NEW! AUGMENTED SCALE Practice Patterns

  

Here are a few new, additional practice patterns, to augment my blog on the 'Study and Etude of the Beautiful Augmented Scale'.

Enjoy and PLEASE leave me comments and subjects you would like to hear about and study.

Thanks so much,

Errol Weiss Schlabach

I will make frequent additions as I compose them.

Sincerely,

Errol Weiss Schlabach

NEW: Pentatonic Patterns!!!!

Pentatonic Practice Patterns

Here is a beginning of the patterns I’ve promised.  More will follow soon.  Enjoy and please comment and give your opinion.

Sincerely,

Errol Weiss Schlabach

PATTERN PRACTICE METHOD

Seeking, collecting, and cellaring classic vintage patterns will give you material for a never ending rich supply of fresh, interesting ideas to practice.

Select new vintages whenever your present routine becomes dull, monotonous, dreary, tedious and stale.  Visit your tasting room and choose the vintages and bouquets that apply to your current fancy and relish.  Forming the new pattern routine, commit it to memory and build the ability to perform it in every key, major and minor (if this applies).

The goal is to internalize by daily practice until it enters your deep recessive pool, the rich reservoir of your unconscious store of ability.  This stage is achieved when the pattern becomes dull, monotonous, dreary, tedious and stale.  Now go to the tasting room for a new vintage.

It might be days, weeks, or years, but suddenly that retired pattern will surface as you read, hear, or improvise music, vividly screaming in your ‘aural imagination’.  Always remember: your ability to play well requires: “an intensity of concentration and a vivid aural imagination” (Andre Watts).

Please leave comments and opinions for me about this blog.  I hope it helps in your passionate quest of music.

Sincerely,

Errol Weiss Schlabach

A Pattern Practice Method That Works

PATTERN PRACTICE METHOD

Seeking, collecting, and cellaring classic vintage patterns will give you material for a never ending rich supply of fresh, interesting ideas to practice.

Select new vintages whenever your present routine becomes dull, monotonous, dreary, tedious and stale.  Visit your tasting room and choose the vintages and bouquets that appeal to your current fancy, fetish, relish, or

----lust?.   Having formed the new pattern routine, commit it to memory and build the ability to perform it in every key, major and minor (if this applies).

The goal is to internalize it by daily practice until it enters your deep recessive mental pool, the rich reservoir of your unconscious store of ability.  This stage is achieved when the pattern becomes dull, monotonous, dreary, tedious and stale.  Now go to the tasting room for a new vintage.

It might be days, weeks, or years, but suddenly that retired pattern will surface as you read, hear, or improvise music, vividly screaming in your ‘aural imagination’.  Always remember: your ability to play music  well requires: “an intensity of concentration and a vivid aural imagination” (Andre Watts).

Please leave comments and opinions for me about this blog: IT IS very important for me, in order to continue this blog,  to HEAR YOUR COMMENTS!!!.  I hope it helps in your passionate quest of music.

Sincerely,

Errol Weiss Schlabach

Pentatonic Study and Practice Etudes

THE INUNDATING PENTATONIC

THE penultimate scale choice

Scientific evidence has proven that in every known culture throughout the world, all children at a very early age, mock one another with a “naw naw  naw naw naw naw”, which translates musically into intervals of a minor 3^rd, a perfect 4^th, a major 2^nd, and a minor 3^rd.  This is 3/5’s of the pentatonic scale.

Another even more common truth: all words for ‘mother’ in every known language start with ‘ma—‘ and drop a minor 3^rd to the 2^nd syllable.  no wonder any melody containing the pentatonic immediately acquires comfort, familiarity, and respect.

The usual definition refers to the black keys of the piano, or the 1^st, 2^nd, 3^rd, 5^th, & 6^th steps of the scale.  it’s a lot more than that!:  Most of the academy award songs are based, sometimes almost solely on the Pentatonic (i.e. Henry Mancini’s “THE Days of wine and roses”).  Jazz players, such as Wooy Shaw, have baseD their playing vocabulary on this scale.

great strength and beauty lies in its ability to be used over so many keys and chords: (i.e. The C pentationic can be played over a c69 chord, C7, f69, B-flat, and more for upper structure relationships.  a Pentatonic built off the Dominant tone of a scale (the 5^th), can be played over the chord changes of that key ‘til the cows come home, with all notes always sounding good. 

Pentatonics are used over quartel tone harmony in modal playing.   a ‘c’ (or any other) Pentonic can be played over almost any quartel chord because of its   ambiguity: the same quartel chord can keep repeating under a continuing chromatic flow of Pentatonics; or one pentatonic can be played over a chromatic flow of quartel chords (Used when a player is said to play/go ‘outside’ the key of the changes/chords):  We might say it’s extremely democratic----liberal!?

I’ve written these scales in c major; but of course know that you must transpose the material to all 12 keys as you practice.

 

Please leave comments and feedback!

Sincerely,

Errol Weiss schlabach

Savor the beautiful Augmented Scale !!!

AUGMENTED SCALE STUDY & EXERCISES

“The augmented scale, also known in jazz theory as the symmetrical augmented scale, is so called because it can be thought of as an interlocking combination of two augmented triads an augmented second or minor third apart: C E G♯ and E♭ G B. It may also be called the "minor-third half-step scale" due to the series of intervals produced.  It made one of its most celebrated early appearances in Franz Liszt's Faust Symphony (Eine Faust Symphonie).  It is also prevalent in 20th century compositions by Alberto Ginastera,[2] Almeida Prado,[3] Béla Bartók, Milton Babbitt, and Arnold Schoenberg, by saxophonists John Coltrane and Oliver Nelson in the late 50s and early 60s, and bandleader Michael Brecker.[1] Alternating E major and C minor triads form the augmented scale in the opening bars of the Finale in Shostakovich's Second Piano Trio.^” 

The above is a quote from Wikipedia, giving an excellent intro to my study and etude blog.

1. A little known, beautiful use of the Augmented Scale is the basis of Ravel’s 2^nd  movement (assez lent) to his Valses Nobles & Sentimentales for piano (1911).  Another is the 3^rd movement (Elegia) of Bartok’s Concerto for Orchestra, written in 1945.  Michael Brecker made great use of this scale, as Bob Mintzer is also using this scale often in his improvisations and compositions, such as Aha. Another famous use of the augmented scale (in jazz) is in Oliver Nelson's solo on "Stolen Moments".

There are only 4 augmented scales; then                                                                  they  repeat on different ‘tonic’ notes.  Each can be used on 3 different dominant 7^th chords and 3 different

Maj 7^th(+5) chords (i.e. C7; Cmaj7+5). When playing over the dominant 7^th, use the 7^th as the ‘tonic’ of the augmented scale; when playing over the Maj7(+5), use the tonic of the chord as the tonic of the scale.

These are the basic 4 scales:

Here is an etude I've composed, using only materials found in the augmented scale, organically developing the motif with patterns heard in all the sources I’ve previously listed.

Augmented Scale Etude

Composed by Errol Weiss Schlabach

I hope you find my information useful and my etude interesting, ----even helpful!

Please comment and give me feedback.

Sincerely,

Errol Weiss Schlabach