The bass and guitar virtuosos' new collaborative album, Notes with Attachments, goes all over the map—and well beyond.
"Yeah, Pino, do you have this big archive of stuff?" Blake Mills is ribbing Pino Palladino about the question I just asked, but it's something we're both very interested to know. "Yeah, I do," the legendary bassist exasperatedly replies, as if he's finally let out the secret that he's been composing and recording original music throughout four-and-a-half decades, keeping it to himself until now.
At 63, Palladino is pretty deep into his career to be releasing his first album of original material. But since the early 1980s, he's been busy contributing to recordings by so many other artists that it really isn't surprising he's just finding the time. "I've waited this long to record something of my own because it's all about space. I've been working on other people's music, which is so different," he says.
Palladino's credits read like a list of the best-selling artists of each decade he's been active, starting in the '80s with Gary Numan, Phil Collins, Elton John, and Don Henley, moving into the '90s alongside Melissa Etheridge, Carly Simon, Eric Clapton, and Michael McDonald, tracking for John Mayer, Erykah Badu, and D'Angelo in the 2000s, and with Keith Urban, John Legend, and Harry Styles in the 2010s—with many, many, many others along the way.
Off The Cuff
What's even more impressive than his resume is that Palladino seems to leave his mark on every session he plays. His nuanced feel adds such a personal touch that it seems as though he puts himself into every note in a way that is instantly recognizable, no matter what style of music he's performing.
On Notes with Attachments, we're finally invited to hear what kind of music has been marinating inside Palladino's head all these years, and the result is exceptional and almost indescribable for its unique sound. Featuring the bassist's compositions, the album was brought to life in collaboration with Mills—who produced, co-wrote, and played on it—and with assistance from heavy-hitting musicians, including keyboardist Larry Goldings, saxophonist Sam Gendel, and drummer Chris Dave.
Throughout the album's 31 minutes, Palladino, Mills, and company throw down an eclectic stew of references that stretch from jazz to minimalism to hip-hop to global sources that span from West Africa to South America. This broad swath of influences makes for a thrilling and dimensional listen, while supple, expert-level grooves provide a warm and cohesive foundation. Every track exhibits high-minded production values that make the album feel futuristic, and we'll be awfully lucky if this is a glimpse of where instrumental music is headed.
"I've waited this long to record something of my own because it's all about space."—Pino Palladino
When pressed about it, Palladino sounds as if the idea of recording an album of his own is something that's always been lingering in the abstract, a possibility that made sense but remained undefined. It wasn't until the last few years that the pieces of the puzzle started to coalesce, as he cut the rhythm tracks for his Fela Kuti-inspired number "Ekuté."
"That came out of something I recorded with drummer Chris Dave at my house in London," Palladino explains. "He and I met in 2009 or so, when we were working on Adele's 21, and started getting together. We recorded that without knowing what we would use it for—whether it would be something of mine or some kind of collaboration between he and I. I showed it to Marcus Strickland, who added the bass clarinet arrangement."
After meeting Mills while working on John Legend's Darkness and Light, Palladino played it for the producer/guitarist, who helped finish the track and explains, "When I played my guitar part on it, I was trying to think like a baritone sax player, where the singer left the band and the baritone sax is playing the melody."
Pino Palladino's career is packed with blue-ribbon studio and stage credits. Here, he stands with the Who, with whom he toured from 2002 to 2017, playing a Fender Jaguar Bass.
Photo by Tim Bugbee/Tinnitus Photography
Pino Palladino's Gear
Basses
- 1961 Fender Precision
- 1963 Fender Precision
- 1960s Magnatone Hurricane
- 1977 Music Man StingRay fretless
Strings
- La Bella Flatwound (various gauges)
- Thomastik-Infeld Flatwound (various gauges)
Mills goes on: "When Pino played that for me, that was the first time that I got to hear Pino as a composer." Intrigued by the possibilities he heard, Mills encouraged the bassist to continue their collaboration, which became an essential part of the album's creative process. Palladino started to present ideas to Mills in various states of completion: some were one or two parts, while others were full demos. "We were uncertain what we were working on," says Mills, adding, "I'm not really sure what we've made or what kind of music this is."
