Violin Harmony

The Vi ol i n Harmony HandbookChristian Howes Preface Acknowledgements: The materials in this book have been developed with assistance and inspiration from several people: Christopher Marion provided substantial editing, notation, feedback, and organization throughout. Yap Shu Mei provided transcriptions and notation. Tomoko Omura provided transcription. Thanks to my former classical violin teachers Ginny Christopherson and Michael Davis. Also to my former classical music coaches, among them Markand Thakkar and Marshall Haddock. My classical teachers taught me to listen and play with musicality. Thanks to Paul Brown and Bobby Floyd, among other jazz mentors, for teaching me to think about jazz improvisation and harmony. In recent years, I’ve become a friend, collaborator, and fan of the great violinist, Billy Contreras. Several of his ideas have come to influence me in the study of jazz violin, and his influence can be found throughout this book. Billy would undoubtedly credit many of his own ideas to his mentor, the great violinist and teacher, Buddy Spicher. Introduction If you’re a violinist, violist, or cellist interested in creating your own music, I hope this book will enrich your understanding of harmony on the fingerboard and give you a clearer sense of the choices available to you as a composer or improviser. You’ll find approaches to developing a strong harmonic comprehension, both from a listening and a theoretic viewpoint. Through application of these materials, I hope you’ll be able to improvise richer melodies which flow from a strong harmonic understanding and intention. This book can be useful both for beginning improvisers and advanced jazz string players. Outline (Synopsis) 1)Context- Harmonic fluency is one important component of the knowledge and skill set necessary to improvise and compose on your instrument. Here we provide a context within which this book fits. 2) Finding triads in all inversions on the instrument. 3) Applied theory: How does improvisation relate to keys/chords/and modes, and what is voice leading? 4) Harmonizing melodies 5) Tips on improving your ear to hear chords. 6) Chord pairs 7) More on chord pairs. 7) Tomoko’s Lesson- In this lesson we go quickly through much of the material we’ve already covered, showing one possible “practice regimen” 8) solo arrangements for violin 9) chord glossary The best scenario for approaching music is one in which a player has developed a harmonic ear and theoretical knowledge base. One supplements the other. For example, if you hear a chord which your ear can’t intuitively recognize, then you use your theoretical knowledge to make sense of how to treat it. Conversely, when you’re confronted with a theoretical situation that doesn’t make sense, trust your ear. The exercises in the following chapters are designed to develop both. By compiling these exercises into one harmony handbook, I hope you will find yourself empowered in your creative musical pursuits. Context There are at least three challenges facing any “creative (improvising) string player”, i.e., improvisation, style , and harmony. Style is difficult to teach. Like when learning a spoken language, one needs to listen to and speak the language, for a long time, preferably around other native speakers. I can’t teach style, but I encourage my students to do a lot of listening, transcription, and interacting within a community of players who are fluent in the musical language they are interested in learning. If there’s a cultural origin of the style they’re interested in, all the better to study (or somehow participate in) the culture from which the music comes. Improvisation is easy and natural, like an ability we’re born with, but most of us have, through training, conditioning and/or socialization, become self-conscious and inhibited. We’re afraid to take a chance, play a bad note… Those of us lucky enough to be encouraged from an early age to be creative on our instruments are well-adjusted. The rest of us need to get over our fear and, in effect, “learn” to be comfortable with improvisation. We have to learn to be creative with our instruments. The best way to learn to be comfortable with improvising is to just do it. However, we feel we must have a structure to work within. Completely “free” improvisation can be overwhelming because it offers too much choice. Too much freedom is unbearable. It exacerbates self- conscious doubts. Better, when first learning, to assign limits, parameters, i.e., “structure”, to our improvisation. One advantage this provides is that improvisation becomes more of a “task”, like a question on your math homework, a household chore, or anything with simple steps to follow. People aren’t self-conscious about tasks, but they’re self-conscious about overt creativity, about making choices... Common structures include tunes, chord progressions, grooves, and drones. But there are many other structures we can use to practice improvisation