de musica

a little bit of math: 7 note scales

2011-08-06T20:42:00.000-04:00

I've been considering scales and modes lately, and have been wondering how many possibilities there are out there. I started writing out some lists (based on the major/Ionian scale, such as 1234b567, 1#2345b6b7, etc). At a certain point, however, I started to consider using any combination of 7 notes from the total chromatic of 12. Here writing out by hand started to become futile, so I wondered how to go about determining the actual number of possibilities. So here's a little math about that.

If we are concerned with 7 notes from a total of 12, and are not concerned about order -- we're looking for a set of tones, not a melodic sequence -- then what we want to find is known mathematically as combinations. There's a simple formula for determining them which is shown in the following image (which image was swiped from wikipedia -- thanks, guys!!!):

(In case you're not familiar with it, that ! doesn't indicate a loud, demanding or angry number: it's a factorial. 4! = 4 x 3 x 2 x 1 = 24. It's better if your calculator has a factorial button, because 12! =

479,001,600...best to do that in one keystroke!)

In our case n = 12 and k = 7. If you work through the equation you'll see that 12 tones taken 7 at a time can be arranged 792 different ways! (That exclamation is not a factorial). Some of these modes will be quite strange beasts from a typical scale point of view: c, c#, d, d#, e, f, g# is not the most common mode around. But if we want to know the exact, finite number then here we have it.

And here's something interesting, too, very, very interesting: if we want to know how many pentatonic scales there are we will find that there are 792, the exact number of septatonic scales (start to work it out and you'll see why). Hexatonic scales, by the way, produce the highest number of combinations: 924.

So if you're wondering if there are any more modes/scales out there to investigate the answer is most probably YES!

sus4 chords

2011-08-05T00:43:00.000-04:00

Superimposing triads over a given harmonic structure is a well-known and -documented phenomenon. I personally love hearing a D major triad over an E minor harmony. And by triads usually meant are the famed major, minor, augmented and diminished. But we shouldn't overlook sus4 chords (or sus2 chords: we'll talk about that, too) as possibilities. As a refresher: a Csus4 chord is comprised of the notes c, f and g, and generalized a sus4 chord is made up of a root, P4 and P5. To a certain extent they can have a "cold" sound as there is no third, major or minor, and are found natively in quartal/quintal harmony.

So as far as use goes there's the obvious: wherever you want! Also here are some conventional usages:

Root of sus4 chord matches root of harmonic chord (e.g. Absus4 over Abmaj7; Esus4 over Emin).

Sus4 chords come from the harmony of a scale implied by the harmonic chord. For example take Dmi7. In a certain context this could be a dorian chord, meaning that we're dealing with a C major scale. In the case of major scales sus4 chords can be built on the 1, 2, 3, 5 and 6 scale degress (yup, you guessed it: a major pentatonic scale!). Concretely: over Dmi7 we could use Csus4, Dsus4, Esus4, Gsus4 and Asus4. Over melodic minor there are less: take sus4 chords built on the 1, 2 and 5 scale degrees. Basically we just have to check the scale tones against those of the sus4 chords and we'll be good.

OK, mention was made of sus2 chords: whassup with them? Let's examine the following 2 chords: Asus4 and Dsus2:
Asus4: a, d, e
Dsus2: d, e, a
Yeah, the same notes. So we can generalize the situation as: a sus4 chord is the same collection of tones as a sus2 a perfect 4th higher.

As far as that goes, let's look at these notes again, but now starting with e as the root: e, a, d. This can be seen as an E7sus4 without the 5th. So a sus4 chord can be used as a 7sus4 the root of which is a perfect 5th higher.

Hopefully these will add something to your palette...

some scale relationships ii

2011-07-26T13:04:00.000-04:00

Following up on what we discussed yesterday I'd like to offer a variant upon that approach.

It's all fine to see how scales can be linked in a chain, each "link" being one accidental away from the ones before and after it. But it might be that you're familiar with certain modes, but not so much with the parent scales whence they hail. For example tons of musicians know about the overtone scale but not all realize that it's a mode of the melodic minor.

So, in today's diagram what we've done is to look at the modes of the major/ionian scale and see how one -- the lydian -- relates to other lydian modes.

