Ben Monder "Emily": What is happening here?!

[Blackguard53]

I've been obsessed with Ben Monders version of Emily for some years now, along with just generally being a huge fan of all that he does.

I have a background in music theory and jazz and can describe most things as I hear it in a technical sense, but I'm having a hard time with this one. This thread is inspired by the recent "Counterpoint Skeletons" thread, as I think what Ben's doing here could relate, except that the lower moving voices under the melody are not attached to a more rigid and common scale found in a Bach piece, more relating his counterpoint to a freemoving tonal center. Advanced or synthetic counterpoint?

I was hoping someone with more theory knowledge than I could accurately tell me what he's doing, so I can describe it better and then attempt to incorporate it myself. It is also the most deceptively difficult thing I've ever heard played on one guitar without overdubs. Its one guitar throughout the whole track without any overdubs. Ive attached him playing the intro live, and the full track because it's so good if you have the time to listen to it.

Live version:

Track:

[starjasmine]

Sounds to me like there's a lot of non-functional reharmonization underpinning a very diatonic melody; in a word, polytonality. It's kind of like a band where the melody is very diatonic but the keyboard player is dropping in a lot of reharmonizations while the bassist is just running along freely. If you wanted to put in the effort to analyze everything BUT the melody as one "idea" I'm sure it would make sense. If you then analyze the melody against THAT, you might find that a chord note in the melody key is actually a non-chord tone (appogiatura, etc.) in the (temporary) harmony key. Your ear "knits all of this together" anyway because every "voice" (roughly the melody, the bass, and the rest) has strong voice leading within its own key. Ain't no arguing with a walking bass line... even if it may occasionally represent an "excursion" from the key(s) that the other parts are implying.

That's my story, and I'm stickin' to it

[Cunamara]

Heavily influenced by Mick Goodrick, and studying Mick's published works will reveal a lot of where this comes from.

[Christian Miller]

Urgh tabs! (Jk)

People use the term counterpoint in jazz normally to refer to texture - so in the case of this we have a two part counterpoint texture with an cantus firmus (ie the melody) in the top voice active lower part which is quite unusual in jazz guitar.

Counterpoint in the sense that I used it to refer to in my counterpoint skeletons is more like ‘harmony’ in the sense that this is basic template that you can embellish; but with more of an emphasis on the melodic lines that go together traditionally. These skeletons are commonplace in tonal music and represent the ‘butter notes’ (cycle 4 3rds and 7ths being an obvious example)

you can play homophonic (chorale style), arpeggiated (prelude style), melody/accomp or imitative/polyphonic textures (as Ben does here) but the harmony can be what you want - common practice, chord scale, free chromatic, Barry harris, whatever. It’s kind of a separate variable.

Obviously in this case the upper voice is fixed with the bottom line ‘free’ (in the sense of Fux, free counterpoint, not necessarily freely improvised). Without sitting down and analysing what Ben is doing I can’t say how his making his pitch choices but I notice some motifs from the melody in the free line.

Aside from the Mick Goodrick material, one thing I’m reminded of is that you can construct a modern set of counterpoint rules that treat, for example, the 2nd and 7th like the 3rd and 6th in trad counterpoint and vice versa. I haven’t done this lol, and I’m not saying that’s how Ben is thinking of it. But it’s a direction.

Being more familiar with the way the VLA’s crunch through chord scales, I was interested that as Jimmy blue note also points out that there were aspects of Mick’s practice that were pretty chromatic - for instance harmonising melody notes while cycling chord inversions with fixed chord types (eg major seventh). Maybe there’s some similar ideas here. I’d need to sit down and analyse.

TL;DR I wouldn’t expect what Ben is doing to have much to do with my counterpoint skeletons- but I would expect he’s embellishing an underlying skeleton based on something else like a chromatic voice leading cycle/reharm or something.

[AllanAllen]

You could always try emailing and asking him directly.

CONTACT

It's a beautiful song.

[Blackguard53]

You could always try emailing and asking him directly.

CONTACT

It's a beautiful song.

He has replied in the past, a friend of mine even got a signed CD from Ben for me as a parting gift. I was more interested in seeing what the forumites think, I have asked several Doctorate level musicians I've worked with and they've all had different answers based on their educational background.

[Jimmy blue note]

Heavily influenced by Mick Goodrick, and studying Mick's published works will reveal a lot of where this comes from.

Ben is an uncanny synthesis of so many functional and non functional harmonic guidelines, all of which he has incredible mastery of. That being said, I attended a solo concert of his, which included original compositions and his readings of standards like Emily. Afterwords he came to me, knowing that I've worked on the Almanacs and with Mick a lot. Ben said "What'd you think of that piece? It's based on Mick's voice leading." and I didn't know what to say. Not because I don't know the things he was talking about, but because he had integrated it SO deeply into his own language that it was unrecognizable from the original forms from which he'd based them.
Ben is the one about whom Mick said "That's why I came up with this stuff."
I might go as far as to say that in there is no one guiding principle in his use of counterpoint here, but like choosing more than one chord voicing, Ben has a number of harmonic guidelines, functional and non functional that he employs throughout Emily. There are many ways to harmonize a moving descending bass line. I hear several in this arrangement.