There are plenty of ways to approach playing lines in jazz, but when playing inside a tonality—especially when playing over vamps—you may feel somewhat limited. That’s where playing outside of the tonality can add some interesting spice to your playing.
When we’re learning how to play, we start by learning how to play inside of a tonality—it helps give structure to our playing and gives us tension and resolution to aim for. That’s where we start learning things like scales, arpeggios, and modes as a way to explore a tonality. But if you listen to some of the greats like John Coltrane, you’ll see that he may weave in and out of a tonality in creative ways to create tension and release.
Now before we get going, make sure to check out our resource 68 Phrases on One Chord Vamps, where you can get to know these concepts a bit better. If you want to hear how Ryan plays through any of these examples we discuss, make sure to check out our YouTube video, How to Play “Out” in Jazz.
Contents
Implied harmonies
When you’re playing over a one-chord vamp, you may want to make things move a bit more. The best way you can do this is to play implied harmonies to help elaborate on the harmonies that are already written. So let’s look at an implied harmony over Cmaj7.
You’ll notice here that we’re playing a iiº-V-i to the relative minor of C, which is Am. This is interesting because you might expect to play ii-V-I in C, but in this case, we’re introducing some more interesting harmony. This is going to give us Bm7b5 to E7alt to Am.
In our first measure, we’ll stay diatonic to C. Then on the “and” of beat 4, we’ll pivot to the minor progression. That Gb transitioned us into a downward Bm7b5 arpeggio, F, D, B, A, hitting the third of our implied harmony of E7b9 up to F, D, D#, leading back to the fifth of our implied Am tonality, which is also the third of C major. So in this way, we’re kind of coming back home. Then we have an enclosure phrase that goes to the root (of the third) of Am/Cmaj, and then another enclosure phrase that resolves to G and E. So we’re implying that tonality of the minor ii-V and really the only notes that are outside of the C major are G#, D#, A#, Ab, and F#, but really these are all chromatic approach notes. But in reality most of this stays close to C major tonality because our implied harmony is closely related with the relative minor.
Another level you can take this is to play a tritone substitution in your playing—so playing F# over C. Another way you could do this is by playing the Coltrane matrix. If you listen to Coltrane’s playing from the 60s and onward, you’ll see he’ll imply his “Giant Steps” progression over different keys.
Outside substitutions
Speaking of substitutions, our next topic is outside substitutions. This is similar to implied harmonies, but the key difference is that the alternative harmonies that we’re going to construct will instead have a very distant relationship from our home key. The goal here is to maximize dissonant intervals so that we can increase the feeling of tension before we release to our home key.
Let’s check out a phrase that uses outside substitutions.
As you can hear, that Db section, the second measure of this line, has no relation to that C major chord. We’re playing a kind of standard bebop phrase, but we’re implying it over that Cmaj7 chord, and it sounds so different. There’s something very valuable about getting the most out of one line and trying to make that line work over multiple keys.
This line in particular, we’re playing a standard Dbmaj7 phrase over Cmaj7, then resolving. And notice how we resolve with approach tones and enclosures. So the real part of this phrase that is important to remember is Ab, Gb, G on beat 4 of the second measure into beat 1 of the third measure. That’s where we really resolve that Db in the third measure as just a passing tone. The start of the third measure is where the resolution of C major comes back. Regardless of the tonality, it’s the intention that can make these lines interesting and beautiful. Remember that when playing these kinds of phrases that the harmony is more of a suggestion and melody is king. Resolving in bars of 2, 4, and 6 help, as well as one bar in, one bar out, two bars in, two bars out, etc.
Melodic cells
Our third concept is melodic cells. These can be inside and/or outside of the chord, and in this case, we’re going to be implying these melodic cells outside of the chord, meaning targeting notes that are not in our chord scale or our chord. And again, this technique is mastered by the amount you do it and where you resolve.
Melodic cells are a 2+ note phrase that has a target tone. They can be any length, as long as you know where you’re starting and where you’re ending—the middle part can be anything you want. Let’s check out this melodic cell example over C.
So we have a couple melodic cell shapes being played here over C major and we’re targeting non-chord tones and chord tones to go inside and outside of our chord Cmaj7.
