my ukulele progress

I've been racking my brain, and my fingers, trying to figure out the turnaround, Cmaj7, Eb7, D7, C#7 (and they are all doms and not minor doms; that was a typo). My wife noticed that the sound just doesn't work. She isn't musical. So she's coming at it as merely an audience member. To her ears, if I may put words in her mouth, the turnaround is bluesy whereas the progression is jazzy (my words and not hers). I have been trying different chord qualities to try and find something a little more concordant. Hitherto I haven't found what I'm looking for.

I've made a bit of a discovery with my augmented chords. It isn't a discovery in the sense that I've found something that no one has ever seen. If I had just read Brad Bordessa's materials more closely I probably could have seen it. Regardless, I did discover that, if one uses the three-string versions (which I prefer) of the augmented chord, there are only two shapes to cover the entire fretboard. They are:

322X
X221

The trick is to realize that any of the three notes can be the root. So now instead of memorizing all those darned first position shapes that they teach you in the ukulele chord books, I have one shape for every string (well, the middle two strings have two shapes). Now I can intelligently play any augmented chord anywhere on the fret board.

It is similar to the diminished 7 chords. When you begin playing, you learn the basic dim7 shape: 1212 and then you learn that you can get a different voicing of that chord if you move three frets. That's true, but that requires you to do all this counting. That takes too much time. However if you know that you want, for example, a B dim7, all you need to do is move the 1212 shape to a place where one of the notes of the shape is a B. That's much easier.
 
I was just browsing a thread about outdoor ukuleles, which I am against, but the thing that caught my eye was the casual mentioning of Bend, Oregon. What's interesting is that Bend, Oregon is, to me, the saddest place in the world. It is so depressing because I grew up around there and the world I knew is gone. Literally gone. Eminent domain paved over the neighborhood that used to be my grandparents' area to make way for a mall. It is illegal to feed the drakes at Drake Pond because that will encourage drakes to be there and they would naturally poop and make it a nuisance for the transplanted Californians to jog. So, to me, it is just a travesty and a mockery. All the microbreweries and kitchen shops and clothing stores make it seem like some fake Disneyland attraction. I actually find it disturbing to be there and I will never go again.

But on happier notes, I became aware of a hole in my musical armament. My 9's were deficient. To be sure, in my song book (if I may be permitted to call it that) there are dom9s and add9s, but I am very very much a lover of the minor. So where's my minor 9's? I like to keep all my essential chord qualities on one sheet of paper. To save space I thought I would only use either a m9 or a minor add9. But which one to jettison? Originally I thought a m9 is just a m7 with an extra note. So I could just use the m7 anywhere I would normally use a m9. But although that is kind of true, the m9 does have a slightly different sound. I thought again the m9 and minor add9 only differ by a half-step, so why bother with the add9? Again, there's a problem. They do sound similar, but the add9 is a little less smooth to my ears. And both qualities have one shape that is quite impractical. The m9 has this shape rooted on the C string which is just ridiculous and the minor add9 has a shape rooted on the A string that is five frets wide! There is one basic difference. m9 shapes are rootless whereas the minor add9 shapes contain the root. That does very slightly affect the sound but more importantly the pitch is different. The m9 chords can be a whole step above their root and that gives me a higher sound. So I have added them both to my repertoire. They are great for arpeggios.

I mentioned in my last post that I had been dissatisfied with the progression of Cmaj7, Eb7, D7, C#7 constituting the last two bars of my blues progression. I finally found some chord qualities that sounded better to my ears.

I went with the spirit of the progression which is written very much in the bait-and-switch vein. In the original, the 10th bar is the V chord which introduces the need for resolution. The 11th bar starts the resolution but then swoops away to the Eb and then chromatically walks back up toward the I chord.

I employed the same tenet of delayed gratification without being such a chord-tease. The 10th bar, as I mentioned above, has the V chord. In my 11th bar I change to dom13 chords and walk down from the IV chord to the III chord. For the 12th chord, the first half is the dom13 of the II chord, continuing the walk-down toward the I chord, For the final half of the final bar, I go back up to the V chord. To be precise, I hit the half-diminished chord of the V and slide into the maj7 of that note. Despite the rather odd chord qualities, it is nothing more than the II and V (anticipating the I after the turnaround) which is the most popular and frequently used progression in jazz. So just to put in concrete terms, for the key of C my turnaround would run:

F13 + E13 | D13 + Gø ^ Gmaj7


I've been playing the same progression for a while now and I think it is time to try something different. I found a progression with no maj7 chords. It extensively uses minor 6 chords. I will need to practice it for a while. Here's a rundown of the bars in the key of D, which is my current side project:

1. Dm6
2. E° | A7+
3. Dm6
4. D7
5. Gm6
6. Gm6
7. Dm6
8. Dm6
9. E°
10. A7+
11. Dm6
12. Dm6

I will positively need to think about that A7+. First of all, I don't really know the sound. Second of all the shape will be a bit off-putting. It is no big deal; all one really needs to do is increment the fifth. So when the normal A7 is formed, just play an F where there would have been an E. Probably easier said but done, huh?
 
