CURRICULUM VITAE

QUARTER TRIADS FOR A COLTRANE SOUNDIntroduction

This quarter triad approach is a sound. It is a big part of Coltranes sound. The thing of the sound is that it is gapped i.e. that it doesnt sound scalar- and that it does not sound triadic either. It doesnt seem to have a third (although it could include the third of the chord). It sounds angular, hip, spacy. It evokes a clear quartal type of harmony, that people associate clearly with Coltrane.This quarter triad approach is also a melodic device. Quarters and fifths (quarters are inverted fifths) are powerful intervalls, the strongest ones we are used to hear, and they immediately register their logic with any audience. They are hip to listen to, and they can be arpeggiod and turned around in different voicings in so many ways to create endless interesting, catchy melodies. Limitation is the key

The most basic starting point is to understand that a normal scale has 7 notes, a pentatonic scale has 5 notes, while the quarter triad is a 3 note scale. Using only three notes gives space and a typical strong, meaningful and open sound. This sound is achieved by forcing yourself to limit yourself to 3 notes it is this limitation will deliver the sound. Add different new notes, and the sound is gone unless they are the exact right extra notes (as you will see below).

The key element in getting these 3 notes to sound good/hip, in/out, as you like them, is to know in advance which quarter triads fits over what chord. That is just a matter of remembering the system below. After internalizing, it is a matter of being able to play them in different shapes (see below). For every type of chord situation, there are a number of pentatonic scales available. Here, we will not go into where to use this or that pentatonic scale. All the ideas of where to apply the pentatonic also apply to the quarter triad, as the quarter triad is a smaller part of the pentatonic scale. That means that when you know what pentatonic scale applies to a certain scale, you know how to deal with that pentatonic scale in different ways by limiting yourself to one of several separate sounds (the quarter triads) from within the pentatonic scale, and not running up and down the whole pentatonic scale. As you will have an idea of when what pentatonic scale will apply, we will here deal only with the most common harmonic situations (I, IV, V major and I, II dorian minor) to apply your tricks immediately to good effect, and without thinking what parent pentatonic scale to use on the chord at hand. When you have more experience in pulling not-logically related pentatonic scales over certain harmony, then the tricks discussed here will help you do so immediately in all these different contexts, because when chosen the right pentatonic scale, you will have an ability to take that pentatonic scale apart and work its hidden potentials.

Major and minor use Because we started with Mo Better Blues, a perfect easy song in major to get the quarter triads out, we stay in the key of F (concert), G for tenorsax. Another reason for this is to use the tricks on a few well known modal tunes such as So What, Impressions, Little Sunflower, which are in Dm (dorian), Em (dorian) for tenorsax. This, as we will see, is the exact same thing from the pentatonic perspective. We will only speak of major pentatonic scales, not of minor pentatonic scales. For example, G pentatonic is also spoken about as E minor pentatonic, but we will for sake of sanity just speak about G pentatonic, also in E minor. This way we internalize the concept one time, have one word for it, and know how to find it and use the same thing in different situations.

Step 1.On the G major chord, we are going to pick the three most usuable quarter triads that may fit (depends on your taste). Usually, they fit after eachother, and you can feel that with each next one, you are moving a little away from the tonic center. Which can be good for a more spacy approach.. but also means you can move from the center outward, and back by using these quarter triads after eachother (similar to the changing in/out sound achieved by using different pentatonic scales over a given major or minor chord). The pianist may play them on top of eachother, but you should play them after eachother, so as not to break the strength of the separate sounds, and to give yourself this potential of these shifting colors, like Coltrane does. Shifting between these three sounds makes people hypnotic Coltrane did this, pushing them through these colours.

The quick way to think is: take the major chord you are playing on (G major), and build your quartet triad on I, V and II of the scale of G (G-D-A. This is easy to remember same counter clockwise thinking on the cycle of Vths as with pentatonic scale use on given major and minor chords). Now build your three quarter triads by looking at these three chords in the G scale, and taking step 1, step 2, step 5 from each of them.

