Continuing to practice the diatonic. I guess some would call this “just the circle of fourths”. But it really crystallized for me in Chris Gentes’s explanation of it as “the diatonic” (I added the word “river”, from my sensation of flow while playing through it — “the diatonic river”). Have been studying Autumn Leaves.

My observations as always lead to very simple exercises. A scale is one way of arranging the notes in a key. “The diatonic” is simply a different way of arranging the notes. In a very musical way. Practicing the patterns that are more musical — if they can be mastered — is more valuable than practicing patterns which are not musical. Harmony is musical from movement. Practicing moving through the diatonic promotes movement, where as scales are static. In theory, the diatonic could be condensed into one moment, and then it is simply all of the notes in a given key — not super useful in practice, but to consider as a limit. I think this is where we get modal jazz from. And to various smaller degrees, this “condensing towards a singularity” can happen, by skipping over certain chords, or “fast-forwarding” through them. And that is indeed useful, and appears in many tunes (e.g., Blue Bossa as mentioned in the post linked above). But that is more advanced than I am able to describe in detail.

My simple exercises are:

  • Given a diatonic starting on either a “first position” or a “second position” chord
    • “first position” 1 4 7 3dom 6 2dom 2 5 — consider each “pair” of chords, there are four “pairs” altogether
    • “second position”4 7 3dom 6 2dom 2 5 1 — all the pairs have different starting chords; particularly the two 2-5 pairs are shifted, so that the 2-5 pairs are “split apart” (struggling to find the right words here)
      • leads to very different range of sounds
      • I find it “unnatural” to practice. That it sounds musical and I find it unnatural suggests it must be practiced.
    • another thing to vary: don’t always start on the same chord. Start on any of the chords in the two positions
  • Play “some one pattern” from one chord to the next; play that same pattern for each of the 4 pairs of chords given that starting chord. Round and round. Examples:
    • step-wise descent
      • starting on different chord tones (R, 1, 3, 5, 7, 9) of 1st of each pair of chords.
    • step-wise ascent, e.g. in 4/4 time from 1-chord to 4-chord, walk up 1,2,♭3,3 to the 4.
      • combined with step-wise descent this can lead to a very nice walking baseline
    • chord-tone ascent
      • trivial starting on the root or 3rd of each chord; starts to get a little tricky on the 5th
    • chord-tone descent
      • starting on 7th or 9th is very natural (i.e flip-side of ascent from root or 3rd)
      • starting on 3rd or the 5th has a fun quality of anticipating/tracing the next chord in the pair
    • variation of hands
      • LH=chords, RH=walking
      • LH=walking, RH=chords
        • walking in the bass starting on different chord tones leads to very different sound from walking in the right hand
    • a final consideration: a middle voice — a third voice — between the LH and RH — the future.

My other observation: songs like You Must Believe In Spring (performed by Bill Evans) — hopelessly complex in the past — become visible on the horizon. And clearly audible while practicing. And that is worth celebration and thanks.