I had to fix my songbook. Other musicians have songbooks in which they have collected the chord charts and lyrics to other people's music whereas my songbook is a page of chord shapes that I use to make songs.

I like to restrict my chords to one page. That page was getting rather full. I came upon the idea of condensing several diagrams into one. For example, we have the m7. Just raise the third and you have a dom7. Raise the third again and we have a 7sus4. Or if we raise the fifth we get a 7+. So, in one diagram we have four chords. I could also add the m7b5 but then the diagram would start looking like a sudoku puzzle.

So I combined all the 7 variations into one diagram and I combined the major and minor versions of my 6, 9, and add9 chords. The result was a tidier, much less cramped songbook.
 
I haven't been feeling very adventurous lately. Today I just grooved in the D minor blues for what seemed like forever. I just entranced myself. Eventually I broke the spell and started using some different inversions of the chords. Lastly, I started to break up the progression with some fingerpicking--mostly some D minor pentatonic stuff as well as some Double Harmonic in D.
 
I practiced some D chords with the root on the E string merely because that is a weak spot. The major triad isn't so bad. It is the minor triad that gives me trouble. There are two shapes associated with the E string root. There is the triangle shape (think of the standard F# minor) and then there's the one (famously, the G minor) shaped like a crooked version of the major triad. With the former, it is necessary to mute the A string. With the latter, the G string must be muted. Aside from the slight problem of muting a string, the main reason I don't usually play these chords is the fact that I just don't ever seem to remember them.

I was a bit miffed because my weekly batch of beans that I make for my breakfasts turned out a bit runny. To add to my misery I had the misfortune of watching the video of a group of ukulele players singing happy slappy versions of punk songs. To exorcise that from my soul I just improvised some low and slow music using the D harmonic minor scale at the 7th fret and the A melodic minor at the 2nd fret, in order to get that tonic/dominant sound. I felt better after that. Why does most ukulele music insist on being so fast and chirpy? There is nothing inherently wrong with that style. I only object because it is so overdone and it ignores all the other things a uke can do.
 
Okay. I have had enough of working with the key of D. I was jamming all over the fret board, so it is time to move on. I arbitrarily chose the key of F#.

F#, as I have discussed in the past, has some problems. Namely F# and Gb are, obviously, enharmonically equivalent. Each scale has six accidental notes so that there is no clear preference one way or the other. I had been trying to think of this scale as the Gb scale because I have a tendency to think in sharps and therefore I was trying to push myself to think in flats. However, in this case it is silly.

My main vehicle in these studies of the keys is the blues progression. If I persisted in regarding this scale as the Gb, that would mean that my chords would be Gb for the tonic, Db for the subdominant, and Cb for the dominant. Cb? Really? Come on, who says or thinks that? That's a B. So I am forced to use the scale of F#, focusing on the F#, C# and B chords. Otherwise I would be calling B a Cb for a week and that would grow wearisome.

As per usual, my first task is to map out where these notes occur. Here's what I found:

F#: g11, c6, c18*, e2, e14, a9
B: g4, g16, c11, e7, e19*, a2, a14
C#: g6, g18*, e9, a4, a16

The asterisk next to the location indicates that the note is too high on the fretboard for me to make a chord--although I can easily finger pick it. That being said, it sure is weird how these notes pop up. The F# only occurs five times, the B six times, and the C# four times. In my past experience, the notes seemed to be somewhat equal in the number of their appearances.

Anyway, there you have it. Tomorrow I will follow my usual program. I will start by playing the I IV V progression with just the notes. After that becomes comfortable, then I shall start to erect chords around them. As always I'll primarily be using major and minor triads for the I chord and variations of the dominant for the IV and V chords.
 
I follow with some interest certain guitarists' blogs for ideas. The E minor add9 has popped up more than once. For that reason I had added the add9 chord quality to my arsenal. The E minor add9 recurred again today and I thought I would practice it. the minor add9 has a few challenges for me. Namely the shapes with the roots on the C and A strings have impossible stretches. For example the G minor add9 = 3755. That's just too darn far for my fingers. Luckily I have been playing enough to know I can play it as 3X55. Now, that's easy: barre the third fret and then partially barre the fifth and it is done.