Uncertainty was an asset throughout the recording process, as the two musicians figured out what they would work on and what they could experiment with. Palladino first recorded the track "Soundwalk" in 2000 while snowed in during his tour as a member of D'Angelo's backing band, the Soultronics, on the Voodoo tour. Palladino laid down bass, guitar, and drum machine in his hotel room, and passed it on to his Soultronics bandmate, Jacques Schwarz-Bart, who added a full horn arrangement to the minidisc recording. While he loved the track, the original disc has since gone missing, and the bassist only had an MP3 of the song. Although he could have re-recorded the whole thing, Palladino felt there was something extra-special about Schwarz-Bart's part that would be impossible to recreate.
Kismet intervened when Mills received a demo of a new app called Rebalance, which features a technology that allows users to essentially create stems from full recordings. Mills' friend, software developer Dave Godowsky, was in the studio to demo the app for Mills when Palladino walked in and played them the demo for "Soundwalk." They used Rebalance to extract the horn part and, while Mills explains that Rebalance was capable of a clean extraction, they became inspired as they "toggled between the parts" and messed with the app's settings. The version of the horn arrangement they ended up using allowed artifacts of the original recording to bleed onto the refurbished track, creating a sound Mills describes as "almost anechoic."
TIDBIT: More than 40 years of composing and two-and-a-half years of on-and-off recording went into the creation of this album—the first to feature Pino Palladino's name on its cover.
Then, they used this extracted track to build the new version of the song, with contributions from Gendel, Goldings, and keyboardist Bruce Flowers. The result is a piece of cut-up minimal funk that sounds like a post-J Dilla update to Teo Macero's work on Miles Davis' On the Corner. Different colors of horn and keyboard parts interact sporadically across the stereo field, while weird percussion bits played by Mills groove with Palladino's distinctive bass bubble at the song's core.
It must have felt like advanced mathematics for Palladino and Mills to coordinate their busy schedules, but they found time to work on Notes with Attachments over the course of about two-and-a-half years. "We'd go in for a couple weeks here and there, and sometimes we wouldn't even have time to listen back to something we'd worked on for a couple weeks," says Palladino.
"When I was playing with Pino, I was really trying to watch him and be inspired by what he was playing and how he was playing."—Blake Mills
"Some music you can go in the studio and record quickly. I don't know what this record would sound like if we had done that," says Mills. Since both were constantly immersed in other projects, they had space to step away from the album, giving them perspective to hear their tracks with fresh ears. This patient workflow inspired experiments and challenges that might have never happened if they'd recorded the album faster.
One of Palladino's biggest experiments in making Notes with Attachments was to bring his melodic sense to the fore as he explored approaches to composition and sound that departed from his usual work as a session bassist. On the West African-inspired "Djurkel," Palladino decided to capo up and multi-track his playing in three bass parts, inspired by the 1-stringed instrument that gives the track its name. The song's looping bass figures interweave with each other to create a distorted melody that resembles a mbira ensemble and challenges the role of the bass guitar.
When talking about this composition, Palladino is quick to say the album is not about virtuosity or technique, but Mills interjects. "I think Pino is being humble here," and goes on to explain how the way the bassist phrases his lines and shapes his notes throughout are all informed by the overwhelming depth of his experience. Basically, Palladino puts it all into his playing, and it shows.
After co-forming an early version of the band Dawes, Blake Mills went on to become a touring and studio guitarist, and then a producer. Here, he plays a headlining gig at L.A.'s El Rey Theatre in 2014.
Photo by Debi Del Grande
Palladino is quick to throw the compliment back to Mills, who, throughout our interview, seems to be looking at the big picture of the album and thinking from the perspective of a producer. While Mills is well known as a great guitarist, he often avoids being overtly guitaristic in his extremely prolific production work. His instrumental contributions are mostly understated throughout Notes with Attachments, but there are notable spots where his playing shines, as Palladino points out. The most obvious is the percussive breakout solo he takes on "Man from Molise." There, he's playing a Cuban tres, not a guitar, but that speaks to his instrumental role on the album. While Palladino has the low end on lock, Mills takes an open-eared approach, playing everything from djurkel to Coral electric sitar to guitar synth.
"When I was playing with Pino," Mills says, "I was really trying to watch him and be inspired by what he was playing and how he was playing."It's charming to hear each of these two giants of their instruments defer so strongly to the other's abilities. And it's no show. These guys both know how great the other is, and despite all the time they spend in the studio working on music, they remain excited by the process. While Palladino and Mills clearly love discovering new sounds and creating new tracks, it's also clear they just like to hang out and make music together.
