Members daddyO Posted March 6, 2004 Members Posted March 6, 2004 Has anyone checked out Pat Martino's music theory using an aug5 and dim7 chord as tonal centres? I tried it and understood it but didn't know how to make music with it.
Members Auggie Doggie Posted March 6, 2004 Members Posted March 6, 2004 I've had minimal exposure to those concepts...perhaps not enough, because it just refuses to make any musical sense to me. My background is very much classical; the function of the Dominant is one of the most necessary and fundamental harmonic concepts for me. The tension and subsequent resolution afforded by it is, to my ears, the strongest. Using an augmented or diminished 5th for a tonic harmony prohibits that resolution; the tonic itself is harmonically unstable! For that same reason, I don't 'recognize' a Locrian modality; to my ears, Locrian is nothing more than a harmonically extended Dominant. For me, an altered 5th and a tonal center cannot coexist! I imagine that, with enough experimentation, forcibly substituting an augmented triad for a major tonic (or a diminished 7th for a minor tonic) could at least yield some interesting results, even if they aren't particularly musical. Sorry I don't any insight for you; my experiences with those concepts seem to be pretty similar to yours.
Members Joe Merlino Posted March 7, 2004 Members Posted March 7, 2004 Augie - Try playing a Lydian Augmented scale any time you hit a major chord. It doesn't always sound "right" but if you hit the run just so, you get that very "modern jazz" sound.
Members Fusion58 Posted March 8, 2004 Members Posted March 8, 2004 I've had minimal exposure to those concepts...perhaps not enough, because it just refuses to make any musical sense to me. I attended one of Pat Martino's clinics when I was a student at G.I.T. I, personally, didn't find Pat's theoretical approach very useful. (No disrespect to PM or his well-deserved status as a jazz legend intended.)
Members daddyO Posted March 8, 2004 Author Members Posted March 8, 2004 Guitar Player has a little bit on his stuff. I think it's cool that you can take a Caug5 and move a finger one fret and get a bunch of major chords (chords I already knew) but the progressions he builds from this aren't going anywhere. I guess I have old fashioned ears looking for the satisfaction of the tonic.
Members Auggie Doggie Posted March 8, 2004 Members Posted March 8, 2004 Originally posted by Joe Merlino Augie - Try playing a Lydian Augmented scale any time you hit a major chord. It doesn't always sound "right" but if you hit the run just so, you get that very "modern jazz" sound. If by 'modern jazz' you mean 'train wreck', then it worked! In other words, I still failed miserably.
Members Occam Posted March 9, 2004 Members Posted March 9, 2004 I liked his ideas very much. I took it more as some ideas for chord construction than for progressions themselves. It opened me up to some of the ideas I've always been stuck with such as inversions and more melodic sounding chords (I'm a pretty meat and potatos riff and simple chords kind of guy).
Members Joe Merlino Posted March 13, 2004 Members Posted March 13, 2004 I just got ahold of this month's Guitar Player, which has an article about this. Martino is not talking about using augmented and diminished tonalities, he talking about using augmented and diminished seventh shapes as "master forms" for chord construction. Basically, his idea is that if you take an augmented triad, and lower any one of the three notes, it forms a major chord. If you raise any one of the notes it forms a minor chord. If you take a diminished seventh chord and lower any one of the notes it forms a dominant seventh chord. Because the augmented and dim7 chords are symmetrical, this gives you a way to create chord forms anywhere on the neck just by moving these shapes around. So essentially, he's talking about using these shapes as a way of organizing the fretboard, creating a "matrix" of related chord forms. It's a really interesting idea, and I'll probably pick up his book, although it may be a little late for me to use this approach, as I've already memorized a lot of these chord shapes.
Members daddyO Posted March 13, 2004 Author Members Posted March 13, 2004 I could only see this being useful if the chords created from a single aug5 or dim7 chord were related harmonically. This is what I couldn't hear when I ra through his progression in GP. But I'm not much of a jazz guy. I can here the basic stuff. That's it.
Members Joe Merlino Posted March 14, 2004 Members Posted March 14, 2004 Originally posted by daddyO I could only see this being useful if the chords created from a single aug5 or dim7 chord were related harmonically. This is what I couldn't hear when I ra through his progression in GP. But I'm not much of a jazz guy. I can here the basic stuff. That's it. They are related harmonically. In the case of the augmented form, they are related by a major third cycle. In the case of the diminished form, they're related by a minor third cycle. Both of these are very useful, especially in jazz.
Members fretwizard4hire Posted March 14, 2004 Members Posted March 14, 2004 i hate that mag so i didn't see the "lesson", but i am familiar with PM's parental forms and really they are a great example of how notes work together harmonically; meaning that a chord is not just the notes being played together, but the focus is the intervals you create with those notes. while i am sure that since it was in a magazine (especially one as commercial and crappy as that one) it was probably giving you examples of cool voicing using the parental forms of diminshed to sevenths, aug to maj & min, but the underlying idea is a better understanding of intevallic structure, and what you can do when you have a great understanding of it like a master such as Pat Martino.
Members Auggie Doggie Posted December 27, 2004 Members Posted December 27, 2004 Originally posted by Joe Merlino I just got ahold of this month's Guitar Player, which has an article about this. Martino is not talking about using augmented and diminished tonalities, he talking about using augmented and diminished seventh shapes as "master forms" for chord construction. Basically, his idea is that if you take an augmented triad, and lower any one of the three notes, it forms a major chord. If you raise any one of the notes it forms a minor chord. I finally found an EARLY example of this approach!! On page 245 of my edition of Schoenberg's Theory of Harmony, he makes a BRIEF mention of that very concept (and describes it as harmonically unimportant ). But, I would venture to guess that Martino's explanation can be traced back (directly or indirectly) to Schoenberg.
Poparad Posted December 27, 2004 Posted December 27, 2004 Joe's post says exactly what I was going to say. This method of Pat's is about fretboard visualization and organization, and not so much about making music. Martino has another musical concept he teaches that is more about making music. He's very much a lick player, and his approach attempts to turn everything into minor 7 chords, so there is only one chord type to think about when soloing. It's an interesting idea... I use pieces of it in my playing, but it's not my solo approach to improvisation. It's basically a food for though/different way of looking at things approach that can be refreshing when you're in a playing rut.
Members FuzzBob Posted January 2, 2005 Members Posted January 2, 2005 Originally posted by Poparad Joe's post says exactly what I was going to say. This method of Pat's is about fretboard visualization and organization, and not so much about making music.Martino has another musical concept he teaches that is more about making music. He's very much a lick player, and his approach attempts to turn everything into minor 7 chords, so there is only one chord type to think about when soloing. It's an interesting idea... I use pieces of it in my playing, but it's not my solo approach to improvisation. It's basically a food for though/different way of looking at things approach that can be refreshing when you're in a playing rut. I dig what you're saying. What Martino's doing here isn't about the theory so much as offering a mechanical springboard for your fingers to leap into an altered dominant environment. It's kinda like the way Howard Roberts used to talk about soloing over tall voicings using the "upper triad"-- not proper from a theoretical viewpoint, but great for breaking down complex jazz changes while you're on the gig at 1:30 in the morning after you've lost count of how much free PBR the bar gave you.
Recommended Posts
Archived
This topic is now archived and is closed to further replies.