Our first cell shape is inside the key—C, G, A, C, all diatonic. Then we go B, F#, G#, C#, which is all outside, implying a C#maj7. Then we go D, C#, C, D. This one is kind of in between because you have D and C naturals, but the C# will definitely pull the ear toward D. Then we go inside again with B, G, A, B and we go outside C#, C, B, C#, outside again, A#, F#, G#, A#, then back inside, G, F#, F, G and resolve E to C. So we’re kind of flip-flopping between going inside and outside of the tonality just with four notes, and this is a great thing to practice yourself. Try to practice your own lines where you play four notes inside, four notes outside.
Now you can practice these cells at different lengths and with different shapes, but really think about implying them inside and outside of the chord, going back and forth at different lengths, just like we talked about with those implied progressions. Ideally you’ll want to master melodic cells first before you try playing them outside the chord. We have some great resources on melodic cells to help you dig deeper, so make sure to check those out.
Pentatonic shifting
We’ve covered this topic a few times in other blogs and videos, but here we’ll talk about how you can use it to play outside.
The definition of pentatonic shifting is taking two or more pentatonic scales and shifting between the two of them, just like how we went inside and outside with melodic cells.
If you remember, a pentatonic scale is 5 notes. The ones we’ll talk about today are minor pentatonics, and they’re spelled 1, b3, 4, 5, b7.
In this example over Cmaj7, we’re going to keep that the same. We’ll shift between Dm, Ebm, Am, and Em pentatonics. All of these pentatonics are somewhat related to Cmaj7 (some more than others) and that’s where we get the outside tonality tension and release.
So Dm pentatonic has some common tones of the C in the scale. They share D, F, G, A, and C—meaning all five of the notes are diatonic to C. Compare that with Ebm pentatonic, where note of the notes are in the tonality of C—Bb, Eb, Gb, and Ab are all nowhere near C major and since they’re half steps away, that’s where the tension is built. Am has A, C, D, E, and G, then Em has E, G, A, B, and D—all of these notes are diatonic to C. That said, we’ll use D, E, and A minor pentatonics as “inside” and our Ebm pentatonic as “outside” information.
Practice these minor pentatonic shifting ideas just like you would practice the melodic cell ideas. Use them at different lengths—do one bar of inside, one bar of outside, then two and two, etc. Practice them in different variations, and remember that every major scale has multiple minor pentatonics that you can play inside with, particularly the ii, iii, and vi. You could also experiment with other outside tonalities like Fm, Bbm, etc. Try them all and see what you think!
Triadic shifting
Our final concept today is triadic shifting, which is where we use triads to create tension and release when modulating different key centers. This is another great way to play out and sound particularly intense because of how rapidly the modulations happen.
For this you see that we’re modulating to different keys through different triads on this line over Cmaj7. We’re shifting between C, D, E, F#, Ab, A, B, and back to C. There’s a little system to this—D, E, F#, and Ab are all whole steps apart. Then we go to A and B, which are another whole step apart, and then back to C.
You can use these triads in randomized orders or sequences. As you might guess, John Coltrane did this particularly well—he plays a lot of triads and little melodic cells over tunes like “Giant Steps.”
But in this particular example, we had that whole step relationship happening between the first five triads going up in whole steps, so it’s kind of like we’re playing a whole tone tonality over that C major chord. Then we go to A to B into C, and the A and B triads are a little bit more related to C, so they almost feel like we’re getting back to resolution. Then we get the half step resolution from B into C, which gives us the feeling we’re finally home.
When you go to practice this concept, try pairing your own triads and shifting between the tonalities, just like we did with pentatonics and melodic cells through this exercise, but try some different permutations—maybe a whole step, major third, fourths, etc. It’s really fun to mix and match different triads together to get that “out” sound. The most important things are the melody and how we resolve back to C to make it satisfying. Remember the role of phrasing, too, because 2, 4, and 6 bar phrases help set up the expectation for listeners to latch on to.
That’s all for today, but make sure to check out our resource 68 Phrases on One Chord Vamps, because it will give you so much more depth to work on these concepts. And if you haven’t already, make sure to check out our YouTube video, How to Play “Out” in Jazz to hear how Ryan approaches these topics.
See you next time!
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