and gain comfort improvising. If I ask a player to improvise continuous eighth notes in the key of D major , in a 4/4/ tempo at 90 bpm, this is much easier to accomplish for some than, “playing something free”. I am preparing a separate book to address this issue. One does not need to know style or harmony, or even technique, to improvise. One only has to be comfortable enough to be creative., and this must be practiced by improvising as much as possible. The more accessible structures one is given to work with, the easier it is to become comfortable with improvisation over time. When it comes to harmony, string players tend to be like the emperor who was wearing no clothes. We pride ourselves in our ability to hear and comprehend music, but rarely can we actually recognize the harmonic progressions underlying melodies. Many of us classically trained string players thought that we had actually learned harmony and theory in our classical studies or our college performance degrees, but we never learned either to hear the chords, create melodies that fit over the chords, or even how to play the chords on our instrument. On the other hand, fiddle players trained by ear in folk traditions typically have a different set of problems. They often hear and improvise comfortably and intuitively over simple chord changes. But when the chords become slightly more irregular, their ears break down and they have no theoretic foundation to lean on. The optimal scenario is one in which a player has developed their harmonic ear and their theoretic knowledge. One supplements the other. For example, if you hear a chord which your ear can’t intuitively recognize, then you use your theoretical knowledge to make sense of how to treat it. Conversely, when you’re confronted with a theoretical situation that doesn’t make sense, you should be able to trust your ear. The exercises in the following chapters are designed to help you develop both. Triad Chord Voicings Build Harmonic Proficiency I doesn’t hurt to internalize basic triads on your instrument. Try these rigorous, yet rewarding, exercises in which you will learn to articulate all major and minor triads as double stops, triple stops, and quadruple stops. Let’s start with a D major triad. Our goal will be to find all ways to play (or imply) the triad on the violin. The notation at the bottom of the page corresponds to the text below. Step 1. Single Notes: Start with the single notes in the arpeggio. Each note in the D major arpeggio represents the triad. In other words, play any one of these three notes - D, F# or A - anywhere on the violin, and you are, in effect, "implying the chord D major". That was easy! Step 2. Double Stops/ Close Voicing: Now harmonize the arpeggio by playing the next voice in the triad above. For example, if you start in the low register, your first double stop consists of the notes A and D (a perfect fourth on the G and D strings). The next double stop is D and F# (a major third). Then the notes F# and A (a minor third). Keep going up (you will duplicate the first three double stops up an octave.) As you harmonize the D major arpeggio using the note directly above, all your intervals will be either 3rds or 4ths. The combinations include these note pairs: D and F# , F# and A, and A and D (voices in close proximity). Step 3. Double Stops / Spread Voicings: This time you will harmonize the arpeggio using 5ths and 6ths, instead of 3rds and 4ths. Starting from the bottom of the register on violin you'll have the following note pairs: A and F#, D and A, and F# and D (and then duplicating up the octave). Step 4. Triple Stop / Close Voicings: From the bottom up you'll find the following voicings: D, F#, and A (root position triad). F#, A, and D (1st inversion triad). A, D, F# (2nd inversion triad). Continue up the octave. Step 5. Triple Stop Spread Voicings: The spread voicings skip over chord tones to create a triad using wider intervals. From the bottom up you'll find the following: A (on the G string), F# (on the D string), and D (on the A string). D (open), A (open), and F# (on E string). F# (on D string), D (on A string), A (on E string) Continue up the octave. Note: In these exercises, you should never double a note. In the triple-stop exercises, you will always play three notes that form a triad. Step 6. Quadruple Stop (Spread) Voicings: (Here you will double one note per triad): A, F#, D, and A. D, A, F#, and D. F#, D, A, F# (6ths and 5ths) Step 7. Next, we'll look at diminished chords, augmented chords, and start to play 7th and other extended chords. After you've figured out the triad shapes in a few keys (minor and major), you'll start to recognize the shapes in all keys, and this will be helpful whether you're comping, soloing, harmonizing, arranging, or composing. This is a great way to build your comfort and understanding of harmony. I suggest working no more than about 15-45 minutes per day on these, depending on your burn-out