Skip to main content
Loading Explore guides…
Modal Jazz Improvisation · Acedra
Home
Explore
Music
Modal Jazz Improvisation
Sign in to save
Chat
If YouTube asks you to sign in, open the video on YouTube.
Watch on YouTube
Reload player
Transcript
44 segments
Copy
Hide video
0:00
Hi guys. So this lesson is going to be about Modal Jazz and specifically improvisation in Modal Jazz. So Modal Jazz is characterized by very sparse chord changes, where a single chord can last for a number of bars. There not being a strict chord progression, a strict written out chord progression. The use of pedal points and drones, often. And the use of quartal chords. Now, Modal Jazz, as the name implies is a genre of jazz that uses modality
0:40
rather than tonality. Now, I explain the difference between these two things in detail in a separate video, so you can go check that out if you want. But essentially tonal music uses functional harmony; and modal music does not. So very quickly, tonal harmony allocates every chord a function and places each chord in a hierarchy with the tonic at the very top. So that every single chord is either the tonic, and so feels like a resolution, or is part of a progression moving towards
1:13
the tonic, that is, either a predominant, or a dominant function. So, in a sense, the tonic acts like the 'center of gravity' towards which all the other chords gravitate. For example, the chord G7 gravitates towards and feels like it wants to resolve to a C major.
1:34
Now, again, I go over this in detail in my other video but essentially it's because every dominant chord contains a tritone interval between the third and the seventh. And this is called a diatonic tritone because it's the only tritone found in a diatonic scale. So, for example, with the G7, the tritone interval is between B and F. And this diatonic tritone, which gives the dominant its characteristic sound, feels like it wants to resolve to the tonic.
2:06
But in Modal Jazz, on the other hand, all chords are equal. There is still a tonal centre, so there is still a root note. But there is no functional harmony, so chords do not feel like they need to move towards the tonic. They don't feel like they need to resolve anywhere. They are just stand alone entities which, kind of, float there, in and of themselves. So, as I mentioned before, in Modal Jazz there are no strict chord progressions.
2:32
Chords are often quartal and chord changes are relatively rare and sparse. So, your chord progression is a little bit boring, or you can say that it has a slow harmonic rhythm. However, you still use diatonic chords, just like tonal music. So, for example, in the key of D Dorian, You can still use the diatonic chords from that key: so D minor 7, E minor 7, F Major 7, G7, A minor 7, B half diminished and C major 7. And so, in this case, because D
3:05
Dorian is just a mode of the C major scale. All the chords found in D Dorian are actually also found in the key of C major. Now, the idea behind Modal Jazz is to give the soloist greater freedom and greater choice when improvising. Tonal harmony restricts the soloist because each chord has a strict function and is inevitably leading to the tonic. And when you're thinking in terms of chords, with chord progressions moving towards the tonic,
3:34
then your improvisation is limited or restricted in certain ways. Incidentally, this is called 'thinking vertically' because you're thinking in terms of chords which are built vertically in sheet music. Now, if we take the classic 2-5-1 chord progression in the key of C, in this case. Then we find we have a predominant functioning chord, going to a dominant functioning chord, and then down resolving to a tonic functioning chord.
4:02
Now, again, I have a separate video where I go into that in a little bit more detail, so you can check that out if you like. So, with this tonal 2-5-1 chord progression the soloist is generally forced to target guide tones; avoid avoid notes; start a phrase of your improvisation at the start of the chord progression; build up tension as the chords build up tension, that is from the two to the five, which, sort of, follows the harmony and the tension of the chords. Then resolve the
4:33
tension of your solo when the chords resolved to the tonic chord; and end your little improvisational phrase on the 1 chord at the end of the chord progression. So, in a sense, your solo is already written out for you. The soloist's goal is just to outline the chord changes. So, in a sense, your improvisation is a harmonic slave to the chords. And so what you can do in your solo is really quite restricted and limited. So, for example, you could play something like this. [music]
5:10
Right, so I started my solo at the beginning of the chord progression.
