Work, with Miles Okazaki

Turning from major to minor, I do a very brief history and explanation of the major/minor duality, and then get into the cadence Fmi6 --> C. Feel free to ask quesitons, as this one goes a bit into the weeds.

Here the traffic circle idea explodes into an infinite pathway concept. I reference a 1945 recording by Don Byas and Slam Stewart that can be found here. Go to 1:48 to hear the thing I'm talking about. Also, attached to this post is a page from my book that diagrams out the pathways. I've only talked so far about the top half of this diagram (not the minor stuff). This one thing could be practiced for many years without being mastered (trust me, I've tried!). So if you have questions, please ask and I'll try to respond in future posts.

This is a continuation of the traffic circle idea, and the beginning of a pathways concept. We are now getting to the juicy part where we connect one traffic circle to another. I demonstrate and talk about why this approach can lead to a more functionalresult than a bunch of scales and altered dominants. I will refer to the attached page for this and subsequent videos.

In the last video we looked at four ways to get to a place. Now we look at, for any particular place, four ways to get out of it. For example, if you are in C (major or minor), you can make that into a C7 to then prepare to go somewhere. You have (in this traffic circle model) four directions: F, Ab, B, or D. These could be major or minor key centers. So in the exercise I just go to a key center, make it dominant, and go somewhere else. For example,

C, C7, Fmi, F7, E, E7, F#, F#7, G#mi, G#7, Bb, Bb7, A, A7, Dmi, D7, Bbmi, Bb7, C

This could go on and on.

Moving back to application, I explain here how the four dominants that we made from the diminished create four "altered dominant" sounds. Specifically:

Bb7 -> C = G7b9#9 -> C

Db7 -> C = G7b9#11 -> C

E7 -> C = G13b9 -> C

and of course

G7 -> C = G7 -> C

So, instead of thinking of four varieties of altered "G7" chords, we are thinking of approaching the destination from four different angles. Could be North, South, East and West, or something like that. Could also think where the roots are - approaching from the 5th (normal), from the b7th (backdoor), from the tritone (tritone sub), or from the major 3rd above (13b9).

Soon we will expand these four dominants in a whole world of symmetry

Back to warmup exercises, here's one looking at the diminished 7th morphing into the four dominant 7th chords that are related to it.

Here's a video to address a member question of application of the stuff from the previous post, using examples on a minor blues and "All the Things You Are."

This will be a series of videos on a single topic that I find extremely useful, which is the use of diminished structures. We start out with thinking about the places where one diminished 7th structure could go, and then turning that into an exercise.

Still using the Chromatic Scale, and then demonstrating with improvising on a blues. Seeing how many levels of dynamics we can get with the pick, playing with the amp turned up to 10.

A couple more quick practice ideas for the chromatic scale, a great way to get your fingers and picking hand going.