#adventuretimetattoos #starwarsbook #nyc
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[https://www.facebook.com/10111169199177213/posts/10105389350460373]
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I think that you’re thinking of “sounding good” as being mostly relative to a fixed, un-changeing harmonic context. In this case the “key”. You’re thinking that because the piece mostly centers around the “key” of E major, that things will sound better the more that they are “in the key” of E major.
What you are hearing in this piece is that “sounding good” is more about the relationship of one chord to the next than to a fixed, un-moving “key center”. Songs can change key in the middle of them, or have multiple simultaneous implied key centers, and still sound good. “Keys” and “key signatures” are good to know in order to talk about music, but like someone else said they are descriptive rather than prescriptive.
If you create a nice melody connecting them, then you could make almost any two chords sound good one after the other.
In this case, this guitarist takes you on a journey through many different implied keys, but does it smoothly, and always ends up bringing you back to E major for a sense of resolution.
If I were to give you one thing to investigate to learn more about why this sounds good, I would say investigate “voice leading”. With proper voice leading, almost any chord progression can sound good, or at least coherent.
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[https://www.facebook.com/10111169199177213/posts/10105150738540573]
hey it’s my birthday. listen to some vulfpeck and watch some amazing dancers --->
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[https://www.facebook.com/10111169199177213/posts/10105143452042773?substory_index=1191088768424861]
photo cred: Ceth Stifel
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Here is an easy way of remember this descriptively, rather than visually:
There are three flavors of major-sounding modes / scales, each distinguished by a specific note that gives its character:
Ionian (major scale): Sound of a natural 4 (unaltered) Lydian: Sounds of a sharp 4 (#4) Mixolydian: Sound of a flat 7 (b7)The only notes that are common to all three of them (the ones that don’t give the flavor of the scale) are the 1, 2, 3, 5, and 6 - we call that set of notes the pentatonic scale. It’s the sound of “major-ness” in general, without any particular flavor.
There are three flavors of minor-sounding modes / scales, again distinguished by specific notes:
Aeolian (natural minor): Sounds of a flat 6 (b6 - sounds classical) Dorian: Sound of a natural 6 (sounds modern) Phrygian: Sound of flat 2 (b2 - sounds exotic)The only notes that are common to all three of them are the 1, b3, 4, 5, and b7 - we call that set of notes the minor pentatonic scale. It’s the sound of “minor-ness” in general, without any particular flavor.
There is one scale / mode that is “diminished” sounding. It is distinguished from all the other modes by having a note that none of the others do, minor or major.
Locrian: Sound of the flat 5, (b5 - the tritone, sounds dissonant)Note that the b5 is different than the #4, even though they are the same pitch, because of how the note is functioning (as a 4 or as a 5).
The harmonic and melodic minor scales are not separate flavors, so much as they are like switching to a different numerical system. They each have their own set of 7 different modes, with different sounds/flavors to them and different naming systems.
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social/reddit
[https://reddit.com/r/Guitar/comments/65wa8d/question_scales_and_jamming/dgdqtdj/]
If you just want to noodle around in a scale and have it fit with different styles, this should get you pretty far:
Minor Pentatonic: Rock, Blues
Major Pentatonic: Country, Bluegrass, happier-sounding Blues
Major (Ionian) Scale: General happy music, simple jazz, nursery rhyme style stuff, happy sounding classical music style stuff
Dorian Scale: Darker sounding modern music, jazz/rock fusion, post-rock, modern rock, simpler metal
Minor (Aeolian) Scale: Darker sounding classical music style stuff, classical-sounding metal
Mixolydian Scale: Jam band music
Phrygian Scale: Very dark, exotic, middle-eastern/arabian sound, exotic-sounding metal
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[https://www.facebook.com/10111169199177213/posts/10105011316099263]
Our friend Matthew is doing something cool on youtube. Check it out, and subscribe so that he has to keep making these!
