Playing 12 tones and sound tonal

[ASATcat]

I find using all 12 tones and making melodic statements more attractive than going atonal such as Chris Crocco and Bryan Baker. as someone stated in another thread, those guys hardly play music for you and your date. hard to get in that romantic mood when all hell is breaking out on stage lol. That made alot of sense to me. that doesn't mean I don't dig those guys, I really do but I'd rather go to that show alone. lol.

So someone that plays all tones in a captivating and trackable way sounds great. in the jazz world it often seems all twelve tones is license to go out as far as you can. but to make it lyrical and "pretty" can be quite elusive to most.

Here is a 17 minute video of Steve Kimock playing with all twelve tones plus microtones and sounding so tonal it's hard to hear anything but beautiful tonal music. pretty clever if you ask me.
this tune is basically divided into two sections, the bright and cheerful, and the dark and mysterious. throughout both sections he plays freely with all the tones, however the bright side is harder to hear it, just do some transcribing and it will reveal itself. the dark side is far more noticable. at 11:15 he plays a great example of this. but it's peppered throughout the piece. the microtonality is also all over the place. whenever you see him doing cello vibrato he is ever so slightly pushing strings flat, a very hard thing to do. I have tried and just can't really do it, and on the fly like Kimock I just forget it, too hard. The only other players that I can readily think of is Bill Frisell and Ted Greene so he in good company. listen to around 15:00 when he gets rid of the pick and imitates a slide with this pushing action.
This piece is African hi-life feel. the drummer is Allen Hertz, who last time I looked was drumming for Scott Henderson. The bassist is Bobby Vega of Sly and the Family Stone and Tower of Power history. The second guitarist Ray White (who is an expert at staying out of the way) played with Frank Zappa, (singing on City of Tiny Lights etc).

Enough, here's the tune

ps, yes he is affilliated with the Dead and was the bands first choice when Jerry died, a spot he took for about two months before he ran for the hills and did his own thing. anyone that holds that against him, well too bad for them. Steve is a world class player, you should hear him play over Giant Steps with his lyrical ways. In fact he is more influenced by Coltrane of the later years, than Baker or Crocco ever were. you should have seen him cutting heads with Mike Stern, that was a sight to behold, Stern pales in the lyrical dept compared.

Also, Kimock was the "ears" behind the development of Mesa's Boogie Mk1, and the Two Rock amps that you hear in this video, the Bandmaster in the backline is a Two Rock prototype, he has another Two Rock he's playing through. He's the "Guru of tone" as many call him.
And he's been my number 1 teacher for the last 8 years, mostly through the internet but a couple times in person. I'm a student, no where near his level but I try, hehehe

all subjective points so take it all with a grain of salt 9whatever that means lol)

mostly enjoy

[Guitarzen]

Nice recording, thanks for introducing me to this guy, never heard him. I've used a 12 tone (tonal) soloing system for years. Nobody really taught me to do it, I just figured it out over the years and from listening to high level guys. You can hear many high level jazz players using all 12 tones in their soloing (Pat Metheny, & Pat Martino come to mind). I purposely try to always use 12 tones. If I don't, I feel like I'm making a mistake ;oP When relaxed and in the zone I find I can easily do it, but when I'm more self conscious, like on stage or recording I tend to all of a sudden become very diatonic lol. It basically just comes down to knowing your arpeggios so well that you can link any note of the current chord or the chord you are going to with chromatic notes. I also use other tricks like playing intervallic stuff or motifs chromatically. It's like if you set up a motif or any kind of pattern within the key, you can all of a sudden take it out of the key and it will work. It's the type of stuff that confuses the hell out of theory "prisoners" but is easy as hell to pull off, no theory knowledge needed ;o) IMO learning to improvise with 12 tones is the most important thing once you learn the basics like timing and scales & arps.

[JakeAcci]

I'm not sure what you mean. I didn't listen to all of the vid, but what I heard sounded completely diatonic with an occasional accidental.

Anyway, I think of jazz as having all 12 tones available at all times as long as you know how to use them. Anything can be part of the right harmonic sequence or just a chromatic approach. In any given key, each note has many possibilities for conventional functions.

Chromatic approaches are an obvious way to use any note you like but sound like you are right inside a basic harmony.

