Follow Your Spine

Sheryl Bailey jazz guitar workshop sessions, North Wales International Jazz Guitar Weekend, Wrexham. Friday 19th to Sunday 21st October 2012

I'm just back from a really excellent weekend workshop co-tutored by New York based jazz guitarist Sheryl Bailey as part of the North Wales Jazz Guitar Weekend held at the Glyndwr University in Wrexham. Sheryl teaches at Berklee amongst many other places, and it was clear from the off that (not surprisingly) she really knows her stuff both about jazz theory and jazz history. I picked up some really useful things that I'll try to explain here. I should probably give a muso warning at this point that the post does get quite technical and assumes some knowledge of jazz theory and harmony.

First off I was really pleased to find that I'm not the only one puzzled why so many jazz guitarists roll their tone right back, in some cases completely off. Sheryl said many students at Berklee do this, but she doesn't think it sounds at all good and mutes all the higher end harmonics that give richness to guitar tone. I wholeheartedly agree! She also suggested that because the subtlety of tone is removed, mistakes are more easily covered up, so it's not a good way to go technique wise either.

Bop Improvising

The Saturday session was about approaches to bop playing. Sheryl emphasised that she isn't thinking about scales at all for this style of playing. It's all about knowing and being able to follow the chord changes or the "spine of the tune" as she referred to it many times. Improvised lines are based on using the arpeggio chord tones along with diatonic and chromatic approach notes. She outlined a good step-by-step way to get into this, which is first to play through the changes using voice led arpeggio notes, next bringing in approach notes to the arpeggio notes.  Voice leading here simply means playing the nearest note of the next arpeggio when the chords change rather than going back to the root note each time.

This principles were explained in application to a Bb blues. I wish I'd taken a photo of the board here, but as I didn't I've typed it out. The formatting was fiddly on the blog, so I ended up taking the photo below.  She said that when she sees a dominant chord she will think of its II minor chord as well as the dominant chord itself, and will use the arpeggio notes for both as the basis for the improvised lines. These would be the F-7 and Bb7 arpeggios over the first Bb7 chord of a blues. She also mentioned that it's good to set up the Eb7 IV chord in bar 5 with an altered sound over the previous bar 4, the same idea being used on the G7 in bar 8. There's also the possibility of using the arpeggios of the sub V chord and its associated II chord in all cases, such as shown in bars 6, 9 (not labelled), 10 and 12 (also not labelled). In the first instance, it's important for the chord tones to be played on the downbeat to give strength to the sound of the chord and the changes, but when you start to have a good handle on what you're doing, you can relax and play around with this to a certain extent.

Click photo to enlarge

Sheryl then outlined some next steps to add boppy melodic embellishments:

1) Add the chromatic note below each chord tone
2) Add the diatonic note above the chord tone
3) Combine (1) and (3)
4) 3 note chromaticism: 1 chromatic below and 2 above
5) 3 note chromaticism: 2 chromatic below and 1 above
6) 4 note chromaticism: 2 chromatic below and 2 above
7) 4 note chromaticism: 2 chromatic above and 2 below

By doing this you're not only adding more colour to a standard blues scale approach, but you're outlining the changes very clearly and sounding much more authentically boppy. Improvising in this manner can be done more or less unaccompanied when done effectively, the changes being clearly outlined. She mentioned that this approach was heavily used by people like John Coltrane and Sonny Stitt.

Additional to the II and V7 arpeggios, the VII and IV arpeggios can also be used. On the Bb7 for example, these would be D-7b5 and AbMaj7. This gives what she called the "family of four" substitution possibilities.

A further possible step is to bring in some melodic minor harmony, using for example FmMaj7, Bb7#11 and AbMaj7#5 arpeggios on the Bb7 chord of the blues progression. Another fairly out idea used by Pat Martino is to play the whole blues sequence a tritone above. She mentioned you may be pushing your luck to do this for more than a chorus though :).

We also got into the idea of playing dotted quarter notes over a 4:4 rhythm to give anticipation to chord movement. Sheryl mentioned that Berklee tutor Ben Wilmott teaches this stuff, his 'Time for the Future: Polyrythm in Harmony' book being a good reference for further study.

Drop Voicings

On Sunday we covered 'drop 2' and 'drop 3' voicings, much used by players like Wes Montgomery. A good exemplar of the use of drop 2 voicings is Wes Montgomery's 'Cariba' where the opening is played on a drop 2 F-7 and its inversions.