5:16
Avoided the avoid notes. Targeted the guide tones. Built up a little bit of tension and then resolve that tension on the 1 chord when the chords resolve as well. And then finished my phrase at the end of the chord progression on the one chord. So it was a perfectly nice sounding solo, and that's kind of the problem. It's very, sort of, expected. You knew exactly what I was going to do. It sounded very smooth and I was targeting all the right notes, and avoiding all the
5:46
right notes, and building up an appropriate amount of tension, and then resolving that tension. It was all, sort of, written out for me. It was all preconceived, almost. And not only that, but you can create a relatively interesting sounding solo by just playing one note. You can have a one-note solo and that's because the chords are changing and so the harmony of that note is changing. So, for example, if I just play the note A. [music]
6:16
Right, I was just playing the note A and because the chords are changing, it was the 5th of the D minor 7, the 9th of the G7, and then the 13th of the C Major 7. And so the harmony was changing and that single note solo actually didn't sound that terrible. In fact, it sounds relatively interesting, despite being an incredibly boring and an incredibly uncreative solo. So, before Modal Jazz soloists generally thought in this way, that is, in terms of
6:46
chords and arpeggios. They thought in terms of the chord progression, where you focus your solo on where the chord leads rather than on the chord itself. And so by removing the functionality of chords, Modal Jazz allows a soloist to focus exclusively on the melody and not worry about the underlying harmony. Now, this is called 'thinking horizontally' or in terms of scales or entire keys or entire modes. So Modal Jazz treats chords as decorative rather than
7:19
functional. So, this gives you greater flexibility and greater creativity when improvising. And, in fact, it forces you to focus on creating interesting melodies and not just outlining the chords or modifying your solo to fit the chord progression. Now, this can be quite challenging at first because you cannot rely on the chord progression to make your solo sound interesting. So no more one note solos. That would be incredibly boring because you're essentially
7:47
playing one chord for a long period of time in your left hand, and one note in your solo.
8:01
Right, incredibly boring. And so, instead, with Modal Jazz, you can now target any note in the scale. There are no guide tones and there are no avoid notes. However, there are something called character tones, which I'll get to later. And because there is no strict chord progression and each of the chords, kind of, just floats there by itself, you can start and finish a phrase whenever you like. There's no limitation on phrase length because you don't have to work around a
8:31
pre-existing chord progression.
9:19
Right or something like that. So, as you can see the chord progression doesn't really go anywhere. It, kind of, just sits there and then floats back and forth doing its own thing. So, whereas with the tonal 2-5-1, you have to fit your solo around the chords, both harmonically and in terms of timing and phrasing. In Modal Jazz, because only one chord is played for a long time and it doesn't really feel like it needs to move or resolve anywhere because you're playing those
9:48
quartal chords, and so you eliminate any sense of harmonic motion, the solo doesn't have to focus on where the chord progression is leading. But instead the soloist can create a free and unique melody that captures the sound of an individual chord or the mode or the groove of the song. So even though a Modal Jazz solo is much freer than a tonal solo, there nevertheless, are some restrictions. Firstly, you generally stick to the diatonic scale. So in this case I was in the key of D Dorian.
10:23
So, I was generally using the scale of D Dorian with some occasional passing notes. You want to avoid playing or emphasizing the diatonic tritone, because that sounds very tonal. You want to emphasize the root note in the bass to establish a tonal centre. And while there are no guide tones for each chord that you have to target, there are still things called character tones which you should try and emphasize. Now, I don't want to say you should target character tones, because in Modal
10:56
Jazz you don't have to target any note in particular. Or rather, you can target any note that you want. So, even though all the notes in the scale are equal, that is, there are no guide tones or avoid notes. You could say that the character tone is the first among equals. Now, this is because a character tone is the unique note or degree that makes a particular scale sound like that particular scale. And helps distinguish it from the major or a minor scale or any other mode.
11:30
So, for example, the difference between a major scale, or the Ionian mode, and a Lydian scale, is that the Lydian scale has a sharp 4. Therefore the sharp 4 is a character tone. The sharp 4 is what gives the Lydian scale its character. Similarly, the Mixolydian scale has a flat 7 which distinguishes it from the regular major scale. So the flat 7 is the character tone. Similarly, the thing that distinguishes the Dorian mode from the Aeolian mode, or the natural minor, is that the Dorian has
12:09
a natural 6, whereas the Aeolian has a flat 6. And so the character tone of the Dorian scale is a natural 6. And so the character tone of the Phrygian scale is a flat 2. And of the Locrian is a flat 5. Now, I've written them up here in the picture in picture. And notice that all of the character tones are either a B or an F, which are the two notes which make up the diatonic tritone in the key of C Major. So, that's just an interesting little aside. And so, if you go back and listen
12:42
to my little modal improvisation earlier in this video, you'll see that i was trying to emphasize that character tone in the key of D Dorian, the B. Now, this is where it can get a little bit confusing. Even though Modal music does not have a functional harmony, different chords still have different amounts of tension, and so you can still classify all of the chords in a particular key into three different categories.
13:11
Now, the first category is the tonic. Now, if you're building chords out of thirds then the chord that fits into the tonic category is the tonic chord. But if you're building chords out of fourths, then a tonic category chord, or a tonic functioning chord, is any chord that has the tonic note in it but does not have the character tone in it. And naturally, the tonic category chords are the most stable. Aow the second category are
13:43
cadential chords. Now, a cadential chord is a chord that has the character tone of that particular mode as a chord tone. That is, in the chord, in the 7th chord, whether or not you're building the chord in thirds or in fourths. And if a chord has both the root note and the character tone of that mode in it, then it is still classified as a cadential chord. And this is the most unstable chord in modal harmony. Now the final category are non-cadential chords. Now again, if you're building
14:20
chords up in thirds then a non-cadential chord is any chord that is not the tonic chord and does not have the character tone of that mode in it. And if you're building chords up in fourths, then a non-cadential chord is just any chord which does not have the character tone or the root note in it. So, for example, in the key of D Dorian, the root note is D and the character tone is B. Now, the chord F major 7 does not have the root note or the character tone in it.
