Lydian concept on "Kind Of Blue?"

[Hugo Gainly]

better

- explain?

It's kind of an emphasis thing...

- If you need a specific scale/mode to enable you emphasise notes you aren't listening to what you are doing

So...the notes in a scale provide a palette to be used by a musician to achieve an artistic result. How you use them is up to you to decide.

[Christian Miller]

- explain?

- If you need a specific scale/mode to enable you emphasise notes you aren't listening to what you are doing

So...the notes in a scale provide a palette to be used by a musician to achieve an artistic result. How you use them is up to you to decide.

This is a concept I got from Adam Rogers. It’s the way he views things.

I was skeptical too, and equally purist about it, but in fact it does make a difference.


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[GuyBoden]

When you're playing, there comes a time when you need to stop playing guitar and play music instead.

[Christian Miller]

And sometime the secret is in knowing when to stop pretending to be a musical brain in a jar and just play the bloody guitar like a filthy strummer.

All things in moderation….

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[pauln]

I guess I didn't put that very well. What I meant to say was: assuming we divide by the 12 semitones so that each is 12th-root-of-two times the frequency of its predecessor, then we get the property that the octave is exactly double the frequency of the root. For the fifth, we get 12-root-of-2 to the power 7 (7 semitones between the fifth and the root). This gives approximately 1.5, meaning that the second octave of the fifth has *approximately* the same frequency as the third octave of the root. Similarly, the frequency of the third is given as 12-root-of-2 to the power 4, which is roughly 1.25. This means that the fourth octave of the third is approximately the same frequency as the fifth octave of the root. These correspondences between higher harmonics of the root and its intervals may account for the fact that these intervals sound consonant. However, these correspondences are only approximate, and depend on how you choose to divide up the octave.

All that math model fails when you span a few octaves; the perceived pitches diverge from the numerical frequencies. Simply doubling frequencies a couple of times results in a very flat pitch perception, and halving frequencies results in sharp pitch perception.

It only takes a few seconds playing with an audio oscillator to notice the discrepancy...

Online Tone Generator - Free, Simple and Easy to Use

Enter 500, press play, select sine wave, adjust volume
While that is playing, enter 1000 and press play
While that is playing enter 2000 and press play

Now think about the consequences of what you heard!

[Irishmuso]

But Christian, what about the Wurtemburg conference of 1713? - as Sir Jacob might say...

[pauln]

It's alive!
So, back to topic, what really sounds hip is G Lydian Dominant on the D chord of So What.

[sully75]

The Lydian Chromatic theory isn't about just using the Lydian scale for everything. It was a way of looking at the organisation of notes. It constructs a scale by stacking perfect 5ths, so C -> G -> D -> A -> E -> B -> F# which becomes C D E F# G A B, i.e. the Lydian mode. The Lydian mode should be the basis of harmony, not the Ionian mode.

It was developed in the 50s, and it affected a lot of people then. It was a new way of thinking about scales that wasn't bebop running changes. In the present day it doesn't seem as revolutionary. But at the time it led people into thinking modally. The tunes on Kind of Blue were all designed to explore a different mode. I think it's Flamenco Sketches that moves through a series of 5 modes. I'm not sure if the Lydian mode is ever explicitly used.

Today it seems like alot to do about nothing, but modal thinking is pretty ingrained today. The pop tunes of the 30s,40s, 50s have tons of harmonic movement. The pop tunes of today have much more simple chord movement, if there is any movement at all.

For the record, I think this is the right take. Miles and Bill seemed to be very influenced by whatever GR was saying at the time. I think Coltrane also? It might be something we totally take for granted now and/or something that is now explained in a better way but I think at the time whatever he was saying was pretty new.

Incidentally I went to NEC in the 90s and played in the George Russell ensemble for a minute and took his class. I never had any fucking idea what he was talking about in class but he was entertaining. He told some weird stories/anecdotes/somethings. It was so weird that even at NEC, being somewhat involved with him, I never saw an actual copy of the LCC.

He is a strange closet in jazz history. But I think whatever he was telling people at the time, it lit some people's brains up.

[sully75]

btw Harmonic Experience is a book that digs into this overtone series/scale stuff in a very cool way. If sometime you are stuck in an attic with a drone and want to get pretty wiggy, it's your book.

