Jazz Guitar Basics: Scale-Tone Seventh Chords

Closed Form Arpeggio Chords by George Pasdirtz

In a prior post (here) I wrote out a simplified Wes Montgomery-style solo in octaves based on the C-minor scale. In my first attempt to play Sunny, forty years ago, I tried to play a harmonized version of the song and failed. I just didn't have enough background information and basic musical knowledge to do what I wanted to do. Even if I had been shown how to play the octave solo, I wouldn't have known why I was using the C-minor scale and what, if anything, it had to do with the song.

In this post, I'll start developing the necessary musical theory. I think that my guitar teacher, Roy Plumb, somehow assumed that I had received some background in musical theory, maybe playing some instrument as a child, but I hadn't. In any event, I would have been way too impatient to plow through all of this. After forty years of playing jazz guitar, I can only say to the person I was in 1970: "You need to do this".

"This" will essentially be working through the first few sections of John Mehegan's Jazz Improvisation book and translating it from piano to guitar. I strongly suggest you order the book. I am only going to provide enough to make it useable by the jazz guitarist. Part of the learning process will be to work through the rest for yourself.

The central argument in Mehegan's book is stated in the introduction to Section V Arpeggios:

The basic problem of jazz improvisation is to abandon the melody and build an improvised line on the elements of the chords in a tune...The chord elements are as follows: (1) Arpeggios; (2) Scales; (3) Chromatic tones (p. 53).

This will involve doing a lot of exercises with arpeggios, scales and chords. Mehegan argues that this is precisely what jazz musicians do and, back in 1970, I would have been skeptical. In future posts I will try to prove this argument by playing video of a Mike Stern master class where he describes how to improvise on the song Autumn Leaves and also a video analysis of John Coltrane's solo on Giant Steps (if you want to skip ahead, the videos are here and here). If you have an ear for jazz, the videos will tell you that Mehegan is right and that he accurately describes jazz played at its highest level.

The sheet music at the start of this post is divided into Figures.  This is a lot of basic, necessary background material on music theory and the briefest way to present it is by describing each Figure for you to work with yourself (you can right-click on the sheet music, "Open Image In New Window," and   print the window out for your personal study).

Figure 1. C Major Scale  Western music has evolved based on the diatonic or major scale (you can read more of that history here). In the C-major scale, there are seven distinct notes identified with consecutive letters starting with C-D-E-F-G-A-B-C. The intervals are T-T-S-T-T-T-S where T is a whole tone (two fret interval on guitar, a major second) and S is a semi-tone (one fret interval, a half step).   A to A would be the natural or relative minor with intervals T-S-T-T-S-T-T (to be discussed below).

Figure 2. Closed Form Chords in Thirds Diatonic harmony builds chords in thirds with each successive scale tone forming the lowest note, the root of the chord. The notes are described by root, 3rd, 5th and 7th. In John Mehegan's words "Chords of less than a seventh are insufficient for jazz (p. 11)". Chords that contain degrees greater than a seventh (9th, 11th and 13th) are considered complex chords, which I'll discuss in a future post. The Roman numerals under each chord (from I - VII) are called Figured Bass Notation. They are the "Abstract Truth" of music theory for the jazz musician and open up a more general understanding of chord progressions and "where chords come from" (much more about that in future posts). Songs never follow the chords in order from I-VII (to hear this, hit the "play button" at the top of the sheet music above). A common chord progression in Figured Bass might be II-V-I, for example, as an ending to a song. Figured Bass lets us abstract from Am7-G7-Cmaj7 chords and see the underlying abstract structure of the progression. It's important to note that, due to standard guitar tuning, the closed form chords in Figure 2 are generally not playable (more about that below). The chords can and should, however, be played as arpeggios.

Figure 3. Intervals John Mehegan makes the point that "No jazz musician thinks of lettered chords when he is playing; he hears interval steps based on the distance between one chord and another" (p. 8). Figure 3 shows the basic intervals of the C scale with guitar fingerings. The name of the interval is given beneath each interval and below the name is the guitar string where either the second or first finger of the left hand sounds the note. The finger used to sound the upper note of the interval is indicated by the note. The string on which to play the upper note can be found on the Fingerboard Chart (here). You are already familiar with the octave fingering (the 8th) from a prior post (here). The notes for the other intervals are found either within or above the octave. Here is your chance to start playing something that is important for understanding both music theory and improvising. A lot of interest in jazz solos is generated when you play an interval other than a 2nd (chromatic tones) or 3rd (chordal tones). Learn to hear, sing and play these intervals to let your ear tell you where to use them in a solo. For sure, be able to hear, sing and play middle C and then be able to work up to intervals from there (these are the first steps in ear training, an essential skill for jazz improvisation).

Figure 4. Interval Groups Intervals can be further classified into groups: P for perfect, S for secondary, o for diminished, + for augmented, M for major and m for minor. The interval group names are used to describe the qualities of chords (discussed in a future post).

Figure 5. C Major Scale in Two Octaves, A-string Unlike the piano where the notes are sitting in front of you (once you've located middle C) as either white or black keys, guitarists have to rely on fingering patterns and, because of the standard guitar tuning (E-A-D-G-B-E), there are different patterns at different points on the finger board.  The first step in learning the fingerboard and fingerboard patterns is to start playing scales. Figure 5 shows the C-major scale in two octaves starting at the 3rd fret of the A-string. For this scale, I've annotated not only the fret and string (second finger of the left hand on 3A, to start) but the finger to play each note on that string. When you change strings moving up the scale, for example from the A-string to the D-string, the position for the next note is shown at the appropriate fret (first finger at 2D, for example). The last fingering annotation, +4, indicates that you move the fourth finger up to get the final note, which is high D in this case.