Drop voicings are where you drop the 2nd or 3rd note (voice) from the top of a voicing down one octave.  The left part of the photo below shows an example using a G minor chord and its inversions. You can (hopefully) see the first chord on the left is a standard R 3 5 7 voicing. Next to it is the drop 2 voicing where the second voice down from the top, i.e. the D note is dropped an octave down to the bottom of the voicing.

Click photo to enlarge

The high, middle and low string tab chord shapes are given below the voicings on the photo along with all the three inversions.  These should be learnt for maj 7, minor 7, dominant 7 and minor 7b5 chords at first, then extending the principle to chords with added tensions later. This should be practiced on all three string groups.

She then explained how these voicings can be used to harmonise a melody line or solo (if you've got the chops ;) on the top string, with diminished chords being used to fill in any passing notes of the line. This isn't easy to do live in the moment of improvising, Sheryl reminding us how Wes was a monster player to be able to do this so well. This took us into a little work on melody notes over diminished chords whilst moving them up the fretboard in minor thirds (on the right of the photo).

Someone asked a question about tasty final chords for tunes, which got us into the idea of using the open strings of the guitar for tension notes to get some striking and strong sounds. Wayne Shorter's 'JuJu' is in a useful key for voicings using open strings, as well as being a good tune for practising whole tone scales.

Pluralities

The final part of the workshop covered what Sheryl referred to as 'Pluralities'. This is the idea that you have families of 'like chords' varied by the use of different notes in the bass. For example if you take a standard Cmaj7 chord and place an A in the bass you get an Amin7 add 9 chord. If you take the same Cmaj7 chord and add a D in the bass you get a D7sus9 13 chord. To get into the sounds of modes such as melodic minor, the same principle can be applied to Cmaj7b5 and Cmaj7#5 chords, a notable example being when an F bass note is added to a Cmaj7#5 chord to give the strange sounding F diminished major 7 chord (dimMaj7).  This sound is coming from the harmonic major scale and its modes.  I was interested to hear Sheryl say that the dimMaj7 chord is very popular with contemporary players in New York such as Kurt Rosenwinkel, Ben Monder and Adam Rogers. These players will typically use the dimMaj7 chord as a default I chord in both major and minor tonalities, it having an ambiguity that allows for its use in both situations.

So that was about it for Sheryl's sessions. Course leader Trefor Owen covered many useful pragmatic tips for the working jazz guitarist in his sessions, including things like bass line comping and Maj7 arpeggio lines for getting through the fast changes on tunes like 'Cherokee'. It was also great to hear Sheryl in concert on the Saturday evening. The jams as ever, were very useful, giving us the chance to play with the legendary Bill Coleman on bass along with Andy on drums.

A big thanks from me to Trefor, Maureen, Joe and everybody else involved in organising the weekend. They've been running for an amazing 12 years now. This one was the 18th weekend so far. Jack Wilkins is the plan for the next weekend, so all being well I'll pop along to that too. For now, there's plenty been added to the practice list.

Etherology

North Wales International Jazz Society Guitar Weekend, Wrexham, Wales

I had a really interesting time at the Wrexham jazz guitar weekend. The main attraction for me was the opportunity to learn from the ace british jazz guitar legend, John Etheridge. The first evening consisted of getting up and knocking out a standard with John and the fab Bill Coleman on double bass. I got up for ‘All The Things You Are’ and did a pretty decent job of it I think. He got us trading fours, which almost caught me out, but I just about got away with it.


The next morning we looked at approaches to chord melody playing, something I don’t do a whole lot of, but keep meaning to have a better look at. John suggested starting with the melody, and then adding the chord root notes. Next it’s a case of adding some chord fragments on the third and fourth strings where you can , but the melody and bass come first.

We then looked at the Joe Pass method. John mentioned that it’s very much a harmonic as opposed to melodic or rhythmic system. Joe Pass didn’t think in terms of scales at all, the system generally being all about chord substitutions, the tones from the chords, and passing notes as the basis for comping and improvising. John suggested that with bebop playing generally, it’s all about chord tones and passing notes, not scales.


On Sunday John talked about some of the improvisation techniques used by players such as John Scofield and Pat Metheny. One scalar approach favoured by himself and Scofield is the use of the half-whole diminished scale on static V7 chords, giving a strong sense of tension. Its sound is not dissimilar to the altered scale, but the natural fifth in the half-whole diminished works well on a static V7, as the flat fifth in the altered scale wants the V7 chord to resolve to its I.