In this case we've tracked through the lydian flat-7 (aka lydian dominant) to arrive at the lydian dominant augmented (lydian b7#5). Please note that bi-directional arrows indicate a scale-mode relationship, while the uni-directional arrows indicate scales that are distant by one accidental. The other way of saying what this diagram is hoping to express is that if you conceptualize your modes in this fashion (lydian b7, lydian b6, lydian #2, ...) you are still obviously framing your mode/scale understanding as we outlined yesterday.

some scale relationships

2011-07-25T18:46:00.006-04:00

One way to ponder and categorize scales is to organize them so that a new scale is described as an old one with one modification. For example, the melodic minor scale can be viewed as a major scale with a flat 3; the harmonic minor can be conceptualized as a melodic minor with a flat 6. The following image describes several scales this way, taking the major/ionian scale as primary:

The box for the whole-tone leading has been made a different color because it doesn't strictly involve only one change (but it is deducible by a series of changes starting from an augmented (ionian sharp-5) then to a lydian augmented).

(By the way the above image was made with Open Office Draw: a great and free program!)

The modes of these parent scales haven't been included, though not doing so is to a certain extent a taxonomic bias. For instance I had at first included the scale/mode ionian #2, as it's only one deviation from the major scale. But upon reflection it turns out that it is a mode of the neapolitan minor, a scale which is already quite well known. Consequently I decided against the inclusion of the ionian #2, though an interesting and extremely complex chart could be generated by including such modes and showing their relationship(s) to other scales.

A chart like this also tells use at a fairly quick glance just how far scales are from one another. For instance the doulbe harmonic scale is just one note different or one "scale away" from the harmonic major; the neapolitan minor is three scales away from the major/ionian.

Of course there are a myriad scales out there, but this beginning should at least get the mind working with a view towards simplifying that array -- "well begun is half done", after all.

permutations

2011-04-27T13:18:00.000-04:00

Lately I've been examining how very little musical material can generate vast amounts of music. Think about all the tonal music that basically elaborates a I - V - I relationship.

To get some of this flavor let's take 3 notes (a, b, and c) and put them into sixteenth note "slots". Let's also stipulate -- at first -- that we can only duplicate one note (i.e. we have to use all of the tones). Here's what we start to get:

aabc abca bcaa
aacb acba cbaa
abac acab
baca caba
baac caab

bbac bacb acbb
bbca bcab cabb
babc bcba
abcb cbab
abbc cbba

ccab cabc abcc
ccba cbac bacc
cacb cbca
acbc bcac
accb cbba

So here we get 36 different little motives from 3 notes distributed over 4 note-slots. We could augment our rule to allow the duplication of 2 notes (thereby not using all three notes). Here's a little of what we get:

aabb abba bbaa
abab baba

aacc acca...

bbcc bccb...

That's 15 more motives or cells. Also let's allow a triplication of notes:

aaab abaa baaa
bbba babb abbb
bbbc bcbb cbbb
cccb cbcc bccc
ccca cacc accc
aaac acaa caaa

There's 18. And lastly let's allow a quadruplication:

aaaa bbbb cccc

which adds 3 more cells. All in all this totals 72 different motive-cells.

And this is just a surface scratching. We could further define some rules for our rhythms: take for example
aaaa.
This could be 4 sixteenth notes, but we could also combine them into larger units, such as:
one 16th and a dotted eighth,
one 16th, an eightn and a 16th,
a dotted eighth and a sixteenth,
2 eighth notes,
one quarter note.

Obviously our cell-motives will increase dramatically when this "rule" is applied across the board.

Why so possibly obsessive about this sort of thing? Well in improvisation and composition we're always looking for ways to make what we do more organic. Just this most basic surface examination shows that there is A LOT of material waiting to be made out of very little building blocks (similar to how electrons, protons and neutrons combine to form over a hundred different elements). Anyway if you're ever bored or just un-inspired take up this sort of exercise and see where it leads you.

what key is it in?

2011-04-18T16:42:00.001-04:00

This question of what key something is in is one that comes up often, and the reasons for it being asked can range from the academic to the very practical -- it is in the spirit of the latter that we will offer up an answer.

The no.1 reason we might want to the determine the key of a tune/piece or section thereof is for improvisational purposes: it's hard (though not impossible) to improvise without knowing the key. In certain cases this will be ambiguous, which means more leeway for the improviser; at other times there will be only one key.

So, let's define a key as the parent scale of all the harmonic/melodic structures in a given instance. That might be a rather convoluted way of stating something very simple. Here are some examples.

