JOE PASS - SOLO JAZZ GUITAR UNOFFICIAL BOOKLET A detailed transcription of the DVD classic. Contains transcriptions of the music, dialogue and lessons. Enjoy!
by DIABLOFIRE (DRAFT: 18/12/2013) Copyright: Ich verstehe nicht… was ist das? не говорите по-stupid. Ek los hierdie maar vir `n ander dag... Like I didn’t get this video off IllegalTube anyways...
“Hot Licks” Intro: To be finished…. Introduction: Hi. My name's Joe Pass and welcome to my Hot Licks video. Those were not exactly hot licks, but just a little concept that I’d like to talk to you about among other concepts on this particular tape. I hear questions that are asked me often by young guitarists about “How do you play so many substitute changes?” and “What are you thinking about when you're playing?” So I took a little chord pattern. I think it's a... let’s see now. I'm not good at numbers, but let's see I think its 1-6-2-5 or C major, A minor, D minor and G7. I tried to show some substitute changes that I would use if I had a 1-6-2-5 pattern and a 1-6-2-5 pattern is basically in thousands of pieces of “All American Music”. From Gershwin, Jerome Kern to Stevie Wonder… and Willie Nelson. Anyway, so I want to talk to you a little bit about so of the concepts that I would use, they are very basic and very simple, that I would use to embellish a 1-6-2-5 progression. We'll get to that in a minute. Tune up: First, I think you should tune up to me so that we're in tune. I think I'm 440 I'm not sure. I hate tuning up. They told me the guitar was tuned at the factory, but y’know (laughter in the studio) but it’s not. ‘Cause if you check it out. But anyway here's my E. 1-6-2-5: Well, now that we're in tune, hopefully, I'd like to pick up where I left off about playing on a chord pattern like a 1-6-2-5 which is a C major, A minor, D minor and G7. We’re staying in the key of C. It’s a good key. So for instance this is the C major, the A minor, D minor and G7...
Figure 1: 1-6-2-5
How I look at Chords: First of all let me say that that when I look, when I think of chords and chord patterns I think of everything very basic and very simple. For instance: to C in the A minor to me or simply C major. The A minor is at the sixth, but it's not really important. It's kind of like the C major in a sense.
Figure 2: C sounding like Am
It’s the same sound. You can hear it. And the D minor and G7, the 2 and the 5, I simply think in terms of the seven, G7, and the D minor just happens to be a little movement that goes with it…
Figure 3: D happening to be a little movement
…but I don't like to complicate my thinking up with too many theoretical changes or too many changes that are… that are not… Chord families: I think very basically. Basically, I think in terms of chords: Major, Minor and Dominant – simple. Under the dominant family I would include: Augmented Chords, Diminished Chords and any Altered Dominant Seventh Chord which would be a #9, b9 and a #5, b5. Those chords all become, for me, Dominant Seventh Chords, but we’ll get on to that. That's another whole different concept or bag. Back to 1-6-2-5: So, on the 1-6-2-5 you can play I, VI, II and a V chord.
Figure 4: 1-6-2-5
Now, if you notice my I chord was a Cmaj7, my VI chord was a Am9, my II chord is a Dm11 and my… whatever this chord is. What is this…my V chord is a G13. Which means that you can always alter your changes by adding tones to them. You don't have to necessarily play…
Figure 5: Don't be boring - add tones
Adding Tones: And the sooner you start to add tonal… add other tones to your chords… For instance on the I chord you could add a 9, you could add a 6, you could add a 6/9, you could add a major 9, and you could add a major 7. When you add these color tones to your chords they help to make your playing sound a little more sophisticated a little more… a little hipper if you want to use the term. So, now that's one thing you can do. So you can go…
Figure 6: Progression we know so far...
You can add…
Figure 7: Some nice tones to add
[8:00] Chord Substitutions: So, now what you can also do is I substitute many times, for a m7 chord, I substitute a dom7 chord so in this case for Cmaj would be Cmaj. For the Am I would substitute in a 7.
Figure 8: Am substituted with an dom7
Now in this case it happens to be an A7#5 and a 13th, but…
Figure 9: An example of more substitutions
So, I'm substituting for the Am an A7 and all the variations of A7. That would mean A13, A+b9, A13b9, A13#9, A7#5#9…
Figure 10: Altered dom7 chords
All the combinations of the dominant seventh that you can think of, which would be: 9’s ,13's, #9’s, b9’s, #5’s. b5’s. Those are all the tonalities you can put in a chord. There are no other ones that I can think of. So, in this case I'm having Cmaj7, A13… now, I also, like I said, I substitute a dom7 for a m7. In this case the chord is Dm. I'd make it a 9th or a D7…
Figure 11: Dm substituted by a dom7 chord, G7 substituted with a #5#9 tone
This is the substitution for D minor. It’s a D13. And for the G7 I substitute… nothing. It’s still a G7 except I have a… Thought I fooled you that time, haha. I have a G7#5#9. Moving Chromatically: Now, another thing I can tell you about. You can always move chords chromatically… Major to Minor, Minor to Dominant substitution: …and I'm going to show you another substitution now, whether it’s for the key of C. The C major which is our first chord, the 1, I can make it an E minor, because if you notice the sound is the same.
