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Old October 20th, 2007
Fong Fong is offline
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Playing guitar for over 10 years.
 
Join Date: Mar 2006
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Location: London, England.
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Quote:
I've seen a half dozen articles in Guitar Magazines discussing the scales and modes Pat Martino uses. Yet Martino has stated emphatically on more than one occasion that he does not think in terms of scales & modes. Who are we to believe? The man or the magazine?
This is just confusing matters Monk.

Lets take a step back. Is there any mathematical equation to music, is there some set of rules, like Physics, that music adheres to?

No.

The entire back catalogue of Music Theory is just there to explain what we do naturally.

A major chord is only a major chord because our ears like it.

There is no reason a major chord should be 1st 3rd and 5th, beyond the fact that our ears recognise it. The only reason the flattened 3rd becomes a minor is because of the change it creates to our ears.

All this goes to the point that it really doesn't matter what Martino is thinking at the time he is playing, or how he is creating the sound he is creating, that has absolutely nothing to do with the value of the theory behind what he is doing.

The best way to explain this is to look at music before J S Bach.

Before Bach we didn't have equal temperment and music was played in a very different way.

Bach came along, invented an entirely new and better way of dealing with music.

Did any of the music created before this point change after this point?

No, because all that Bach did was create a better way of explaining what was already happening.

What Martino himself thinks is irrelevent. As long as the theory explains what he is doing correctly.

The idea that a Chord chart is put in front of you, thus proving any point, is just not right. Since you can play many many many different scales over any given chord it would be unrealistic to place a scale sheet in front of anyone.

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