A favorite: Knocking On Heaven's Door by Bob Dylan. The chords:

      Gmaj | Dmaj | Amin | Amin | Gmaj | Dmaj| Cmaj| Cmaj| (repeat to infinity)

The key here (according to our definition) is fairly unambiguous: G major. Major keys give us 3 major chords and 3 minor chords. In G major those chords are specifically: Gmaj, Cmaj, Dmaj; Amin, Bmin, Emin. All of the chords of the tune number among those just enumerated, so there we have it.

Here's a slightly more involved one: House of the Rising Sun.

      Amin | Cmaj | Dmaj | Fmaj | Amin | Cmaj | E7 | E7 |
      Amin | Cmaj | Dmaj | Fmaj | Amin | E7 | Amin | Amin |

We have 4 major chords (analysing E7 as such) which tells us right away that we're going beyond the chords found amongst our normal major keys. In this case Amin going to E7 is telling us that this in in A minor. Now there are 3 different minor keys:

     1. Natural (same as its relative major)
     2. Melodic
     3. Harmonic

One way of looking at this would be to say that this song is in A natural minor (i.e. C major) whenever the chords are Amin, Cmaj, or Fmaj. When we encounter Dmaj it's probably really in A melodic minor (the natural 6 gives us the F#) but it might be easiest to think of it as Gmajor (D mixolydian). The E7 is either melodic or harmonic minor.

How about a chord progression like this:

     Emaj7 | Bmaj add b9 | Amin | AminMaj7 |

There are some possibilities here, but all of these chords come from E harmonic major, though you might conceptualize/hear it as shifting from E major to A minor.

Of course there are other indicators that you might already be aware of / be doing: II - V is more or less subsumed by our definition, but it is a distinct and very prevalent pattern to be on the lookout for.

Keep one thing in mind: this is a practical way of understanding the concept of key. Take the following example:

      Dmin | Cmaj | Dmin | Dmin |

According to our method this is in C major, though really C doesn't seem to the tonic but instead D does (that is the progression is in D dorian). However have no fear: as far as improvising goes you'll still be on solid ground if you're thinking C major -- though knowing the major key's derived modes is a good idea.

For the above mentioned "way" to work of course we need to know some basic scales (and where to look for those that we might not know) and their triads, and all of us can always learn more of these.

aura lee caged

2011-04-05T23:26:00.004-04:00

If you have a guitar method book like Mel Bay's or Alfred's sitting around and you feel like you've learned the notes in open position (or maybe not even those) and you'd like to expand your knowledge of notes over the entire neck try the following. Take a simple tune such as "Aura Lee" -- perhaps better known as Elvis's "Love Me Tender" -- and play it in as many of the 5 traditional major scale patterns (CAGED) as possible.

Here is what the first 4 bars of "Aura Lee" will look like as found throughout the CAGED system:

(E₀ means the E pattern in open position, E₁₂ is the E pattern at the 12th fret.)

So in this case the tune can be played in six different positions. And more generally speaking we can note that if the open G string on the guitar is the lowest note in a first position melody that same melody will be able to be played in all of these same patterns. If we only had notes on the E and B strings we would have even more possibilities; if an open D is in the mix less.

And since there's an interest in this blog about patterns in music, let's examine how the notes relate to each other across contiguous patterns. If we examine the penultimate measure we'll see a regularly occurring interlocking/overlapping-ness:

This is a beginning: we could also explore this tune as found throughout 3 note per string scales, too (or even 4-note/string if you're so inclined), which might be the subject of a blog down the line.

zhou xuan -- song of the four seasons

2011-02-27T00:18:00.003-05:00

I just got a collection of songs by the fabulous and (in China) ultra-famous singer Zhou Xuan. Here's an example of her singing "Song of the Four Seasons" (hopefully hearing it will tempt you to seek out and listen to more!):

There's some info about here here at the wikipedia site.

And to give credit where credit is due: I had never heard of Zhou until I saw the film Electric Shadows (which, by the way, is the literal reading of the Chinese characters for the word 'movie(s)' which looks like 电影 / 電影).

ivy -- nothing but the sky

2011-02-22T22:04:00.009-05:00

I'm comfortable enough with myself to admit that I watched the film Shanghai Kiss. Not a fabulous movie. In fact not even a decent movie, though I liked all the actors and the places (it's great to see Shanghai on film -- see below).

