Lonesome fiddle blues

[fishdawg40]

I got this lonesome fiddle blues transcription here. It's in Dm.

I'm not so sure about this minor chord progression because i don't know the chromatic minor chord scale (and can't seem to find it anywhere). Can someone tell me what that is?

Second, would a pentatonic scale work for this progression?

And finally I'd like to use this tune as a point of departure for the discussion of the uses of different scales for different keys, i.e. what scales could you possibly use in this instance or in other examples? Others that are more basic, such as I IV V.

Thanks in advance.

Joe

[fishdawg40]

Well I did a little digging and found the harmonized minor scale in Thomas Ohmsen's Theory for Modern Mandolin. In it he discusses the concept of identifying a tune as being an authentic or non-authentic minor key. I'm getting pretty confused here with this. I don't think it is in a non-authentic minor key because the Dm is not the relative minor of the following chord in the tune, which is C. I guess Dm is the relative minor of the key of E, correct? And there is only one E chord in the B part of the tune. So I don't think the tune is in E.

Ahh, this is getting crazy.... and it doesn't seem to be in an authentic minor tune because the harmonized minor scale has diminished, 7th chords, etc. There's no straight up chrods in that scale. And in the tune there are no diminished, 7th chords, etc. So this leads me to believe that there would have to be the latter chords in the tune in order for it to be in an authentic minor key. What gives?

I biting off a lot....if anyone can sort through this mess I made here I'll award you a medal.

[Perry]

The C major scale works just fine over the "A" part. The first part is typical modal territory.

The "B" section is in a different key or even keys. It moves in the circle of fifths. If you you don't want to follow the melody here then using chord tones or arpeggios seems to fit the ticket.

Yes a D minor pentatonic would work for the "A" section. Try mixing that with a C major scale.

And no E and D minor are not related (at least in the context I think you're speaking of); rather D minor is the relative minor of F.

I'm sure others can expand greatly on the above.

[250sc]

Don't get too hung up about all chords in a song being part of a harmonized scale. It doesn't always work that way.

Just to get started, can you play the chords and melody? Let us know and then we can take it from there. You should be able to use pentatonics for this song but not one scale through the whole song, like you can in a I,IV,V blues.

Great song and fun to play.

[Don Stiernberg]

I'm not sure about which type of minor Lonesome Fiddle Blues is. While it is good to have a handle on harmonized minor (and major) scales, the simplicity of this great tune means you can get way inside of it without too much harmonic analysis.

First, think of the tune in two sections. The first section consists of Dminor and C major. Most frequently we approach I Major or iminor from a V7 chord, also called a dominant chord. But here we approach the root from the b7 chord. This can happen in major as well--think of "Love Come Home" or "Angel From Montgomery" or "Tangled Up in Blue".So we have similar functions here...the root, in this case minor, approached from a whole step away, or b7. A fairly common device.

In the second section everything shifts to major. D major. We begin on the IV chord, G, then return to D major. Next comes a dominant II chord(E7), then V7(A7). Note that the A7
reconnects us to Dm which makes sense because A7 is V for either D major or minor. Again the movements in this major section are found in many tunes also: I, IV, II, V.

Scales? I find plenty to do with the following:
Dm--D,E,F,G,A,B,C,D Cmajor--C,D,E,F,G,A,B,C.
Funny, that's the same group of tones, different starting points.
G--G,A,B,C,D,E,F#, G
D major--D,E,F#,G,A,B,C#, D
E7--E,F#,G#,A,B,C#, D, E
A7--A,B,C#,D,E,F#,G,A

Since you are headed back to a minor chord, you could do like the jazz guys and insert a minor iim7b5-V7alt cadence on the way back to Dm from the bridge section. That might look like this:

Em7b5---E,F,G,A,Bb, C,D, E
A7b9--A, Bb,C#, D, E,F#, G,A
or
A7+5--A, B, C#, D, F, G, A
or
A7 altered(b5,#5,b9,#9)(THE KITCHEN SINK!)
A, Bb,B, C,C#, D,Eb,E, F, G, A
the only missing tone is the major seventh. Can't use that on a dominant chord or it would not be a dominant chord.

This last batch of sounds is very jazzy but that's OK, especially considering the note choices of the tune's composer, Vassar Clements.

Don't miss the Newgrass Revival's version on the green Starday album and somewhere Marty Stuart takes a break on this tune that is way hot...Vassar's solo album on Mercury I think

[Perry]

See I told you somebody would know what to say

Is E7 really a part of the key of D?; I know it's fairly common to use a II7 chord (instead of the IIm chord) in many tunes.

Does the II dominant chord require us to think a little bit differently then D major for that chord?

Thanks for that "last batch of sounds". I'm going to give that a try. The same concept(s) would work in the second part of "Minor Swing" in the key of Dm too right?

Reread Don's post carefully and see that my answer is right in front of me; when playing the E7 chord then there is the shift of playing a G# note and not the G natural found in the D major scale.