14:55
Therefore, it is non-cadential. The chord E minor 7 has the character note in it, therefore it is a cadential chord. And the chord D minor 7, of course, is the tonic chord, because it starts on the tonic, on the root note, and it doesn't have a character tone in it. Now similarly, with quartal harmony, a chord like this does not have the D or the B in it, therefore it is non-cadential. A chord like this has the B in it, which is the character tone,
15:27
therefore it is cadential. And a chord like this does not have the character tone, but it does have the root note in it, therefore it is a tonic. However, to make the chord changes a little bit more interesting, you can add chromatic approach chords.
15:48
Now, the interesting thing to notice here is that the tonic chord in the Locrian mode, for example, in B Locrian, is B half diminished. So B half diminished is, of course, the tonic chord of B Locrian mode. But it also contains the character tone of that mode, which is the F. Do you find yourself in a bit of a paradox, where you have an unstable tonic chord that wants to resolve to itself. Now, this is why the Locrian mode generally isn't used in Modal harmony.
16:23
So then, any chord which contains the character tone of that mode, and is therefore a cadential chord, feels unstable and feels like it wants to resolve or pulls towards the tonic chord. Now, this is pull for a resolution, or pull to the tonic chord, is not as strong as a dominant chord wanting to go to the tonic chord. But it, nevertheless, has a slight tendency to, kind of, feel like it wants to resolve back to that tonic chord.
16:54
Now, of course, the most common cadence in functional harmony is a 5, the dominant chord, going to the 1. But the most common cadence in modal harmony is a 2 going to the 1, so moving by a step. And so, just like in functional harmony, where the usual chord progression or the usual functions that you would go through in a chord progression would be a predominant function chord, to a dominant function chord, to a tonic function chord. In modal harmony, the equivalent kind of
17:29
progression would go from a non-cadential chord, to a cadential chord, then to a tonic chord. So you can describe the movement of chords, or the fact that a particular chord feels like it wants to resolve, as that chord acting 'like' a functional dominant chord. But it wouldn't be accurate to call it a functional chord, or to call this functional harmony. That term is exclusively reserved for tonality rather than modality. And so you'll find then, that in the best known Modal Jazz
18:06
song, that is, the song 'So What', the chord progression goes from an E minor 7 down to a D minor 7. Now notice that this E minor 7, using its So What chord voicing, has the note B in it. Which is the character tone in the key of D Dorian, which is the key that this song is in. Therefore this is a cadential chord
18:33
and therefore creates a little bit of tension that feels like it wants to resolve down to that tonic chord which is the D minor 7. And notice that there's no character tone in this voicing, that is there's no note B.
18:51
And so, in the song 'So What', which again is that classic Modal Jazz song, we have that little riff at the beginning.
19:00
And then we have a cadential chord moving to be tonic chord.
19:07
And that's why that particular chord combination or chord movement sounds really strong and good. So, you are still creating tension with a cadential chord and resolving it to a tonic chord, but you're doing so in a non-functional manner. And also, as a bit of an aside, where the character tone is located in the chord effects how much tension you create and therefore how much that chord feels like it wants to resolve to the tonic. The character tone in the root of the chord creates a lot
19:42
of tension. The character tone in the fifth of the chord creates a bit less tension. The character tone in the third of the chord creates even less tension. And the character tone in the seventh of the chord creates even less tension. And so, it feels like it wants to resolve to the tonic chord less. Now, I've written all of that up here in the picture in picture so you can pause it and have a look at it if any of that didn't make sense.
20:10
So then, Modal Jazz is designed to give the improviser greater freedom and flexibility, ,however, there are still some restrictions. There are no guide tones, however, there are still character tones which you should try and emphasize. Similarly, there's no functional harmony, however, you still create non-functional tension with the chords that you play; and that tension you create still slowly wants to lead you back to the tonic
20:38
chord. So the chords still want to float back down to the tonic chord. However, that need of resolution or that feeling for resolution is nowhere near as strong as a dominant chord wanting to go to the tonic. It's much more subtle and it's much more vague and ambiguous but it still exists because different chords create different amounts of tension. So, in conclusion, in Modal Jazz, because of the lack of chord progression and the
21:05
lack of chord functionality the focus of the improvisation is on creating a coherent and a meaningful melody rather than merely restating the chord changes. And precisely because the chord changes are so boring, it forces you to be more creative and more interesting in the actual melody that you create. Cool, that's it for me guys. Thanks for watching. As always feel free to leave any questions or comments. See you.
Here to help you learn
Sign in to keep a private conversation with your course tutor.
Ask me anything about the material…
Sign in to chat