But Reg makes good points about harmonic implications...For example, F# over a Dm, one could imply E9 Eb9 Dm, or A13b9 to Dm, or side step Ebm7 to Dm7, etc. For each note there are moves like this.

A little wonky headed right now, I hope that post made sense.

[ASATcat]

Hey Jake it's not diatonic maybe a bit here and there but basically he's using three tnalities over a static chord. The first half has A as the root ver that he plays the A ma pent or hex for an in sound, F maj pent or hex fr a slightly out hit and C# maj pent or hex for an out sound. Just like Trane was doing in his later life, stuff that ended up in W.A. Mathieu's book "Harmonic Experience".
The fact that you basically heard diatonic tells me he just may have fooled your ears,, and then the whole microtonal bag where he plays certain tones in just intonation, pushing tones flat on the fly with his cello vibrato technique can be very subtle but that gives him this great tone that separates him from the pack. And it can sound so regular, like diatonic stuff, far from just diatonic. Julian Lage went to Ali aAcbar cllege in Marin Ca and has spent considerable time across from Steve as a student of microtonality and Steves slant on it. And those two cmmunicate this stuff when playing tgether, I know that because I knooow both of them. Julian grew up and Steve lived in Sonoma County just north of SF. And I was the fly on the wall
Perhaps you'll listen to the whole thing or not, it's all cool, but there is a level of sophistication happening that is pretty darn amazing for those that want to understand. Over at TGP he confuses the hell out of most people with his unusual approach to music.
Look up The Coltrane Matrix if you're interested at all. That guy was changing the game, Steve still is playing the game so to speak.

I'm not sure what you mean. I didn't listen to all of the vid, but what I heard sounded completely diatonic with an occasional accidental.

Anyway, I think of jazz as having all 12 tones available at all times as long as you know how to use them. Anything can be part of the right harmonic sequence or just a chromatic approach. In any given key, each note has many possibilities for conventional functions.

Chromatic approaches are an obvious way to use any note you like but sound like you are right inside a basic harmony.

But Reg makes good points about harmonic implications...For example, F# over a Dm, one could imply E9 Eb9 Dm, or A13b9 to Dm, or side step Ebm7 to Dm7, etc. For each note there are moves like this.

A little wonky headed right now, I hope that post made sense.

[JakeAcci]

All right, I gave a listen to the first four minutes, it is absolutely all A major. Can you give me a time in the clip where he does something that's not? I'm not gonna give it 15:00, sorry, but I'm interested to hear what you're talking about.

[ASATcat]

Jake, do what you want and listen the way you want, it's not a competition.
There are plenty of people from TGP that have followed Steve for years, perhaps they will pop in.
Hopefully they get what he's doing.

If I must spoonfeed it to you, something that satisfies your request,, go to 11:15, that one is obvious I hope.

But in the end, I really don't mind hoow you feel about him.

Back at ya bro,,,, same level of energy

[ASATcat]

Obviously there seems to be a misunderstanding as to what tonal means. It doesn't mean diatonic.
And perhaps I jumped on Jake a bit hard but I took it like I was being told I
Didn't know what I was talking about. Giving someone the benefit of the doubt would have been easy to accept.

Tonal vs atonal vs diatonic - three different things.

Bryan Baker is atonal, a blues player is tonal, neither are diatonic.

[JakeAcci]

Cool, I hear the stuff you're talking about at that time mark.

For the future, if you're going to post a vid as an example of a certain technique, point out where in the vid the technique is utilized if it's not in the beginning. I gave it four minutes and there was only A major, what was I supposed to think.

I'm not talking about spoon feeding, more of a basic courtesy. Before you gave me that 11:15 mark I jumped around a bit and only heard diatonic stuff for the most part, now I here some of the outside stuff you were talking about. You can't deny that he plays in diatonically for the bulk of it in the beginning...thought maybe you were on crack, or posted the wrong video or something.