But one excellent thing about the film is that the tune "Nothing But the Sky" by Ivy is in it. Here's a link:

But to see/hear how it was used in the film check this one out:

The nearly sci-fi landscape of Shanghai along with that ambient, ultra-airy sounding voice is really an excellent match...

Oh, and here are the entire lyrics for the song:

Meet me tonight
Fifteen miles high
Nothing but the sky
Shining in your eyes...

rhythmic training by robert starer

2011-02-21T00:01:00.000-05:00

A book I used a million years ago at the College-Conservatory of Music in Cincinnati (for a guitar sight reading class): Robert Starer's Rhythmic Training. I'm giving an amazon link here because you can look through some of the book there, but of course buy it at your favorite vendor of music scores...

Anyway it's an excellent book to go through from time to time, and especially if you're having particular difficulties (e.g. switching between triplets and sixteenths while keeping a steady pulse). The last few exercises are still brutal for me...

the fan man

2011-02-20T00:11:00.000-05:00

I read this book last year and looooved it. The main character -- Horse Badorties -- is a hippie who's exclusively into medieval music. He lives in the Lower East Side and has a choir of young runaway girls and has them hold tiny battery-powered fans which emit to him a beautiful sound. A great, weird book. Horse's hatred of Puerto Rican music parallels my own detesting of Dominican music...

Click here to read what wikipedia has to say about the novel. If you read and enjoyed Confederacy of Dunces you'll dig this...highly recommended.

And if you do read it try to get the illustrated version (though it looks like the newer edition has a forward by Vonnegut which must be a great read).

music as patterns i

2011-02-19T19:45:00.000-05:00

This is one of two series I want to start on this blog (look for the other "mystery" series to appear shortly!), viz. the investigation of music as patterns.

Let me just discursively throw out some ways in which patterns are a part of music:

VIBRATIONAL (from a simple vibrating sine wave to complex multi-timbrel occurrences, the vibrating ear drum, and so on)
RHYTHMIC (organization of sound even irrespective of pitch)
FORMAL (melodic shapes, harmonic structures, harmonic progressions, divisions of a piece of music into common forms -- sonata, song, aba -- scale structures, fingering patterns on particular instruments)

Also patterns may be grouped into those that are PERCEPTIBLE and those that are more CONCEPTUAL. A melodic phrase is an example of the former whereas the graphic representation of a square wave producing the pitch B4 is an example of the latter. Of course a melodic phrase notated is more conceptual but still perceptible, so perhaps another category of VISUAL needs to be added.

At any rate future posts in this series will start to examine some of these issues and others having to deal with emotion, entrainment and the like.

ai no tenshi

2011-02-19T13:22:00.005-05:00

This is my favorite tune from Satoshi Kon's 1998 fabulous anime classic Perfect Blue, and it's called "Ai no tenshi" (The Angel of Love).

Also of potential interest is the following clip which shows the tune being recorded by the singers (which clip is on the dvd, btw):

highest f major chord?

2011-02-06T14:31:00.002-05:00

Sor's Fantasy no. 2 (op. 7) is a spectacular piece. For those of you who have the Bream Baroque Guitar record and have heard the piece that way keep in mind: Bream only plays the Introduction. There's a whole theme and variations which follow, some of which are truly remarkable.

Remarkable in terms of just having to deal with a somewhat uncomfortable fingering examine the following passage from the B section of the 3rd variation:

Yes, that F chord is stratospheric! Yes on the electric guitar (or any guitar with a cutaway) this is not a real beast. But keep in mind: the lowest fret here is the 13th. I'd be tempted to introduce some rubato at this point just to accommodate this technical aspect.

By the way: you shredders should check out the 6th variation...

new ideas in a new year

2011-01-02T20:22:00.006-05:00

If I were made dictator of the universe for a minute or two I'd like to change some aspects of conservatory training. These would be the additions/changes:

One semester (at least) of music writing and improvising. NOT taught by a "composer", especially not by an academic one. Here the goal is to reveal to musicians that if they can play an instrument they can improvise on that instrument. And also they can write music of very diverse styles for that instrument of any other.

One semester of "pop music" performance. Here we would, for example, play Let It Be. But the pianists would be given the chart on a cocktail napkin and NOT (I repeat NOT) permitted to write out any parts. The performance would have to be convincing, etc. Real world.

