Great progression to hone your skills with...

[gennation]

It's in 6/4 time...

 

6/4 ||: Dm7 | Gm7 | Gbmaj7#11 | Gbmaj7#11 | F7sus4 | F7sus4 | E7#9#5 | A7#9 :||

 

MAKE SURE you repeat this as a everything AFTER the Gm7 gets you deeper into a nice ball of tension that's released when you come back around to the Dm7 again.

 

Also, notice from Gm7 it walks down chromatically, G->Gb->F->E then uses the V7alt (or A7#9) of Dm to turnaround.

 

If you need a hand with the chord forms or what scales or note collections you might want to use, please let me know.

 

Playing over this progression will get you weavin' and windin' and then make have to land right on your feet again and keep moving.

[Virgman]

I'd tried to improvise over it but felt the interdimensional space time continuum shift.

 

I got the heck out.

 

I checked the clock and an hour had passed.

[gennation]

I'd tried to improvise over it but felt the interdimensional space time continuum shift. I got the heck out. I checked the clock and an hour had passed.

 

 

I should have had a warning sign that said...

 

Take it slow at first, I don't want anyone getting hurt in this dimension or any other!

[malin]

chord shapes plz mike!

[malin]

and scales to solo over it...i'll try and understand why that scale with this chord

[bigboy_78]

Not relating to this progression specifically, but when comping a progression like this, is it best to just play the basics?

So leave out #9 & 13's etc and let the soloist take care of the extensions?

[gennation]

In this case, play them as written. Then as the soloist you play against those chords. The chord's harmonies should lead you to the correct mode and relative harmonies for the chord.

 

I'm posting from my cell and can't go into the chord forms and stuff yet, but hopefully tomorrow.

[Floortom]

I programmed this in...listened to it for a few minutes before diving in for some improv and realizing how much I suck:facepalm:

[1001gear]

My JAM player suks at your changes

[Virgman]

You could do this:

 

Dm7 (play Dm)

 

Gm7 (play Gm)

 

Gbmaj7#11 | Gbmaj7#11 (play GbM)

 

F7sus4 | F7sus4 (play Cm)

 

E7#9 (play Bm)

 

A7#9 (play Em)

 

If you detect anomalies in the flux converter, hit the ESCAPE button.

 

[gennation]

You could do this: Dm7 (play Dm) Gm7 (play Gm) Gbmaj7#11 | Gbmaj7#11 (play GbM) F7sus4 | F7sus4 (play Cm) E7#9 (play Bm) A7#9 (play Em) If you detect anomalies in the flux converter, hit the ESCAPE button.

 

Once you mess with the progression, you'll definitely dig playing over the Gbmaj7#11 as opposed to a straight Gbmaj7. The #11 makes the chord hang very nicely, and it leaves nothing in the forefront but YOU and your melody.

 

For the F7sus4, try Cm7 as it'll still capture that 'sus' sound and essentially creates a G9sus4 chord, which should work nicely. The other thing to experiment with is Quartal Chords for the 7sus4 chords.

 

For the E7#9 and A7#9 options, you might try Bb13 (or Bb7 no 5th) for the E7#9 and Eb13 (or Eb7 no 5th) for the A7#9. I can see where the Bm ad Em could work though, as they would bring out the Phrygian Dominant scale for each chord. But any inversion or substitution for the A7#9 would need to first and foremost resolve nicely to the Dm7...

 

the E7#9->A7#9->Dm7 walks straight backwards in the Cycle of 5ths to Dm, so whatever you do you want to make THAT happen.

 

To understand the 'color' of this progression spend time with the changes given. This will help you flush out a few different aspects/possibilities for where the harmonies come from.

 

If you try to dumb it down right away, and you're not familiar with playing over these types of chords or even how to play these types of chords, you might never find the things that keep this progression moving...mainly you may never find "melody" in it.

 

Dumbing stuff down isn't a bad idea at all but not if it's for reasons of not understanding the chords and what's going on in the progression. As a teacher I would tell you learn how to play over it as written as it will show you the inter workings of what's going on, and when you understand that you can always trim things back and then you'll have two or more "levels" of playing over it and can create improv that steps up through the solo and climax's to it's full potential...instead only understand it from one "simpler level". It's difference of seeing things from a 10,000 ft view as opposed to 10 ft view, IOW, you'll learn a lot the closer you get to it. Of course you may find everything by default, it can happen, but there's a better chance of that not happening than it happening...IOW...

 

you never know the full affect of the flux-capacitor until you've held it in your own hands

 

Actually, that E7#9 should also have a #5 in it too, my mistake. So change the E7#9 to an E7#9#5. I'll change the original to show it.

 

I'll be back with some basic chord forms and basic scale approaches. Or someone else can take a stab at it too if they want. Then we'll compare.

