what to think at the changes

[Jedong Lee]

I am at one of the ‘preparatory exercises’, and have a quick question on what to think at the chord changes.

Let’s take the ‘Exercise 1’ on the page 10 of the WORKBOOK for instance. I am working on it in the key of Bb. At the first chord change of the exercise, I am supposed to hit the third of the chord IV7 on the second string.

One way I can find the note is purely from the mental image of the scale pattern at the 6th position, and the relative degree numbers assigned to the image. For the mental image of the pattern 4, I find the numbers ‘2’, ‘3’, and ‘4’ at the 6th, 8th, and 9th frets of the second string, so I know that the third of the IV7 chord is at the 8th fret of the second string.

Another way that works for me is to think in terms of the note names. The line of thinking is like, since I am in the key of Bb, the IV7 chord is Eb7, and the third of Eb7 is G, and I happened to know that the 8th fret of the second string is G, so I can hit the note.

I am inclined to use the second way of thinking because I think I need to get more familiar to thinking in terms of the note names. It takes a little more time than the first way, but not by much. But I am wondering if thinking only in terms of the shapes is preferable for some reason. Would you recommend one way or the other?

(Once I find the first note of each change, I follow the scale/arpeggio pattern up or down to find the subsequent notes.)

[Richie]

Hi Jedong,

I recommend the 2nd way which is what I advice when first introducing the interval script in the Lesson book. I later stress the reasons for this in the intro to the bebop calisthenics in Module 2.

In a nutshell, we don’t have time to think in terms of actual notes during improvisation. The chords change too fast and differ for each given scale 12 times because there are 12 keys. If we can identify just the root of each new scale and see the relative intervals accordingly (eg. 3, 5, b7, etc.), we can see the same “pattern” of intervals in all 12 keys, versus a different one for the same scale in each key!

This is very important because when we improvise we need to visualize and hear everything in terms of numerical intervals in relation to the root of the moment.That said,this doesn’t mean we don’t need to know the actual names of the notes. However, learning the notes on the fretboard should be for a different purpose. For example, when we decide we are going to play in Bb over a progression consisting of I, IV and V, we need to know where are roots lie for these degrees. In other words, depending on the fingering pattern employed we have to first be able to view the Bb (I),Eb(IV) and F(V) on the proper strings in order to see the remaining intervals as a numerical pattern.

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