Pino Palladino + Blake Mills + Sam Gendel - Man From Molise (Live)
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Is this the most affordable (and powerful) modeler around?
Very affordable way to get into digital modeling. Excellent crunch and high-gain tones.
Navigating many modes through limited controls means a bit of a learning curve for a pedal this small.
$179
IK Multimedia Tonex One
ikmultimedia.com
Resistance to digital amps might just be futile at this point. Many tunes you hear—and an increasing number of live gigs—feature a bit of faux-tube tone somewhere in the mix. But while the sound of pro-level modelers can be nearly indistinguishable from their analog counterparts in a mix, the feel and simplicity of a real amplifiers remain appealing and even indispensable to many players. That said, modelers that make usability, convenience, and price priorities can convince even die-hard tube users to see what’s on the other side of the fence. IK Multimedia’s TONEX ONE is one modeling device that might make the cut. It’s likely the smallest, most portable modeler out there. And at $179, it’s easily the most affordable.
Big Tones, Tiny Controls
The TONEX ONE isn’t designed to put a million different options at your feet, and that economy may be the unit’s strongest feature. It features several different modes, but the primary operating mode allows you to either switch between two different models, or simply use the unit as a stompbox. Each model can be an amp, an amp and cab, a pedal, or a pedal driving an amp and cab. Judging by how deep the online repository tone.net is for user-created presets, the options are nearly endless, which speaks to the already sizable user base. It’s a little strange to consider a modeler in a package this small with so few controls. There’s a large main knob that controls volume and gain (when you’re in ALT mode), and above that are three illuminated mini knobs that control the 3-band EQ, gate, compression, and reverb. You can also plug your headphones directly into the pedal, which makes it a dynamite silent practice amp.
My experience with modelers is that high-gain tones and clean tones are relatively easy to achieve and typically very good. After unboxing the TONEX ONE, I loaded up a slightly dirty Vox-style amp to evaluate the edge-of-breakup tones. I paired the pedal with humbuckers (with a coil split option), Stratocaster single coils, and P-90s in a T-style solidbody. With each one, the Vox-style amp was punchy and clear but could also range to very nice higher-gain sounds. Naturally, each version of a modeled amp offers different gain structures, so it pays to experiment. Combining the humbuckers in a PRS SE DGT with a few hot-rodded Marshall emulations and the growl offered tones nearly as good as those from much more expensive modelers. In a blind test, I’m not sure I could hear—or feel—much of a difference. As I explored further and fine-tuned things a bit more, the ToneX One felt more alive in my hand,s and sounded much less shrill in the top end than other digital solutions I’ve encountered.
One of the most obvious tone fixers in a modeler—and maybe one of the most underutilized—is the EQ section, and kudos are due to IK for placing those controls at the fore. Being able to adjust the most immediate tone-shaping options without having to dig through menus or touchscreens is a pleasure.
There are many possible uses for the TONEX ONE. It can serve as a high-quality direct solution on your pedalboard, a portable recording interface, and a plug-and-play practice solution when high volume is a no-go. One handy setup I tried was disabling the cabinet emulation in the pedal and then plugging into the effects return of a combo amp, in this case, a Fender Hot Rod Deluxe. I immediately imagined many backline amp headaches being a thing of the past. You can always plug directly into a flat-response cabinet or PA system too.
Because it has such a small footprint and streamlined controls, harnessing the unit’s full potential, and accessing all the different modes, takes a bit of effort. You can store 20 different presets within the pedal and assign them to any of the three active slots (two for dual mode and one for stomp mode). And although doing this on the fly is handy, I found it much easier to program the presets via the easy-to-use desktop editor.
The Verdict
TONEX ONE benefits from a rather singular focus and its biggest advantage is that it’s not shrouded in unnecessary layers of tweakable options. You can simply load up a base sound or two, drop it at the end of your pedalboard, and go.The included software allows you create your own models and makes swapping presets easy. I did find the multitude of modes, and their color-coded indicators, a bit confusing at times, but IK’s documentation was very clear and got me through any trouble spots. The TONEX ONE would serve well to those who want to explore digital modeling but still hold on to their analog pedalboards, and at $179 it’s a steal.