A while ago I would have said "how can you have a G minor add9 without the G?" Now I know that by playing Bb, the minor third, you (and your ear) naturally ask Bb is the minor third of what? The answer is the G. Same with the A and the D which are, respectively the ninth and the fifth of the G. So all those notes imply the G. You hardly miss it at all since the remaining cluster of notes. It is perceptible. There's a nuance missing, but it is only missing in an academic context. In a musical context, it sounds perfectly natural and it still has the vibe of the add9.
 
Not being a millennial, I don't engage in social media; I just use online resources and leave when I am done. So I didn't really know about rating conversations and threads and such. Today I just happened to look at this my little ukulele diary and I saw that it had two stars. I thought that was good. After all, it was two more stars than I had anticipated. Upon further examination, I read that two stars equals the rating of "bad." What does it mean to have a bad ukulele diary. How can people know that I am bad? Do they know my goals and my potential and therefore feel justified in announcing that I am falling short? It seems odd. It seems like it would just be easier to ignore my bad diary versus taking the time to denigrate it.

Whatever...another first world problem. On the other hand, I found some habichuelas rojas at an international market, so that I can make my beans and rice. Around here most stores have kidney beans and they assume that variety will suffice for everyone's red bean needs. I have to disagree and am relieved to have found proper red beans at last. So I am pressure cooking some of my staple food (along with some potatoes) and now it is time to annotate what I've been doing.

Most recently I have toying with something that I knew about but never actually practiced, and that is the dominant diminished scale. It is a logical, symmetrical scale that alternates half steps and whole steps. The fingering pattern on the G and E strings are the same and the fingerings on the C and A strings are the same. Therefore, if you employ string skipping you can finger, in this order, the G, E, C, and A strings. You can move fairly quickly because of the recursive nature of the scale. This scale is meant to be played over dominant chords. So in order to make use of it I just played around with a progression based on a harmonization of the Harmonic minor scale. Here was my strategy:

1. E minor
2. B7
3. Am7
4. Bb dom dim scale. I read that the scale should be played a half step above what it is being used with...in this case an A. Here's what I did specifically: meander up the scale from the Bb on the G string until I hit the E on the A string. When I hit that E, then I descended in a harmonic minor scale down to the E on the C string. From there I just improvised using the tonic and leading tone shapes of the pentatonic scale, eventually resolving on that E. Then I just built the minor chord around that E and returned to the progression.

Sometimes for variety's sake I would use the E minor and B7 chords located at the 7th and 11th frets, respectively, and play the Bb dom dim from the 15th to the 19th frets.

That was today's fun. Oh, and here's a graphic :rulez: for the mouth-breathers. Maybe breaking up my text will get me another star.
 
for posterity's sake I need to mention what I'm doing. However I cannot be very specific because I've just been playing without much of a plan. Without a road map, it is hard to tell where you've been and how far you are from your destination. So here are some of the things which have been attracting my attention:

1. playing blues in F# and F#m, using different roots all over the fret board
2. messing around with the 7sus2 chord just to get a feel for it. Used it successfully in place of a dom9 chord
3. combined some structures to create new platforms for improvising. Specifically tried Phrygian + pentatonic and Gypsy scale + harmonic minor scale.
 
I had become homesick. I enjoyed trying out different keys and using different roots for my chords, but I missed my E, my favorite key. It will be of course comforting to be back in my key, but it will also be interesting to see how I've changed by using those other keys and how it will transfer to my old stuff.

Off the top of my head, the first thing I was going to jump into was a progression from the aiolian harmonization. What is great about that harmonization is the quantity of flatted scale degrees. The formula for the aiolian is

i II° bIII iv v bVI bVII


or

Em F#° G Am Bm C D

All those natural notes sure look appealing. I guess that's just the woodwind player in me. I like to see natural notes even though with stringed instruments it doesn't matter if a note is flat, natural, or sharp; it is just played at a different fret.

Anyway, I plan on just grooving to the Aiolian for a while. Maybe I'll mix in some other "minor-ish" harmonizations like the dorian:

Em F# G A Bm C#° D

or the phrygian:

Em F G Am B° C Dm

I'll probably stay away from the melodic and harmonic minors because I had been focusing on them a lot. For example I had worked out a system of modes for the harmonic minor wherein I started each pattern at a different degree of the scale. It was cool, but it is time to return to some basics and get re-centered.

I also transposed a lot of blues licks from a Lil Rev book. I think I will try some out and see how I like them.

