"Wrong" notes that sound "right"

[The Fury]

Is there a formula to it or is it totally random?. How would you possibly write something using those "wrong" notes if you didn't know where to begin?

Do certain "wrong" notes sound "right" in a blues style for example?

I guess what I'm asking is, how do you tell if a note will sound right when theoretically it shouldn't?

I know it's one of those things, people say "it's an art form there is no right or wrong" but I'm sure you know what I mean.

Has anyone studied this and come to any conclusions?

Thanks.

[se77en]

I know a guy in Texas that does some work on a particular TV show thats aired here in the US. I've spent quite a bit of time with this guy. He is a very very very good guitar player. One time we were sitting around playing guitar, and he would do runs that were so fast and sounded so good it was amazing. I couldn't copy them. He said to me this exactly "The trick is...you know where to start, and you know where you have to end up....as long as you hit everything cleanly and fast, people won't know if you're hittng the exact notes in a Gmaj scale because the human ear can't listen as fast as your fingers have the ability to go." I don't know that I necessarily buy into this theory, but he's got a point....makes ya wanna listen again to the guitarists you love and see if thats what they are doing...lol

I have put this theory to practice on a few project's that I've worked on, and it is true...nobody ever mentioned that I didn't know what I was doing...lol...and alot of people would come up to me and tell me how "badass" they thought my soloing ability was....I don't use that theory anymore...I prefer to hit what is supposed to be hit.

[64Firebird]

Ahh blues.

In most music, your stuck with Major or miner harmony. But, in blues we use domanant harmony (7 chords) and play Major or miner tones over it to get differant effects.

A good place to start is to try playing the Major pentatonic over the I7 chord and the miner pentonic over the IV7 and V7 chords. This will give you that Major to miner shift that is so much a part of blues music.

[The Fury]

Well, I wasn't talking about the blues in particular.

Heres an example from a Seahorses song called Blinded By The Sun.

He playes the Bminor scale over a D major chord progression, so far so good, but he throws in a note which isn't in the scale. It sounds wrong but in a good way.

How did he come up such a thing if there's no way to tell which notes have this effect? Did he play loads of different notes untill he chanced upon it? (I don't think so) or is there a way to tell in advance?

The chord progression is D major, F#7 and Gmajor7. The note that sounds "wrong" is a Bb.

Cheers.

[smfulla]

well the Bb is actually in the B harmonic minor scale, but yeah. So the note actually does fit... in a different way. =]

[The Fury]

So if the Bb is part of a minor scale that means there must be a way to tell that it would have this effect of sounding "wrong but right" when played over these chords.

Are there any rules, for instance you could say that the 7th note of a B harmonic minor scale sounds "wrong but right" when played over a D major chord progression. (a bit too complex, I know)

I want to know if there's a way to tell what notes have this effect rather than just sounding horrible.

Cheers.

[smfulla]

well you do realise that B minor is the relative minor of D major... so the same chords can be used. So you coud say that he's using a B minor progression with the B harmonic minor being used as the scale. Or he's playing the D major scale with a Raised 5th. Maybe thats the harmonic major scale? (I don't know anything about the harmonic major btw.. just guessing)

Well I personally have no way to tell. But I mean the way jazz guys do it... they take from the chords being played. So I mean if there is a F#7, they could take from the F# major scale... place a note in from there and it would sound good with that chord. I mean like depending on the sound they have. I personally can't do that yet... but am trying, hehe.

[The Fury]

This is probably way too advanced for me at this stage, perhaps in time I'll understand it all, but not yet.

Anyway, thanks for your help:)

[smfulla]

No problems... I probably wasn't too good in explaining either =]