meter. CHORDS/KEYS/MODES/Blah Blah Blah Some nuts and bolts: What is a key? A key is simply a group of seven notes. Thinking of the key signature is the easiest way to comprehend the key. The scale is identical to the key because the scale contains the seven notes which are in the key. The key does not change every time a chord changes! I used to think that every time a chord changed, I needed to use a different scale. That’s wrong. Often when chords change the key stays the same. When this happens you can use the same scale because you’re in the same key! In order to find a scale that corresponds to a chord, make sure you’re aware of the key. One way to determine the key is to look at the chord that came before and the chord that comes after. If you can figure out which key all chords belong to, you’ve got your key. So for example, take this progression of three triads: G//// F////C//// What key do all chords “share”, i.e., belong to? Take all the notes from each chord and put them together. You will end up with enough information to determine the key. The G triad has G,B, and D. The F triad has F, A, and C. Finally the C triad has C, E, and G So we have altogether, G,B, D, F, A, C, E Rearrange them and they look like: GABCDEF- No sharps, no flats, seven notes. Clearly we have the key of C major. So, what can you play over these 4 chords? Your safest scale choice is the C major scale, also known as the 7 notes in the key of C major. Rather than using this scale indiscriminately/generically, you could think of each chord scale like this: For the G chord, play a C major scale starting on G. For the F triad, play a C major scale starting on F. For the C major triad, C major scale starting on C. You get the picture. This is what people mean when they refer to “modes”. The modes (Dorian, Lydian, Locrian, etc…) are the names given to the scales that form from the seven notes of the major scale. It seems to me that the process of learning the names of the modes is both redundant and confusing. Instead, I recommend thinking of modes in the way described above. In other words, as “C major scale starting on B”, or “C major starting on G”. Another way to think of this, perhaps the easiest way, is to, as my friend and colleague Rob Thomas suggests, “think of the key signature”. Instead of thinking “ C major”, you could just think, “no sharps, no flats”. Using “modes”, especially at first, seems unnecessary and somewhat ineffective to me. For example, if you play over a G chord and think, “ a C scale starting on G”, it amounts to an attempt to emphasize chord tones on the strong beats. By starting the scale on this note, you ensure that the root in the chord is played on the strong beat. This reinforces the chord briefly, giving you an illusion of knowing where you are, but it still does not give you what you need to improvise with confidence over the chord progression. All this stuff about using the scale works somewhat, but only to a point. If you really want to feel empowered when you’re improvising, you need to know your chords. The chord is boss. Your most effective melodic improvisations will come when you truly have a harmonic intention, i.e., when the melody is driven by a constant awareness of the chords you are implying. Implying harmonic motion with melody is richer than using melodies based on scales. The comparison is similar to the difference between pencil drawings and oil painting. Chords are boss. The safest note to play in your improvisation is always a note in the chord. A “chord scale” (the scale that works over the chord you want to play on) contains the 3 (or 4) notes in the chord (chord tones) plus a few other tones. The remaining notes in the scale could be thought of as “connector” notes. As an exercise, try to improvise a melody in which a chord tone always falls on the strong beat. Any other tones besides the chord tones can be used on the weak beats (and you can use chord tones on weak beats as well). Here’s an example in which the strong beat is defined as every half note: 1) Here’s another in which the strong beat is defined by the downbeat of each 4 beat measure: 2) every whole note Notice in this example that the “strong” beat is defined as every quarter note. Sometimes using eighth notes. 