And, of course, I have been fascinated with playing all over the fretboard, and I'll probably keep that alive and apply it to my E. I think I have to thank my newfound passion for root notes to two people Brian Liu and, of course, myself. I watched some Brian Liu videos where he was using different roots to play over the fret board and it inspired me although I had known about it. I think I was just at a place in my ukulele career to do it. I had been practicing and getting comfortable, and so I was just ready to leave those cowboy chords behind and start being the virtuoso that I know myself to be...or at least as virtuostic as I can be.

So let me think, where are my root notes for an E blues progression.

For E, I have G9, C4, C16, E0, E12, A7, A19
For A, G2, G14, C10, E5,E17, A0, A12
For B, G4, G16, C11, E7, E19, A2, A14

Of course I can mix any of the roots up, if I wish...but where are the natural groupings that won't be eccentric?

There is, of course, old Faithful down there around the 4th fret. Then there's the E @G9, A @C9, B @C11 (that is my favorite B).

There's the E @A7, the A @ E5 and the B @ E7

There's the E @ E12 which is interesting because with it you can either go up to the A @G14 or down to C9.

Similarly the E @ C4 has fourths and fifths above and below it.
 
I am still having some conceptual blind spots, and it seems like they occur on the E string more frequently than not.

I have run across this with dominant chords already. I do not like the 7 and m7 chords rooted on the E.

But now I have to face the more fundamental problem of the minor triad.

When I think of the minor triad, The E string root never pops in my head unless I force it. And that's a shame because there are two really nice shapes rooted in the E. I suppose some people would consider it one shape, but I tend to break the shape into two shapes. I do this so that I can control the pitch and decide if I want a higher or lower pitched triad, instead of smooshing them together.

The two shapes are the ones we learn as F#m and Gm. To take E as an example, we have that E on the 12th fret. Now we can either play:

12 11 12 X

or X 11 12 10

If we select the former, then the flatted third is on the G string and the A string is muted, resulting in a lower pitched voicing, whereas the latter suppresses the G string and has that A string singing out.

This is my usual modus operandi; I keep my triads as triads in order to keep the sound clean and in order to be able to have more options.

I won't at this time bore anyone with my augmented and suspended triads, but just looking at the major and minor triads, here's what I usually do:

For E minor, aside from the two shapes I have already mentioned, I normally would use: X777 or X432. Sometimes, if I want a lower pitch, I will play 9777 and make use of that low G string.

For E major, my typical shapes are

987X
444X
X 11 12 11

Alright. I've talked it out and got it straight at least in my head. now I have to practice those E string roots and make them natural to me.
 
I was braving the New Mexican winter (it was in the 60's because of a semi-overcast sky) and reading some Vergilius. A certain passage seemed significant. At Aeneid 8.8 it says "vastant cultoribus agros." It is rather a small line in terms of the narrative but here's what struck me:

Students, of course, would ask what does this sentence mean.

I would say it means

1. They despoiled the fields of its farmers (i.e., they conscripted the farmers into war)
2. They ravaged the fields to the chagrin of the farmers (and they either did it unintentionally because an army eats and tramples as it goes or they did it intentionally to trap the farmers and local residents into fighting as they had no alternatives)

The students want a simple answer but the poet actually takes pleasure in saying two things at once; it is what elevates poetry from prose. The reader has to be flexible and understand which meaning works for him or her.

I mention this because I find myself settling into a similar flexibility with the ukulele. I used to be as stiff as one of my students when it came to music. I came from a rather more objective background where an E was an E and there was one way to play it. As you can imagine I was very upset because 1402 does not sound like 4447 although they are both E major. I certainly understood the concept of voicings, but it took a few years for me to allow that information into my heart as well as my brain, and to be cool with it.

Speaking of being cool, I have also become more flexible in terms of opinions with the ukulele. For example, there is a current thread about outdoor ukes. I think the concept is asinine. I don't leave things in the car; as I walk out the door I collect stuff like books, backpacks, wallets, some tobacco. And if I want a car ukulele, I grab my kamaka on the way out. That's my outdoor uke. Why spend money on some piece of crap ukulele when you can just bring a good one with you and take it back inside when you're done. However, to each his own.

And what has been my own lately has been the dominant diminished scale. It is a great scale because it does work well with blues progressions being that its triads lend themselves to dominant chords and the vibe of the scale is somewhat minor-ish. The first two strings of the scale resembles the phrygian mode.

...uh-oh. I just heard my wife's alarm resound and I haven't made her porridge yet. I'll be back if I can arrange it.
 
I've been busy with a new job and I am still busy. But I did manage to spend some time with my Kamaka today.

Someone mentioned how I do everything the hard way, and I cannot deny it. However I think I like it that way in certain respects. It is almost as if I invented the things that I have discovered on my own. Granted, a google search would have been easier but, as things stand, I have a much more personal connection with some things.