He then talked about the use of primary triads built on harmonised scales. This approach is particularly useful in modal vamp situations such as on ‘So What’, where triads can be used to add interest to comping as well as in the improvising. He then explained the use of fourth or ‘quartal’ voiced suspended chords, and scales harmonised in fourths such as used on Miles’ ‘In a Silent Way’. He said that as long as you have a note from the relevant pentatonic scale on the top of a voicing, you can play pretty much any suspended chord voiced in fourths below, and the harmony will take it. This approach works well with modal vamps too.

To finish up, John summarised his practice approach to new scales and harmony:

• Get all the notes of the scale all over the neck
• Play the scales over a looped groove, such as using the Line 6 delay pedal or the iRealBook.
• Work out the harmonised triad chords
• Only when the above is mastered, bring in and practice non-scale passing notes
• Then put a sequence of chords together in a loop and run the scales together in the same area of the fingerboard
  

Having attended these schools a few times a number of years ago, I was fairly familiar with the material Trefor Owen covered. Having said that, the information on the use of the whole tone scale on V7 chords was something I was aware of, but hadn’t gotten around to looking at. Trefor also took us through some approaches to improvising on the changes to ‘Autumn Leaves’ and ‘One Note Samba’ type sequences.

At lunchtime each day there was a well organised jam in the bar which I had fun at, playing with Giles Barratt, backed by Bill Coleman and a drummer I have to confess I didn’t get the name of. On the Saturday there was a concert with John, Trefor, Andy Hulme, Bill Coleman, violin player Don May and the drummer. John’s playing was great, especially on his loop backed solo performance.

So that was about it. A great weekend and a few more tricks up my sleeve.

Jazzwise 'Write Stuff' Winning Entry Announced

Blimey, where I've been? Neglecting this blog again it seems yes. Coming off the back of the ace London Jazz Festival and doing the Write Stuff jazz journo mentoring scheme, it feels like I've been ill ever since. Well so has everyone else in the UK it seems, so no sympathy deserved I know. Anyways, I think I'm more or less back on track and figured it's time to get this thing going again. Not easy, as I've not really been out and about that much due to aforementioned bug. I shall be endeavouring to in good time.

I can at least report that the best review winner of the 'Write Stuff' was announced earlier this year. Sadly for me, it's not me. However the very worthy winner is Howard Caine from Manx Radio. All us Write Stuffers reviewed the same Roy Hargrove gig during the festival and submitted it a few weeks later. It was then judged by Jazzwise magazine's editor Jon Newey and journalist Kevin LeGendre. I can't point you to the review as it's not online yet, but it is in this month's Jazzwise magazine (Feb 09). Nice one Howard.

The Dappled Cat - The Music Place Jazz Summer School 2008

About two weeks ago I once again attended the annual Music Place Jazz Summer School hosted by the kind folk at The Cinnamon Club in Bowdon. It was another exhausting week of scales, arpeggios, triplets, grooves, vibes and mixed emotions. Don't get me wrong, it's a really great week but it can expose the raw side of one's ego when you realise what you (still) can't do, though it's all too easy to forget what you have actually learnt. I have to say I found this year quite a tough one as I wasn't really all that happy with my playing during the week. That's not to say I didn't have a good time and learn a good deal to boot. The evening jam sessions in particular were excellent, being expertly facilitated by Suzanne Higgins.

I had originally made the decision not to attend this year as I went on Mike Walker's fab guitar retreat in Andalucia, Spain. However my other 'arf, Jane has taken up jazz ivory tinkling and decided to do the course this year so I figured I'd go along partly to keep her company. The set up for most days is 'sectionals' in the morning which is based on your instrument, and ensembles in the afternoon roughly grouped by standard. The course tutors this year were Mike Walker (guitar), Iain Dixon (horns), Andy Schofield (horns), Les Chisnall (keys), Caroline Boaden (drums) and Alec Dankworth (bass).

Having been on the summer school before and having had one to one lessons from Mike, I suspected the guitar classes might be going over stuff I'm fairly familiar with but it was a pleasant surprise to find that he took a different tack this year. One thing that's been noticed is that the general standard has improved over the last few years and the bar has definately been raised. In the guitar class everyone had attended the course at least once before so we were able to look at some new areas including the finer subtleties of triplet swing feel. We went into this in quite some detail and it was clear there's a lot to getting this feel spot on. Mike employed the phrase 'Dave the dappled cat' to good effect to help master the timing of the swung '2 and' beat of the charleston groove landing on the word 'cat'.

