I’d been struggling to really understand what was going on with the 7-string master modal pattern on the [Chapman Stick][0]. Part of it was just that I’m new to music theory even though I’ve played an instrument in some form or another since I was eight.
[0]: http://www.stick.com
I have great learning materials: [Bob Culbertson][1]’s [instructional videos][2]; [Greg Howard][3]’s [_Stick Book_][4]; and [Emmett Chapman][5]’s [_Free Hands_][6]; and I’ve attended a couple of seminars with Greg and [Steve Hahn][7]. But things have only recently begun to click once I put [this image][8] on my wall, which is a fancy version of this:
[1]: http://www.stickmusic.com/html/biography.htm
[2]: http://www.stick.com/instruction/videos/lessonsonstick/
[3]: http://www.greghoward.com/
[4]: http://www.stick.com/instruction/books/stickbook/
[5]: http://www.stick.com/history/emmett/
[6]: http://www.stick.com/instruction/books/freehands/
[7]: http://www.deepchocolate.com/
[8]: http://jimmoy.com/stick-modal.gif
This pattern in one form or another has been described many times in the above materials and on the [Stickwire][sw] mailing list, but I hadn’t seen an instance of it that contained all the elements of the one in [this GIF][8]. (I have a nice PDF of it for printing if anyone’s interested) My brain hadn’t really locked on to its significance until I had a couple of key elements in one place along with the usual presentation of the pattern:
[sw]: http://home.ease.lsoft.com/archives/STICKWIRE-L.html
* The 3-string “box” both above and below the two two-string patterns and in their correct relative physical position, which means as I move off the top or the bottom of the box, I don’t have to think about anything, I can just see it and go.
* The major scale ordinals are in the circles, which means I can track each finger as I move out of a particular right hand position. Greg described how you can develop a _fluency_ up and down the entire fretboard at a seminar but I couldn’t see how it really happened. I still can’t do it, but at least now I think I see the mechanics of it.
* Slight separation between the two and three string groupings, so that it sets them off very slightly for fast visual recognition, but not so much that it interferes with the “flow” of the pattern to the next/previous string.
It’s one thing to be able to just play this pattern from the root of a key, but I can now see that knowing it inside and out from any finger location within it would be a boon to improvisation. I’ve got a hunch that the pattern plays out on the bass side as well; the bottom two lines of the “box” looks just like a chunk of the major scale on the bass side _without_ inverting the pattern. Steve pointed out at a seminar how the melody pattern, if flipped upside-down, works on the bass side if I move two frets toward the nut for each higher string, but that’s too much thinking.
I think it’s also helping that I’m reading Mark Levine’s Jazz Theory book, but as always it’s the combination of things when you’re learning stuff. I need to practice more.