November 2020 - Darn That Dream

[Dutchbopper]

Sometimes a very unsentimental reading of a ballad can "re-strange" the music for us and make us hear it from different angles, different perspectives. Somewhere on here someone posted a clip of "Misty" played by Larry Carlton and Tal Farlow, and oddly, Tal played no lines at all, just chord-melody improvisation, and Carlton played an over-driven strat and it was all at a faster temp than you'd expect. I thought it worked really well. I enjoyed it. Did it "honor the words" or some such? Nope. But then "Misty" was played quite some time before someone wrote words for it. I liked that performance, and I like your "Darn that Dream." I like mine too, though it's very elementary, to be sure.

Agreed Lawson.

Listen to this completely unsentimental version of "Body and Soul." It is completely devoid of the original emotion if you ask me. Tal does that all the time. Wonderfully unemotional and highly intellectual!

[lawson-stone]

Agreed Lawson.

Listen to this completely unsentimental version of "Body and Soul." It is completely devoid of the original emotion if you ask me. Tal does that all the time. Wonderfully unemotional and highly intellectual!

There is of course the passion of the mind, the response to ideas and insights that goes beyond mere sentimentality or "thinking about the lyrics." Tal drills down into the marrow of the music here. Some times it's certainly "not pretty" but then... parts of this song are not exactly pretty either!

[ragman1]

I think we should be pretty clear on some things. No one's talking about tawdry emotion or sentimentality. The forum is awash with advice from various posters about going back to the original song when presented with a new or unfamiliar tune. The point is that the words give meaning to the tune, they give context to it. I see nothing wrong with that, do you? Of course, being jazz, one can then take the tune and do what one likes with it. We understand that.

Then there's the difference between one's own personal, subjective emotions and feeling. By feeling I don't mean personal emotions. I mean feeling for the music, feeling for life, feeling for beauty, and so on. The two are as different as chalk and cheese.

On the Tony Rice thread, a poster commented below one of Rice's recordings:

Few people have the facility to play flawlessly at great speed AND with such feeling.

If you think the reference to feeling means he plays like a sissy or something, I can't help you. It doesn't mean that at all.

I'm sorry Lawson feels the the way he does. No one's trying to 'get inside his head' and all that stuff, certainly not me. I've no idea what he's thinking and feeling! How would I know? Nor does it interest me at all, none of my business. So I think we went to somewhere strange on that one.

What I said to him about his playing was very complimentary. I liked what he did. Any comments, as I explained before, were meant to compliment and augment his performance. You must take that or leave it. I can't be responsible for anyone misinterpreting what I'm talking about, especially after it was already explained.

Anyway, sorry if you're all having great objections to something. Like I said before, never my intention. And I think one should always play with feeling, don't you? Otherwise it's all bit arid. In my view, anyway.

[ragman1]

Agreed Lawson.

Listen to this completely unsentimental version of "Body and Soul." It is completely devoid of the original emotion if you ask me. Tal does that all the time. Wonderfully unemotional and highly intellectual!

Absolutely. I think there's great feeling there, a real understanding and depth to his playing. Will that do?

[lawson-stone]

I think we should be pretty clear on some things. No one's talking about tawdry emotion or sentimentality. The forum is awash with advice from various posters about going back to the original song when presented with a new or unfamiliar tune. The point is that the words give meaning to the tune, they give context to it. I see nothing wrong with that, do you? Of course, being jazz, one can then take the tune and do what one likes with it. We understand that.

Then there's the difference between one's own personal, subjective emotions and feeling. By feeling I don't mean personal emotions. I mean feeling for the music, feeling for life, feeling for beauty, and so on. The two are as different as chalk and cheese.

On the Tony Rice thread, a poster commented below one of Rice's recordings:



If you think the reference to feeling means he plays like a sissy or something, I can't help you. It doesn't mean that at all.

I'm sorry Lawson feels the the way he does. No one's trying to 'get inside his head' and all that stuff, certainly not me. I've no idea what he's thinking and feeling! How would I know? Nor does it interest me at all, none of my business. So I think we went to somewhere strange on that one.

What I said to him about his playing was very complimentary. I liked what he did. Any comments, as I explained before, were meant to compliment and augment his performance. You must take that or leave it. I can't be responsible for anyone misinterpreting what I'm talking about, especially after it was already explained.

Anyway, sorry if you're all having great objections to something. Like I said before, never my intention. And I think one should always play with feeling, don't you? Otherwise it's all bit arid. In my view, anyway.

No offense taken by me, I appreciated your comments. But I still don't know what you expect when you ask me to play it with feeling. I thought I was doing that. I felt I was getting free of the mechanics, sticking to a very modest/standard approach to chord melody, and letting the song happen as best I could. I love the tune, never having played it before this thread.

So like I said, i don't know what you want from my performance on that score.

[christianm77]

This is the mood of the original

[ragman1]

No offense taken by me, I appreciated your comments. But I still don't know what you expect when you ask me to play it with feeling. I thought I was doing that. I felt I was getting free of the mechanics, sticking to a very modest/standard approach to chord melody, and letting the song happen as best I could. I love the tune, never having played it before this thread.