Beauty and sweet sonority elevate a simple-to-use, streamlined acoustic and vocal amplifier.
An EQ curve that trades accuracy for warmth. Easy-to-learn, simple-to-use controls. It’s pretty!
Still exhibits some classic acoustic-amplification problems, like brash, unforgiving midrange if you’re not careful.
$1,199
Taylor Circa 74
taylorguitars.com
Save for a few notable (usually expensive) exceptions, acoustic amplifiers are rarely beautiful in a way that matches the intrinsic loveliness of an acoustic flattop. I’ve certainly seen companies try—usually by using brown-colored vinyl to convey … earthiness? Don’t get me wrong, a lot of these amps sound great and even look okay. But the bar for aesthetics, in my admittedly snotty opinion, remains rather low. So, my hat’s off to Taylor for clearing that bar so decisively and with such style. The Circa 74 is, indeed, a pretty piece of work that’s forgiving to work with, ease to use, streamlined, and sharp.
Boxing Beyond Utility
Any discussion of trees or wood with Bob Taylor is a gas, and highly instructive. He loves the stuff and has dabbled before in amplifier designs that made wood an integral feature, rather than just trim. But the Circa 74 is more than just an aesthetic exercise. Because the Taylor gang started to think in a relatively unorthodox way about acoustic sound amplification—eschewing the notion that flat frequency response is the only path to attractive acoustic tone.
I completely get this. I kind of hate flat-response speakers. I hate nice monitors. We used to have a joke at a studio I frequented about a pair of monitors that often made us feel angry and agitated. Except that they really did. Flat sound can be flat-out exhausting and lame. What brings me happiness is listening to Lee “Scratch” Perry—loud—on a lazy Sunday on my secondhand ’70s Klipsch speakers. One kind of listening is like staring at a sun-dappled summer garden gone to riot with flowers. The other sometimes feels like a stale cheese sandwich delivered by robot.
The idea that live acoustic music—and all its best, earthy nuances—can be successfully communicated via a system that imparts its own color is naturally at odds with acoustic culture’s ethos of organic-ness, authenticity, and directness. But where does purity end and begin in an amplified acoustic signal? An undersaddle pickup isn’t made of wood. A PA with flat-response speakers didn’t grow in a forest. So why not build an amp with color—the kind of color that makes listening to music a pleasure and not a chore?
To some extent, that question became the design brief that drove the evolution of the Circa 74. Not coincidentally, the Circa 74 feels as effortless to use as a familiar old hi-fi. It has none of the little buttons for phase correction that make me anxious every time I see one. There’s two channels: one with an XLR/1/4" combo input, which serves as the vocal channel if you are a singer; another with a 1/4" input for your instrument. Each channel consists of just five controls—level, bass, middle, and treble EQ, and a reverb. An 11th chickenhead knob just beneath the jewel lamp governs the master output. That’s it, if you don’t include the Bluetooth pairing button and 1/8" jacks for auxiliary sound sources and headphones. Power, by the way, is rated at 150 watts. That pours forth through a 10" speaker.Pretty in Practice
I don’t want to get carried away with the experiential and aesthetic aspects of the Circa 74. It’s an amplifier with a job to do, after all. But I had fun setting it up—finding a visually harmonious place among a few old black-panel Fender amps and tweed cabinets, where it looked very much at home, and in many respects equally timeless.
Plugging in a vocal mic and getting a balance with my guitar happened in what felt like 60 seconds. Better still, the sound that came from the Circa 74, including an exceedingly croaky, flu-addled human voice, sounded natural and un-abrasive. The Circa 74 isn’t beyond needing an assist. Getting the most accurate picture of a J-45 with a dual-source pickup meant using both the treble and midrange in the lower third of their range. Anything brighter sounded brash. A darker, all-mahogany 00, however, preferred a scooped EQ profile with the treble well into the middle of its range. You still have to do the work of overcoming classic amplification problems like extra-present high mids and boxiness. But the fixes come fast, easily, and intuitively. The sound may not suggest listening to an audiophile copy of Abbey Road, as some discussions of the amp would lead you to expect. But there is a cohesiveness, particularly in the low midrange, that does give it the feel of something mixed, even produced, but still quite organic.