For example, I was practicing harmonic minor scales merely because the guitarists I appreciated in the 80's were said to be all about the harmonic minor and diminished stuff as well.

So I was practicing the harmonic minor. Then I started to think. I said to myself if the major scale can have modes, why can't the harmonic minor? So I mapped out shapes to play the notes of the harmonic minor starting at the seven different degrees of the scale (I could have just googled this).

Fast forward a good spell and I have become enamored with a song entitled "Sails of Charon." I discovered that it employs B Phrygian Dominant. What the hell is that? I look it up and immediately recognize it as the fifth mode of the harmonic minor and it is also one note away from one of my favorite exotic scales which is alternately called the Byzantine or the Greek or the Gypsy or the Double Harmonic. And since it is the fifth mode, that means that it is in the key of E, which is my key of choice for two years.

So I could have saved a lot of time, but I meandered onto the rudiments of the song by accident.

Anyway, I just practiced improvising melodies using the B phrygian Dominant, the F# Dorian, and E minor pentatonic. I based it around my favorite B, which is the one on the 11th fret. I think I like it because it resides between those two fret markers.

So I was just jamming around with the B Phrygian Dominant, the B Double harmonic (only different from the previous with an A# instead A), and the E minor pentatonic (dominant shape). I interlarded some B minor chords and some 6th interval double stops.
 
It is a few hours 'til sunrise and I've been trying to find things to do. I pressure cooked some pinto beans for breakfast this week. The one thing I am not allowed to do is play my ukulele.

I can play Thelonious Monk or John Coltrane on the stereo and no one is the wiser. However, if I play my ukulele, even fingerpicking it, it awakens my wife. I don't know why, maybe because my ukuleles are expensive solid-wood instruments that are very resonant. Maybe it is because of the inherent percussiveness of a live instrument. I don't know and it doesn't really matter. The only thing that matters is the result. And the result is a gato mojado.

So I did some ukulele planning on paper.

First off, I decided to finger pick the melody of that song most of us know from Billie Holiday, "Gloomy Sunday." So I printed it out. I know it is in C minor, so I was confused when I saw it had three flats. C has no flats. Three flats is Eb. Then I realized that C major has no accidentals, but C minor is the relative minor of Eb, so it does have accidentals. Aside from my stupidity, the rest of it went like clockwork. I still find playing things on a stringed instrument a bit complicated. With my silver flute, for example, it is simple. There is only one way to play a note. You see the note and you play it. With the ukulele there is a bit more work.

Here's what I do when I look at a piece of sheet music.

First of all, I confirm that the ukulele can play the lowest and highest note of the piece. It is usually the low note that's the problem. If the note is lower than the uke can play, then I quickly transpose it to a higher key. Then the real fun starts.

As I said before, with other instruments there's one way to play the note. With stringed instruments, there's more than one way to play the same note. So you need to consider some factors when decided which version of the note to play: considerations such as do you want an open or fretted note, which note will facilitate transitions, etc.

Just to gratify morbid curiosity, I decided to use the C on the fifth fret to start the song off because it seemed to be closer to the other notes I will need. Also the lower C's seemed too close to the nut for comfort. I want space to move about, even if I'm not going to move about.

The second thing I did in my ukulele-planning mode was left unfinished and deemed a failure by me.

I have really been enjoying the new shapes of my modes of the harmonic minor. They sound really cool. So I figured since the guitar heroes of my youth valorized the harmonic minor and the diminished scales, I would map out the modes of the dominant diminished scale. I mapped out the shape for the scale starting on the first and second degrees of the scale. When I got to the third degree, it was the same as the first. And the fourth copied the second. This repetition was also a symptom of the fully diminished scale. In hindsight, it makes perfect sense; since the scales are symmetrical, there isn't a lot of variation in its modes. So that was a bust. At least I garnered a little more understanding of the diminished scale. I now see the odd-numbered degrees have the same shape (only differing on what note they start with). And the even-numbered degrees all have the same shape as well.
 
Since my ukulele playing has a curfew that is demarcated by my spouse's sleeping patterns, I thought I would get in some practice early. I worked on combining three scales into one big improvisational block. Here's the deal:

1. starting on the E on the 10th fret, I can ascend the harmonic minor scale 'til I hit the D# and E of the E string.
2. or while I'm ascending the aforementioned harmonic minor scale, once I hit that B note at the fifth degree of the scale, I can then start the B Phrygian dominant scale instead of completing the E harmonic minor scale.
3. or when I ascend the B Phrygian dominant scale and hit that final B on the A string, I can descend back down using the dominant shape of the E minor pentatonic.