Figure 6. C Minor Scale, A-String The fingerboard pattern for the C-minor scale should be somewhat familiar to you since you used the C-minor scale to play the octave solo for Sunny (here). However, to make things more complicated, this scale is different from the one used in Sunny. It is the Ascending Melodic Minor scale (also know as the jazz minor scale) and has only one flat (1 2 -3 4 5 6 7 8).  The scale played in Sunny is called the Natural Minor scale and has three flats (1 2 -3 4 5 -6 -7 8). There is yet another minor scale called the Harmonic Minor scale and it has two flats (1 2 -3 4 5 -6 7 8). And, to top it off, the Descending Melodic Minor scale is the same as the Natural Minor Scale. Confused yet (I'll talk about this in a future post after we've had more music theory)? To play the jazz minor scale as single notes, a different fingering pattern from the major scale is used starting with the first finger on 3A. Notice that the first G-note in the scale is annotated as -4; this means that the fourth finger is positioned one fret lower than normal. This is because we are about to make a pattern shift to having the first finger on 2G for the A-note. Extra Credit: work out the fingering for the relative minor scale (A-minor) discussed in Figure 1. Extra Extra Credit: work out the fingering for the Natural and the Harmonic minor scales in C. Play the Ascending and Descending Melodic Minor scales together. Listen to the differences.

Figure 7. Arpeggios C Scale Fingerings Within the pattern for the C-major scale, we can find patterns for arpeggiating each of the chords in the scale. In the annotation, I have just indicated the string on which to play the chord's root and the fingers to use in playing the other chordal tones. I leave it to you to find the correct string without shifting position. For reasons I will discuss below, once you learn the various finger board patterns for playing each chord, you will find it easy to simply annotate the fret, string (3A, for example) and the left-hand finger to use, 2 for example.

Figure 8. Arpeggios Octave Fingering Since you are already familiar with octaves from playing Sunny (here), thinking in terms of octaves generates some very easy finger board patterns to play and remember. Once you know the fingerboard, you can use these patterns to arpeggiate any chord at any point on the fingerboard. For now, concentrate on identifying the pattern you are playing and where the notes are located on the fingerboard; your goal is to read the notes, not to read the fingerings.

Figure 9. Ending Example I With the knowledge you've developed so far, you can play a simple improvised ending. The progression in Figured Bass notation is I-II / III-IV /V-VI-VII-I / I6. I will leave the fingering to you but first play it starting at 2A and, as extra credit, try to play it again starting at 8E with different fingering. The C6 final chord is a great jazz guitar barre chord played by pressing down multiple strings with the first and second fingers (work at this chord until you can sound all the notes cleanly as a prelude to block chord playing, to be introduced in future posts).

Figure 10. Ending Example II To confirm my initial statement that very few closed-form chords can be played on guitar, I've provided another ending example that uses two closed-form chords, D flat maj7 and C6. At the end I provide another C6 chord that can be played at 7D with an open A-string annotated with 0 (zero). Extra credit: Why can't we play all the closed form chords as block chords?

Figure 11. Name That Tune For extra credit, here's a progression that I really don't expect you to be able to identify but that I will reveal in future posts: VI / II Ix. For now, use it as a brief sight reading exercise.

Figure 12. Guitar Range There are two effective ranges for guitar depending on the type of guitar. For a classical guitar, the effective range stops at high E (or slightly above it for single notes). The electric jazz guitar with a cutaway can go all the way up to high B or slightly higher.

Figure 13. Double Octaves To round out your ability to play octaves, you can also play double octaves as Wes Montgomery does on the song Bumpin' on Sunset (starting at 1:48 in the video until about 2:50--this may well be the ONLY recorded, prolonged playing of double octaves in the history of jazz guitar and you can find the solo written out in the Wes Montgomery Jazz Guitar Method which may now be entirely out of print and unavailable).

Figure 14. C Major Scale in Two Octaves, E-string Here is the answer to the extra credit question in Figure 9. It is also important (particularly for writers and arrangers) to realize that you can play the same named note in at least two different places on the guitar. The notes are in different registers and sound different, that is, have a different colour (for example, play middle-C at 3A or 8E and listen to the difference). For this reason alone, annotation is very important. If the score isn't annotated, the guitarist will have to make some decisions about which register to play chords in and do the necessary annotation before playing.

Figure 15. C Minor Scale in Two Octaves, E-string Here is the fingering for the C-minor (jazz minor) scale. Concentrate on reading the notes and learning the pattern.

The reason that these exercises are subtitled "Creativity Through Boredom" is that the path to jazz improvisation is through the boredom of arpeggio, scale and chord exercises. The necessary path to really understanding a lead sheet such as Sunny is through playing the melody, arpeggiating the chords, trying different scales (such as the C-minor scale), playing accompaniment chords (comping) and developing chord solos. All these will be covered in more detail in future posts. But the idea is always the same: play these as exercises until you know the song by heart. The minute you start becoming bored, abandon the exercises and do something you find more interesting. At this point, you have the  necessary intimate understanding of what you're doing to start being creative. You hope that your audience also finds it interesting!

NOTE: If you find any errors in the pdf file, let me know. You can also find the .pdf file and the .msc file (for MuseScore, if you have it loaded on your machine) here.