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I haven't read the entire thread, but how are you going to play over a tune like Dolphin Dance at the jam session with only dominant and tonic resolution?
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05-28-2015 07:26 AM
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05-28-2015, 09:13 AM #202destinytot GuestSure - but why might one wish to do that? What might be gained from pointing out thatplaying a phrase with a guitar is NOT speech? It seems to me that much might be lost by pointing that out.
Originally Posted by targuit
Academics argue that music codifies emotion. Benson has by-passed gate-keepers, guardians and custodians of culture by elaborating a code of his own. I don't believe anyone wants to stifle or silence that singular voice, but I believe some sneer at it's significance.
Benson's approach communicates abstractions - directly, and across social divides. It's not speech, but it's a language. And, as Dizzy reportedly told Phil Woods, "If you can hear it, it's yours."
I can hear it - and I'm on this thread to learn to understand it and apply it.
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Agreed. Love to hear Albert play. I used to listen to a jazz station that had a 'blues hour' at 4 AM. It often included Albert's "Snowed In." Here, his guitar makes the sounds of a guy walking on ice, scraping ice off a windshield, putting a key in a door, patting the accelerator, cold wind blowing, and (slowly) cranking a cold truck motor. Good stuff. Originally Posted by grahambop
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The analogy of talking and playing a phrase on the guitar is understood and is fine, but when you consider what is communicated by speech versus music, I think there are unique attributes to music. For example, I think poetry is a better analogy than merely talking. Music communicates emotions through the interplay of intervals, polyphony, rhythm, tempo, key.... Poetry, which is a kind of refinement of speech, communicates in a similar manner.
True, not all humans can create good poetry, but likewise not all musicians are poets either. Rarely will random notes played by an inexpert musician will communicate with the force of a talented and experienced player.
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See above ;-) Originally Posted by fritz jones
Basically, you can't.
(That said some sections of the tune lend themselves to this approach.)
I'm not looking for world-conquering sets of rules that cover all contingencies. I'm happy to have a patchwork withe some blurred edges. At the moment my mental picture of how to choose pitches in jazz looks like this -
*There is the harmonic thing (T/D etc)
*For everything else we do modes.
*If modes are too hard we do triads, or tetrachords.
It's funny that there are tunes like Yes or No that demand this approach :-)
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Well they adopt the patronising tone don't they - ah well Benson is amazing BUT .... Originally Posted by destinytot
But what? :-)
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Benson tells the story in an interview of Miles Davis coming up to him to ask him point blank "George, what you thinking about when you playing? Even I couldn't play it". Can you imagine that? LOL.
He was referring to a transcriber he got to transcribe George. Benson laughed and said Miles I should be asking you.
Imagine that, one of the greatest trumpet players asking GB how he functioned... That's gotta tell you something about GB's level, he was way ahead and still remains to this day. In traditional bop, I've heard many a great player, but no one else but George has that baw raggedy/knock you out in the street feel that he does. I think a lot of it besides the harmonic sophistication is his amazing sense of rhythm and how he picks, staccato most of the time, avoiding slurs for the most part.
Some of these lines on Straight No Chaser are just unbelievable: the out lines + rhythmic execution + cohesiveness of everything. Kornel is a very good player, but the contrast is just amazing. Note closely how George has more of the strong notes in his lines, so aesthetically much more pleasing to the ear.
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Someone gifted me an original book of poetry today by coincidence to this discussion regarding the analogy of music to language.
I have read just the first poem in this book, and I have to reiterate that the language of poetry is a refinement not only of plain speech, but is also like a gem with glittering facets - a work of art beyond the commonplace, like music is greater than just making noise on an instrument. Word music.Last edited by targuit; 05-28-2015 at 07:01 PM.
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Ah but was Miles the greatest jazz trumpeter or - instead - one of the greatest jazz musicians - I would say the latter not the former? Whole new threads await..... Anyway I digress. Originally Posted by Breezin78
Back to the the central point - George Benson! OMG!!!! (Will watch when I have a chance...)Last edited by christianm77; 05-28-2015 at 05:06 PM.
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Originally Posted by Breezin78
Fantastic. There is just no BS is Bensons playing. Its all from the heart and just makes you feel great inside. No surface tricks. Pure depth. It makes me want to get up and dance! And listen to his comping...following right along and feeding the soloist ideas!
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You can easily just look at all chords as tonic if you like, and just add Dom ideas where you hear them. Modulations are many times just that, like in many modal tunes. Tonic areas moving around, or even just changing their color, like c major to c minor. It pretty much always works. Originally Posted by christianm77
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I transcribed a few of his lines from Billie's bounce (Which is basically a blues as below)..
F - Bb - F - F
Bb - Bdim-F- D7
Am/D7- Gm/C7- F-C7
One technique he employees to get those angular sounds is that he uses tritone subs quite a bit to get a great outside sound and in a unique way.
So on the D7 and Am7/D7 - Benson used the Ab triad (Which is the tritone of D7) and also the Db triad and back to Ab triad. He also approaches the 3rd of Ab from 1/2 note below...which is a technique used while using the tritone triads a lot.
The lick I'm talking about appears in the 3'rd cycle of Benson's solo (The 1st once the band kicks in with walkin' bass and drums swingin')..
This needs to be played very smooth with great time, on the right measures...for a beautiful outside sound..
You can build on this tritone idea (Using Ab triads or Db triads) to create your own licks on the D7 chords..
Don't stay on Db too long, use it for building/passing, before moving back to Ab and then to the next chord (Gm/C7)
Benson wasn't just makin' cool sounds - the concepts are all rooted in jazz theory, and he definitely knew them.