3) The correspondence of the consonant chord tone with the strong beat is a sure way to “imply” or state the chord via your improvised melody. Practice improvising melodies which utilize this “chord tone-strong beat” relationship. Once you can do this, then you’re ready to break away from it. Voice-Leading When you play over more than one chord, i.e., a chord progression, the trick is resolving from the first to the second chord. This is where voice leading comes into play. Voice leading is the process of leading from a chord tone in the first chord to a nearby chord tone in the second chord. USING CHORD STACKS: Here we will present the Kanon Chord Stack exercises Do the following exercises using the Kanon Chord Stacks and the audio file (or your own backup tracks, or a second player): • Play one note from the stack per chord. When moving from chord to chord, always move the smallest distance possible, i.e., either one step down or one step up, or stay the same if two chords share the same note. • Play two (consecutive) notes per chord. Like in the first exercise, only use chord tones and move the smallest distance between the first note in each pair • Play two (consecutive) notes per chord. Like in the first exercise, only use chord tones, but this time move the smallest distance between the LAST of one pair and the FIRST note of the second pair. • Play 4 (consecutive) notes per chord. This time only the FIRST note of each 4 16ths must be a chord tone. The remaining three in each group of four can be chord tones or scale tones. • Now mix between all of the above. • Also: Practice playing 3 note arpeggios 1)from the bottom note of each triad ascending 2)from the top note descending Play the chords in any other ways you can think of, i.e., as bluegrass style double stops, as Paganini or Bach-like chord sweeps, as double stops, triple stops, as harmonized arpeggios, as bass lines, etc…. Harmonization of Melody “Bluesette” In the following examples, I harmonized based purely on the intervallic relationships. In other words, I wasn’t necessarily thinking about chord tones as much as I was about the chord scale. For example, in the 11 th bar in the tune “Bluesette”, when the tonal center (key) modulates to Db major, I had to use the notes in the Db scale. The harmony line follows the key. To show this, we will harmonize the first half of “Bluesette” 5 different ways using double stops. 3rds and 6ths sound very natural: 3rds: 6ths: The next 3 examples are very colorful and useful in certain settings. 2nds, 4ths, and 7ths. 2nds: 4ths: 7ths: Overcoming the Harmony Handicap Overcoming the Harmony Handicap - With your Ears Classically trained string players often have the ability to recognize classical-sounding melodies by ear without being able to recognize chord progressions. Folk players can often hear bluesy and modal lines, and they can recognize simple diatonic chord progressions. Any improvising musician should strive to hear chord progressions and complex melodic lines in any style. If you play fiddle styles, jazz or any music where there’s improvisation long enough, eventually you’ll begin to intuitively hear the chords commonly used within that style. But there are ways to develop your ear more quickly, and you’re better off by attacking the problem from all sides. Change your listening. You can accomplish a lot when you're listening to your iPod, just by changing the focus of your listening. Think of it like a workout for your ears. You are probably in the habit of focusing on the melody. Next time you listen to music, try to focus on the chords. As a Suzuki trained classical violinist, I was always proud of my so-called “perfect pitch”. I could recognize most classical sounding melodies. But then one day it dawned on me that I couldn’t tell when the chord changed, let alone what the chords were. By implementing these listening techniques, eventually I was able to train my ears to hear more. Select a song which you want to transcribe the chords to. (Don’t pick something too difficult.) Draw a blank chart on a piece of paper with only bar lines. When does the chord change? Put a mark inside the bar each time a chord changes. (Are there one, two, or more chords per bar? Or maybe there’s only one chord that stretches over several bars?) Now, what is the bass line doing and how does it relate to the harmonic motion? Write in the letter name of the bass note that corresponds with the change of each chord. In other words, only write the bass note that occurs on the point of the chord changing. Often this will be the first beat of the bar, but sometimes, chords change within the measure. (If you can’t recognize the notes in the bass because they’re too low, just sing or play them up an octave, or two octaves if necessary, until it’s in a high register and you can recognize the note). You can simply transcribe the entire bass line if you want, but the note at the point of the chord change will be especially important. Ok, so you now have a bass note where each chord changes. Listen back to the same segment and see if you can hear any other notes in the chord (in a higher register than the bass). Write in the staff any notes you hear (as notes or as letters, doesn’t matter). Now, listen one more time and see whether you can hear the quality of any of the chords. Can you tell if anything sounds major, minor, diminished, or augmented? Now look at the information you have about each chord. Often the bass note is the root of the chord. If you wrote other pitches from the chord above the bass line, it may support this idea. Or, take a guess - If you have a B in the bass line, play a B minor or B major triad on the piano (or sing