[ASATcat]

Jake,,, as a courtesy, read the op, I did state 11:15 and some other interesting points. Face it,, you came out of the gate ready to set things straight and I felt that head on.
Fwiw,, the microtonality is all over the first four minutes, and a number of extra tones that you just didn't hear because it's there, why do you think he's using a cello vibrato, he uses it to push tone into just intonation. The guitar is roughly an equal temperment instrument, just like a piano. Some tones on the guitar need to go flat to be in tune with the harmonic series and that is what Kimock is doing on the fly.
The guitar by nature is totally out of tune, not the termination points of the strings but the frets are out. And guitar tuners tune to ET, not JI.
And that is why big fat jazz guitars sound far from a pedal steel guitar that does tune up, or lap or slide or fretless.
Listen to Ted Greene, their is a reason he played a tele with light strings and used that cello vibrato on big chords, to get in tune as much as he could, and the cello vibrato only gets the note in tune half the time, the other half is rebound.

[ASATcat]

Kimock has a little saying that Greene would have agreed with and Frisell most definately does agree with.

"Guitar players spend half their time tuning the guitar
And the other half playing out of tune"

Lol

[copernicus]

Reading your description I figured the video would sound something like this.

I think you need to have a fret-less instrument to achieve true micro tonality and not an approximation of it. By approximation I mean rather then just sliding over the notes you should be able to hold onto the integrity of the note so that they can be heard audibly and not just as a glissando. Here is the creator of the fretless guitar Erkan Ogur demonstrating this idea at 4:16 onwards.

Also I struggled to hear that he was playing outside of the chord changes as well. I don't think this is an opinion either, I think if I showed some of my teachers this they would struggle to hear as well.

Beautiful music regardless but I don't see how it is relevant to trash the music of Chris Crocco and Bryan Baker. I think you need to consider that they are playing music that is appropriate for them at that point in time. We should respect that I think.

Edit: I realise that 'trash' is a powerful word, but I think too often people dismiss other peoples music out of simply not enjoying their aesthetic choices and artistic vision rather then not enjoying music from a lack of unpredictability and using actual musical terms to describe why they don't like something. This idea comes out of professionalism as a listener which goes hand in hand with playing music.

[AmundLauritzen]

I love it! He's not really playing much outside at all, except from the occasional side-stepping. Sounds like substitutions going on when he does step out: intervallic constructs introducing the odd outside note for the most part. Towards the end it gets country-esque. I love how he stylistically developed his solo through different phases.
I don't really have any preconceptions as what a solo has to include language-wise as long as the soloist tells a story. This guy certainly succeeds at that. There weren't many boring moments in the performance if you ask me. Now, of course this is guitarists music so not everybody will listen closely enough to keep interest for seventeen and a half minutes. But blame that on the quick fix ADD generation. I personally love storytelling in music, and I'll listen as long as the musician keeps developing the story in an interesting way.

Thank you for introducing me to this musician. I'm going to check out more of his playing.

[docbop]

Listen to Ted Greene, their is a reason he played a tele with light strings and used that cello vibrato on big chords, to get in tune as much as he could, and the cello vibrato only gets the note in tune half the time, the other half is rebound.

Ted Greene used

13 16(or15) 22plain(or 24) 32(or 34) 42(or 44) 54(or 56)

.014 .017 .024plain (or .026) .036 .046 .058 (or .060 Single Wrap, not the much quieter double wrap. strings)

He later in his life Ted said his hands couldn't handle the heavy strings and he dropped down in gauge.

I wouldn't call those light string.

[JakeAcci]

Jake,,, as a courtesy, read the op, I did state 11:15 and some other interesting points. Face it,, you came out of the gate ready to set things straight and I felt that head on.
Fwiw,, the microtonality is all over the first four minutes, and a number of extra tones that you just didn't hear because it's there, why do you think he's using a cello vibrato, he uses it to push tone into just intonation. The guitar is roughly an equal temperment instrument, just like a piano. Some tones on the guitar need to go flat to be in tune with the harmonic series and that is what Kimock is doing on the fly.
The guitar by nature is totally out of tune, not the termination points of the strings but the frets are out. And guitar tuners tune to ET, not JI.
And that is why big fat jazz guitars sound far from a pedal steel guitar that does tune up, or lap or slide or fretless.
Listen to Ted Greene, their is a reason he played a tele with light strings and used that cello vibrato on big chords, to get in tune as much as he could, and the cello vibrato only gets the note in tune half the time, the other half is rebound.