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social/reddit
[https://reddit.com/r/gypsyjazz/comments/63qfs6/moving_into_gypsy_jazz_guitar/dfwv6wh/]
Here’s a basic outline:
Step 1: Buy a gypsy jazz guitar. At this stage it’s probably not really important which one you buy, just that it’s set up well enough to play without fret buzz. Typical beginner guitars are the Saga Gitane line, or the Cigano line. (I started with a Cigano GJ-10, and recommend it highly)
Step 2: Change your right hand picking technique. The go-to book for this is Gypsy Picking by Michael Horowitz. It is not comprehensive but it will get you 90% of the way there. There will likely be a change in both your picking patterns, and in your hand position. Watch videos and take videos of yourself to make sure your right hand looks like the pro players. This step took me way longer than it should have because I was being stubborn, and it takes more effort than I expected to really make the change.
Step 3: Learn the common chord shapes. There are lots of resources for this. I would recommend Getting Into Gypsy Jazz Guitar by Stephane Wrembel, or maybe some of the introductory courses on Denis Chang’s DC Music School.
Step 3.5 (optional): Spend some time really learning how to play la pompe (the rhythmic technique). I say optional here because this one I think will require an actual teacher sitting down with you and correcting your mistakes. It’s harder than it seems to really get it right. On the other hand, if you’re just starting out it’s sort of forgivable if you’re close but not all the way there.
Step 4: Learn the chords and melodies for some standard tunes. Hopefully no explanation needed here.
Step 5: Learn solos from famous players. Best if you transcribe them by ear yourself, but there are many resources that will just give you the tabs and personally I think that is still very effective. Learning some Django solos is basically obligatory, but there are now many other great players with different styles that you can listen to and choose your favorites. A couple of my favorites: Stochelo Rosenberg, Adrien Moignard, Olli Soikkeli, Stephane Wrembel, Biréli Lagrène. And many others.
You can pick up lots of licks and shapes and other hints from a variety of sources, but seriously 99% of learning how to improvise solos is done by transcribing and learning existing solos.
Some good general sources for lessons and discussion are: Djangobooks forum, DC Music School, Rosenberg Academy, and Christiaan van Hemert’s video lessons.
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social/reddit
[https://reddit.com/r/Jazz/comments/61wxr5/how_the_hell_do_i_use_the_altered_scale_over/dfhzhrg/]
Here’s a huge oversimplification that I think will get you pretty far without getting too technical:
If you’re playing in a generally major key, or “major” sounding section of a song, then when you play a 7 chord (like G7, or C7) a safe bet is to play around with the chord tones (root, 3, 5, b7) plus other notes from the major scale (2, 4, and 6 otherwise known as 9, 11 and 13).
Any other notes you play against that chord (b9, #5, #4, maj7, b3, etc) will produce sounds of tension, dissonance, darkness, etc. You can think of these as “altered 7” or “altered dominant” sounds. You can sort of pick and choose from all the alterations at will for different effect. They sound appropriate in places that should sound “minor” or dark or exotic.
For example in almost all “ii V i” progressions in a minor key, the V will be an altered dominant. For an example with the G7 specifically, try playing an altered sound over the G7 in the beginning section of Tears by Django Reinhardt.
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social/reddit
[https://reddit.com/r/Fantasy/comments/5w83qz/alan_moores_jerusalem/de8ak33/]
It is both dense and sometimes difficult.
The story itself was not enough to keep me reading, in part because it jumps around a lot, especially in the beginning.
But the writing itself enthralled me — the quality and the depth of it. To me the book is clearly the master-work of a master. The quality of the writing alone kept me glued to the page for hours at a time (and it took many, many hours).
That said, although the story was not so engaging in the beginning, it did get considerably more interesting as it went on, it did stop jumping around so much, and in the end was satisfying and felt complete.
In fact, in full retrospect, it is one of the best stories I have ever read - because it resonated with me in a very personal way - but it’s not one that I would recommend to everyone, because it is deep and complex. And difficult.
I picked it up expecting and hoping for something challenging, but not as challenging as say, Infinite Jest. What I got was exactly was I was expecting challenge-wise, but the reward from making it through was actually many times greater than I had expected.