You'll Hear It: Full Album Deep Dives with Jazz Musicians - 3 Ways To Use Triads In Your Lines - #88

Episode Date: April 27, 2018

In this episode, Peter and Adam discuss some ways to incorporate triads into your melodic lines. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

This is Adam Manus. And I'm Peter Martin. And you're listening to the You'll Hear a podcast. Daily Jazz advice coming at you. Today we're going to give you three ways to use triads in your lines. So we almost never do a list of three. Is this a play on the triad thing? Da, da, da, da, yes it is.

I like it. All right, that's very meta. I like that a lot. Yeah. Cool. Why don't you kick this one off? Because I have some ideas about this, but I don't really know how to put them in words. So I'm hoping that once you and your eloquence and verbacity...

I don't think that's a real word, but I'll go with it. Verbacity? Verbositeness. So the first thing that I usually think of when I think of triads is triad pairs. And this is a really easy concept where you can combine two different triads that work in the diatonic scale of whatever chord tone you're in, a chord you're playing on, excuse me, and you can play them in their inversions. So if you are playing over

C major 7 chord, you can do, let's say it's a C major 7 sharp 11. You could do the triad of E minor and D major, D major, E minor, and do those in their inversions one after the other, so D major, E minor, D major, E minor, up there

inversions. And it gets you this really organized sound. It's a way to kind of organize your lines into the these patterns. And that's usually the first way you can kind of break in the triads. I mean, you can go even simpler than that, but that's a very easy way to get into this idea of triadic patterns of using the shape and these shapes in your lines. And that stuff sounds good. I mean, I think that any of these things when you talk about using them in your lines, like when you

practice them will probably be a little bit more, you know, specific and almost pattern-based as we go through them. But once you start to find things that you can put over course, is that you like the way that they sound and then break them up, there's more of a chance that you're going to use like a little fragment of them as opposed to just running through them. Because I was thinking, you know, diatonically, that's like a way to really hear all the possibilities

that are really right inside of a certain sound. But the simplest way, of course, over a C major, would set you up for all the different modes. So like if you're going through diatonically and you're just skipping a note each time, you know, C major, then D minor, E minor, F major, you know, up like that, that just gives you the exact sound of the, of that particular chord, and then once you go to the other modes, they're going to be exactly the same.

But you could also think about, like, the diminished scale. It could really be over any scale. That's right. And when you get to diminish, it's interesting because diatonic movement of the triads are all diminished triads. Right. And you can break them up in interesting ways. And those are the kind of ones that I end up sort of using it, I think, in my lines a lot. Are, like, the diminished scale of diatonic triads?

Yeah. Little fragments of those. Yeah, that should actually probably be number one, and the triad pairs should probably be number two as far as complexity, because you're right. You can just move the diatonic triads around the scale. And then the triad pairs are more of the specific shape of those two triads. That's a good point, yeah. All right.

So that brings us to our third tip of the triad. Are there tips on a triad? No, they're angles, points? Yeah, the anchors. Points. Anchors of the triad. So when I was in New York, I got to play with a bunch. The great tenor saxophone is George Garzone.

Oh, yeah. And, I mean, George is an awesome guy. great player and he's got this great teacher too excellent teacher and he has this amazing triad concept for playing outside of the changes and for getting outside and it's one of my favorite things to do because you actually take the changes completely out of the out of the equation there there you don't even have to think about them because it's almost it's not random but it's almost random so here's how the the george garzum system of triads work and i think he calls it the the chromatic triadic concept.

I'm going to have to double check that, but I think that's what it's called. And the way I learned it was this. You start with one triad. It doesn't matter. It could be major, minor, diminished, or augmented. And in fact, you want to work on all of these. But let's say you start with it.

C major triad in root position, C, E, G. Now, the only rule is you have to start your next triad within the half step of that last node of that G. So the next triad has to start on either G-flat or A-4. And then the second rule is it can't be in the same inversion as the triad it just came from. So it can't be, the next triad can't be G flat, B, flat, D flat because we just did a root position. So the next triad could be F sharp A, D because that's a first inversion of a D. Or it could be F sharp B, D sharp because that's the second inversion of B.

Or it could be F sharp A C. That sounds really cool, a diminished triad. or it could be G-sharp, B, E. It could be A-flat D-flat F. It could be A-flat-C-E. You know, all of these actually couldn't be that because that's in a root position. That was a test.

That was a test. I was a self-check there, see? Although that could be maybe a C augmented. So even if it's a different type of triad, it still needs to be a different inversion as well, or is it one or the other? Yeah, it still needs to be in a different inversion as well. well. But it can be the same type. The diminished and the augmented obviously are the same thing

in any inversion, right? So you kind of get away with something there a little bit. But yeah, and it's fun to mix the types. It's fun to mix major and minor. It's fun to mix, especially diminished and augmented. So let's say you do C, E flat, F sharp, and then do G, B, E, E flat. That thing sounds awesome. And you can keep going up. You can keep, and then go after the E flat, go E, A, C-sharp, an A triad Up above that and come down. So the rule stays the same as you go through. The rule stays the same up and down.