I apologize that sometimes my disagreements can come off as authoritative, I have been accused of that before by other posters. It's a flaw in my delivery and I apologize. However, I stand by the content of my statements.

[ASATcat]

The microtonal adjustments are like 10 to 20 cents, that's the typical difference between the fretted offered et major 3rd and a ji major 3rd.
Steve also plays fretless and slide. Funny no one challenges this stuff over at TGP, prbably because it's Steve giving the discriptins. Peoople like David Torn (Splatt) and Tomo Fuhito andmany ooothersFuhitoand s many others get it so blame me for not giving this the detail it needs.
Also trash? My comment about Baker and Crocco not being the best first date music??? I dig those guys and I was the one that introoduced Crocco and the Garzone concept to that thread,, totally out of respect for Croccos talent. Fwiw, I don't trash people. I will defend them tho. Read up on Steves rap over at TGP or ask him personally, he's totally accessable and totally full of knowledge for the picking.
But please,, I don't trash pros.

Reading your description I figured the video would sound something like this.

I think you need to have a fret-less instrument to achieve true micro tonality and not an approximation of it. By approximation I mean rather then just sliding over the notes you should be able to hold onto the integrity of the note so that they can be heard audibly and not just as a glissando. Here is the creator of the fretless guitar Erkan Ogur demonstrating this idea at 4:16 onwards.

Also I struggled to hear that he was playing outside of the chord changes as well. I don't think this is an opinion either, I think if I showed some of my teachers this they would struggle to hear as well.

Beautiful music regardless but I don't see how it is relevant to trash the music of Chris Crocco and Bryan Baker. I think you need to consider that they are playing music that is appropriate for them at that point in time. We should respect that I think.

Edit: I realise that 'trash' is a powerful word, but I think too often people dismiss other peoples music out of simply not enjoying their aesthetic choices and artistic vision rather then not enjoying music from a lack of unpredictability and using actual musical terms to describe why they don't like something. This idea comes out of professionalism as a listener which goes hand in hand with playing music.

[ASATcat]

No sweat for me, I do the same thing. Now if Steve reads this then, well, he's used to it.

I apologize that sometimes my disagreements can come off as authoritative, I have been accused of that before by other posters. It's a flaw in my delivery and I apologize. However, I stand by the content of my statements.

[ASATcat]

Unfrtunately, my phone won't allow me to hear those videos but Steve is very aware of them.
Steve plays the line between 12et and JI. Et on a fretted guitar is a huge part of his bag just like most people. The microtonality on the fretted guitar is peppered here and there, for the effect. It's not a full on course. Go to Kimock site and then go to "Kimocks Korner" for a video on microtonality re the blues, his examples are with a slide and he talks of tones in terms of commas and ratios, interesting.

Reading your description I figured the video would sound something like this.

I think you need to have a fret-less instrument to achieve true micro tonality and not an approximation of it. By approximation I mean rather then just sliding over the notes you should be able to hold onto the integrity of the note so that they can be heard audibly and not just as a glissando. Here is the creator of the fretless guitar Erkan Ogur demonstrating this idea at 4:16 onwards.

Also I struggled to hear that he was playing outside of the chord changes as well. I don't think this is an opinion either, I think if I showed some of my teachers this they would struggle to hear as well.

Beautiful music regardless but I don't see how it is relevant to trash the music of Chris Crocco and Bryan Baker. I think you need to consider that they are playing music that is appropriate for them at that point in time. We should respect that I think.

Edit: I realise that 'trash' is a powerful word, but I think too often people dismiss other peoples music out of simply not enjoying their aesthetic choices and artistic vision rather then not enjoying music from a lack of unpredictability and using actual musical terms to describe why they don't like something. This idea comes out of professionalism as a listener which goes hand in hand with playing music.

[ASATcat]

Hey Amund, thanks for going easy on me, I feel you don't see me as a dizzy confused soul lol.
You brought up the term "out". What exactly is out? Steve is a tonal player that can use up to 31 tones to play tonally. Stuff that is cmmon in Indian and early South African music. But the thing is,, he's a R&R guitarist, he doesn't shy away from that fact. And he can play what sounds very jazzy but from a tonal place, not 12 tone serial row playing. One foot in, one foot elsewhere "out?" If that term works.
Again many answers to all this are in "Harmonic Experience".
If you want to get into him more, he has around 10,000 hrs of free live shows.
Right now I must leave t give a lesson on Landslide by Fleetwoood Mac lol.

