Scribd Logo
Upload

Welcome to Scribd!

  • 177 views

    Melodic Minor Quartal Boxes PDF

    Uploaded by

    Rosa victoria paredes wong
    The document discusses using melodic minor modes in quartal voicings to harmonize chords. It presents "melodic minor quartal boxes" that associate a melodic minor mode with common chord types like major 7, dominant 7, minor 7, and minor 7b5. For each chord type in three positions of the CAGED system, it provides three quartal voicings covering most of the fretboard as a vocabulary to play through tunes. It recommends learning one application at a time to internalize the shapes and join them together.

    Copyright:

    © All Rights Reserved
    Download as PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd

    Melodic Minor Quartal Boxes PDF

    Uploaded by

    Rosa victoria paredes wong
    177 views4 pages
    The document discusses using melodic minor modes in quartal voicings to harmonize chords. It presents "melodic minor quartal boxes" that associate a melodic minor mode with common chord types like major 7, dominant 7, minor 7, and minor 7b5. For each chord type in three positions of the CAGED system, it provides three quartal voicings covering most of the fretboard as a vocabulary to play through tunes. It recommends learning one application at a time to internalize the shapes and join them together.

    Original Title

    Melodic Minor Quartal Boxes.pdf

    Copyright

    © © All Rights Reserved

    Available Formats

    PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd

    Did you find this document useful?

    Is this content inappropriate?

    The document discusses using melodic minor modes in quartal voicings to harmonize chords. It presents "melodic minor quartal boxes" that associate a melodic minor mode with common chord types like major 7, dominant 7, minor 7, and minor 7b5. For each chord type in three positions of the CAGED system, it provides three quartal voicings covering most of the fretboard as a vocabulary to play through tunes. It recommends learning one application at a time to internalize the shapes and join them together.

    Copyright:

    © All Rights Reserved
    Download as PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd
    Download as pdf or txt
    177 views4 pages

    Melodic Minor Quartal Boxes PDF

    Uploaded by

    Rosa victoria paredes wong
    The document discusses using melodic minor modes in quartal voicings to harmonize chords. It presents "melodic minor quartal boxes" that associate a melodic minor mode with common chord types like major 7, dominant 7, minor 7, and minor 7b5. For each chord type in three positions of the CAGED system, it provides three quartal voicings covering most of the fretboard as a vocabulary to play through tunes. It recommends learning one application at a time to internalize the shapes and join them together.

    Copyright:

    © All Rights Reserved
    Download as PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd
    Download as pdf or txt
    of 4
    At a glance
    Powered by AI
    The passage discusses associating different melodic minor modes with common chord types and provides quartal voicings to express these sounds on guitar.

    The chord types discussed are major 7, dominant 7 (with altered and lydian options), minor 7 (with tonic and dorian options), and minor 7b5. Each is associated with a different melodic minor mode.

    The three options for dominant 7 chords are the altered scale, lydian dominant scale, and mixolydian b6 scale. The altered scale expresses altered tensions, lydian dominant uses a #11, and mixolydian b6 uses a b13.

    Melodic Minor Quartal Boxes

    A while ago I posted some general information about harmonizing chords in fourths. In
    this post I want to follow up on that, focusing on melodic minor modes in fourths as a
    way to create surprising voicings and give your chords some harmonic motion.

    The idea here is to associate a particular melodic minor mode to each common chord
    type: major dominant, minor and m7b5. This will give us vocabulary for every chord
    type, meaning we can play through any standard tune using nothing but melodic minor
    quartal stacks if we want to, and that's a great way to get fluent with these.

    In fact if we consider two different versions of dominant chords -- functioning and non-
    functioning -- and two minor chords -- depending on whether we hear it as the tonic or
    the ii -- then we have six chord qualities to consider. There are only seven modes of
    Melodic Minor; the "other" one is Mixolydian b6, so I thought I may as well include
    that one too.

    In each case I look at three positions corresponding to C, E and A in the CAGED


    system, and for each position I give three quartal voicings on the top strings. Together
    these voicings cover almost the whole fretboard, so we don't really need to bother about
    the other two CAGED positions.

    The colours aren't especially significant except that all the notes of the same colour in a
    particular box give one quartal chord, and I've used matching colours at the tops and
    bottoms of boxes to indicate overlaps.

    Before learning these applications you should know the Melodic Minor scale, at least in
    the five CAGED positions, and be able to play the quartal voicings up the neck in any
    key. Of course, you should also be familiar with some more ordinary ways to play
    chords on jazz tunes; these are advanced sounds.

    I recommend picking one application (i.e. one subheading below) and learning just the
    green form as a substitute; once this is internalized, add the forms above and below it to
    start joining the shapes together.

    Major 7
    There's no straightforward major 7 sound in the melodic minor scale; the closest is
    Lydian Augmented. The resulting chord -- 1 3 #5 7 -- can work as a sub for Maj7#11 or
    for a tonic major with a b13 on top, which is a very hip Harmonic Major kind of sound.

    1
    Dominant 7 (Altered Option)
    Typically, when a dominant chord is functioning as the V -- whether it actually resolves
    or not -- it can take the altered scale (a.k.a. Super Locrian). These chords express the
    altered scale directly:

    Dominant 7 (Lydian Option)


    When a dominant chord is not functioning as a V, we usually think of it as a 7#11 or
    "Lydian Dominant" chord. Here we express this with the quartal voicings from the
    Lydian Dominant scale:

    2
    Dominant 7 (Mixolydian Option)
    This is the third option Melodic Minor gives us on a dominant chord: Mixolydian b6. I
    like it as an alternative to the Lydian Dominant idea; essentially we're just using a b13
    instead of a #11 while the 5 and 9 stay unaltered as usual. Be warned, this will cause
    consternation if you just throw it in unannounced when comping for another soloist:

    Minor 7 (Tonic Option)


    Here's Melodic Minor itself; these are beautiful chords to resolve to in bluesy minor-key
    tunes such as the A section of "Body and Soul":

    3
    Minor 7 (Dorian Option)
    If you try the previous voicings on m7 chords that are functioning as the ii in a ii-V
    motion, you'll probably find they don't sound quite right. This is the sound I prefer on
    the ii. The b9 is a little hard on the ear at first but it's quite a cool sound -- it's the same
    pitch as the #5 of the V7 chord, which is a nice way to pivot into that.

    Minor 7b5
    Finally, here's the quartal version of Locrian Natural 6, a popular modern scale choice
    on m7b5 chords:

    You might also like