the triad as an arpeggio). Does it sound right? Your ear will know when you’ve found the chord. If the bass note is NOT the root of the chord, try it as the 3 rd or the 5 th of the chord. If it still doesn’t work, you might need to leave the chord blank. Go through this process of transcribing chord progressions to tunes frequently. As you do it, you’ll get quicker and your ears will develop. Other approaches: *Choose a really simple song that you know the melody of, like a holiday tune, or “twinkle twinkle little star”, or a lullabye, or a pop tune, or a song you sing in the shower, and try to figure out what the chords are. If you can't figure it out on the piano, or using your instrument, then write out the melody and try to analyze it on paper to narrow down the possibilities, assuming that most of the notes falling on strong beats will be chord tones. * Learn guitar or piano. Piano is best, but guitar is easy for a string player. Electric bass is great too. If you do learn piano, start by playing melodies in the right hand and playing voice-led chords in the left hand. You might read the tune out of a fake book or something. * A tip on perfect pitch- If you have good relative pitch but can't find the first note, try locating a pitch in your voice using physical memory: a) By singing a note in a song that you sing sooooo much, you always start in the same key b) By finding either the lowest or highest note in your vocal register, might be the same every time) or by finding a note in your register that occurs in the transition between your falsetto and natural voice. It doesn’t work to try to “remember” the pitch, but I think you can remember a physical feeling, or location, in your body. Singing allows you attach a physical feeling to a pitch. Once you have located a constant pitch in your voice (it should be like a physical memory, i.e., you recognize the feeling in your body of singing a certain pitch, and you can always find this pitch without help of a tuner) use this one known pitch as a landmark by which to locate any other pitches you hear. Every time you hear a snippet of music, check your voice to find your reference pitch, and then use your relative pitch to find the key of the song you're listening to. This will gradually become seamless, and you will recognize pitches without using a reference. Learning to hear the chord changes is one of the most empowering things you can do for yourself if you want to compose and improvise diatonic music. It may be frustrating at first, but it will make your life easier in the long run. *In addition to hearing chord changes by using perfect pitch, it is equally important and useful to recognize the chord changes by identifying the function of the chord within a particular context. A chord’s function is simply it’s expression of either tension or release. When you’re using your ear to identify function, there are several strategies that will sharpen your ability to successfully pinpoint specific movement in the chords. The most important strategy is to always be aware of each chords relationship to “I”. If you can hear the distance of each root (most often heard in the bass), then your general awareness of each chord’s relationships from “I” will become sharper. The next most important strategy is to hear dominant/tritone resolution. When a dominant 7 th chord resolves, it has an unmistakably distinct quality. Arguably the V7 chord is the chord that most defines a key and therefore the most important chord to identify (It is also helpful to understand that substitute dominants serve the same purpose as their less colorful tritone cousins and they should be heard and identified accordingly). This concept of hearing dominant resolution is very important to build on, because when you understand where dominant chords resolve in their relationship to “I”, it even becomes much easier to hear more advanced elements such as modulation within a tune. The final step is to learn to identify all of the different chord qualities and their typical uses. The ability to hear these chord qualities removes harmonic “blinders” and makes improvising over changes by ear much more attainable. Harmonic Heavy Lifting: Exercises for Voice Leading Chord Pairs Improvising over one chord isn’t so difficult to comprehend. The really difficult part about “playing the changes” is getting from one chord to the next. Once you’re comfortable articulating triads on the violin as double stops and triple stops in spread and close position, you’re ready to begin practicing voice-leading chord progressions. By starting with isolating two chords (a “chord pair”), we build up to playing progressions of several chord progressions of several. Most progressions will contain relationships similar to the chord pairs that I suggest, so once you get to working on a longer progression, you will have internalized many of the pairs within it. It’s the transition between any two chords that hangs people up, and this exercise takes us into the heart of the problem. We’ll use the chord pair of G major and C major. (these examples can also be articulated as arpeggiated triple stops in close voicing) Start by playing the G major triad in root position. Then play the C major triad in 2nd inversion. That's your first chord pair. Now, we'll express the same chord pair by using double stops and triple stops in close and/or spread voicings.