The Wisdom of Pat Martino

Jim Cohen · From: Philadelphia, PA

Thanks to Dave Mudgett, I discovered another Forum where Pat Martino has been participating for about a year, giving very thorough and thoughtful replies to questions from other forumites. It is a fascinating read and I highly recommend it to anyone who is interested in jazz, improvisation, Martino, guitar, etc. Well worth the time you'll spend there. Here's the link: http://forums.allaboutjazz.com/showthread.php?t=14335

p.s. the thread is over 50 pages long, so wander in and get lost, and enjoy!

Dave Mudgett · From: Central Pennsylvania and Gallatin, Tennessee

Let's give credit to Shane Reilly, who pointed this fine forum out here: http://bb.steelguitarforum.com/viewtopic.php?t=111746

This came at a particularly good time for me, as I've been working on jazz 6-string a lot lately. But I think a lot of Pat's insights apply to any instrument.

David Mason · From: Cambridge, MD, USA

If you go to Pat Martino's own website, he has some writings on the nature of guitar and how the teaching and music theory for it can/should be treated differently than for piano:
http://www.patmartino.com/

click on "The Nature of the Guitar." For a quick overview of his harmonic system, click on "Sacred Geometry", an interview from Guitar Player magazine. When you delve into Pat's own writings, he ropes in numerology, astrology, the Ark of the Covenant, architecture and geometry among other things - no big deal, John Coltrane and John McLaughlin were two other musicians who cast a pretty wide net in order to inform their musicianship and it sure didn't hurt their playing. Makes for some interesting reading, at least.

Mike Shefrin · Posted 5 Jul 2007 7:49 am

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Jim Cohen · From: Philadelphia, PA

Mike Shefrin · Posted 5 Jul 2007 9:50 am

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Jack Stanton · From: Somewhere in the swamps of Jersey

I attended a Master Class with Pat in Washington, DC last month, and as stated above, he was way into the numerology thing ( 12 musical tones correspond to 12 months in a year, 12 numbers on the face of a watch, etc!!??)
He spent quite a lot of time on augmented and natural positions on the six string.
To me, the most interesting part was when he demonstrated how he improvises over changes. The closest I could get to seeing a thought pattern is if he's soloing over a minor chord he'll play the corresponding minor 7th scale. - sometimes. Other times he would play the relative minor 7th scale.
If he's playing over an extended major chord (# or b 5ths, 9ths, 13th’s, etc.) he'll typically play a minor 7th scale a semi tone above the chord root (ex, if the chords a A7th, he'll play a Bbmi7th scale). When I tried to press him on whether or not that was his thought process, he was vague and said he just plays what he feels.
He told some great stories about being a teenager and living with Les Paul and hanging with the jazz crowd in NYC in the '60's.
We went out to see him later that evening at Blues Alley with his quartet. Truly amazing

Jim Cohen · From: Philadelphia, PA

Hey Jack, great to see you here. Does this suggest you're getting 're-activated'? I hope so!

David Mason · From: Cambridge, MD, USA

If you read through the Pat Martino theory stuff (that intro is sufficient), I can absolutely see what he's saying about the utility of a diminished 7th chord as a structural device for making music. When you lower any one note of the chord by a half-step to a new root, you relatively raise the b3, b5 and 6 to: 3, 5 and b7, a 7th chord. When you lower any two adjacent notes, you change to a major 6th chord - two neat tricks, immediately accessible with the 5+6 pedal combination on a C6th pedal steel. I don't understand his elevation of the augmented chord to the same level of importance.

On a practical soloing basis, he treats the distinction between major and minor as being far less important than many people - so many other guitarists like Pat Metheny, John McLaughlin, and John Scofield solo this way it almost seems like the new paradigm (next to be broken?) It's maybe just another way of explaining the blues-through-a-piano transition. Ummm - Coltrane thought so too?

Regarding the numerology, astrology, Ark of the Covenant etc., hey: smoke him on the bandstand, and I'll listen to your funny ideas too. Smile

Jim Cohen · From: Philadelphia, PA

Ian Kerr · From: Queensland, Australia

I work it out as follows.If you lower one of the notes and the other three stay the same ,then relatively speaking these three notes are in effect raised when compared to the new lowered note.e.g.
C dim7 is C,Eb,Gb,A.If you lower the C to B you now have the notes B,D#,F#,A which is B7.If you lower the Eb to D then you would have C,D,F#,A which is D7.Lowering the F# to F would then give the F7 chord and lowering the A to Ab would give the Ab7 chord.
The other example of lowering two of the notes would
be:say if you lowered the C to B and the Eb to D then you would have B,D, F#,A, which is D6. Likewise you can get F6,Ab6 and B6.And this is what pedals 5&6
do but the opposite way.They go from the 6th chord to the diminished.
Hope this helps .It's how I worked it out anyway.

David Mason · From: Cambridge, MD, USA

Yeah, Ian's got it figured the way I saw it. The only issue is, that there are so many adjacent 4ths on a standard guitar, and 4ths and 5ths are so important in "normal" music, it's almost like reasoning backwards: using a weird harmonic system to try to play normal music, instead of using a normal system as a basis for getting weird. Your chord forms move by half-steps, to play a 1-4 or 1-5 progression. There are many doors to the outside, I spoze.

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