Some interesting exploration of the melodic minor scale was very welcome too, with it's altered and lydian dominant modes useful over certain applications of dominant chords, and the Hitchcock/Debussy favoured mystical locrian natural two mode. For sure no one was left in any doubt as to how to swing the metronome on the 2 and 4.

There were some great players in my group for the afternoon ensemble sessions. This was good for keeping me on my toes and I was sometimes left for dead if asked to play the melody for a tune. Mike had us running down the 1st, 2nd, 3rd and 5th notes of each chord of 'Solar' [I never got his "they say so-la in Liverpool" joke] and I came up with some particularly tasty 'clams' [= very wrong notes] when forced to improvise just using these notes of the scale. It's surprising sometimes how the slightest rearrangement of a scale or arpeggio brings you to a grinding halt. We did a lot of work on swing feel in the ensemble class as well, alternating between playing all of the '1 and a, 2 and a' triplet beats and then dropping playing but still feeling the 'and's to get the quaver swing feel.

The final evening of the week is always the school concert to which family and friends come. A nervous Jane did really well trading eights and fours on an Abdullah Ibrahim tune in Alec Dankworth's ensemble. In the end I think I chickened out a little by choosing to solo on the straightforward blues of 'Thing's Ain't What They Used To Be' a la BB King. Nevertheless it seemed to go down well so I guess it must have come across OK. The rather shattered tutors then sent us home with some mellow renditions of a few standards. Now it's time to practice...

Mike Walker Interview on ALL FM

A world exclusive tonight on mine and Sam Andreae's EXR Jazz Unsigned radio show on ALL FM. We've got guitarist Mike Walker coming in with sax player Iain Dixon. Mike's new and first CD, 'Madhouse and the Whole Thing There' is at last finally completed and will be available soon from Jazz CDs. We'll be interviewing Mike and Iain about the new CD and playing some tracks. This will be the first time any of the material from the CD will have been aired so we're really excited to have this exclusive. Mike is not one short for words and there's quite a story behind the CD so we should be in for an entertaining show.


We'll also be playing tracks from a couple of new Manchester jazz ska bands, Skamel and Baked A La Ska . Like buses these new jazz ska bands. There'll also be the usual listings for the next couple of months and a few previews from the last two.

Listen online or tune in if you can. The show runs from 11pm to 1am tonight.

The Noise Upstairs

Two gigs last night. Julian Argüelles as part of the fab Learn Live series of events and Jon Cervantes new outfit, Current Affairs.

The Learn Live events are basically:

"informal talks by each of the featured artists in a relaxed and friendly venue. We wanted to create a place where you could hear great gigs from internationally performing artists and ask them about their lives, loves and music!"

I've been to several of these now and found them really enjoyable and useful. They're normally held in the RNCM Students Union and the attendance has generally been quite low so I'm really hoping they can manage to keep them going. Surprisingly few students show up - most people seem to be usual MCR jazz mafia. This one was well attended however with the Jazz Festival publicity behind it. Julian covered some of the issues of jazz education. This has become a big business since the 1970s and he made the point that it can be a problem with students looking to be given everything and maybe not going and finding things out for themselves. he thn talked about improvisation. He stressed that many of his favorite players with the exception of Coltrane were not master technicians. It's great to have facility and technique but there's a danger it can get in the way of expression and feeling. Music isn't supposed to be a competitive sport.

I then went over to Matt and Phreds to see Jons Current Affairs. It was quite Steve Coleman and very fusiony at times but there were some really good grooves in there. Quite liked the poetry style vocals. It's good to see Jon's finally got something together. We've met at jams many times over the last couple of years and played together briefly in a funk band, the Vibrant Family Collective.

Also finally chatted to Anton at M&Ps. I've known who he is for a while but our paths didn't quite cross for some reason and hadn't spoken to him before. Had a really good chat actually. I was really excited to hear he's involved in setting up a free improv jam night called 'The Noise Upstairs' at Fuel Cafe Bar in Withington - sounds really amazing:

"The idea is an improv-jam night combining our backgrounds of jazz, contemporary classical and electro-acoustic music. In order to create a totally democratic evening, the way we're running it is; if you want to play, put your name in a hat at the start of the night, then ensembles are created at random by pulling, say, three names out at once (depending on how many people turn up and so on) and then you play for 10-15mins... Bring instruments, laptops, voices and toys!"

I've got high hopes for this - reminds me of some of the amazing sounding nights that used to happen in Soho in the 50s and 60s that I've read about. Withington is very studenty and quite a young crowd so I'm hoping I don't feel too much the old git. I'll have to give it a try for sure.