[Virgman]

Once you mess with the progression, you'll definitely dig playing over the Gbmaj7#11 as opposed to a straight Gbmaj7. The #11 makes the chord hang very nicely, and it leaves nothing in the forefront but YOU and your melody. For the F7sus4, try Cm7 as it'll still capture that 'sus' sound and essentially creates a G9sus4 chord, which should work nicely. The other thing to experiment with is Quartal Chords for the 7sus4 chords. For the E7#9 and A7#9 options, you might try Bb13 (or Bb7 no 5th) for the E7#9 and Eb13 (or Eb7 no 5th) for the A7#9. I can see where the Bm ad Em could work though, as they would bring out the Phrygian Dominant scale for each chord. But any inversion or substitution for the A7#9 would need to first and foremost resolve nicely to the Dm7... the E7#9->A7#9->Dm7 walks straight backwards in the Cycle of 5ths to Dm, so whatever you do you want to make THAT happen. To understand the 'color' of this progression spend time with the changes given. This will help you flush out a few different aspects/possibilities for where the harmonies come from. If you try to dumb it down right away, and you're not familiar with playing over these types of chords or even how to play these types of chords, you might never find the things that keep this progression moving...mainly you may never find "melody" in it. Dumbing stuff down isn't a bad idea at all but not if it's for reasons of not understanding the chords and what's going on in the progression. As a teacher I would tell you learn how to play over it as written as it will show you the inter workings of what's going on, and when you understand that you can always trim things back and then you'll have two or more "levels" of playing over it and can create improv that steps up through the solo and climax's to it's full potential...instead only understand it from one "simpler level". It's difference of seeing things from a 10,000 ft view as opposed to 10 ft view, IOW, you'll learn a lot the closer you get to it. Of course you may find everything by default, it can happen, but there's a better chance of that not happening than it happening...IOW... you never know the full affect of the flux-capacitor until you've held it in your own hands Actually, that E7#9 should also have a #5 in it too, my mistake. So change the E7#9 to an E7#9#5. I'll change the original to show it. I'll be back with some basic chord forms and basic scale approaches. Or someone else can take a stab at it too if they want. Then we'll compare.

Excellent stuff, Mike.

[gennation]

Excellent stuff, Mike.

Thanks Virg. Simpler is always better...but sometimes it pays to be bad

[mosiddiqi]

Mike..probably a daft question..but I've noticed that you like many of your progressions for improvisation practice to be in 6/4 or 6/8..any particular reason?..just curious.

[gennation]

Here's some chord ideas:

 

 

Dm7 Gm7 Gbmaj7#11 F7sus4 E7#9#5 A7#9

E---------------------------8----------

B--6---3---1---------4------8------13--

G--5---3---3---------3------7------12--

D--7---3---3---------3------6------11--

A--5-----------------3------7------12--

E------3---2--------(1)---------------- the (1) is optional if you want the Root at the low end of the scale

 

Dm7 Gm7 Gbmaj7#11 F7sus4 E7#9#5 A7#9

E---------------------------3---------(8)-(8)--

B--3---3---1---------4------1------2--(5)-(8)--

G--2---3---3---------3------1------5--(6)-(6)-- these () forms are just other options for A7#9

D--3---3---3---------3------2------5--(5)-(7)--

A----------------------------------0-----------

E----------------------------------------------

 

 

That shows some common forms on the top that you might be familiar with, and if not it would be good to stash them as go-to movable forms for those chord suffixes.

 

The bottom list is nothing more than trying to keep all the forms in basically the area on the fretboard.

 

For scales there's are couple of idea you can use for some of the chords. And of course arps and relative arps are all welcome too, as are a ton of diminished and augmented arps on the E7#9#5 and A7#9 chords! And NEVER forget all the Minor and Major Pentatonics that make up the great 'residues; of these scale sounds.

 

Here's the scales in a nutshell:

 

Dm7 Gm7 = D Aeolian

Gbmaj7#11 = Gb Lydian

F7sus4 - F Phrygian Dominant, F Mixolydian/C Dorian

E7#9#5 - E Super Locrian/E Altered scale, E Phrygian Dominant

A7#9 - A Phrygian Dominant

 

Since this is a Modal-type progression (anytime I have scales changing that aren't necessarily "key changes" I term it as Modal) you can look at everything 'closer' to the tonal center of where the progression resolves too, IOW closer to D. From here you can break the scales into something like this:

 

Dm7 Gm7 = D Aeolian

Gbmaj7#11 = Db Ionian

F7sus4 - D Phrygian

E7#9#5 - D Aeolian b5

A7#9 - D Harmonic Minor

 

Looking at it either way produces the same results EXCEPT, usually players take the first way and start playing by positions and scale forms they are comfortable with, IOW they'll be jumping all over the next from 'memory-stop to memory-stop'. Not that there is ANYTHING wrong with that, because the results can be great...but...