Enjoy -
Ash
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05-29-2015, 09:29 AM #213destinytot Guest
GB on the sign of a great artist: "His instrument's talking to me."
YouTube doesn't allow me to access the video, but there's a snippet here https://www.facebook.com/SkyArtsHD/v...3/?pnref=story
Last edited by destinytot; 05-29-2015 at 09:37 AM. Reason: GB quote
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Fritz The tonic/dominant approach isn't just playing a tri tone and resolving it. It can simply become loud to soft...all your doing is creating a type of flow or motion to what your playing. You can even think of this concept as just a rhythmic approach. Two part approach to playing, your just creating motion or flow, movement.
We we all somewhat understand maj/min functional harmony, where dominant chords want to go to or resolve to tonic chord..... V - I. So you can literlely add a V7 chord anytime, anywhere and create a micro dominant tonic approach. If you checked out my casual version of dolphin dance earlier in thread.... I was using just that approach... Simple melodic licks imply a V chord, I was and use V7 chord licks all the time...I just add the V7 chords and they approach and can approach any chord on any tune in a Micro application
you create smaller or micro Dominant - Tonic versions of what this thread is basically about.
Were talking about a very basic type of harmonic movement, which is really just a method of creating movement. We then use this movement as a tool while we're creating our improv
That's the basic reference.... Now you start creating relationships, right, use a sub v instead of the V chord, use a IV chord, a bVII7 etc... Ther are unlimited possibilities, so then you can develop those relationships and on and on, that what Jazz is about, the possibilities.
If you didn't see my vid of Dolpnin Dance, check it out and try and hear and understand it with this this approach. I've been out of town and won't get back until Monday... I'll try and post some examples, slow example of different versions of the dominant tonic approach using other harmonic versions .
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Just came across this Emily Remler quote from her instructional video
"I've got specific melodies that I'm doing... what you have to do now is write out, about 10 of your own, special, private melodies/licks, whatever you want to call them, to fall back on when you're not improvising. As I said before in my earlier take, I don't think anyone improvises 100% of the time, it's impossible. I think Wes probably improvised maybe 30% of the time and John Coltrane, you know. The rest of us are doing a lot of things by rote, what we've done before, what we've heard before, there's a lot of things we need to fall back on to fill in space."
You guys agree with her?
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I think there's a lot to that approach and I find it heartening that Emily thought so too. Originally Posted by Breezin78
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Phish? Originally Posted by christianm77
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YES. And I'm not just saying that because I think the world of her!;-) Originally Posted by Breezin78
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Tonic - Dominant principle must be correct, because that is the only real principle in harmonizing melodies. All other are derived from it.
Any tune, equal to any melody, equal to any string of notes, as long as in the same key, can be harmonized by using not more than 2 chords. Tonic and Dominant.
So, (tonic + dominant)/ tonality must do the trick, there's no way not to.
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Quite. Originally Posted by Vladan
Although the presence of a chromatic note requires the use of a chromatic chord of some kind (the simplest traditional approach is simply to use a dim7, right?)
This works pretty well.
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On the subject of Benson, I remembered he'd played on one of Miles Davis' albums so I dug it out again to listen. It was on the Wayne Shorter tune 'Paraphernalia' on 'Miles in the Sky'.
Benson plays a very short solo, quite tentative at first. It's actually kind of annoying because it sounds like Benson was just getting warmed up when Miles brings the band back in and that's the end of that!
Perhaps Miles decided Benson wasn't giving him the right kind of guitar sound? It wasn't long after that he started to use McLaughlin and more of the 'rock guitar' approach.
I've just got Benson's autobiography so I expect there's something in there about it (I think there is a chapter about Miles).
Bit of a missed opportunity though if you ask me!
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Yeah, I always felt that. Like you say Miles wanted a rock sound. Knowing Miles none of this would have been explained before the session either :-) Originally Posted by grahambop
Didn't he record with Joe Beck as well?
McLaughlin was a good balance of jazz ears and rock vocab.
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The way I understand it, Miles loved Jimi Hendrix and was looking for a way to bring jazz into stadium venues. In some ways maybe it was a business goal? He realized that rock sounds were accessing huge crowds and wanted to move out of the intimate jazz setting into arena rock. Originally Posted by grahambop
He used to yell at his guitarists to, "Play like Jimi!" from what I've heard. Unfortunately for him, no one can play like Jimi
When you consider Miles' career, you can kind of see why he wasn't hung up on continuing to play "jazz". He'd already invented three new genres of it and was looking for something else. It is too bad that he didn't end up being a part of the creation of smooth jazz along with Benson, et al. That would've been something to hear.
And, ironically, Benson ended up being a much bigger star than any of his rock guitarists. Also, perhaps ironically, Michael Buble and Diana Krall are doing fine playing stadiums.
If you want a big crowd, get a singer.
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Yes, I think that was even worse. It's on 'Circle in the Round' or one of those similar compilations. Originally Posted by christianm77
Beck just plays this kind of oscillating trill thing on 2 notes for the whole track! Like a kind of background drone.
Just read an amusing story about Miles. Once he flew all the way to Mexico just to hear Joe Zawinul play the electric piano with Cannonball Adderley's group (this was at the time of 'Mercy Mercy Mercy'). Miles just wanted to hear what an electric piano sounded like.
Unfortunately there was a power cut in Mexico that night so he never heard it!
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Here's a better example of Benson with Miles ('Side Car' from 'Circle in the Round'). You have to go to 5 mins 0 secs to hear 'Part 2' which is where Benson joined in. This has to be one of the more way-out things Benson has ever done.
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