Lesson 143: The Sus Chord – G7sus4
In the video below, I explain a few ways to conceptualize the Sus chord. Sus is short for suspension – in church music, the “ah” in “Amen” – is an example of a simple 4 to 3 “suspension” sound; the
Free Jazz Education and Music
In the video below, I explain a few ways to conceptualize the Sus chord. Sus is short for suspension – in church music, the “ah” in “Amen” – is an example of a simple 4 to 3 “suspension” sound; the
The 4 note structure or tetrad made up of 1, 3, #11 and b7 is a very useful note set for voicings and improvising over all sorts of dominant 7th chords. These 4 notes are common tones from both lydian
This is a short melodic phrase that I wrote that includes use of the #9 on a major chord. I often think of this sound coming from the 6th mode of harmonic minor which works nicely over a major 7
In this live discussion I outline the entire process I go through when I work on a new idea. In this case, I have written a short 7 note melody which comes from the Altered scale (also called diminished-whole-tone or
Yesterday I wrote a short 3 chord tune by writing the melody first using a minor pentatonic scale. Many great songs use a pentatonic scale (or relative minor pentatonic) as a theoretical basis for all or part of the melody.
Here’s a simple progression with a chromatic melody. It’s in the key of G starting and targets iii minor (maj7) and I using substitute secondary dominants. I became interested writing really short form tunes by both Monk (Light Blue) and
This cell phone recording was from a quartet gig on Aug 15th 2019 at Ca Va in Kansas City. Matt Otto – tenor sax, John Kizilarmut – drums, Seth Lee – bass. (Stephen Martin was the band leader also played
Here’s a transcription of my tenor sax solo from the Alliance album (2020). This is over the chord changes to Woody and You (Dizzy Gillespie) on a contrafact I wrote called Woods. In the transcription I tried to notate what
In this short video I attempt to demonstrate how I like to practice Major Scale melodies. Often times we practice the same way we practiced when we where young, only faster. That is, instead of learning better melodic material as
I took off a small phrase from a Chet solo today over just friends. This was a good period for Chet, he had gotten out of jail and although was still learning to play on fake teeth an addict he
I came up with this easy ear training exercise today in which you sing each tension over a dominant 7th chord from easiest to hardest. In this order natural 9, natural 13, sharp 11, sharp 9, sharp 5, flat 9.
If you’re like me, you may often listen back to one of your solos and think, ” I am playing too much, I’m not leaving any space and I’m not listening to the band “. I think that the main