The tunes goes buy so fast that I betcha both notes would sound ok

[Don Stiernberg]

Perry,

those altered dominant sounds will work in Minor Swing also. They may make it sound better, depending on your ear or taste. Django and all them cats definitely used those tones from time to time. Perhaps arriving at them from another method or just by ear(having heard them on Bird and Diz records??), but they were used and can fit and add spice or interest to your minor lines.

Em is chord ii in the harmonized D major scale, made up of all D major tones. It's the D scale played from E to E.
E7, the dominant II chord, is, as you speculated, something else again. It's almost as if we move to another key briefly, but notice also the E-A-D cyclical dominant/circle of fifths movement. E is the fifth of A, A the fifth of D.
This is a common progression, it's OK to think of it as fifths in D, but yes you need to treat that E7 as 1-3-5-b7, or E-G#-B-D.

Well to keep in mind that there are but four or five families of chords, depending on which book you read. The definite four families are Major, Minor, Augmented, and Diminished. The fifth family would be dominant chords. Some think of them as major because they have a major third. Others think of them separately because of the power they have in cadences. They ...Dominate!

The most important intervals in any chord are the third and seventh, because they tell us the quality of chord we're dealing with, whether it's major or minor(3rd)and whether it's dominant(7th).

I mention all this in response to our Em vs. E discussion. If your improvisations address the quality or family of each chord, they will sound good and help everyone know where you are in the tune.

I generally stay away from pentatonics, or at least don't recommend them often, for that reason. They effectively serve as a shortcut sometimes that can keep the player from fully understanding the progression, and they can get a bit trap-like also. Pentatonic phrases are fine as a melodic
device, but why not use all the tones rather than falling back on only five of them as the basis for an improvised solo?It's a bit like using a blues scale on all three chords of a blues. It might sort of work, but soon enough we want to hear more detail, a treatment of each chord sound.

Lonesome Fiddle Blues is a great vehicle for getting these things together because it already has major, minor, and dominant chords in it--a lot to work with even if you don't insert the "setup" chords of iim7b5 and V7altered on your way back to the "home" chord of Dm.

Thanks for looking at this all you cats and don't get me wrong about Pentatonics and Blues scales. Everything's good, it's just a matter of what's the main ingredient and what's the spice, or what's walking and what's running...

I'm pretty sure Vassar concerned himself with none of these concepts. I remember him saying"I just play. I paint myself into a corner, then I have to try to find a way out"...if we all had ears and chops like that, huh??

[Crowder]

I know practically nothing about theory (but would be willing to learn, if anyone can recommend some resources). That being said, I have noticed a helpful shortcut for playing the mandolin in minor keys. After I find the minor chord using the most common fingering (2-2-3-5 for Am), I use the scale that matches the major chop chord with the same root (C in this case, 5-2-3-x).

I don't know why it works, if you can bear to pardon my ignorance.

[fishdawg40]

Just saying thanks to everyone and especially to Don for laying it all out there. Lots to digest here but I think I have the rudiments of it. I'm sure I'll have more questions soon...

Glad to see others are getting good use of this topic as well.

[swampstomper]

Don,

Thanks for the eye-opening posts. LFB is one of my favourite tunes and I've been experimenting with it for a long time (inspired indeed by the Newgrass Revival version). I tried your end-of-bridge scales over the A7 chord. Cool! Especially the A7+5: just putting the F in place of the E "jazzed" it up considerably.

But, I am confused about the timing of your proposed cadence. The A7 chord is held for two measures. How are you proposing to divide this up? I just did an A7 (1st measure), A7+5 (2nd). If I read your first post you are proposing:

1st measure:
Em7b5---E,F,G,A,Bb, C,D, E

2nd measure:
A7b9--A, Bb,C#, D, E,F#, G,A
or
A7+5--A, B, C#, D, F, G, A

Is this what you mean?

Then, within these scales, there is some up-and-down as in the rest of the tune, I guess.

Thanks! I never thought of LFB as an entry to jazz, but hey, it's Vassar, as you said.

[Don Stiernberg]

Hey Swamp,

I just picked up my mandolin, and yes...

The last two bars of the form are what we're playing with. It could be a bar of Em7b5 followed by a bar of whichever altered dominant A you like, or you could cram both of those into the last bar, two beats each. I think I've also heard players insert a Bb7 before the A7. This has a similar effect-note the Bb note in common with the Em7b5..

Also remember one alteration begets another--if a sharp 5 is OK, a b5 likely is OK too. Same with the nines..

[Walter Newton]

I know practically nothing about theory (but would be willing to learn, if anyone can recommend some resources). That being said, I have noticed a helpful shortcut for playing the mandolin in minor keys. After I find the minor chord using the most common fingering (2-2-3-5 for Am), I use the scale that matches the major chop chord with the same root (C in this case, 5-2-3-x).

I don't know why it works, if you can bear to pardon my ignorance.

For a good place to start learning theory try www.musictheory.net.

(The basic reason your shortcut works is that the C major scale is C D E F G A B C, and the A (natural) minor scale is A B C D E F G A - the exact same notes, just starting and ending in a different place. #Am is called the "relative minor" of C.)