. It’s only an exercise [Larks Tongues in Aspic III Style] but, hopefully it gets the point across.
Exercise:
Conclusion:
This technique can also be found in Al Di Meola’s REH video from the 1980’s. Al di Meola employs this for chordal/Arpggeio Picking, [as does Fripp sometimes].
Again, if used sparingly this right hand picking pattern/technique is absolutely essential for this type of art/creative style guitar music.
Lastly, picking one note per string is way more difficult and precise than plucking standard 3 notes per string as there’s so much string crossing going on.
Pat Martino’s Guitar Improvisation Techniques | Free PDF Download
Please watch video above for detailed info:
Hi Guy’s,
Today, a look at how jazz guitar legend Pat Martino approaches jazz improvisation.
This unique insight is strictly for guitar players, [although, players of other instruments may well find some of this extremely interesting and probably useful].
Pat’s approach to guitar improvisation is also a brilliant method for any guitarists that find playing through complex chord changes difficult or confusing
EXAMPLE 1: “Coltrane Changes”
Okay, let’s say we are given this set ofchord changes to improvise over.
Well, this is a lot of chords in different keys and with harmonic shifts to get through. This is 3 Chords per bar!!!
At a fast tempo this is a lot of different scales and arpeggios to connect together quickly!!!
So, what do we do???
Here’s where Pat’s unique approach comes into play.
Pat would approach this by employing the minor.
So, if we take a closer look at our sequence we will notice three sets of ii V7 I’s.
Now that we have this, let’s exploit Pat’s minor topic/minorisation improvisational technique:
To do this we will employ the dominant chord and make it minor:
So for Bbm7 we will use Fm,
for F#m7 we will use C#m
and for Dm7 we will use Am.
In the example below we can visually see it all set up.
EXAMPLE: “minor” shapes to build from:
This allows us to play freely and easily without worrying about messing up harmonically or rhythmically when connecting/playing through the changes.
EXAMPLE 2–Modal slash chord application:
Let’s now exploit this with 7sus4 chordal movement and slash chords.
As before w will make the dominants minor:
F#7sus7 = C#minor
Ab7sus4 = Ebminor
B7sus4 = F#minor
[DbMaj7 = Fminor or Bbm7]
VISUAL CHART: with dominant minor application below.
BASIC minor shape examples to build from:
EXAMPLE 3:
Minor ii V7 Application:
Finally, let’s add a chain of minor ii V7’s
Here we will employ biii as our minor-isation for easy improvisation:
For example with F#m7b5 the biii will be Am. [F# to A is a flattened 3rd or minor 3rd]
To make this really authentic we will add the 6th to the minor arpeggio:
So,
F#m7b5 = Am6
Em7b5 = Gm6
Dm7b5 = Fm6
Example: Classic Jazz Seq Lick:
With this in mind we can either sequence our way through the chain of chords or play freely by exploiting minor biii
IN CONCLUSION
In conclusion this was a brief look at Pat Martino’s brilliant approach to jazz improvisation through any chord changes on the guitar.
The guitar unlike the piano cannot play the same shape through countless octaves, so, when improvising on the guitar we need to be selective[in what actually works] so that ironically we have the freedom to let go and just play.
The minor topic [minorisation] technique allows us to achieve the guitar improvisers aim in a short period of time. For any student frustrated or seeing no end in sight, Pat’s methodology is a shining light. This method can save you 20 years of practice and frustration.
