Diminished Sounds with Major Triads

The major triads of the symmetrical diminished scale are a treasure trove of modern sounds used for everything from “outside” improvisation to the Blues and beyond. Equally useful for soloing, comping, chord melody playing and composition, achieving fluency with these triads can elevate your improvising to an exciting new level. Pairing these spicy melodic sounds with the similarly interesting rhythmic devices shown in this class yields a recipe for exciting improvising and composition. Opportunities in using diminished sounds for jazz improvisation are many since they can be used over both diminished chords and dominant sevenths. This class is an in-depth examination of major triad usage in achieving diminished sounds from the symmetrical diminished scale. You'll learn many ways to negotiate these sounds using both closed and open voiced major triads in all inversions and most every conceivable combination. The blueprint is given to compose original exercises of your own and includes practice tips and visualization techniques so these sounds can be accessed more easily while improvising. The class features an original composition “Blues For 4” based on the blues progression with a melody derived from some of the exercises in the class. “Blues For 4” uses Dom.7 13b9 chords as its harmonic foundation yielding all twelve major triads (four major triads from three tonal areas.) The theory is explained in-depth with equal weight given to all twelve major triads so that you'll be better prepared to use these sounds over diminished and dominant seventh chords occurring so often in jazz improvisation.

Take the “Diminished Leap” into an exciting new aural territory and have fun exploring!

• 29 pages of written materials notated in both TAB and standard notation with fingerings.
• Running Time: 133 minutes