The Verdict
Taylor got one thing right: The aesthetic appeal of the Circa 74 has a way of compelling you to play and sing. Well, actually, they got a bunch of things right. The EQ is responsive and makes it easy to achieve a warm representation of your acoustic, no matter what its tone signature. It’s also genuinely attractive. It’s not perfectly accurate. Instead, it’s rich in low-mid resonance and responsive to treble-frequency tweaks—lending a glow not a million miles away from a soothing home stereo. I think that approach to acoustic amplification is as valid as the quest for transparency. I’m excited to see how that thinking evolves, and how Taylor responds to their discoveries.
The evolution of Electro-Harmonix’s very first effect yields a powerful boost and equalization machine at a rock-bottom price.
A handy and versatile preamp/booster that goes well beyond the average basic booster’s range. Powerful EQ section.
Can sound a little harsh at more extreme EQ ranges.
$129
Electro-Harmonix LPB-3
ehx.com
Descended from the first Electro-Harmonix pedal ever released, the LPB-1 Linear Power Booster, the new LPB-3 has come a long way from the simple, one-knob unit in a folded-metal enclosure that plugged straight into your amplifier. Now living in Electro-Harmonix’s compact Nano chassis, the LPB-3 Linear Power Booster and EQ boasts six control knobs, two switches, and more gain than ever before.
If 3 Were 6
With six times the controls found on the 1 and 2 versions (if you discount the original’s on/off slider switch,) the LPB-3’s control complement offers pre-gain, boost, mid freq, bass, treble, and mid knobs, with a center detent on the latter three so you can find the midpoint easily. A mini-toggle labeled “max” selects between 20 dB and 33 dB of maximum gain, and another labeled “Q” flips the resonance of the mid EQ between high and low. Obviously, this represents a significant expansion of the LPB’s capabilities.
More than just a booster with a passive tone, the LPB-3 boasts a genuine active EQ stage plus parametric midrange section, comprising the two knobs with shaded legends, mid freq and mid level. The gain stages have also been reimagined to include a pre-gain stage before the EQ, which enables up to 20 dB of input gain. The boost stage that follows the EQ is essentially a level control with gain to allow for up to 33 dB of gain through the LPB-3 when the “max” mini toggle is set to 33dB
A slider switch accessible inside the pedal selects between buffered or true bypass for the hard-latch footswitch. An AC adapter is included, which supplies 200mA of DC at 9.6 volts to the center-negative power input, and EHX specifies that nothing supplying less than 120mA or more than 12 volts should be used. There’s no space for an internal battery.
Power-Boosted
The LPB-3 reveals boatloads of range that betters many linear boosts on the market. There’s lots of tone-shaping power here. Uncolored boost is available when you want it, and the preamp gain knob colors and fattens your signal as you crank it up—even before you tap into the massive flexibility in the EQ stage.
“The preamp gain knob colors and fattens your signal as you crank it up—even before you tap into the massive flexibility in the EQ stage.”
I found the two mid controls work best when used judiciously, and my guitars and amps preferred subtle changes pretty close to the midpoint on each. However, there are still tremendous variations in your mid boost (or scoop, for that matter) within just 15 or 20 percent range in either direction from the center detent. Pushing the boost and pre-gain too far, particularly with the 33 dB setting engaged, can lead to some harsh sounds, but they are easy to avoid and might even be desirable for some users that like to work at more creative extremes.
The Verdict
The new LPB-3 has much, much more range than its predecessors, providing flexible preamp, boost, and overdrive sounds that can be reshaped in significant ways via the powerful EQ. It gives precise tone-tuning flexibility to sticklers that like to match a guitar and amp to a song in a very precise way, but also opens up more radical paths for experimentalists. That it does all this at a $129 price is beyond reasonable.
Electro-Harmonix Lpb-3 Linear Power Booster & Eq Effect Pedal Silver And Blue
Intermediate
Intermediate
• Learn classic turnarounds.
• Add depth and interest to common progressions.
• Stretch out harmonically with hip substitutions.
Get back to center in musical and ear-catching ways.
A turnaround chord progression has one mission: It allows the music to continue seamlessly back to the beginning of the form while reinforcing the key center in a musically interesting way. Consider the last four measures of a 12-bar blues in F, where the bare-bones harmony would be C7-Bb7-F7-F7 (one chord per measure). With no turn around in the last two measures, you would go back to the top of the form, landing on another F7. That’s a lot of F7, both at the end of the form, and then again in the first four bars of the blues. Without a turnaround, you run the risk of obscuring the form of the song. It would be like writing a novel without using paragraphs or punctuation.