 

in the second examples of scale everything is 'close to each other'. The benefit of this method is it will keep you in one area of the fretboard and will allow you to see EXACTLY what's changing from scale to scale based on half-steps and whole-steps, so you can NAIL the changes by learning what the hell is REALLY changing.

 

There are other concepts you can use, but do BOTH of these first. This way if you lean one way more than the other, you get sharper at the method you're comfortable with but you'll also be able to see a lot of cool things the other method brings.

[gennation]

Mike..probably a daft question..but I've noticed that you like many of your progressions for improvisation practice to be in 6/4 or 6/8..any particular reason?..just curious.

I've found that I do write a lot of things in '6', not sure why that is. But I do have books full of 4/4 stuff too that I can post in due time.

Although, this particular progression isn't mine, it's from a tune I recorded on a session a couple of weeks ago and that we are also performing this Friday. There's a couple of other more difficult progression in the tune (it's 11 tunes run from one to the other as one long epic piece!) that I'll be posting, they are make GREAT music as well as GREAT ball busting exercises in playing and theory concepts.

[mosiddiqi]

Ah, cool, thanks...I'm going to try and put together a rough backing track of the chords and see how I can butcher them

[gennation]

Something that A LOT of Modal tunes contain is these 7sus4 chords played as Quartal Chords, or chords made by 'stacking 4th's'.

 

Look at this form for that F7sus4 chord:

 

E----

B--4--

G--3--

D--3--

A--3--

E----

 

For F7sus4, the Root is not the lowest note in the form, it's on the D string instead. Stacked up this is C F Bb Eb or the 5, R, 4, b7 of the F7sus4 chord. All of these tones are found directly in the F Mixolydian scale (or you might even say some sort of F Minor scale since the sus doesn't tell us Major or Minor, but the function of the chord in this case does).

 

But let's pretend the lowest note of that form is the Root note, because a lot of guitarist base things on how things are built from the Root...

 

in this case C would be the Root, but the chord would still be a stack of 4ths and would still contain the notes C F Bb Eb. The chord would now be named Cm11 or or Cm7add11, maybe even Cm7add11(no 5th) depending on how direct the transcriber wants to tell you exactly what to play. From "C" these notes are found directly in C Dorian (directly related to F Mixolydian note wise, right?).

 

Now look at the 'higher' portion of that chord, F Bb Eb, these three notes "look" like a Bbsus4 chord representing the 5, R, and 4 of the Bbsus4 chord... but with the C note lower. So yet another way you can see this chord spelled is Bbsus4/C Implying the Bbsus4 triad with a C note 'in the bass' position.

 

So, F7sus4 could be viewed as F7sus4, Cm11, or Bbsus4/C. So by learning just a few basic things about this chord you kind of have three approaches to it. How would you know which one to name it...

 

Take the Root movement in that progression: D-G-Gb-F-E-A see how that sets up a chromatic movement? That's probably why the guy named the chords as he did. But he could have named them with this Root movement: D-G-Gb-C-A-E, noting wrong with that except that from the bassists stand point there might be large jumps than there needs to be I guess. But the chromatic movement definitely sets things in a 'direction'.

 

Just some food for thought as the Quartal Chords are VERY popular in modern modal music, ala So What, Maiden Voyage, etc...and the names of the chords might not always be explicitly TELLING you "hey, use a Quartal Chord here!"

 

For more on Quartal Chords with explanations and plenty of common uses and more look here: http://mikedodge.freeforums.org/quartal-chords-t5.html

[Knottyhed]

Here's some chord ideas:

Surely those Gbmaj7#11's are just Gbmaj7's? One of them without the root...

[gennation]

 

Surely those Gbmaj7#11's are just Gbmaj7's? One of them without the root...

 

 

Not sure where you're coming from but that C note is the #11. It's in both those forms.

[Bedlum Bednarik]

Hey Gen, any chance you(or anyone) could post an example blowing thru these changes?

[Knottyhed]

Not sure where you're coming from but that C note is the #11. It's in both those forms.

 

 

I'm not either! I misread the tab.

[gennation]

I'm not either! I misread the tab.

 

 

No problemo.

[gennation]

Hey Gen, any chance you(or anyone) could post an example blowing thru these changes?

 

 

I would like to put together a backing tracking for this and let everyone have at it, having the time right now is the problem.

 

I'll try to at least put together a midi backing of it and play over it. It won't be until this weekend though.

[Bedlum Bednarik]

I would like to put together a backing tracking for this and let everyone have at it, having the time right now is the problem. I'll try to at least put together a midi backing of it and play over it. It won't be until this weekend though.

 

 

Cool man, anything would be great just to see if Im on the right track.