So I have three great options that I can line up paratactically, or I can syntactically imbed them within each other and jump back and forth. It makes for a lot of cool jamming. However, in a recent post in another thread I had to lugubriously admit that my wanking doesn't serve a higher purpose. My wanking just arcs away on a one-way tangent like a comet or like Lady Godiva riding by. I need to get hooked into a structure and into repetition which will turn what I do into music. That is easy to explain, but maybe more difficult to do:

just open the front of my metronome and let it start pounding out time and then restrict my wanking to a harsh mistress of time. I'll see how it goes.
 
I have been working and sleeping more than playing. I went to youtube to look around at some jazz guitar stuff which I could possibly adapt to my playing and, man oh man, the media sure is trying to push Billie Eilish down our throats. I wouldn't have even noticed her--just another figurehead to the corporate machine, but she was also mentioned on this forum. That made me take notice of her--not enough to actually listen to her. But I will remember the name.

What I've been doing is using my Kamaka (despite its disadvantage of having a high G and no cutaway) and playing around with the modes of the harmonic minor. Starting at the 11th fret, I've been focusing on the B Phrygian dominant, C Lydian #2, and D# super Lokrian bb7.

These modes have a vaguely foreign sound to them and that's a priori pleasant. And I have been playing with the metronome, so I've been phrasing the scales in-between the percussion of the 'nome. Because of the nature of these scales, you can just straight up play them and it sounds like a song, or you can actually skip notes to actually make songs.

This area of the fretboard also has some dominant, leading tone, and tonic shapes of the pentatonic. So I can morph between the two with ease.

Something that doesn't seem to work as well is harmonizing these modes. One salient problem is the lack of resolution in these. For example, in the B Phrygian dominant harmonization, the simple I IV V progression would be B, E minor, F# diminished. Or, if you add a dominant flavor to all the chords, you get B7, E minor major7, F# minor 7 flat 5. In either case, it just doesn't feel good to go back to that B, regardless of what chord qualities you use. I even tried to slip in a V of the V, the Ab (as both a minor chord and as an augmented chord) before the F#. The problem is that the IV chord is where my ear wants to stop. Of course that is because all these modes are variations of the key of E.

Maybe if I use something like the G Ionian #5, I could get around the E altogether. In that case, my progression would G aug, C major, D# diminished. That might be good because I have always felt that there was a marked similarity between G+ and E minor, so that maybe I can have my cake and eat it, too.
 
Some days you want to be in the vanguard and some days you want to be just amidst the pack. Today was one of the latter days for me. I just didn't feel like leading or advancing. I just wanted to tread water and keep my head above water. So I was just doing some very mechanical stuff.

I may sound impressive if I were to say I played the whole fret board from the A Dorian # 11 at the 3rd fret (I could have started with the G Ionian # 5, but I don't like open strings) and went all the way up to B Phrygian dominant on the 16th fret. However all that nomenclature obfuscates the fact that all I'm doing is taking the notes of the E harmonic minor scale (EF#GABCD#) and playing them modally--i.e., playing E to the next E, then F# to the next F#.

That was all I was up for today. I just wanted to sling the strap over my shoulder and move my fingers for a bit.


Yesterday I did something a bit dodgy. I have a ukulele curfew because I cannot play after my wife retires for the night. She had been staying up late and she was going to go to bed soon. So I started playing and kept on playing continually because I knew she would wait for a natural break in the playing.

I knew from just general knowledge that Iggy Pop's song "I wanna be your dog" only has three chords G F# E. So I just started playing that in 16th notes. I played five chords to keep things moving briskly along. It becomes entrancing. It is akin to marathon running. The physicality of beating out chords is hypnotic and I can do it for a long time. Every once in a while, as a bridge of sorts, I would improvise with the chords you always hear in hispanic music. Stuff like A7, D minor, or other chords diatonically linked to E.

In that way I was able to string out some playing-time.


******************


I did find a way to get in some practice without crossing swords with she who must be obeyed. Although it is almost 4 in the morning. I went out like a troubadour and played as I walked. It is winter and a bit chilly--being a bit below freezing--but I work in colder weather. So why not play.

So I prepared a single fondant potato.

{{{I wonder if people know how to make fondant potatoes. It is basically a potato cooked in stock. Here's what I do. Make stock by pressure cooking mirepoix, animal bones, and water. Cut the ends off a peeled potato, brown the truncated potato in butter, add some stock to the potato and then throw it in a hot oven for a spell}}}

So I threw a single fondant potato in the oven and then I took a walk, playing in A. I chose A because I heard that A is the key favored by country musicians and I figured if I met any unsavory characters out at that time of night, they would be the sort of people who would have voted for Donald Trump and who listen to country music. So I was currying favor with that demographic. I also was carrying a .45. If I was compelled to hand over my ukulele, I would do so willingly, but my assailant would get 8 slugs in his back as he started to flee the scene of the crime.
 