Harmonic Experience: Tonal Harmony from Its Natural Origins to Its Modern ... - W. A. Mathieu - Google Books

[sully75]

Chat GPT again. Not bad. Kinda helpful.

Here’s a clear, compact summary of George Russell’s Lydian Chromatic Concept of Tonal Organization:


---

? Lydian Chromatic Concept – Summary

1. Tonal center = Gravity, not key.
Music is organized around a tonal center that exerts gravitational pull — like a home base — rather than traditional key-based resolution.


2. Lydian scale is the true tonic scale.
The Lydian scale (e.g., C D E F? G A B) is more harmonically stable than the major scale because it arises from stacking perfect 5ths (a natural overtone structure).


3. Tonal gravity flows outward, not back.
Musical movement isn’t always toward resolution — it can expand outward from the tonic, following gravity, rather than returning “home.”


4. Lydian Chromatic Scale includes all 12 tones.
All 12 notes are valid, but some have stronger or weaker gravitational pull toward the Lydian tonic — they are ranked in a hierarchy.


5. Harmony is vertical, not functional.
Chords are understood as vertical structures (not progressions), and improvisers can use scales freely based on how they relate to the tonal center.


6. Applies across styles.
Though rooted in jazz, the concept is meant to be a universal theory of music, applicable to any genre.




---

? Essence:

> The Lydian scale is the central sound of tonal gravity, and all other tones orbit it with varying degrees of pull.



Let me know if you'd like a diagram of the tone hierarchy or a breakdown of how to apply this in improvisation.

[Bob_Ross]

I went to NEC in the 90s and played in the George Russell ensemble for a minute and took his class. I never had any fucking idea what he was talking about in class but he was entertaining. He told some weird stories/anecdotes/somethings. It was so weird that even at NEC, being somewhat involved with him, I never saw an actual copy of the LCC.

Did you actually take the LCC course with George, or only play in his ensemble?
I was at NEC in the 90s also, and took one semester of LCC with George. They made us buy the book.
But I definitely see why you never had any fucking idea what he was talking about, because I would challenge him regularly to expound, elaborate, or explain some of the vague platitudes he would espouse, and it became very clear that at a certain level even he didn't have any fucking idea what he was talking about. But after so many decades he had succeeded in convincing himself that his bullshit was legion.

The irony is, when I do compose a piece of music that's chord-centric -- i.e., a melody with changes, aka "jazz" -- I'm more likely to use the LCC than any other approach. It does yield some very cool sounding harmonies. Just, not necessarily for the reasons George insisted they did.

[sully75]

Did you actually take the LCC course with George, or only play in his ensemble?
I was at NEC in the 90s also, and took one semester of LCC with George. They made us buy the book.
But I definitely see why you never had any fucking idea what he was talking about, because I would challenge him regularly to expound, elaborate, or explain some of the vague platitudes he would espouse, and it became very clear that at a certain level even he didn't have any fucking idea what he was talking about. But after so many decades he had succeeded in convincing himself that his bullshit was legion.

The irony is, when I do compose a piece of music that's chord-centric -- i.e., a melody with changes, aka "jazz" -- I'm more likely to use the LCC than any other approach. It does yield some very cool sounding harmonies. Just, not necessarily for the reasons George insisted they did.

I know I played in his ensemble at least a couple of times but not sure if I was subbing for someone. It was kinda funny, I was a bass player, for a while I was using actual weed wacker blade material for my high strings as a substitute for gut strings and he was like "wtf is that, it sounds like cardboard".

But I definitely took his class. I didn't see the book, I'm pretty sure. I feel like I looked for it in the library and they didn't have it. I think there was someone there who was helping him revise it but the fact that I couldn't put my hands on a copy made it seem more and more like bullshit.

I was there 93-97, you? Is that your actual name?

[AllanAllen]

I was a bass player, for a while I was using actual weed wacker blade material for my high strings as a substitute for gut strings and he was like "wtf is that, it sounds like cardboard".

trend setter

Weedwacker Pro Lite Slap Bass Strings good for EUB too

[sully75]

trend setter

Weedwacker Pro Lite Slap Bass Strings good for EUB too

I don't like to make a big deal about it. But I am an innovator in stupid things that no one ever does again.


Oh wait they stole my shit.

Probably sounds like shit though.

Also they were like dayglo orange.

[Bob_Ross]

I was there 93-97, you? Is that your actual name?