I love it! He's not really playing much outside at all, except from the occasional side-stepping. Sounds like substitutions going on when he does step out: intervallic constructs introducing the odd outside note for the most part. Towards the end it gets country-esque. I love how he stylistically developed his solo through different phases.
I don't really have any preconceptions as what a solo has to include language-wise as long as the soloist tells a story. This guy certainly succeeds at that. There weren't many boring moments in the performance if you ask me. Now, of course this is guitarists music so not everybody will listen closely enough to keep interest for seventeen and a half minutes. But blame that on the quick fix ADD generation. I personally love storytelling in music, and I'll listen as long as the musician keeps developing the story in an interesting way.

Thank you for introducing me to this musician. I'm going to check out more of his playing.

[ecj]

There's some really nice playing in the OP's vid, but I have to wonder if it's fair to describe anything he's doing as "microtonal". If "microtonal" is just about slight bends and pitch manipulation, then aren't all instrumentalists who use vibrato playing "microtonal"?

When I think of stepping outside the even tempered system, I think of things like using the natural 3rd, or actually treating semi-tones like notes with full harmonic weight, not just skipping steps between the 12 tones of the Western pitch collection.

[ASATcat]

Here's Kimock playing fretless and only a minute long, to the point =)

Folks, I find myself in an awkward position.
I am just not qualified to be Kimocks spokesperson. Nor did I ever want that job.
Mstly I wanted to share and perhaps talk about the Coltrane matrix and things I understand enough. Kimock is beyond me, but I sure dig his thing.
I've suggested researching TGP for his raps and also his websight.
But I'm just not capable of speaking for him. I would have much mored sucess talking aboout Wes and Martino.
At least I'm being honest and humble =)

Hope you all like that fretless clip.

I don't want the thread to die, I just want off the hot seat.

[Vladan]

All right, I gave a listen to the first four minutes, it is absolutely all A major. Can you give me a time in the clip where he does something that's not? I'm not gonna give it 15:00, sorry, but I'm interested to hear what you're talking about.

OP being ASATcat, I'd not hold my breath for straight and meaningfull answer. That's why I won't pull back my like forour post, eventhough I clicked on it by accident, instead of "quote button".

[JakeAcci]

ASATcat, it's not Kimock's playing that's being questioned, it's your use of terminology. If we're going to talk about atonality or 12 tone playing (or microtonal,) it's a more useful discussion if we're all on the same page about what we're really talking about. Nobody is dissing Kimock, they/we are disagreeing with your assessments/terminology.

[Vladan]

With vibrato on guitar, You can't push something to "flat". It's always pushed to sharp from where it started.

If you mean bend, to next half step, or step, but end a little flat, I'll stand to everybody does that, that's one of the coolest sounds one encounter while playing guitar, and it happens very early in instrument exploration.

Idon't know where you collected all the lingo you use in diatribe posts, but it makes no sense, to me. That player by the way is pretty awessome, but not for reasons you described, although, it may be fancy to say "microtonal cello vibrato to flat" instead of "slide to emulate non tempered native instrument", and so on, and off, again.

[JakeAcci]

Vladan, you can pull the string flat by pulling it towards the fret. Takes a little getting used to.

[Vladan]

Ok, my mistake, sorry.
Could you please point me to desription of technique, I don't get it this way, really?

Like, if I'm fretting G, if I pull back toward fret for Gb, it'll go flat? Is it like, if correct tone is achived with certain ammount of pressure, I could just release a bit, without loosing the note, and it'll become flat?

I have strong disbelief in "cello vibrato" on guitar. Guitar being fretted instrument, I believe it's always the same note btw same 2 frets, and "that vibrato" is actually achieved by varying the pressure. That variation in pressure is maybe easiest achieved by sliding the finger back and forth btw 2 frets, but is nothing like vibrato on nonfretted instruments like cello, where it's achieved by varying the length of a string.

Are we talking about the same effect?