Last edited:
I think I've finally arrived at the terminus of the rabbit hole.

I love the aiolian mode. I love the harmonic minor variation of that mode. I love finger picking the modes of the harmonic minor.

However, I don't really like the harmonized chords of those modes. That are alright in a very low-key way but nothing I feel avid about. Just look at the 1-4-5 progressions from these modes

aiolian #7: Em/Am/B
Lokrian 13: F#°/B/B
Ionian #5: G+/C/D#°
Dorian #11: Am/E°/Em
Phrygian Dominant; B/Em/F#°
Lydian #2: C/G°/G
Super Lokrian bb7: D#°/F#/Abm

Some of them, like the F# Lokrian 13 just don't work. I suppose it is just too derivative. The minor is a derivative of the major, the harmonic minor a derivative of the minor, the Lokrian 13 a derivative of the harmonic minor. After a while, the notes get wonky and not spread out.

Even the ones which don't have duplicated chords are unsatisfying. As I said above, they are distinctive but very mellow.

It helps to move the voicings around in some cases.

Maybe there is some redemption for these modal harmonizations, but right now I do not feel like my investment of time is paying dividends--especially when compared to the scales. For example, there are 3 instantiations of the B Phrygian dominant on my low-G fret board and it is very rewarding to play around with them and to interlard them with nearby pentatonic shapes. I am very happy with them. And I do not hesitate to assume that I would be just as happy with the other modes of which I am not currently familiar with. For example, the F# Lokrian 13 looks like its shape lends itself to some very quick wanking. I do look forward to adding it and the others to my understanding.

But I just cannot extend the same hospitality to the associated modal harmonizations. Obviously the Aiolian #7 is a keeper. Maybe I'll spend a little more time and see which ones can be made to be catchy. The problem (or perhaps the boon) of these modal progressions is that they all seem unresolved when I return to their I chord, and they all seem to want to resolve to the E. For example in the C Lydian #2 schema, the C is the I chord and there's an Em for the III. As I said, that might be useful. I could start off in E Aiolian #7 and when I reach the B in that progression, then move to B Phrygian dominant. In the B Phrygian Dominant mode I could shilly-shally a bit and then end with a B, Am, and Em. I think that would seamlessly interweave the two modes because, when you hit that B, at first it seems like it will be the unsatisfying I chord of the B Phrygian dominant, but it is actually the V chord of the Aiolian #7, to be followed by the Am, the IV chord, and the Em the I chord.
 
As an addendum to what I said above, I made some errors in calculating the chords in those harmonizations. Nonetheless, even after correcting my errors, the progressions didn't always sound very satisfying. The E aiolian # 7 is very good; the rest--not so much.

I had a very New Mexican new year. I had some food and ukulele.

For the food, I made some carne Adovada made with ground turkey thigh. Well, it is adovada-esque. For those who don't know, in New Mexico, we braise meat in a sauce. Braising is meant to tenderize meat by slowing parboiling. Usually tough meat, like pork roast, is braised. Turkey is as tender as a baby's butt; there's no need to braise it. Nonetheless, I simmered the turkey in our sauce. The sauce is easy enough. It is some of our red Hatch chili, an acid like vinegar (but I use lime juice), garlic, brown sugar, cumin, and oregano.

As an aside, in New Mexico there are two chili sauces, red and green. It comes from the same plant. With the green chili, we take the unripened pepper, still green, and cut the pepper up to roast it and preserve it as a chunky green sauce. For the red sauce, we take the same Hatch chili which has matured and dried, and we grind it to a powder. The red powder is more hot than the green since it is denser. However it isn't overly hot. People are shocked that New Mexican cuisine isn't very hot. But we value flavor. Hotness is cheap. Any fool can add heat to a meal. For that purpose, I keep two hot sauces handy. One, an Australian sauce called Bunsters, is a Ghost pepper natural sauce which can add a very respectable amount of heat to anything with just a splash. Moreover, since it is Ghost pepper, the heat doesn't fade. It lingers on the lips and surrounding area for fifteen minutes or so. I also have a sauce called 357 which isn't natural; it uses extracts from Ghost, Scorpion, and other peppers, and it is ridiculous. A dollop in a pot will make a chili hotter than comfortable for most people. So, as I said, heat is puerile; taste is what we're after.

