Mike Stern Master Class: Improvising on Autumn Leaves

In a few previous posts (here and here) I've claimed that jazz musicians actually use the kinds of arpeggio exercises that I have never had much use for. In this post, I will start providing the proof.

In the video above from a master class, jazz guitarist Mike Stern starts out by first arpeggiating the chords for Autumn Leaves and then takes off with a great example of jazz improvisation. Mike calls the arpeggios "chord turns" and explains how classical composers would outline chord changes in a "particularly beautiful way," for example in the Bach Corales. Jazz musicians can use chord turns for parts of solos as long as they make sure it doesn't sound like an exercise! Mike then goes on to demonstrate with the changes for Autumn Leaves.

In the pdf file (here) and the MuseScore msc file (here) I have written out an arpeggio exercise using the changes Mike was outlining. I've given the fingering for the the first note of each arpeggio in the first eight measures. In the second eight measures, Mike switches to a higher register. I've written these arpeggios out as octaves so you can either player the higher note or play the octave. In the sixth and seventh measures on the second page, Mike plays block chords (Em7, Eb7, Dm7, Db7). These are pretty standard root-position chords that many readers will be able to play. In a future post, I'll describe a very straight-forward way to play root-position chords on guitar, especially now that you are familiar with octaves and arpeggios.

Also, in a future post I'll go on to analyze Mike's solo in more detail. If you're interested, you can find a transcription of a Mike Stern Autumn Leaves solo from the Bob Berg In The Shadows CD here. Comparing the two solos is an interesting exercise in understanding the process of improvisation. One point I want to make here is that Mike knows and can arpeggiate the chord changes to Autumn Leaves by heart. So our first step is memorization! Then we go on to play arpeggios (and maybe throw in some block chords) until we are bored, at which point we move on to try different things that might interest us. In the Bob Berg transcription, Mike uses be-bop scales, side-slipping (outside playing) and guide tones (targeting)--all topics to be explored in future posts on jazz improvising.

In the next post, I will look at John Coltrane's use of arpeggios in his well known solo on Giant Steps. Hopefully, studying the Coltrane solo will provide enough proof that the greatest jazz musicians have made extensive use of arpeggios.

Improvising with Eighth-note Arpeggios

In Lesson 35 (page 57) of John Mehgan's Jazz Improvisation and Rhythmic Principles it is suggested that "as a starting point for improvisation, abandon the melody and play the arpeggios of the chords in eighth notes." In prior lessons in Section V (p. 53) Mehegan describes arpeggios and introduces the concept of arpeggios in rhythm. In a prior post, here, I worked out similar material for jazz guitar. In this post, I'll apply the ideas to the song Sunny by Bobby Hebb.

The pdf file (here, the first few measures are displayed above) provides an example using the changes from Sunny and using Mehegan's approach starting on page 58 of  Jazz Improvisation. I have just indicated the starting string and finger to use for each arpeggio. The fingering patterns are similar to what has already been presented here with some small differences:

• In the first measure, second line, the descending Abmaj7 arpeggio starts with the +4 fingering notation at 9B. This means that the fourth finger is raised one half step to play the root of the arpeggio, Ab. The same notation is used for the descending Abmaj7 arpeggio in the second measure, third line. The way to think about this is that all the notes of an arpeggio (to include higher order 9ths, 11ths and 13ths) are found in or around the octave. This is the reason I introduced octaves before arpeggios and block chords. It's not the only way to play a descending Abmaj7 arpeggio in two octaves (one could also start with the second finger on Ab on the high E string, that is 2 at 4e) but it retains the octave structure.
• In the third measure of the third line, note that even though there is a jump between C of the Dm7 chord and G of the G7 chord, the two chordal arpeggios are played in the same position on the guitar. Finally, in the third measure of the first line and the first measure of the third line, the Eb13 chord, the 13th is played as a 6th (C); it could also be played as a seventh (Db) with the 13th (C) played an octave higher than the 6th.

Once you can play all the chordal arpeggios of a song in root position, Mehegan encourages you to be more exploratory: "Do not 'set' the improvised figures. Use the arpeggios both ascending and descending as well as from various inversion points (third, fifth and seventh)" (page 57). The exploration of inversions and higher order tones (9ths, 11ths and 13ths) are exercises you can develop on your own. I would suggest first learning to arpeggiate the chords in root position from memory and then going on to explore inversions and higher order tones, converting the exercise into a real improvisation. Also, explore different rhythmic combinations: half-notes, quarter notes, eight notes, sixteenth notes and 32nd notes (Matt Warnock suggests using triplets involving 3-5-7 in different orders--think in terms of the octave for the root position chord and play the 3-5-7 inversions on the appropriate string). Write out your best ideas in a notebook and use the notebook to developing your own style (John Coltrane kept such a notebook). As before, play everything in different keys.

