Posts tagged whole tone
Posts tagged whole tone
Hour 35 - 38
Oz Noy is one of my favourite guitar players. I’ve been listening to his latest record, Twisted Blues Vol. 1, a ton lately. It’s awesome! Great guitar tone, fantastic musicians, genre-bending, quirky compositions and Oz’s unique improvisational style makes for a really cool record.
He recently released a couple of instructional videos, too, through JazzHeaven.com and launched a contest in support of the release. Up for grabs is a private lesson with Oz! To enter, guitarists record themselves trading choruses with him over a blues in G7, using specific scales that he outlines from pentatonics to altered modes. I spent hour 35 - 38 working through some whole tone, diminished and altered ideas before recording the video above. The video with the most “likes” on YouTube by midnight tonight wins!
Hour 10
During hour 10, I was wood shedding the whole tone scale in intervals of a 3rd, b5th, #5th and b7 to get the scale under my fingers better. I also started working out altered chord voicings in (mostly) 4ths across the neck. You can hear a glimpse of what this sounds like between the 0:51 and 0:54 second mark in the video clip above. The clip was recorded at my album release party at The Rex Hotel in Toronto on January 14th, 2012. We’re playing the Billy Cobham classic, Stratus.
Hour 3 - 4
I become nocturnal on tour. It’s 3:34 in the morning. I just wrapped up today’s practice session. It went by pretty fast! I made up a few 1 - 2 bar rhythms and jammed them out during the first hour. I find this is a good way to play new lines: if you limit yourself to a specific rhythm and try to make it sound good in the context of an improvised solo, unfamiliar phrases start to pop up.
I was inspired to do some writing. You’d think being in a hotel room in a medieval citadel in Transylvania might inspire a spooky composition, but instead, I put together these chord changes (to be played with a jazz ballad feel):
Bb9#11 I Ebmaj7 I Dmin7 I Eb6 I F6 I Abmaj7#11 I Gmin9 I Gmin9 I
The melody still needs to be refined. I’m going for a vibe with a similar spirit to Beatrice by Sam Rivers (played famously by Joe Henderson) and Infant Eyes by Wayne Shorter. These are two of my favourite jazz ballads. Both of these songs have very colourful, moody, beautiful chord changes.
And last but not least, I played through a jazz-blues in the key of F trying to incorporate the whole tone scale a lot: over the F7 going to the Bb7 and implying a C whole tone leading back to F. I think the whole tone scale sounds rad… and it’s a symmetrical scale, so it’s pretty easy to learn on guitar!
Good Night!