- Double Stops (Spread Voicings)- Double Stops (Close Voicings)- Triple Stops (Spread Voicings)- Triple Stops (Close Voicings) Quadruple Stops (Spread Voicings) For additional exercises, arpeggiate any of these double stops. These exercises might cause you to burn out pretty quickly, but they are really worth checking out for 10 minute periods at beginning and/or end of your practice sessions. I also really recommend doing them on the piano. Besides playing these exercises literally over progressions, we can super-impose chord pairs and longer progressions over modal or one-chord vamps. For example, on a “C-” vamp we can superimpose the chord progression of “C- to Bb-”. In this example the chord change is implied every quarter note. Here are four more examples of implying particular chord pairs over a “C” vamp: I to IV- (implying the change every four eighth notes): I- to bVI- (implying the change every bar): I to Idim- : I to bVII: In addition to super imposing changes over one chord vamps, these chord pair exercises facilitate reharmonization of melodies. For example this one melodic phrase can be harmonized many different ways. Here are just five examples: More Chord Pair Examples Here are 6 more examples of chord pair exercises using various chord changes: This example uses arpeggios to express the triads G and F: This example expresses the chords G and Cmin using Double Stops (close voicing): This example expresses the chords G and Gdim using Double Stops (spread voicing): This time we will use a neighboring tone to create a four note grouping that expresses the chords G and F: The next example expresses the chords G and Ebmin using Triple Stops (Spread Voicing): The next example expresses the chords G and Ab using Triple Stops (Close Voicing): More on Chord Pairs I recommend practicing the following chord pairs in the same fashion as the examples above. Each roman numeral represents all types of the triads (major, minor, augmented, diminished, and sus) and 7 th chords (maj 7, min 7, aug 7, dim 7, min7 (b5), major min7, sus7, maj6, min6). Try using different combinations of any of these different types. I to IV (C-F) I to V (C-G) I to b VII (C-Bb) I to bII (C-Db) I to VIIdim (C- Bdim) I to Idim (C-C dim) I to bVII (C minor- Ab minor) I to II (C to D) I to bIII (C to Eb) I to bV (C to Gb) I to III (C to E) Tomoko Omura’s Lesson The following material includes a condensation of what we’ve discussed throughout this book so far. The following exercises can be interspersed as part of your practice regimen. OK. Let’s take F major7. Play 4 note arpeggios of the chord in each inversion descending and ascending… So, now… Let’s harmonize. The bottom voice is the arpeggio. The voice above is the same arpeggio beginning from the next note in the chord. It’s a harmonized arpeggio. I call what we just did “close voicing”. It’s harmonizing the arpeggio with the note closest above in the chord. We can also articulate it as “spread voicing”, in which you skip the next note and go to the one after, like this… So, instead of the harmonizing the A with the C directly above it, I’m skipping that and going to the E. For three-note spread on a 7th chord is difficult… Let’s back track and deal with just triads now. So, just F major triad. First of all, close-voicing double stops. Good. So, now, the spread-voicing. OK. Now, triple stops, close-voicing. And we have quadruple stops, spread. So, basically, these are all the possibilities with triads. • Double stops, close-voicing • Double stops, spread-voicing • Triple stops, close-voicing • Triple stops, spread-voicing • Quadruple stops, spread-voicing So, for every minor and major triad, this our foundation. For seventh chords, it becomes more complicated and there are some other things we can do. This is something Billy Contreras showed me: This is an important shape because it’s one position, one way to play the seventh chords in any key. You can do this in all keys. If I want to play Ⅱ-Ⅴ-Ⅰ in G, I can use only 3rds and 7ths like this: And with the root… Also, we can do Ab7 sub for the D7 like this: For the same chord, I might take out the root and I might play 9th like this… Or… You can find many other ways. This is also Ⅱ-Ⅴ in G. Take two chords and voice-lead ascending and descending between them with variations. We’ll do arpeggios first. We’ll do “G” to “F” like this… Now two notes, close-voicing. (3rds and 4ths): Triple stops, close-voicing: Double stops, spread-voicing. (6ths and 5ths): Triple stops, spread-voicing: Quadruple stops: More