Now that you have "heard" Mehegan's approach to developing improvisational ideas, you should remain skeptical.  The arpeggios have a particular "sound" and use within an improvisation but must be supplemented with scales, modes, block chords that can be played on guitar and non-chordal tones. All of these topics will be taken up in future posts.

In case you are still resistant to doing exercises (as I was), in the next post I will show that arpeggios are routinely used by jazz musicians. The first example I will use is the song Autumn Leaves from jazz guitarist Mike Stern's master class where Mike explains how he uses "chord turns". In a following post, I will look at the John Coltrane solo in Giant Steps where the arpeggios and rhythmic variations are particularly easy to recognize and for which we have his basic solo written out for study (please contact me if you would like a MuseScore msc file for personal study).

NOTE: If you find any errors in the pdf file, let me know.

Can't Get The Music Out of My Head

Here are a number of things guitarist Brad Carter is not doing in the video clip above:

• Trying to get the music out of his head
• Taking a break during brain surgery
• Warming up for a Lady Gaga Concert
• Trying to reduce his health care costs by bartering a free concert with the OR staff

To get the incredible answer, you'll have to watch the video.

How to Warm Up For a Practice Session

Jazz Guitarist Matt Warnock recently posted this picture on his Facebook page (here and, no, I really don't look like the guy in the picture, yet). Matt was asking his followers if they had "Any big practice plans for the weekend." A few of them responded asking for suggestions. I can only pass on what my guitar teacher, Roy Plumb, suggested as a warm up exercise other than 2112 By Rush.

Warm Up Exercises by George Pasdirtz

The idea here is to play the ascending 1-3-2-4 pattern on each string and the descending 4-2-3-1 backwards on the same strings after which you move up a fret and repeat the entire pattern until you've reached the 12th fret (hit the "play" button above the score to here the exercise). As your finger strength, dexterity and technique improve you can, when reaching the 12th fret, do everything in reverse back down to the 1st fret. Another option is to make the shift up a fret when your fourth finger reaches the E-string (on the high E-string, 1-3-2-4 shift 4-2-3-1, etc.).

After this, you should be warmed up and ready to play. And, weirdly enough, I find myself using some of these patterns as scales (for short periods) in a solo. I have also heard jazz guitarist Jim Hall mention that he soaks his hands in warm water before playing. I have tried to play in the morning right after showering and it just rips off my calluses, so I'm not sure how he does this, but I'm not sure how Jim Hall does a lot of things (more on that in future posts).

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.

Developing Jazz Guitar Sight Reading Skills

In the last post (here), we started with pretty basic material covering scale-tone seventh chords and arpeggios. The angel on my shoulder says "you have to learn this stuff and there are no short cuts or tricks" while the devil on my shoulder is saying "man, this is really boring stuff, yawn". I just read a post by jazz guitarist Matt Warnock (here) that could help with the devil that just wants to start improvising.

Matt's post was about sight reading skills, how generally poor these skills are among jazz guitarists and finding interesting ways to develop these skills. For myself, I'm great with the top two and the bottom two strings, but not so good with the middle two strings. The reason is simple: I've played a lot of charts written out in the correct register for guitar (an octave higher than the standard lead sheet) and those charts largely make use of the top two strings for melody and the bottom to strings for naming the chord changes (e.g., root position G7 can be played in either 3E or 10A--I'll introduce more of this in future posts). The important point here is that we learn by doing. But what you do is important. Although being bored is also important to jazz creativity, playing obscure sight-reading exercises may be just a little too boring.

Matt's suggestion is brilliant. Get a copy of The Real Book, start on page 1 and sight read four songs a day. Don't worry about fingering technique, use fingerboard charts (here and here) when you get stuck, but just plow through this concentrating on reading the notes and playing the tune. Play everything as written without transcribing up an octave. Since you will know most of the tunes (if you don't, find them on YouTube and get familiar--this is part of learning the jazz book), you will also know when you hit a wrong note.