I was there 93-95. Electric bass player, but was getting my Masters in Composition. Yep, that's my real name!

[sully75]

I was there 93-95. Electric bass player, but was getting my Masters in Composition. Yep, that's my real name!

Sounds super familiar. I must have known you. I was an upright player. Paul McEvoy. My memory is amazingly shitty. I met someone this summer from NEC who I could not remember at all. It's depressing. Luckily it's always been bad, doesn't seem to be much worse.

[AllanAllen]

I don't like to make a big deal about it. But I am an innovator in stupid things that no one ever does again.


Oh wait they stole my shit.

Probably sounds like shit though.

Also they were like dayglo orange.

I think someone used to make neon green ones. Or it was an April fools thing on talk bass.

[sully75]

They worked after a fashion. The problem was that the gauges were selected for weed walking and not really for bass playing.

I bet I could source something really easily now.

I had a friend who was an absolutely killer washtub bass player and he used weed Wacker blade.

[Christian Miller]

Did you actually take the LCC course with George, or only play in his ensemble?
I was at NEC in the 90s also, and took one semester of LCC with George. They made us buy the book.
But I definitely see why you never had any fucking idea what he was talking about, because I would challenge him regularly to expound, elaborate, or explain some of the vague platitudes he would espouse, and it became very clear that at a certain level even he didn't have any fucking idea what he was talking about. But after so many decades he had succeeded in convincing himself that his bullshit was legion.

The irony is, when I do compose a piece of music that's chord-centric -- i.e., a melody with changes, aka "jazz" -- I'm more likely to use the LCC than any other approach. It does yield some very cool sounding harmonies. Just, not necessarily for the reasons George insisted they did.

I’ve heard a few people say this about George Russell. I got a few pages into a bootleg pdf of the LCC and got a bit confused when the C# disappeared without explanation. After that I kind of lost interest.

I do think he was onto something though.

As a history buff I’d love to know more about how influential his ideas were beyond his immediate circle and how much they shaped the playing of the modal era musicians and how.

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[Tal_175]

The funny thing is the dominant chord in the Lydian tonal centre is a major chord.

[sully75]

I’ve heard a few people say this about George Russell. I got a few pages into a bootleg pdf of the LCC and got a bit confused when the C# disappeared without explanation. After that I kind of lost interest.

I do think he was onto something though.

As a history buff I’d love to know more about how influential his ideas were beyond his immediate circle and how much they shaped the playing of the modal era musicians and how.

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

I wonder if George Russell was sort of coming on a proto Harmonic Experience type book but didn't really finish the job or the theory. Have you checked that book out Christian?

[Christian Miller]

I wonder if George Russell was sort of coming on a proto Harmonic Experience type book but didn't really finish the job or the theory. Have you checked that book out Christian?

I haven't, but going by the blurb I'd probably find myself arguing with it for the duration lol

There's long been an impulse - especially but not only in the German speaking world - to find a link between the physical basis of music, tonality and a sort of objective aesthetics of music. I'm not really super opposed to attributing a harmonic experience to music provided this is understood to be cultural, and these emotional and symbolic connections are subject to change over the centuries even as harmonic devices remain in use over the generations.

To give an example - the lament, descending diatonic or chromatic minor bass - long had funeral, morbid connotations, which makes it funny that when these moves pop up in the jazz/GASB repertoire, there's not really any of that emotional association, at least to go by the lyrics of tunes like Blue Skies, No Moon At All, Chim-chim-cheree and so on.

So these things are in constantly in flux even before you look beyond the limits of Western music.

[sully75]

I haven't, but going by the blurb I'd probably find myself arguing with it for the duration lol

There's long been an impulse - especially but not only in the German speaking world - to find a link between the physical basis of music, tonality and a sort of objective aesthetics of music. I'm not really super opposed to attributing a harmonic experience to music provided this is understood to be cultural.

To take an example - the lament, descending diatonic or chromatic minor bass long had funeral, morbid connotations, which makes it funny that when these moves pop up in the jazz repertoire, there's not really any of that emotional association, at least to go by the lyrics of tunes like Blue Skies, No Moon At All, Chim-cheree and so on.

So these things are in constantly in flux even before you look beyond the limits of Western music.

Well tbh I only worked through the first third of the book, which is only about constructing scales from the overtone series but I think this part is rock solid...he's not saying anything that isn't totally factual. It was really good for me because his method is experiential...singing intervals against a drone. More or less based on Indian music and scales.

