Module 14: Modern harmony and rhythmLesson 6professional⏱ 90 min + 25 min daily for three weeks

Playing outside and modern sounds

Leave the harmony on purpose and come back: side-slipping, constant-structure and chromatic planing, spread triads and clusters, the tone and effects of modern jazz guitar, and the post-bop repertoire to learn.

Why "outside" is a rhythm skill

Playing outside means playing notes that are not in the chord or its scale, deliberately, for a stretch long enough that the listener hears a second harmony superimposed on the first, and then returning. Every great outside player, from Eric Dolphy and the late Coltrane to Scofield and Rosenwinkel, obeys the same three conditions, and if you remember nothing else from this lesson remember these:

1. The line must be strong. Outside notes played hesitantly sound like mistakes. Outside notes played with a clear rhythmic shape and conviction sound like a decision.
2. The out section must have a logic that the ear can follow: the same phrase transposed, the same chord shape moved, a scale that is simply the "wrong" one. Random chromaticism is not outside playing; it is noise.
3. You must come back, and the return should land on a strong chord tone on a strong beat. The release is the point; the tension only exists to make the release mean something.

Everything else in this lesson is a particular way of satisfying those conditions. The material depends on the triad pairs, the quartal voicings and the drop-2 shapes from Drop-2 voicings on strings 5-4-3-2, and on the phrasing discipline of Motifs, development and your first solos.

Side-slipping

The simplest outside device: play a phrase inside, play the same phrase a half step higher (the same fingering, one fret up), then play it inside again. Because the shape and rhythm are identical, the ear accepts the transposed bar as a logical event rather than a wrong note, and the half-step relationship means every note is maximally "wrong" against the chord, so the return is maximally satisfying. The example is a one-bar D Dorian phrase, slipped up for one bar, brought back, and resolved. The block is not pitch-checked, because bar 2 is supposed to fail every check; the text annotations mark what is happening.

\tempo 150
.
\ts 4 4
:8 5.5{ch "Dm7" txt "in"} 7.5 3.4 5.4 7.4 5.3 7.3 5.2 | 6.5{txt "out: same shape, one fret up"} 8.5 4.4 6.4 8.4 6.3 8.3 6.2 | 5.2{txt "back in"} 7.3 5.3 7.4 5.4 3.4 7.5 5.5 | :4 3.4 :2 5.5 r.4 |

Variations, in order of difficulty: slip for half a bar instead of a whole bar; slip down a half step; slip up and come back by a different route (so the return is a new phrase, not the mirror image); slip a whole step or a tritone, which are "less wrong" and therefore harder to make convincing.

Side-slipping also works in comping. Take a Dm7 drop-2 shape and move it up one fret for an off-beat or two; the band hears the harmony lift and settle. In the example the out chord is labelled honestly as what it is, an Ebm7, and the engine checks both.

\tempo 150
.
\ts 4 4
(5.5 7.4 5.3 6.2).4{d ch "Dm7"} (5.5 7.4 5.3 6.2).8 r.4 (6.5 8.4 6.3 7.2).4{ch "Ebm7"} | (6.5 8.4 6.3 7.2).8{ch "Ebm7"} (5.5 7.4 5.3 6.2).8{ch "Dm7"} (-.5 -.4 -.3 -.2).4 r.2 | r.4 (6.5 8.4 6.3 7.2).4{ch "Ebm7"} (5.5 7.4 5.3 6.2).2{ch "Dm7"} | (5.5 7.4 5.3 6.2).1 |

Constant structure

A constant-structure progression moves one chord shape, unchanged, through a series of roots that have no functional relationship: the same maj7 voicing in minor 3rds, the same 6/9 voicing down in half steps, the same sus chord around the cycle. Because the quality never changes, the ear stops hearing "chords" and hears a shape in motion, which is the harmonic equivalent of a side-slipped phrase. Herbie Hancock, Wayne Shorter and Chick Corea built whole tunes on it; as a soloist's device, it lets you imply a progression over a static chord.

The first example moves a root-position drop-2 maj7 shape up in minor 3rds, which after four steps returns to the starting root (the minor-3rd cycle divides the octave evenly). Every chord is checked against its own symbol: the shape really is a maj7 chord each time.

\tempo 80
.
\ts 4 4
(3.5 5.4 4.3 5.2).2{ch "Cmaj7"} (6.5 8.4 7.3 8.2).2{ch "Ebmaj7"} | (9.5 11.4 10.3 11.2).2{ch "Gbmaj7"} (12.5 14.4 13.3 14.2).2{ch "Amaj7"} | (3.5 5.4 4.3 5.2).1{ch "Cmaj7"} |

Chromatic planing is constant structure in half steps. The second example takes the quartal 6/9 shape from the first lesson of this module and slides it down three frets, one at a time, landing on Bb6/9. Played over a Bb pedal it is an approach from above; played over nothing it is pure colour. Both examples are typical of how modern guitarists (Rosenwinkel, Lage, Gilad Hekselman) voice a static section.

