“I’ve never heard a professional musician say, ‘I’m playing a circle of 4ths and 5ths,’” she continued. “They’ll just say, ‘It’s the cycle, Carol.’” Noting that “There’s only one cycle,” Carol played through the run of roots beginning on C, as shown in Ex. 1. The interval between any two consecutive notes is a perfect 4th up or a perfect 5th down—the same as the relationship between dominant and tonic chords. Carol stresses the importance of playing chord arpeggios through the cycle, naming the chords aloud as you go. At a brisk 170 BPM, Carol ripped through a series of major arpeggios, beginning the cycle on E as shown in Ex. 2. (Feel free to start at a more modest tempo.)
Ex. 3 shows how Carol demonstrated the cycle in practice playing through changes like those in Toots Thielemans’s “Bluesette,” which follows the cycle fairly strictly. “Most of the chords in standards go in cycles for a while. But you do have to watch for when they break a cycle and start a new one.” As an illustration, Carol walked through the changes to “All the Things You Are,” as shown in Ex. 4. When Db gives way to Dn at bar 5, Carol notes, “You’ve got to be able to hear it move up a fret when it’s starting a new cycle.”
For more of Carol’s explanation of the cycle, visit bassplayer.tv.
Carol Kaye On Teaching Women
“I teach both men and women, and I do teach them a little differently. With men I can always tell when they’ve had enough, because there’s a glaze that comes over their eyes. Most women are very smart, very sharp, and they get their reading and sense of groove going really good. What they need to do is not say, ‘Oops,’ when they start to make a mistake. I tell them, ‘Don’t say “oops.” Remember, this is not your identity— this is something you’re learning, so keep your mind on the music.’ Women are so used to being right that when we’re proven wrong, it’s like the world is crashing. Men, if they’re proven wrong, they just get up and have a beer, and everything’s all right with the world.
“Sometimes women think, ‘I’m a woman bass player or a woman guitar player.’ I tell them, don’t think ‘woman.’ A man isn’t thinking, ‘I’m a man guitar player’ or ‘male bass player.’ You’re a bass player; you’re a guitar player. The minute you put ‘woman’ into it, you put yourself at risk. I’ve given a lot of seminars, and sometimes women think I’m going to stand up there and talk about all kinds of crap that men do. No, no, no—I’ve had it good. The only thing I had to do was go play and play well. There are some men who are going to give you guff sometimes, but you just feed it back to them and make the rest of the guys laugh at ’em, and they’re not going to bother you anymore. So I try to teach women: Get yourself together, be professional, and you’re always going to work.”