The most common turnaround is the I-VI-ii-V chord progression, which can be applied to the end of the blues and is frequently used when playing jazz standards. Our first four turnarounds are based on this chord progression. Furthermore, by using substitutions and chord quality changes, you get more mileage out of the I-VI-ii-V without changing the basic functionality of the turnaround itself. The second group of four turnarounds features unique progressions that have been borrowed from songs or were created from a theoretical idea.
In each example, I added extensions and alterations to each chord and stayed away from the pure R-3-5-7 voicings. This will give each chord sequence more color and interesting voice leading. Each turnaround has a companion solo line that reflects the sound of the changes. Shell voicings (root, 3rd, 7th) are played underneath so that the line carries the sound of the written chord changes, making it easier to hear the sound of the extensions and alterations. All examples are in the key of C. Let’s hit it.
The first turnaround is the tried and true I-VI-ii-V progression, played as Cmaj7-A7-Dm7-G7. Ex. 1 begins with C6/9, to A7(#5), to Dm9, to G7(#5), and resolves to Cmaj7(#11). By using these extensions and alterations, I get a smoother, mostly chromatic melodic line at the top of the chord progression.
Ex. 2 shows one possible line that you can create. As for scale choices, I used C major pentatonic over C6/9, A whole tone for A7(#5), D Dorian for Dm9, G whole tone for G7(#5), and C Lydian for Cmaj7(#11) to get a more modern sound.
The next turnaround is the iii-VI-ii-V progression, played as Em7-A7-Dm7-G7 where the Em7 is substituted for Cmaj7. The more elaborate version in Ex. 3 shows Em9 to A7(#9)/C#, to Dm6/9, to G9/B, resolving to Cmaj7(add6). A common way to substitute chords is to use the diatonic chord that is a 3rd above the written chord. So, to sub out the I chord (Cmaj7) you would use the iii chord (Em7). By spelling Cmaj7 = C-E-G-B and Em7 = E-G-B-D, you can see that these two chords have three notes in common, and will sound similar over the fundamental bass note, C. The dominant 7ths are in first inversion, but serve the same function while having a more interesting bass line.
The line in Ex. 4 uses E Dorian over Em9, A half-whole diminished over A7(#9)/C#, D Dorian over Dm6/9, G Mixolydian over G9/B, and C major pentatonic over Cmaj7(add6). The chord qualities we deal with most are major 7, dominant 7, and minor 7. A quality change is just that… changing the quality of the written chord to another one. You could take a major 7 and change it to a dominant 7, or even a minor 7. Hence the III-VI-II-V turnaround, where the III and the VI have both been changed to a dominant 7, and the basic changes would be E7-A7-D7-G7.
See Ex. 5, where E7(b9) moves to A7(#11), to D7(#9) to G7(#5) to Cmaj9. My scale choices for the line in Ex. 6 are E half-whole diminished over E7(#9), A Lydian Dominant for A7(#11), D half-whole diminished for D7(#9), G whole tone for G7(#5), and C Ionian for Cmaj9.
Ex. 7 is last example in the I-VI-ii-V category. Here, the VI and V are replaced with their tritone substitutes. Specifically, A7 is replaced with Eb7, and G7 is replaced with Db7, and the basic progression becomes Cmaj7-Eb7-Dm7-Db7. Instead of altering the tritone subs, I used a suspended 4th sound that helped to achieve a diatonic, step-wise melody in the top voice of the chord progression.
The usual scales can be found an Ex. 8, where are use a C major pentatonic over C6/9, Eb Mixolydian over Eb7sus4, D Dorian over Dm11, Db Mixolydian over Db7sus4, and once again, C Lydian over Cmaj7(#11). You might notice that the shapes created by the two Mixolydian modes look eerily similar to minor pentatonic shapes. That is by design, since a Bb minor pentatonic contains the notes of an Eb7sus4 chord. Similarly, you would use an Ab minor pentatonic for Db7sus4.