Another way to do this is to print and play four Wikifonia lead sheets (here) every day. When you are just starting, pick songs you have heard before. As you get better, (1) pick songs you don't know and (2) transpose songs into different keys, increasing the number of flats and sharps over time. Don't annotate the songs for fingerings. Just play and move on.

Matt suggests going on to comp the chord progressions as if you were accompanying a singer, being careful not to conflict with the singer's melody line (which you already know at this point). If you have the The Real Book (pretty much a necessity if you want to work with other jazz musicians), chord comping works great. The changes are quite accurate and sophisticated (in a future post, I'll provide a simple explanation for how to play any root position chord you might find in The Real Book). If you're using the Wikifonia lead sheets, you might run into some problems here since not all the chords are accurate (John Mehegan has a lesson on page 201 of the Jazz Improvisation book titled 'Sheet Music Conversion' which may be necessary for some Wikifonia lead sheets and I'll cover it in a future post, but we need a lot of jazz theory first).

Matt has a number of other great suggestions and I strongly recommend reading his blog entry on Jazz Guitar Sight Reading Skills. The other suggestion I would have is to write a lot of music, but more on that in a future post. For now, here's an example exercise:

Ex. 1 Download four versions of Sunny from Wikifonia (here). Use the "Transpose" button on the right side of the page and choose "+3 (3 flats)" for the first (key of E flat major),  choose "+5 (1 flat)" for the second (key of F major), choose "-5 (1 sharp)" for the third (key of G major) and finally choose "0 (-)" for the fourth (key of C major). Play the melody for each version without annotation. Play the melody in both single-note and octaves. Play each at different positions on the fingerboard (for the E-flat key signautre, try the third and the tenth fret). Then, return to a question posed in an earlier post (here): Does Wes Montgomery make any key changes in his version of Sunny (here)?

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.

"That Doesn't Work, Does It?"

One of the questions raised by my last post was: How does a Jazz musician come up with chord progressions that are somehow "better" or more interesting than the ones provided in a commercial lead sheet? In future posts, I will use this question to motivate a detailed look at Jazz harmony--a topic about which I knew nothing when I started trying to play Jazz guitar. But first, I want to play my favorite clip from the movie Amadeus (above) since it provides a wonderful illustration of Jazz improvisation.

In the first part of the clip, the composer Antonio Salieri (F. Murray Abraham) is seen composing a "March of Welcome" to be played by Holy Roman Emperor Joseph II (Jeffrey Jones), a patron of the arts and amateur piano player, at the Emperor's first meeting with Mozart (Tom Hulce). Salieri is seen noodling around at the piano trying to come up with a melody line which, when it falls into place, he thanks God for the inspirational moment.

The scene then cuts to the Emperor trying, not very successfully, to play Salieri's March as Mozart enters the room not knowing that it is the Emperor at the fortepiano. As the Emperor continues to play, Salieri beams with pride over the accomplishments of his illustrious student. Upon finishing the piece, the Emperor offers the manuscript to Mozart as a remembrance. Mozart claims not to need the manuscript because he has already, on one hearing, memorized the piece. The Emperor asks him to prove it and Mozart sits down at the pianoforte and plays it through once flawlessly.

On the second time through he starts critiquing the piece and starts improvising over a more sophisticated harmonic line, transforming Salieri's "trifle" into the "No more gallivanting" march from the Marriage of Figaro.

Essentially, this is the process of Jazz improvisation:  try to get the composers intent from either hearing the song (if you have great ears like Mozart) or reading the sheet music. You are probably going to find the sheet music a little boring, as Mozart did,  so you go about adding chord changes "that work better" and a more interesting melody line. It helps to have a good understanding of Jazz harmony so you don't have to sit at the piano, as Salieri did, and pick out notes until you figure something out.

Amadeus is one of my favorite movies. It sets up the conflict between genius (Mozart) and mediocrity (Salieri) so beautifully. Salieri is a good enough musician and composer (he was quite good, quite popular in his time and his music is still played) to know genius when he hears it and to know that he isn't at the same level. One can be sympathetic!


NOTE: If you can't wait to find out the answer to the question posed at the beginning of this post ("How do Jazz musicians come up with chord progressions that work?), start reading Lesson 76. on page 201 of John Mehegan's Jazz Improvisation: Tonal and Rhythmic Principles. If you get lost, back track to the beginning of the book and work your way back to page 201. If you are a Jazz guitarist, in future posts I will work my way slowly through Mehegan's book, which was written for piano, and translate the main ideas to guitar.