I never got into the harmonic part where he gets into western music and I don't really know what his goals are there. But constructing scales out of different permutations of the overtone series was helpful for me in understanding Indian music and baroque temperaments at the very least.

I have a feeling you'd dig it. Not sure what the blurb is about though.

[Christian Miller]

Well tbh I only worked through the first third of the book, which is only about constructing scales from the overtone series but I think this part is rock solid...he's not saying anything that isn't totally factual. It was really good for me because his method is experiential...singing intervals against a drone. More or less based on Indian music and scales.

I never got into the harmonic part where he gets into western music and I don't really know what his goals are there. But constructing scales out of different permutations of the overtone series was helpful for me in understanding Indian music and baroque temperaments at the very least.

I have a feeling you'd dig it. Not sure what the blurb is about though.

I've read a lot of books and essays along these sorts of lines, and even constructed my own theory of harmony from basic principles which doesn't use the overtone/undertone sequence, but rather a theory of composite wave forms. In the end I kind of lost interest in this stuff as it didn't seem to have much to do with my aims as a musician.

The acoustic principles into scales and harmony things is a well worn road in music theory that started in the modern era (1720s) by JP Rameau who believed it was possible to root tonality in the laws of physics (in so much as acoustics was understood in the early eighteenth century).

Apparently, JS Bach believed this was a bit over theoretical and didn't really see the point.

This is a classic Enlightenment project, and Rameau was indeed hailed as 'the Newton of music'. But it actually connects to a much older pre-enlightenment concept of the 'music of the spheres' that had Johannes Kepler describing a celestial polyphony even after Copernicus had dethroned the cosmology of the ancient Greeks.

Re: the overtone sequence you have a whole series of influential theorists building on Rameau taking in Hugo Riemann up to Ernst Levy (Negative Harmony). Paul Hindemith believed in this connection between the overtones and tonality in the 20th century, somewhat in opposition to the Avant Garde. It's no coincidence that he wrote an opera about Kepler using his ideas. And I suppose we can understood George Russell too in this tradition although his ideas also remind me a little bit of Pythagorean theory.

(Indian music theory BTW is also influenced by Pythagoras.)

This is nice and stuff, but what I came down to was the fact that none of these theories are exactly intellectually watertight, and in the end smack to me more of pseudoscience than real science. The physics of acoustics are relevant to music of course - to orchestration, instrument design, recording and much else. But to make a bridge from acoustics into musical language is always going to require a leap of logic or a 'god of the gaps' because there's nothing inevitable or natural about the Western harmonic system of 2025, or 1720, or any other era. Many other musical languages have been spoken through time and space.

What interests me much more is the interplay of society, technology and culture in the construction of music. It seems to me the difference for instance in jazz and classical harmony arise as much from the social nature of the music and its cultural influences as anything inherent in Die Harmonie Der Welt.

[wolflen]

[QUOTE=Christian Miller;1420652]I've read a lot of books and essays along these sorts of lines, and even constructed my own theory of harmony from basic principles which doesn't use the overtone/undertone sequence, but rather a theory of composite wave forms. In the end I kind of lost interest in this stuff as it didn't seem to have much to do with my aims as a musician.

Agree..I think we as musicians, and this may be true of humans on the whole, we have a wanting for there to be something "magical..mystical, spiritual" that we can obtain through some ritual or arcane process that will manifest itself through our expression of art and other aspects of life.

There was a time when certain notes of the scale were considered "evil/devil" music ahh yes the tritone. The exact reason for this dislike..well I think its one of those.."you would have had to been there.." moments. A broken plate after a night of too much wine perhaps.

Our ears adjust to sounds that are within our hearing range some very pleasant some painful-the ol' finger nails on the blackboard trick.

On this forum we explore music..not only one style .. "jazz"..but the ingredients that are used in the craft of its composition. We explore its theory..harmony and the illusive melody..and the why and how of it-and how to make it something new via improvisation.

The study of all this uncovers many approaches to reveal --Ahhh..what exactly? The "western" music 12 tone scale.

I love playing exotic scales over strange sounding chords, And many musical greats have explored this to the depths of their abilities-in all eras.

The LCC may give some a new insight into their own creative path and how to express it.

I dont think it is magic..any more than when the recording technique of playing a backward track on a Beatles tune was in its day.