Scales and Lines

About building the skill of approach notes:
I do exercises for MAJOR and DOMINANT chords playing from
-below chromatically
-above diatonically
-above-below & vice versa
-above-below-below-above & vice versa

I wonder, if in the variant of minor chords in Jazz we tend to use rather the aeolian or dorian scale. I guess dorian, but aeolian is easier to hear in the first place.

Thanks for any remarks & comments,

Norbert

Extended plagal progressions are recurring in many standards. A plagal cadence is the motion from the IV chord to the I chord. Some tunes that have extended plagal cadences are... Blues for Alice, All of Me, All the Things You Are, Emily, etc. Once you pick this sound out, you will hear it all the time... it usually just sounds like a chromatic walk down, and in a lot of ways, that is really all it is.

Here are some lines that are a jumping off point for tackling this progression. This was compiled by Bert Ligon.

Hope ya dig it!

-Drew

Hope this is the right topic / place for this question...

I'm new on the vibes and my sight-reading is very very crappy. I'm looking for suggestions for (a) material to use for practice in sight-reading, and (b) approaches to practicing.

Right now for sight-reading I'm just reading Real Book heads and Bach Inventions (one part at a time). I've also just started with Bartok's Mikrokosmos for very very simple two-handed reading (stuff like unison lines, very simple parallel motion, etc).

I have a progression to play over and I need help with options for scales.

The progression is:
Bm7b5 ///| F+5/Eb /// |Em79+5/D ///|C#sus9,11 ///|Bb6/C /// | Bb6/C ///|

It sounds better than it looks :)

Suggestions on how to think of this progression and what scales to play would be sincerely appreciated.

Thanks in advance.
-Todd

This morning I was reading through Steve Kahn's analysis of a Michael Becker solo and became so ill from anxiety that I almost lost my cookies.

Do I have enough time to learn such a vast subject matter?
It's scary to think that even practicing to a sweat in a cold room may never get me there.
I hope there is such a thing as divine intervention and that He's willing to help out.

Here is the analysis:
http://www.stevekhan.com/rojoa.htm

I would like to hear some insights into playing over minor 11 chords where the progression moves by a 5th. (Em11 > Bm11 > F#m11 > C#m11 > Abm11 > Ebm11 > Bbm11 > Fm11)

How would or do you get your head around this pattern?

Also your thoughts on voicings for this chord type would be appreciated for comping and soloing. Those changes are from One of the tunes I'm working on: Joe Lockes' Tarzani.

tia
-Todd

After listening to John's ear exercices, I'm just curious about one thing: so far I thought that all Anglo-saxon people were always naming the notes with letters, and that only a few European countries like France were using the D'Arezzo system.

It seems that I was wrong. I had more had looks on scores with chords mentioned with letters, but it's the very first time I hear an English speaking person name notes :o)

So, are you all naming the notes with the D'Arezzo system, and just using the letters for chords naming? Or do you use both systems?