Chord Pairs: Ⅰ to ♭Ⅱ in triple stop spread voicings: I to IV- in triple stop spread voicings: We can play seventh chord pairs as arpeggios. For example: Here’s a variation: We can do…, you know… Then, you can add a chromatic neighbor… OK. So, more chords things. First of all, if you want to play more chords, this week, whenever you’re practicing, whenever you’re soloing and improvising, only improvise using double stops. That’s one thing to do. But also, take any melody and play in third with the third below and third above or six below or six above. Now another thing you can do is you can play static harmony underneath changing melody. Let’s take an easier one. Then, you can also play a combination. II – Vs and Stella Multi-Purpose Scale Exercise 1) The first step is to understand the scale in its most basic form. As an example, let’s use G major. Play the following sequence: It can be expressed in scale degree numbers: Beginning on G: 1, 3, 5, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3 Beginning on A: 2, 4, 6, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4 Beginning on B: 3, 5, 7, 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, etc. 2) The next step is to play the inversion descending. The scale degree numbers are as the following: Beginning on G: 8, 6, 4, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 Beginning on F#: 7, 5, 3, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 Beginning on E: 6, 4, 2, 7, 1, 2, 3, 4 Beginning on D: 5, 3, 1, 6, 7, 1, 2, 3, etc. 3) Then, move to second position and play the same pattern in the key of G major. Your first note will be B (with your first finger on the G string). You will play the same exercise in second position, requiring that you find the related fingerings. 4) Next, play the same exercise up and down two octaves in all positions (through seventh if possible) in the key of G major. This will enable you to find all the notes in every position on the violin, giving you a more complete grasp of the scale all over the instrument. 5) Make sure that you practice this exercise using the melodic minor scale. The melodic minor scale is very important to internalize if you want to play bebop and modern jazz. Thus, this exercise will help you fully internalize the scale and begin to hear it intuitively. 6) As with all exercises, be sure to improvise your bow strokes. In other words, use a different bowing for each eight-note pattern. This promotes more freedom with the bow. There are endless possibilities for randomizing your bow strokes. Here are two options that demonstrate a good “random” bowing: Example 1: OR Example 2: 7) To develop rhythmic fluidity, try this variation: Play the same exercise while tapping your foot on every third note while playing in 4/4. This will develop your ability to imply 4-note groupings of triplets. The triplet is a key rhythmic figure in jazz. Many beginning jazz violinists play lines in duple feel without developing their triplet vocabulary. If you are able to tap on every third note while playing this exercise at a fast tempo, you will be well on your way to having a fluid and well-developed rhythmic palette for improvisation in jazz. (The accents below represent foot taps.) 8) Finally, you can play the exercise in double stops; thirds, sixths, and octaves are most common. Perfect Practice My former classical violin teacher, mentor and friend, the late and widely beloved Michael Davis, told me many things which influenced me early on as a classical musician and later came to influence my growth as a jazz player. Regarding the amount of time spent practicing daily, he felt that, "if you can't get everything done in three hours, you're not practicing efficiently". In his view, the saying, "practice makes perfect", wasn't adequate. Better to adapt the mantra, "Perfect practice makes perfect". Many of my students at Berklee and abroad come out of a classical tradition and have developed practice habits conducive to making gains as a technician and classical player. Often though, these same habits become detrimental to growth in "creative studies". This is not to suggest that practicing technique and jazz/ improvisation are mutually exclusive; quite the opposite is true. It's actually advantageous to consolidate improvisation practice with technical practice. For example, one can focus on technical issues such as string crossing, bow control, intonation, double stops, etc. all while improvising- this is the equivalent of killing two birds with one stone, and offers the added advantages of 1)developing technique beyond the "given" and limited possibilities of the classical repertoire and 2) providing the student w/ a sense of ownership in the vocabulary he/she is practicing/creating. However, you must remember that regardless of how many years you have studied your instrument and/or classical music, the moment you begin to study jazz and/or improvised tonal music, you are a novice. Accepting this is