\tempo 80
.
\ts 4 4
(6.5 6.4 6.3 6.2).4{ch "Db6/9"} (5.5 5.4 5.3 5.2).4{ch "C6/9"} (4.5 4.4 4.3 4.2).4{ch "B6/9"} (3.5 3.4 3.3 3.2).4{ch "Bb6/9"} | (3.5 3.4 3.3 3.2).1 |

To improvise with constant structure, pick a shape you can arpeggiate (a triad, a 7th chord, a 4ths stack) and move it by a fixed interval for two or three steps before returning to the real chord. Minor 3rds and whole steps are the most common intervals; the "wrong" chords should be played as cleanly as the right one.

Spread triads and clusters

Two voicing types belong to the modern sound: triads opened up until their notes are a 5th or a 6th apart, and chords squeezed until their notes are a 2nd apart.

Spread triads

A spread (or open) triad has its middle note moved up an octave, so a close C major triad becomes root, 5th, 3rd: a 5th and then a 6th. On guitar they lie on strings 6-4-2 or 5-3-1 with the string in between muted or skipped, and they ring in a way close triads never do. They are the sound of Bill Frisell and of Ted Greene's harmony; played as arpeggios they are also the fastest way to get wide intervals into a line.

\tempo 100
.
\ts 4 4
:8 8.6{ch "Dm7"} 5.4 5.2 5.4 10.6 7.4 6.2 7.4 | 12.6 9.4 8.2 9.4 13.6 10.4 10.2 10.4 | :4 10.6 :8 7.4 6.2 :2 5.1 | r.1 |

Clusters

A cluster stacks 2nds. On guitar it needs open strings or a stretch, which is why the usable clusters are the ones that fall under the hand in a few keys: the shapes below put a major 2nd or a semitone pair inside a 9th chord, with the open B and E strings doing the work. They sound like a piano and they sound like now. Each one is checked by the engine against its chord symbol.

Use clusters at the ends of phrases and at the tops of ballads, not under a soloist, and let them ring. The Am9 shape (A, C, B adjacent in the middle) and the Dm9 shape (C, D, E on the top three strings) are the ones to learn first; move the Dm9 shape to other keys where open strings allow, and finger the rest.

Tone and effects in modern jazz guitar

The archtop-into-a-clean-amp sound of the 1950s is one option among several now. The modern players who use effects use them structurally, not as decoration:

• Reverb and delay make spread triads and clusters sustain; a long reverb or a dotted-eighth delay turns a sparse comping part into a texture (Frisell, Metheny).
• Overdrive at low gain adds sustain to single lines and compresses the attack, which is what makes Scofield's and Rosenwinkel's legato lines sound like a horn. Keep it low enough that chords stay clear.
• A volume pedal gives swells that remove the attack entirely, which suits the constant-structure and planing examples above.
• Pitch shifting and octave effects (an octave up, mixed low) thicken a single-note line and sit well with 4ths-based playing.
• Modulation (chorus, vibrato) is a 1980s signature that a few players use with intent; most modern players avoid it.

The rule is the one that governs the notes: every effect must be a decision the listener can hear as a decision. Set up each effect so that it can be switched in for a section and out again; a sound that never changes is as static as a comping figure that never changes. Record yourself with and without each effect and keep only the ones that make the music clearer. The reference pages have amp and pedal settings.

Exercises

1. Side-slipping lines. The example as written at 120 and 150; then your own one-bar phrase in D Dorian, slipped up, back, resolved; then slipped down; then over a ii–V–I, slipping only on the V chord.
2. Side-slipping comping as written; then with a Dm7 drop-2 in a different inversion; then over a modal vamp for two minutes, slipping no more than once every two bars.
3. Constant structure with the maj7 shape in minor 3rds and in whole steps; then a drop-2 m7 shape in minor 3rds; then arpeggiate each chord as eighths instead of strumming it.
4. Planing the 6/9 shape over a Bb pedal (record the pedal or use a looper); then the same shape in whole steps.
5. Spread triads on 6-4-2 for all seven D Dorian triads, as chords and as arpeggios; then on 5-3-1 (work the shapes out: the same intervals one string set higher, with the string-2 notes one fret higher).
6. Clusters as written, each held for four slow beats with reverb; then invent one more in the key of G using open strings and check it in the chord dictionary.
7. Effects audit. Play the planing example clean, with reverb, with a volume pedal, with low overdrive; record all four and decide which one serves the music.

Quiz