On G major, the three (or 4) quarter triads to use are ( left is low, right is high like on the piano):

G A D

( 1 2 5 on G)D E A ( 1 2 5 on D) (or 5 6 2 on G) A B E

( 1 2 5 on A) (or 2 3 6 on G)E F#B ( 1 2 5 on E) (or 6 7 3 on G) use only if you want a maj7 sound over I !Now a small reconfiguration, to assure they flow more smoothly into eachother, we reconfigure the second one by inverting it:

G A D ( 1 2 5) A D E ( 2 5 6) A B E ( 2 3 6) B E F# ( 3 6 7)

Practically, you can see now how they melodically flow nicely into eachother, because the first pair, the second pair, and the third pair have stuff in common ( A D between the first pair, A E between the second pair, B E between the third pair) that sounds good to keep in the same place and to use to connect two phrases to each other when you move from one quarter triad to the other. The logic is moving from one to another is keeping two, dropping one, adding a new one. This keeps enough of the old sound intact, yet changes the sounds dimension enough to notice. Audiences understand this logic. This makes them ideal to play after each other (in the right order otherwise the logic between them is lost, the audience is lost following you).

Theoretically, you can also observe that with these three taken together, you have exhausted the whole G pentatonic scale. So there is three quarter triads inside the pentatonic scale. Practically and theoretically, all this applies to E minor as well !Step 2.Now lets look at the second chord of Mo Better Blues, the IV / C. Lets do the same thing on C:

C D G

( 1 2 5 on C)G A D

( 1 2 5 on G)

D E A

( 1 2 5 on D)

You notice something? Yep, this is just one quarter triad (the first one that bases the quartal triad firmly in its related chord/keyof the pentatonic) different from the previous series ! That makes life more easy, as it means you can basically understand them as one tower of quartal triads per key, just adding a quartal triad at the bottom or at the top to fit the chord better (to taste) ! And to add to simplicity, because on IV more added tones work well, the whole previous bunch applies, so you can keep A B E too, but only if you want a maj 7 sound on the IV. Reconfiguring them for melodic use and connecting them smoothly after eachother:

C D G

D G A

D E A

( E A B) only if you want a maj 7 sound on the IV ( E F# B) only if you want a maj 7/ lydian sound on the IVBefore you get to woodshedding, here is something else that considerably simplifies our use of these quarter triads throughout songs: a pentatonic approach starting from the root the V chord (D7) is giving us a Vsus chord sound that also sounds appropriate for a normal, mixolydian V7, but that is actually a IV triad over V in the bass. On a V you often would go altered, but in Mo Better Blues it is a Vsus/ IV over V. So, the IV chord, which is as we saw almost the I chord but with a different bottom quartal triad, and now this IV is played again as V, as the V is in the bass ! That means, it is simply the exact same bunch of quarter triads as above. I is almost the same as IV, except for the bottom quartal triad. Vsus is IV again. So it is almost one simple and powerful sound. This sounds weird, but with pentatonics, that are build on perfect quarter distances, there will never appear a tritone which is the 3-7 core of the V dominant chord.. so this quartal/pentatonic approach does not yield a real good pentatonic or quarter triad that represents the dominant sound with its 3-7 tritone at least not diatonic in the key of G. What this means is: pentatonic playing is something you can do key based, (almost) forgetting/replacing the changes !Lets look at this logic in Mo Better Blues. One bunch of notes for I, and almost the same (different starting quartal triad) bunch of notes for IV/V with the example of Mo Better Blues a bit. In Mo Better Blues, you go I-IV briefly, then I and then again IV (C). Then it goes down in this way C B/G Am B/G and continues A/Em7.... That you should just understand as C G C G ... so very little change (just the bottom quartet triad) of your choice of notes. You could even simplify this whole section as all being C, and stick to G pentatonic ! Then A7 (different stuff), and then again the usual suspects: Dsus (Vsus), which is C (IV) again, then G (I). You can in fact reduce all harmony in any song to falling into either the I or IV/V category.. so you can apply this process wherever you are. For example any II-V is just V... any VI or III is just I. When the harmony of a song becomes sophisticated, this harmonic generalisation will become problematic for a specific sound, the right, fitting pentatonic mother scales need to be figured out, to retrieve the perfect matching quarter triads. But arguably, our quarter triad approach is not so much for playing sophisticated changes, but for creating interest by moving your quartals over the simpler harmony going on below. But wherever you see a simpler passage (II-V-I, I-IV-V) or have one dorian chord for a long time, you can go Coltrane quartals for contrast !Step 3. Ok, now it is time to go and work out ! This is what we have now (written down in the three possible inversions):(G C D in case of a IV/V situation) G A D --------------------------------

A D E -------------------------------- } I situation

A B E --------------------------------

(C D G in case of IV/V situation) D G A -------------------------------- D E A -------------------------------- } I situation

E A B ------------------------------ (D G C in case of IV/ V situation) A D G ------------------------------------

E A D ------------------------------------ } I situationB E A ------------------------------------

As you notice, the last inversion is the quarter stack in its pure form.