difficult, because you have come to identify yourself as an expert. Both can be true, i.e., that you are an expert musician and instrumentalist, and at the same time a novice in jazz or improvised tonal music. In studying improvisation or jazz, you are embarking upon a journey to obtain an entirely new and different skill set. It will take time. (In his 2008 book, Outliers, Malcolm Gladwell refers to a study which holds up the "10,000 hour rule", i.e., it takes about 10,000 hours, or 10 years at 3 hrs per day, to effectively master any given discipline. Even accounting for your accrued mastery on your instrument, you might want to allow yourself about 6 years.) I've referred before to the difficulty and discomfort that comes out of accepting your new status as a "novice". For many musicians switching from classical to jazz, this discomfort is intolerable. It can threaten one's self esteem and cause all sorts of defensive thoughts/behaviors to arise. One of these is denial. The sooner you accept the truth about where you are in your development and get over your insecurity, the sooner you can begin to make progress. Remember, you can still take credit for the mastery that you have developed over years of practice. You have a lot to be proud of in taking the plunge into something new. Ultimately, by forging ahead in a discipline which is totally new to you, you will come out stronger for it. One of my favorite and most accomplished young adult students frequently arrives to his lesson with a list of concerns and questions including things such as sound production, shoulder rests, philosophical questions about the state of the mind while playing, posture, et al. These are all very good questions for a classical student, but often they strike me as distractions for a jazz student. Every week, as he plays solos for me over standard tunes, a large part of the things that I notice holding him back are related to gaps in his grasp of harmony, i.e. "playing the (chord) changes". Sure, there are other things worth working on as well, but this is a consistent thing that comes up which he continues to evade. It's not that he can't execute ideas on the violin- it's that he can't Conceive of the ideas because the harmony is challenging and eluding him. I continually give him exercises for internalizing the harmony, and he continually avoids doing them. Is this denial? Why do so many of us have this same tendency, I wonder. I have to be ever vigilant in my own practice to make sure I'm not "practicing" what is comfortable, but rather addressing the gaps, the uncomfortable areas. Every day you practice you are faced with one crucial challenge, which is to practice effectively. Make it count. Practice the things that matter. Michael Davis once also told me, "if you sound good, you're probably not practicing". Most of your practice time should be devoted to things which you don't sound good doing. Once you sound good, it's time to move to something else. Their are several ways you can go about drilling harmony such that, over time, you assimilate and internalize the information (and once you have internalized harmony, the understanding will never go away.) I've covered many of these in other articles, but to recap: 1) articulate the chords on the violin in various forms (as double stops or arpeggios in all inversions or shapes) 2) play the voice-led chords on the piano (or guitar) 3) when you listen to music, Focus on listening to the harmony instead of the melody. Try to use your ears to transcribe the harmony on any music you listen to. 4)play voice led arpeggios or double stops of chord progressions (including both chord pairs and/or longer progressions) 5) harmonize melodies and/or solos in double-stops (both as parallel thirds, 4ths, 6ths, 7ths, 2nds, and as non parallel harmonies) 6) play 3rds and 7ths of chords in various comping styles. Play root/3rd/7th voicings of chords. Play voice-led upper extensions of chords. Walk bass lines. Importantly, one's brain is typically only able to handle this kind of practice for so long. Perhaps an hour tops. So, if you practice 2 hours in a day, you might want to spend 1/3-1/2 of your time drilling these harmonic issues. The rest of the time can be spent on other things. But if you ignore this practice, you are just stalling, and Nothing can replace real harmonic understanding. It will never come easily, and there's no way around it. You have to practice the important things or you will just be living in denial, and on some deep level, you will be frustrated. On the other hand, make these a regular part of your practice and you will see results over time. The rewards are worth it. Howe’s your Giant Steps Emily Transcription All the Things You Are 4/5/09 5:21 PM Chord Glossary This book is a work in progress. Please be sure to visit www.christianhowes.com for supplementary materials. New editions and many more educational resources. Feel free to contact me directly at [email protected].