Figure 12: Cmaj7 subbed with an Em7
It sounds very much, very close to the same… Em and Cmaj are related. If I put a C root on you have the…
Figure 13: Adding the C bass note to an Em7, you can clearly hear the relation. Hence, the obvious substitution and a rule of thumb to other “similar sounding” chords for viable substitutions.
So, now I can… once I said that I can substitute for a minor chord a dominant chord. So in this case, the Cmaj becomes an E minor. E minor becomes the E7#9. And we have this…
Figure 14: Cmaj6 sub to Em7, Em7 sub to E7#9. Thus, Cmaj7 can be substituted to E7#9.
So I'm substituting now E7#9 for Cmajor, coming from E minor which is a substitution for C major. It sounds like a lot of substitutions, but it's very, very simple, because what I'm getting at is this.
Back to Moving Chromatically: For the E7#9, you can always move, like I said, your chords in a line. E7 is a substitution for C. A13 is a substitution for Am. D7#9 is a substitution for Dm7. G13 is G13. There’s no substitution. It’s just an added tonality to G13 so this is what you got…
Figure 15: Moving chords chromatically using substitutions
…and this is replacing this…
Figure 16: What you're replacing...
So what you've got is… this is what we started with originally…
Figure 17: fig 15 again
We’re re-substituting…
Figure 18: fig 16 again
Adding Tones to these Substitutions: You can add tones to these substitutions like this… #5, 136/9, #5#9, 136/9.
Figure 19: Adding some nice tones to the 1-6-2-5 progression.
b5 Substitutions by changing the root: So, you can always, you can go… let me get back to where I’m… there’s to be a lot of substitution pretty soon. So, let me give you some examples… E7#9 can be a Bb13 by changing the root.
Figure 20: Note that the 3 and the 7 switches when the root changes from E to Bb.
A13 can be a Eb7#9 by changing the root.
Figure 21: Similarly, the 3 and 7 swops when the root changes from A to Eb.
[13:00]
You don't change any fingering. You don't have to get any chords that are really difficult to play.
General Advice: I don't believe in play anything that's real hard. If it's real hard - forget it, because it takes you so long to finger something like that by the time you get it you can't do anything else. And the object of playing so-called “jazz guitar”, or “solo guitar”, is to be free to play the music that you feel and hear and not to be tied down with trying to do something that’s very technical and very difficult, because it just gets in the way of the playing and the object of playing the instrument is to play the music that you hear, as I said, and that you feel. The instrument is just a means to express the music that you want. So, I don't know how good it is… to not to play real hard things, but I don't like to, haha. Back to Substitutions: Anyway, so E becomes Bb…
Figure 22: Similar to figure 20 – E becomes Bb
A becomes you Eb or Eb becomes A…
Figure 23: Figure 21 – Eb becomes A
D becomes D and Ab…
Figure 24: D becomes Ab
So you can move… I can't remember the word that I’m looking for…chromatically
Bb7, A7, Ab7, G7 – that’s one pattern.
Figure 25: Bb7, A7, Ab7, G7 = 1-6-2-5 pattern
E7, Eb7, D7, Db7.
Figure 26: E7, Eb7, D7, Db7 = 1-6-2-5 pattern
So let me show you. This is what we started with…
Figure 27: Again, what we started with for a 1-6-2-5
This is a substitution…
Figure 28: Flat-five substitution
Substitution… A different root…
Figure 29: Flat-five root sub from Fig. 28; some alternate root variations with added tones.
You don’t have to do that one. That’s a hard one [referring to bar 6 of fig. 29]. Continuity - Keeping a common tone: The reason I did that was because you want to keep… sometimes you can move voices back. This is moving a voice.
Figure 30: Moving a voice.
Sort of a little melodic line… because things you don't want to do is this…
Figure 31: Don't do this - rather keep continuity.
In other words you want to keep continuity in your chord playing. If you play a certain voicing it’s almost logical that you could move that voicing back or by changing one note or one string. You get continuity, you get… so the thing to keep in mind is to keep in mind: Melodic lines, Voice movements…
Figure 32: Voice movements.
I keep repeating that one …Voice movements or a common tone in your chord like… E, A, D, G - always with a G on the top or…
Figure 33: E, A, D, G - Common Tone
E, A, Ab…
Figure 34: Another Common Tone Example
That one you can leave out or…
Figure 35: Yet another Common Tone Example
E (or a Bb13 or a E7#9b5), A7b9, D7#9, G7#9. So you see I have a common tone in every chord or I’m making movements like… That’s a little voice moving…
A little review: Anyway, so let me once review what I was trying to talk about… I was talking about a 1-6-2-5 pattern, very simple pattern, and talking about substitutions. One of the substitutions is to add colour tones to your 1-6-2-5 pattern which would be adding 9th’s and 13th’s which would be… 6/9’s, 13’s and major 7th’s. Adding those tones to your chords… to your 6-1-2-5… ..or changing some of the chord progression. Choosing the “right-sounding” Altered Tones: The 1 chord is a 1 chord. It stays a 1 chord. You can't make the 1 a chord Dominant chord. In other words you can’t make it a C7 in this case, but you can make the one chord an E7#9. Now you can’t make it a 9th, because… how's this sound… That's what we're starting with now… You can't say I'm going to make this this… It doesn’t seem to sound right, but how does this sound… Pretty close, because we have a tone… we have some of the tones in the I chord are included in the E7 chord… …but if you make it a 9 or 13 you're losing… … but it has nothing to do with the root. Let me see if I can do this… To be finished….