So I made some carne adovada and drank some New Mexican IPA (Sierra Blanca is the brewery that lies close to my heart). For myself, I mixed some of the meat with stilton cheese (I am an inveterate anglophile afterall) and Bunster hotsauce into a burrito or two. My wife is more refined, more of the Sante Fe type, so I made her a burrito by combining the carne advocada with some black beans, basmati rice, and spinach.

After I had staunched my need for drink and abated my hunger (Vergil always says something like that in his poetry), I turned to music.

I turned off John Coltrane's Ole, which accompanied my kitchen work, and I attempted my own versions thereof. John Coltraine is paying homage to a Spanish vibe in that recording and my minor harmonic does the same.

Specifically, what I did was combine the B Phrygian Dominant with the A Dorian #11. What I am trying to do is create an immense scale shape. These two scales share some space. The bottom of the A Dorian #11 is identical with the top of the B Phrygian Dominant. What I am trying to do is to pass from one to the other so fluidly that there is no seam. I want to get to the point where I'm zipping between the two, using them as one. I am making some progress. I am still thinking of the two as separate entities, but I am trying to break down the walls I have erected didactically.

I also worked a pentatonic scale into that mess. Since the B Phrygian ends on a B, I thought it would be expedient to switch at that time to that Dominant shape of the E minor pentatonic. That is where is problem started. The Dominant shape of the pentatonic was immediately recognized by me as what comprised Led Zeppelin's "You shook me." That's why, unlike other musicians, I don't listen to other music. Once you hear something, you cannot unhear it. And once I started playing it, I had to keep playing it for an hour, until I had smoothly worked out the backing rhythm (taken from the tonic shape of the pentatonic) as well as the solo.

It was strange, but it was instructive.
 
I had an accident. My pressure cooker blew up. Well, not actually. It must have developed a blockage, blew off its safety valve, and sent pinto bean juice everywhere. The latter was especially vexing because, living in a traditional southwestern home, I have bigas (logs serving as exposed rafter that support the roof) and they are not easy to clean.

I took advantage of the situation by purchasing a new pressure cooker. My former one was thirteen years old and I thought it was time for a new one. I probably could have, and should have, bought a new valve and gasket for $12, but I presented it to my wife as an issue of breached structural integrity. So my new pressure cooker should arrive soon, as will also a twenty-five pound bag of Dominican habichuelas. So my food is going to be set for a while.

Because of the kitchen drama I did not really apply myself to ukulele creativity. I merely practicing running down the fret board using the modes of the harmonic minor. I started with the E aiolian #7 at fret 4 (there are two modes below that E, but I wanted to start on the tonic note). Then I moved to the F# Lokrian 13 @ fret 6, then G Ionian #5 @ fret 7, the A Dorian #11 @ fret 9, the B Phrygian Dominant @ fret 11, the C lydian #2 @ fret 12, and the D# Super Lokrian bb7 @ fret 15. That final scale ends with the D# on the 18th fret of the A string, but since that's the leading tone of the key and just begging for resolution, then I just give the people what they want and end on the E of the 19th fret.

I played this on my re-entrant Kamaka despite its inherent handicaps. I was surprised that its upper bout had a low enough profile to allow me to pick all the way up to the end of the fret board.

As for the linkage of the above scales I just ascended the scale (intercalating phrasing as I went) and then descended back until I reached the first note of the next mode. From there I just continued with the next mode.

The only other thing I did was to try to combine three modes (G Ionian #5, A Dorian #11, and B Phrygian Dominant) into one unit. I was focusing on the A string (since it is easier to see) as a conduit between the modes. I find it easy to hit the A string in G Ionian #5 and then just keep hitting the notes of the harmonic minor as I went up the A string, until I was back in B Phrygian Dominant territory. It was good to break up the continuity of the harmonic minor modes with some pentatonic modes, namely the G mediant, A subdominant, and B dominant shapes. The two different sets of modes each have their own vibe and I haven't figured out what I want to do with that difference. I'm thinking of using that difference in a similar manner as the Beatles used to modulate between two sounds in their verses and chorus/bridge of their songs. Or then there is something like the AABA scheme.

Since it is now the year 2020 and people have spoken about the chord shape, 2020, I played a blues progression in G using the F# dim as a D7 and it was most unedifying. It didn't have that tang that you want as you pull away from the tonic in the blues. Maybe the Hawaiian D7 has a place in something like the edentate smooth jazz of Lyle Ritz, where unassertive buttery chords are more the idiom.

Lastly I saw a youtube video which I liked merely because it validates what I do. It was an interview with the guitarist Reb Beach and he mentioned, among other things, how there are so many guitar ninjas out there, but so few of them can write songs. That's my experience as well. There are many robots who can replicate somebody else's music, but they cannot create their own. I try to create my own.
 
Top Bottom