Now we are going to make life more interesting. We are going to make them into 4 note figures by doubling one of the three notes of the triad, and making sure the outside of the shape is a perfect octave. That is gonna give you some powerful shapes ! I wrote shapes that flow into eachother.(G C D G in case of a IV/V situation) G A D G --------------------------------

A D E A -------------------------------- } I situation

A B E A --------------------------------

(C D G C in case of IV/V situation) A D G A --------------------------------

D E A D -------------------------------- } I situation

B E A B ------------------------------

(D G C D in case of IV/ V situation) D G A D ------------------------------------

E A D E ------------------------------------ } I situation

E A B E ------------------------------------

You may ofcourse add any note from within on top or bottom again for five note structures.. or create these continues arpeggios of these shapes over two or more octaves. The thing is to keep these shapes intact: the three note sound !We saw already that the quater stack can be filled out within a perfect octave by doubling the outer note, but here they are all together for clarity:

(C D G C in case of IV/ V situation) G A D G ------------------------------------

D E A D ------------------------------------ } I situation

A B E A ------------------------------------

or:

(D G C D in case of IV/ V situation) A D G A ------------------------------------

E A D E ------------------------------------ } I situation

B E A B ------------------------------------

Step 4.

Can more be done ? Yes ! We can revoice the quarter triad as two stacked fifths ! This creates wide spaced voicings....

(C G D in case of IV/ V situation) G D A ------------------------------------

D A E ------------------------------------ } I situation

A E B ------------------------------------

The most appropriate note to be doubled as a fourth note now seems to be the one that is a fourth or and fifth away from its neighbours:

on the bottom: (G C G D in case of IV/ V situation) D G D A ------------------------------------

A D A E ------------------------------------ } I situation

E A E B ------------------------------------

or on the top:

(C G D G in case of IV/ V situation) G D A D -----------------------------------

D A E A ----------------------------------- } I situation

A E B E ------------------------------------Step 5.We could try to go beyond the quarter triad sound now.. and pick a fourth note from the pentatonic, that is NOT the next quarter a typical note... its up to taste. Because the note you add better be a good one not to break the magic. But there are a few tricks to work with.

G A B D over G major, C major (for a maj7/9 sound) or Dsus7 (for a sus sound), or F major (for a lydian sound). Or over E dorian minor (or over A dorian minor or over D dorian minor) C D E G for Dsus7 (for a sus sound)D F# G A gives maj7 sound on G / I, a lydian sound when used on C/IV; gives a triadic, mixolydian / sus sound on D7 / V. Great over Em7 !There are other pentatonics than the obvious ones ! A quick overview of pentatonic scale options:Over G you could play:

-G pentatonic scale- in Mo Better Blues dont play D pentatonic as it is really not Gmaj7 but over Em7, yes !- in Mo Better Blues dont play A pentatonic as it is really not G lydian, but over Em7, yes !

Over C you could play:

-C pentatonic: C D E G A (we broke this one apart in three quarter triads)-G pentatonic: G A B D E (we broke this one apart in three quarter triads)-D pentatonic: in Mo Better Blues it is not advisable to play as it is really not C lydian !Over Dsus7, you could play-C pentatonic: C D E G A (used for three quarter triads. Works on sus, sussing a mixolydian)-G pentatonic: G A B D E (used this for three quarter triads. Not a mixolydian sound, as no 7)-D pentatonic: D E F# A B (try its quartal triads. A triadic, not sus or mixolydian sound, as no 4, 7)Other pentatonics for D7 (mixolydian or sus) for use diatonically inside key of G: (there are otthers for altered ofcourse)-Dsus/dom pentatonic: D F# G A C (has 1, 3, 4 7, gives good mixolydian or sus sound)-Am6 / Coltrane minor-pentatonic: A C D E F# (has 1, 3, 7, gives good mixolydian sound)-Am6/9 pentatonic: A B C E F# (1,2 b3, 5, 6, has 3, 5, 7, 9, 13, gives good mixolydian sound)same as -F# halfdiminished pentatonic: F# A B C E ( has 3, 7, gives good mixolydian sound)- C/D hexatonic (C+D triad): D E F# G A C (has 1, 3, 4 and 7, excellent for dominant or sus) The trick is to play these pentatonic scales as a set, flowing through one pentatonic into another. This approach preserves the gapped sound, while allowing a more thorough exploration of the chord scale.