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The Diatonic Trap

Question

  • How do you improve what you can hear in your head though? I've heard that if you can't sing something, you're not really hearing it. I can sing some OK stuff but I can't seem to get out what I really want to play. Everything seems simple and diatonic.

    • Response

  • I agree in that the voice is a direct connection to what we hear. For instance, if you play a C Major 9th and listen to it, then play a C Major 7th but this time sing the 9th. You will then experience the chord in a deeper more emotional way. I call it stepping into a chord. The chord surrounds you in a deeper way and you feel the emotional connection more.. Unless you are a trained vocalist, the range of what you hear may not be reachable with your voice, however, try to at least sing in the mid range - say concert D below middle C (first fret 2nd string – guitar is written 1 octave higher then it sounds) if you use falsetto you can get up to maybe A above middle C. (I can’t get that high anymore - I would like to unison up to the 12th fret 1st string ) So instead of letting these limitations bog you down, sing your ideas in the range you can reach. It doesn’t matter. Ideas are ideas. Musical ideas are more than just pitch. They are rhythmic phrases, harmonic relationships, even dynamics.
  • You feel you are too diatonic? Understandable because tonality is nature. Even the most obscure tunes can be explained diatonically except atonal music or Avant Garde nonsense. Don’t sell the diatonic “box” short. It can be more modern than you may think. In Bb rhythm changes – BbMaj7, G7+5, Cmi7, F7-9 – consider the diatonic scale of Bb. If you sing the notes C, Bb, D, F on those 4 chords above you get a hip sound using your voice – BbMaj9th, G7+5+9, Cmi9th, F7b9. Remember not to put the upper partials in your voicing just sing those notes using only the chords above. This exemplifies how mere diatonic notes can sound modern. It’s all about perspective – much like modality and a lot of other things.
  • The really deep thing is even though each individual chord has it’s own 1, 3, 5, 7, 9 etc, notice how on a deeper level the diatonic scale of Bb always manifests throughout the progression. In other words, the personalities of DO, RE, MI,FA, SOL, LA, TI are always present. This is important in improvisation because it allows complete control of what we hear. It’s like a multi-dimensional experience – each role/personality of the individual chord, plus the constant awareness of DO throughout.
  • Start here and everything else – chromaticism will make more sense. For instance, if you hear the BbMa7 and sing the tone F (FA) in your idea, you can then appreciate the lowering it to E natural to experience the flat5 – but more importantly how it relates to the 5th. On another musical idea, if you sing the tone F (FA) on the V chord (F7b9) you can raise it to F# to match the flat 9 in the chord, or even lower the 3rd to get the +9 sound with the F7b9 chord. Etc. Every diatonic note has a chromatic direction it can become. It’s up to your musical ear to make it work. We can’t talk in absolutes here. It’s about vocabulary. Never force things. Vocabulary grows over the years provided you remain sensitive to musical relationships.