The next four turnarounds are not based on the I-VI-ii-V chord progression, but have been adapted from other songs or theoretical ideas. Ex. 9 is called the “Backdoor” turnaround, and uses a iv-bVII-I chord progression, played as Fm7-Bb7-Cmaj7. In order to keep the two-bar phrase intact, a full measure of C precedes the actual turnaround. I was able to compose a descending whole-step melodic line in the top voice by using Cmaj13 and Cadd9/E in the first bar, Fm6 and Ab/Bb in the second bar, and then resolving to G/C. The slash chords have a more open sound, and are being used as substitutes for the original changes. They have the same function, and they share notes with their full 7th chord counterparts.
Creating the line in Ex. 10 is no more complicated than the other examples since the function of the chords determines which mode or scale to use. The first measure employs the C Ionian mode over the two Cmaj chord sounds. F Dorian is used over Fm6 in bar two. Since Ab/Bb is a substitute for Bb7, I used Bb Mixolydian. In the last measure, C Ionian is used over the top of G/C.
The progression in Ex. 11 is the called the “Lady Bird” turnaround because it is lifted verbatim from the Tadd Dameron song of the same name. It is a I-bIII-bVI-bII chord progression usually played as Cmaj7-Eb7-Abmaj7-Db7. Depending on the recording or the book that you check out, there are slight variations in the last chord but Db7 seems to be the most used. Dressing up this progression, I started with a different G/C voicing, to Eb9(#11), to Eb/Ab (subbing for Abmaj7), to Db9(#11), resolving to C(add#11). In this example, the slash chords are functioning as major seventh chords.
As a result, my scale choices for the line in Ex. 12 are C Ionian over G/C, Eb Lydian Dominant over Eb9(#11), Ab Ionian over Eb/Ab, Db Lydian Dominant over Db9(#11), and C Lydian over C(add#11).
The progression in Ex. 13 is called an “equal interval” turnaround, where the interval between the chords is the same in each measure. Here, the interval is a descending major 3rd that creates a I-bVI-IV-bII sequence, played as Cmaj7-Abmaj7-Fmaj7-Dbmaj7, and will resolve a half-step down to Cmaj7 at the top of the form. Since the interval structure and chord type is the same in both measures, it’s easy to plane sets of voicings up or down the neck. I chose to plane up the neck by using G/C to Abmaj13, then C/F to Dbmaj13, resolving on Cmaj7/E.
The line in Ex. 14 was composed by using the notes of the triad for the slash chord and the Lydian mode for the maj13 chords. For G/C, the notes of the G triad (G-B-D) were used to get an angular line that moves to Ab Lydian over Abmaj13. In the next measure, C/F is represented by the notes of the C triad (C-E-G) along with the root note, F. Db Lydian was used over Dbmaj13, finally resolving to C Ionian over Cmaj7/E. Since this chord progression is not considered “functional” and all the chord sounds are essentially the same, you could use Lydian over each chord as a way to tie the sound of the line together. So, use C Lydian, Ab Lydian, F Lydian, Db Lydian, resolving back to C Lydian.
The last example is the “Radiohead” turnaround since it is based off the chord progression from their song “Creep.” This would be a I-III-IV-iv progression, and played Cmaj7-E7-Fmaj7-Fm7. Dressing this one up, I use a couple of voicings that had an hourglass shape, where close intervals were in the middle of the stack.
In Ex. 15 C6/9 moves to E7(#5), then to Fmaj13, to Fm6 and resolving to G/C. Another potential name for the Fmaj13 would be Fmaj7(add6) since the note D is within the first octave. This chord would function the same way, regardless of which name you used.
Soloing over this progression in Ex. 16, I used the C major pentatonic over C6/9, E whole tone over E7(#5), F Lydian over Fmaj13, and F Dorian over Fm6. Again, for G/C, the notes of the G triad were used with the note E, the 3rd of a Cmaj7 chord.
The main thing to remember about the I-VI-ii-V turnaround is that it is very adaptable. If you learn how to use extensions and alterations, chord substitutions, and quality changes, you can create some fairly unique chord progressions. It may seem like there are many different turnarounds, but they’re really just an adaptation of the basic I-VI-ii-V progression.
Regarding other types of turnarounds, see if you can steal a short chord progression from a pop tune and make it work. Or, experiment with other types of intervals that would move the chord changes further apart, or even closer together. Could you create a turnaround that uses all minor seventh chords? There are plenty of crazy ideas out there to work with, and if it sounds good to you, use it!