PHOTO: PAUL HILLIER
BASS
Alex Fournier is a double bassist from Toronto. He has studied with Dave Young, Andrew Downing, Jim Vivian, and, most recently,
Michael Formanek. His debut album as a leader, Triio, was released in June 2019 and is available for purchase from his website: www.
alexfournierplaysbass.com.
By Alex Fournier
Opening Up the Fingerboard:
Chromatic Complements in Improvisation
N
ot too long ago, I was brushing up on some Monk tunes
when I got to “Off Minor.” If you don’t know the tune, the first
chord’s a G minor with the melody implying a jazz minor
sound, and it’s followed by a D 7 chord (see Ex. 1a). While
practicing this transition, it struck me as pretty amusing that Monk im-
plied one set of notes and then follow it up with the exact opposite set.
Ex. 1a
This got
me think-
ing of some
concepts that
I’ve encountered in 12-tone theory – mainly complementary pitch
sets and their cadential properties. Interestingly enough, this concept
is utilized quite a bit in jazz and otherwise improvised music. Subse-
quently exploring some of these sounds and their geometric proper-
ties opens up cadential/voice leading potential to such an extent that
it becomes possible to substitute any mode of the melodic minor scale
at any transposition over any chord, so long as you can bring the line to
a strong resolution.
This has been something on my mind since conferring with a few
friends who attended the Banff Jazz Workshop in 2012 and heard Ben
Monder talking about this subject in a lecture. Though I’m yet to see
his logic, I believe my conclusion has significance without too much
extraneous conflating of theoretical ideas.
Let’s revisit “Off Minor.” We have a chord/melody heavily implying a G
jazz minor followed by a chord that can be described as a D mixolydian-
pentatonic (Ex. 1b). These two scales are perfect complements, mean-
ing that neither scale contains each other’s notes and when combined,
they create a chromatic scale. Extending this idea to another popular tonic
chord, Gma7, we get a D pentatonic scale as the complement (Ex. 1c).
Though not interchangeable, I’m including both of these examples since
they constitute distinctly strong options for tonic chords.
Ex. 1b
The comple-
mentary pitch
Ex. 1c
set pertaining
to the major
chord resem-
bles some of
the strongest voice leading features of an altered scale. If we augment
the root (D to D) we get an altered scale minus its 4 th and 7 th degree
(Ex. 2a), leaving us an interesting chromatic approach note option. For
the minor chord, we don’t have quite as strong of a sound, though I’ll
note that much like the jazz minor scale, our complement contains a
similar double leading tone that resolves to the tonic’s 5 th (Ex. 2b).
Ex. 2a
Combining
our D scales,
we get
something
Ex. 2b
that looks
a lot like a
mixolyd-
ian mode
– only
missing its fourth degree. Given that we are using this scale as a float-
ing pitch set, let’s assume an augmented 4 th since the lydian dominant
scale is considered highly stable given its resemblance to the harmonic
series (Ex. 3).
Ex. 3
Now we’re able to resolve a dominant chord to a tonic chord spaced a
tritone away. This motion resembles the use of diminished axis theory
– explained in Ernö Lendvai’s book on Béla Bartók and demonstrated
in Gil Evans’ “Moon Dreams” and diminished and symmetrical scale lan-
guage. To heavily simplify the theory, it states that chords spaced along
an axis of repeated minor 3 rds are more or less interchangeable, making
our one inferred substitution into four.
But why stop there? We have two regularly occurring examples
within the jazz canon: the flat II dominant and the IV dominant. Both
of these chords tend to be treated with the same scale. Expanding axis
theory to these two chords, we end up getting every transposition of
the lydian dominant scale. Subsequently applying modal interchange
to these substitutions avails every melodic minor mode to us at once.
Applying this idea only needs two things: a strong sense of structure/
voice leading and the confidence to pull it off. It can be especially difficult
as a bassist given that when your range sits under your accompaniment,
going off the page is a harder sell; however, Western music is based off of a
dodecaphonic scale, and in jazz, you’re expected to regularly be thinking of
seven or eight of those notes at a time. Inevitably, if you’re working on hear-
ing your way through a progression, you’re going to start seeing aspects
of more “stable” cadences in just about any sound you pick to pursue. I’m
not the hugest fan of chord-scale theory, but I use it here to illustrate how
many options you have if you know where you’re going.
Obviously, this is a glut of information to immediately apply to
one’s playing, and it probably won’t sound great if you force it before
understanding how the notes move. I just hope this helps you enjoy
the freedom that this theory implies.
CANADIAN MUSICIAN 27