George Benson - The first chord is a C with a flat five over a D9

[christianm77]

Yeah, the D/C does have the Lydian/Lydian dominant function as well, of course. That does work nicely on the C7#11. Melodic minor again, I guess....

[vhollund]

The chord i think Benson talks about that the piano plays :
X 3 4 5 5 X

"Nine on top" ^^

Not really melodic minor no
Just D mixolydians 7th mode

If it was it would not be written as D9

[jordanklemons]

Anyone explored polychords with the freeze pedal? I've not done much work on it, but that would seem a logical thing to have a go at.

Yeah I've never messed with that freeze pedal. There's a great video of Rosenwinkel on youtube playing Stella as a solo performance and he gets a ton of mileage out of that thing...as a performance piece obviously...not just as a practice tool. Though it's obvious he's put in a lot of time in the shed with it. If all I have is my guitar, I just use my loop pedal. Probably not as good as the freeze pedal. I think Kurt's was "the hog"?? Or something.

Though neither of them will be as good as just sitting at the piano. I'm terrible at it, and have zero technique. But when it comes to working on ear training or exploring new sounds (especially these 'polychords')...it doesn't get better than the piano to me. I always try and start there just to open my ears and get them inside a sound...and then work my way onto the guitar...sometimes with a loop pedal. Sometimes I'll sit at the piano with my guitar in lap, play a chord on the piano with the sustain pedal down, and then try out the ideas on the guitar while the piano is ringing. That might be one of my favorite practice tools. Just gives a very realistic view of how things will sound musically to me. Especially for situations when I'm working with a piano player. Which these days is a lot more often than it used to be.

[Reg]

The chord i think Benson talks about that the piano plays :
X 3 4 5 5 X

"Nine on top" ^^

Not really melodic minor no
Just D mixolydians 7th mode

If it was it would not be written as D9

Who knows, right... Notation then as compared to now has changes....D9 can and does imply #11 or Melodic minor on many tunes, even though it's not spelled out.

It seems it was really just GB making reference to Picking up some comping tips from Freddie Gambrell.
I've seen it as simple as.... play a C with a b5 then a D9... so could be as simple as Gmaj diatonic harmony...

Cmaj with a b5 would be 4th degree of Gmaj and the D9 would just be the V chord... but I would have thought GB's ears at the time would have already have that down.

Using #11 on a dominant chord... pulling harmony from Melodic minor.... D9#11 and modal interchange concepts, b5 or #11 on Cmaj etc... might have been something new to GB's ears. But maybe it was as simple as voicings, although at the time melodic minor harmonies were being developed into the language.

When you say 7th mode of Dmixo. are you implying modal characteristics of Dmixo. or just 7th degree of Dmixo, like a voicing of D9 with C in bass...

[jordanklemons]

Hey Marinsmarcos...have you read the whole book yet? I'm dying to know what lessons he learned from Jean-Luc Ponty. He mentions that the lessons he learned from Freddie were almost as crucial to his development as them. I don't know about anyone else, but I'm super curious to know what they were.

I think it's important to keep in mind that, while we're all going back and forth mostly talking about theory/harmony/etc here...that we are talking about George Benson. THE George Benson. One of the greatest guitar players to ever hit this planet. The assumption that this is some simple answer that most of us just get no problem yet was somehow completely baffling to him is probably best seen and remembered through the lens that...WE'RE TALKING ABOUT GEORGE BENSON! hahahaha. If this idea were just a simple thing, like inversions or basic diatonic modal harmony or something...my guess is that Benson would have had that stuff figured out by the time he was gigging. But not only does he NOT get this stuff already by the time he's gigging professionally...it was clearly a huge revelatory moment for him. We know this because Freddie stopped mid tune to explain it to George in front of a paying audience! Hahaha...and instead of George getting pissed about it, he watched Freddie and couldn't get over how cool it was. And then he says he couldn't sleep for 2 nights...he was so overwhelmed by how hip this stuff was that he stayed up 2 nights in a row and couldn't stop playing and exploring the "whole new world" that Freddie had opened up for him. He even threatened to beat his neighbor because he was so inspired that he didn't want to stop exploring and practicing! hahahaha
Man...that's some revalatory $#!t!!! Hahaha

And he continues to drop clues that it really was THAT huge by pointing out that even killin' players like Jack McDuff weren't hip to this stuff. And by the very fact that he's talking about it in his biography! It must have been HUGE for him to actually think it was worth printing in his biography. And for saying that, these painful lessons were almost as crucial to his development as those from JLP...which is why I'm dying to know what THOSE lessons were.

As far as #11s and b5s being something new to Benson's ears that he didn't know about and couldn't hear or utilize yet...I suppose that could be possible. But Monk released "Genius of Modern Music Volume 1" when Benson was about 4 years old...and Bird and Dizzy both had recordings out around (and possibly before) that point to. So the historical context of this, to me, implies that the bebop vocabulary was already pretty well defined by the time this story happened. Hence George talking about Freddie and the other cats that new this stuff as the "true bebop cats" compared to the blues and soul guys he new and played with also.

Marinsmarcos...any idea on those JLP lessons he learned???

[Reg]

I was checkin this out, some cool info...GB talks about... again different voicings and Double Diminished that Jean-Luc showed him
http://amhistory.si.edu/jazz/Benson-George/Benson_George_Transcript.pdf