to all bassists/guitarists

It's hard to say, since I don't listen to jazz/fusion

but my 11yrs education in classical music

tells me that those harmoines are basically

jazz harmonies. Our solfeggio teacher/composer

told us that major harmonies shifts in jazz are made

with septacords following

II. - V., I. -IV., VII. -III.(etc.) degrees in any diatonic scale

(western music tradition scales, ex. d-minor).

figure out those shifts and you should be able to

play in any scale on top of that.

i just worked out squarepusher theme

  Jimbob said:

does anyone with a better education in music theory than mine know what scales/modes Tom uses to solo over tracks like Deep Fried Pizza, The Swifty etc?

Some of the melodies are fucking insane, and i'd be interested to know where one would start to build up a repertoire like this, other than years of experience of jamming, and growing up listening to alot of jazz, neither of which i can say i have :grin:

I'm not a newbie to playing, but tunes like his are so mind-numbingly sublime i need to get those scales!

Any links, artists, fingers in the right direction would be well apreciated.

Peace

mate he's a jazzer, and to play jazz well you need to know ALL the scales (the main ones at least). its not like hes found a couple of sublime scales and is jamming over them, he is a jazz-player, and playing jazz is about abstracting from the ground level melody in endless ways.

so my aqdvice to you to start understanding what he is doing is to learn major scale harmony, learn the comparative melodic and harmonic minor harmony rules. learn where you would use and interchange them on a basic level. learn the H/W scale as well, and the W/H may come in useful. learn them for a while, then forget about them and play from your subconsious. that is what a great jazz player is doing when they improvise.

also, start listening to guys like bill evans, brad meldau, miles davis, charlie parker etc ( the list is endless) they all have (had) a similar understanding of harmony as squarepusher and did similarly sublime solos! they did of course print there own signature on there findings however!

I'm afraid there is no set of scales you can use and suddenly start to sound like someone who really knows there stuff, it just doesnt work like that man!

I just hoovered to My Red Hot Car. Toms the reason I stopped trying, I cant even get close. His brother seems to have a good education.

sorry my last reply was a bit bleak. yeah, just listen to all that came before i guess. Learning jazz harmony, and the scales associated with progressions etc is the best way to understand his playing, but in terms of actually being able to DO it you have to ignore all this stuff.

If you look at jazz theory it says, for example, that over a major7 chord you play a lydian or major scale, but much more important than knowing which scale to use is knowing what effect the notes you choose to use are having on the feel of the piece.

purely staying within the major scale you can get so many variations and feels, some of them sublime, some of them crap.

what I mean is that by learning scales you are not learning a group of notes you CAN use, or should use, more you are learning a framework of notes that are closest to the chord, sort of like a home base for your melodic ramblings.

if you listen to any of the greats, and i include SP in there, then they play lots of notes in there solo's that jazz theory does not point towards. the beginner improviser/player says but...what...thats WRONG...

the expert says, sure, there only guidelines!

so even in learning the more complex aspects of jazz harmony you are only really learning a different set of 'base notes' which allow you to go off and play what you want, knowing you can come back to an unusual note which still has connertations to lead you towards the next chord.

so to improvise well you have to know all these rules, and then forget them and play whatever you feel will be right. over time with doing this, an listening to the greats, as well as transcribing and analysing there solos, your ear and mental library of ideas will expand to a place where you can start doing your own insane melodies. the important point is that by analysing others' solos your not learning what they did so that you can do it (though that is a part of it) you are fine tuning your ear for harmony and melody so you can walk around these great tunes like you own them.

as a side note, heres an absolutely amazing vid of bill evans playing beautiful love. its a random scratch group, he hadnt played with any of the musicians before, so he sticks to the pretty conventional 'rules' of jazz harmony, not doing anything too out there. it a good piece to look at as its a jazzer playing a great solo but playing 'close to the rules'.

I have a transcription i did of the swifty that you may like, let me know if you want me to post it, thats an awesome one to look at because harmonically its just two chords, but melodically he is flying around like a maniac.

cool, hope that helps.

o

dont think about scales, think about chord tones.

Squarepusher uses alot of chromatic and leading tones, he just knows where to put the notes. Although sometimes he just noodles too.

  Rook said:

dont think about scales, think about chord tones.

 

Squarepusher uses alot of chromatic and leading tones, he just knows where to put the notes. Although sometimes he just noodles too.

yeah, you're right to think chord tones when you soloing yourself, provided you have enough melodic ideas to keep things interesting without scalar help. its awful when you here a solo which basically consists of a load of scale runs!

but for working out what someone has done so you can do it you need to know your scales as well. i mean, take the swifty for example, thats just two chords for the most part, and no chords for the rest. you cant work out what someone is doing in reference to chord tones if there are barely any chords! well, you can but it wouldnt make allot of helpful sense.

going chord tones is they way to go when improvising, but if you really study an instrument in the sense squarepusher has your use of the chord tones will be influenced by the years you have spent learning the sound of all the scales out there! there isnt a complete method out there which passes scales by, rather you learn all the scales and uses, get the sound of them into your head, and into your playing vocabulary, and then you focus on playing to the chord tones (confident that the ear for harmony you developed using scales will allow you to play whatever you want).

the reason the great players out there are so good melodically is because they have all the possible 'sounds' nailed so when they play they can hear a great idea in there head, and then play it!

so bassically scale studies add ideas to your inner library of 'sound' and helps explain why things sound so good and so bad, and playing to the chord tones allows you to be free when you are improvising, and not stuck with a few scalar ideas.

though to be honest, although this is the standard methodology taught in many of the top conservetoires, it also requires a hell of a lot of practice to become 'complete'. its a complete method and should effectively allow you to play anything you could possibly want, so you just have to worry about technique.

it all depends how much you want to get into it i guess, i'm pretty obsessed with getting as good as i can get as playing bass is my job and ive never really wanted to do anything else, but i guess there are a fair few other, less complete but still valid, ways of learning that will take you most of the way to being a decent player.

man i ramble, sorry, i love discussing this stuff :)

any thoughts? id like to see others' views on sp's soloing :)

a great album :

Artist/Band

Jean Fontanille/Fantastics3

Album

Boarding Pass

that's a band of 3 good musicians : Jean Fontanille is a guitar hero, Wilfried Widmann is a bass guitar player & Pascal Biwandu is a drummer...

Jean Fontanille

http://www.guitareuroshop.com

^^^ thats mad stuff, awesome

I have the Mark Levine jazz theory book as a pdf, widely regarded as one of the best complete methods, written in an easy going understandable manner. pm me :)

i think squarepusher implies melody expertly

the spaces between the notes are as important as the notes themselves

his soloing is a bit atonal usually, but he could do more arpeggios i guess, that might make me take fonder to his technique

i'm stuck in this phase where i want to be a neoclassical metal soloist so i want to hear fretboard-spanning arpeggios and tapping

  tht! tne said:

i think squarepusher implies melody expertly

the spaces between the notes are as important as the notes themselves

his soloing is a bit atonal usually, but he could do more arpeggios i guess, that might make me take fonder to his technique

i'm stuck in this phase where i want to be a neoclassical metal soloist so i want to hear fretboard-spanning arpeggios and tapping

:) hehe yeah, he's a legend. though i wouldn't say his soloing was generally atonal, you can work out most of what he does with the standard jazz theory approach. this doesn't make it any less amazing though, it takes allot to make the pretty basic concepts of jazz theory sound good!