It is super hard to get going on this thing. It takes a lot of concentration. But once you kind of get, you actually start to develop licks. You start develop patterns that feel good and that you kind of have. I'm telling you what, it's like the coolest sound. And it's a great way to get out of your head and get out of the changes for a second and really just worry about, you're thinking about rhythm. and the shape of the line.

This is a great concept. I might actually even, on this particular episode, I might post a link to part of the literature on this. I know there's probably some stuff online because it's worth checking out for sure. So this is the triatic chromatic approach? That's right. Oh, cool.

Okay. Well, I love that, and then you hit on at the end there, I think such an important part of this, and I can see you kind of light up as you were hearing this and thinking about it is like it's a really cool sound. And that's what this is about. Like there's a restricted rules

there, which is great to practice by, but I always think of, like, restricting yourself to certain rules actually opens up new sounds for you. Absolutely. Because we're always, we always think, you know, some people like, well, I don't want to do patterns or rules because then I'm not being free to improvise. People that are usually saying that, when they're free to improvise, they're actually just playing what's comfortable to them. So they're not actually coming up with anything new.

No, and when you hear Garzone play this, I don't think, I mean, he's breaking the rules. He's playing, he has this, I mean, it's truly a musical sound for him. And it's a language that he's really helped develop a dialect that he's helped develop. So these rules are in place to kind of get you into this sound. And then once you understand the sound, you can break the rules and do all your own things. Yeah, and a lot of times these are really practice techniques for improvisation. Everyone's always talking about, what do I practice? I just have to be free and improvise.

But this opens up new sounds and new things to play that you can incorporate when you are being free because they sound good. Yeah, that's right. If you let your musical taste sort of dictate and curate what you're going to actually play when you're improvising, It's great when these things start to come out. Yeah, yeah. Now, I know that's three, and that's all we promise, because this is triad, but I want to just throw one more in. Oh, uh-oh, seventh chords coming.

No, no, still on triads, but that is like one use of triad. Wait, what is this episode called? It's called the three ways to use triads, and you're giving us number four. Come on, yeah. I haven't gone. Okay, this will be number four, but it's still using triads in your lines. But, I mean, I think this is something that I do a lot, and I like the sound, and that is to take a triad that is,

you know, very far from the core that you're in. And typically I'll do this over major chords or dominant chords. I think they could work over other ones, but that's sort of where I hear them. So you might have like a C major 7. So if you think about something that would clash with that or that would be really outside, there's a lot of different things, but maybe you take A. Yeah. So you got A, C-sharp E.

So, of course, the C-sharp, you know, kind of violently is in collusion with, no, collusion. Collision. Collision. I don't know why collusion is on my mind. Collision with. It's more colliding with the C. With the C sharp and the C. So I would play over an A triad in improvising.

So you don't have to fight hard to make that sound out because it is out. But it's got a little bit kind of centering it as well because the A and the E. But what I'll do is when I'll go to those kind of triads is I'll play them in a very basic way. Like just do do do do do do dee do dee do dee da, da. like one, two, three, five. Still over, that would be in the A, over the C. So almost like a two-court, like something very basic, no upper extensions, no sevenths or anything. Yeah, yeah.

But because they're already so far outside, you can go very basic. And the beauty of the triad is such a basic harmonic, you know, foundation of music. Strong. Very strong that, you know, if you do it in C, it just sounds like you don't know what you're doing. Right. If you go to some sort of weird triad, it can, it can, really give you some great, strong, melodic content in which to improvise over. That's awesome.

I mean, so funny, I do the exact same thing, but I usually use B if I'm in C. Right, right. Like, I'll use something. Yeah, yeah. Well, no, they, almost everyone works. Actually, yeah, so for C, A works, B works, A flat works really good. F sharp. I mean, the only ones that don't are the ones that are just straight diatonic, like G.

G, you know, I mean, D works, E flat works, E. Yeah, F doesn't really work that well for this. But you almost just think about it, like what pianists, what we call, like, a two chord one, two, three, five. Yeah, that's awesome. Well, I hope you like those four ways. Sorry, man. Hey, we always, you know, under promise and over-delivered. If we say we're going to give you three, we're going to give you four. No, but you know what? We want to hear from you on this, too. If you have any ideas about how to use triads that we haven't hit on, you know, send us your ways that you like to work triads, and we want to hear about that. Maybe we can talk about it. Yeah, because if you

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