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Playing the right "wrong" note


black cobra

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Posted

Hi. I'm very interested in playing music that doesn't sound too obvious. On the other hand, I don't want to sound so dissonant that the music sounds atonal.

 

I'm looking for the sound that is not quite right but not quite wrong. What is that note in a major pent scale? How about in the minor pent scale? I'm guessing the b5 for the major scale and the 6th for the minor since lydian and dorian are the "go to" scales for non-diatonic chords.

 

Any help and thoughts from fellow sorcerers? What's in your grimoire? Oh now I feel dumb for saying that.

Posted

You can try playing any note, really....listen to each non-scale note and determine if it works for you. I try to think about it in terms of how much tension or dissonance I want. Every note will have a different color or flavor against the chord...to me there aren't really any wrong notes, just bad resolutions...

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Here's a classic Miles Davis "out of Key thing" he does. Notable it's from his version of Dear Old Stockholm...and it's played as a pickup measure/solo lead in over a Dm chord...

 

You can run through these notes over Dm when in the Key of Dm just about anytime.

 

E--------------------------------------9--10--12--13--10------

B--------------------------9--10--12-----------------------10-

G---9----------9--10--12--------------------------------------

D------11--12-------------------------------------------------

A--------------------------------------------------------------

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

 

It touches the D Mel Min or D Harm min however you want to look at it, as well as the D Dorian...it's JUST A MINOR lick.

 

Lay down a Dm vamp and play it as two measures of 8th notes starting on 2 of the first measure and landing the last note on 4 of the last measure. Miles phrase is a bit different than just 8th notes in the song...but mess around with it making small groups of note out of it and stuff, it's quite inspirational and helps you play MINOR instead of a SCALE per say.

 

Of course mix it with the straight Minor scale and Dorian too.

 

It's also similar the lick Miles does in his trumpet solo in So What, JUST before moving to the Ebm7 chord (over the last four measure of Dm7 before the first Ebm7 change). The 4th row of measures in this transcription... http://lessons.mikedodge.com/lessons/Transcriptions/SoWhatTrumpetSolo.htm

 

You can also just experiment with half step approaches to the Dm, or Dm7, or Dm9 chords.

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