So like I said, i don't know what you want from my performance on that score.

Hello, Lawson. God knows, I expect you were tired, that's all. It doesn't really matter. I hope you try it again. The brain kind of absorbs it all and what comes out comes out. I've done that so often. No one sees the amount of stuff I throw away!

Oh, happy new year, by the way. Personally, I'm waiting for Jan 20 when they finally get rid of that ghastly little man. No, really. Sorry!

[ragman1]

This is the mood of the original

Nightmare on swing! The mind boggles

[kris]

This is the mood of the original

The mood of the orginal is great.
Looks like optimistic version of the ballad.

[lawson-stone]

Hello, Lawson. God knows, I expect you were tired, that's all. It doesn't really matter. I hope you try it again. The brain kind of absorbs it all and what comes out comes out. I've done that so often. No one sees the amount of stuff I throw away!

Oh, happy new year, by the way. Personally, I'm waiting for Jan 20 when they finally get rid of that ghastly little man. No, really. Sorry!

Happy New Year also to you. This has been an interesting exchange, and I think it's livened this ongoing thread a bit too. Some months it's really slow, so I'm happy that the conversation has continued. On to whatever's next... wait... "All of Me" 'was next... onward to whatever's next AGAIN.

[ragman1]

He hasn't put it up yet but I think it'll be 'More Than You Know'. To be honest, I've already done it... quite nice :-)

[lawson-stone]

He hasn't put it up yet but I think it'll be 'More Than You Know'. To be honest, I've already done it... quite nice :-)

Beautiful ballad. Joe Pass has a gorgeous recording of that with a German big band and strings.


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[kris]

He hasn't put it up yet but I think it'll be 'More Than You Know'. To be honest, I've already done it... quite nice :-)

Is it your version with "jazz feeling"?...

[christianm77]

Here’s a very creative version of the song, with harmony as colourful and distinctive as the shirt:

For me Darn That Dream is one of those chord melodies that write themselves, like All The Things You Are and other tunes where there’s a lot of harmony in the melody. So
a lot of chord/melody arrangements tend to end up sharing a lot of DNA even where they don’t influence each other directly. I see a lot of shared stuff in Lawson and my versions of the tune for example.

A lot of contemporary players seem to be intent on finding a way out of this. You might also want to check out Lage Lund and Kurt Rosenwinkel’s versions for example.

Or you might think ‘if it ain’t broke’

[lawson-stone]

Here’s a very creative version of the song, with harmony as colourful and distinctive as the shirt:

For me Darn That Dream is one of those chord melodies that write themselves, like All The Things You Are and other tunes where there’s a lot of harmony in the melody. So
a lot of chord/melody arrangements tend to end up sharing a lot of DNA even where they don’t influence each other directly. I see a lot of shared stuff in Lawson and my versions of the tune for example.

A lot of contemporary players seem to be intent on finding a way out of this. You might also want to check out Lage Lund and Kurt Rosenwinkel’s versions for example.

Or you might think ‘if it ain’t broke’

I think this is a great insight. My own chord-melody approach came from studying, ignorantly, the old Mel Bay "Chord Melody System" 35 years ago, which basically just works on learning the harmonized scale. Then I used Steven Crowell's 4 books of arrangement, which are almost like a chord-melody "lick book" set up with standards. A great study, kind of Ted Greene in its general feel, but a very fruitful set of tunes to cut one's teeth on.

I need to work more on harmonic interest, more voice movement, decent fills, and some fresh "grips." The last 4-5 years I've mainly been trying to develop my non-existent line-playing, so actually I was a better solo chord-melody player 10 years ago than I am today. I guess that's why Joe Pass means a lot to me, his solo playing incorporates so many great lines and very solid voicings of chords as well.

[christianm77]

Yes, one thing with Joe is that he does a lot with quite standard materials... also the feel is amazing

But even without all those cool sounding books (none of which I’ve read, much less practiced) with DTD, you have the melody and put the bass under it and - well the middle voices slot in...

Which is great, especially for those new to CM, and there’s no doubt it works great!

but I’d be interested to see if I can come up with fresh things on it.

[ragman1]

Talking about Joe, I was meaning to post this but never did.

[ragman1]

All right, Lawson, here's a CM on this. It's not quite my thing, as you know. I mean, I know the chords, etc, so I'm just getting round it. It goes rubato to swing and back again, which is something, but there's nothing inventive about it. I don't study this genre enough. A proper electric guitar and decent sound would help. Who knows, one day

Oh, it's got lots and lots of feeling... not :-)

[christianm77]

This is what I managed to record today; compare to the other one I did four years ago above :-) searching for something on this tune

[ragman1]

Groovy overdrive, man :-)

[christianm77]

Haha, for some reason all my playing videos seem to distort on phone speakers at full volume. They sound much cleaner on laptop speakers...