Basics of recording, multi-tracking, etc. Are there any musicians, anywhere, who at this point don't need recordings of their playing? Might as well be armed with some knowledge of how it's done...maybe even enough knowledge to do it one's self.

I would certainly toy with the idea of getting rid of music history. Maybe a course that contains the basic bullet points. Maybe in theory situate the concepts historically. There seem to be lots of musicians in the world who function just fine without knowing thing one about clausulae -- just as there are millions of musicians worldwide who know nothing of set theory and would much prefer to stab themselves repeatedly with rusty implements than learn anything about said subject.

the yearly roundup

2010-12-30T10:08:00.003-05:00

Hard to believe but another year is looming large on the horizon. That means it's time for the yearly roundup of good stuff that I've encountered music-wise. And by encountered I also mean re-encountered, too. This stuff isn't necessarily particular to 2010, that's just when it happened my way.

Books

David Toop's Sinister Resonance. Toop does it again. This book is special for me because it has come along right at a time when I've been thinking about the peripheries of music and sound more generally as well as what's going on when we hear/perceive such.

Wallace Berry's Structural Functions in Music. Actually I'm not sure where I come down with this book. The author does penetrate deeply. I'd be interested if the book were about music and not just a small segment -- though maybe people could start writing appendices of sorts applying Berry to Indian music, R&B and free jazz, etc.

Recordings

Carolyn Hove, Ascending to Superlatives (yeah, I'm not thrilled about the title, either, but there it is...) Great English horn album starting off with a Castelnuovo-Tedesco piece entitled Eclogues (for English horn, flute and guitar) which is fantastic. All the works are terrific. This record will make you believe in 20th century music (if your faith has indeed ebbed). Also, though I went to CCM I had no idea the Gerhard Samuel was also a composer...

Not entirely unrelated is L'ensemble Pyramide's recording of Migot chamber works featuring flute, clarinet, harp, bassoon, etc. Great pieces! I'm a huge Migot fan and if you've never heard of him just go ahead and jump in with this one. The works are modal and very, well, French. If you dig on the likes of Poulenc and Dutilleux you'll like this one. There's a wikipedia thang about Migot here.

Gentle Giant's Octopus. My favorite prog album to date. Very diverse, excellent tunes.

Bill Emerson's Gold Plated Banjo. A good friend of mine always turns me onto what he considers the "best of", any genre. For bluegrass his pick is this one, and I have to agree. It's so filled with gladness that it'll make you happy that you're alive -- it'll at least put a big smile on your face!

The B-52s first album. I heard it when I was in 6th grade and loved it. I listened to it again about a month and a half ago and I still love it.

Other albums heard a long time ago and re-enjoyed: Vangelis' Albedo 0.39. That's right albedo, the reflectivity of an object, 1.00 being perfect, 0.39 being roughly the Earth's. V does all of the instruments and the tune Main Sequence is spot-on fusion (with even a great little blues lick near the end!). Of course the opening tune is great (Pulstar) as is the tune Alpha, both of which were in Carl Sagan's Cosmos.

Susanne Schoeppe's Ponce, Moreno, Dolezel & Castillo: Guitar Recital (yeah, technically any recording with the word "recital" in the title should entitle the maker(s) to a public torturing...pretend the album is called Diario, I guess). Susanne needs to be thanked, sincerely, for playing (and playing beautifully) Torroba's Sonata Fantasia. It's an absolutely exquisite work and hopefully will only grow in popularity.

Zombies: Odessey and Oracle.

Video

Scott Henderson: Jazz-Rock Mastery. This is really 2 videos in one: the first is about scale choices for given common chords (maj7, min7, min7b5, dom7 and altered dom7s -- Scott details playing both inside and outside); the second concerns phrasing and is really a breath of fresh air.

Various

The You Rock Guitar. I picked one up back at the beginning of November. A really fabulous midi controller. FINALLY a midi controller that has what I (we) really want: a midi out! No need for a 13 pin cable which then gets converted to midi then sent to the midi out. This is very inexpensive and easy to play. It's not a guitar, so there are some compromises: pulling off to open strings doesn't work, and the strings which are picked/plucked are all the same size which means that your hand doesn't get any clues as to where it is by string size. It has some onboard sounds but I go right into a Yamaha TX-7. The best feature: it doesn't EVER go out of tune...

the enigmatic scale and even some more extended triads

2010-12-26T13:02:00.007-05:00

I made a point in the posts about extended triads of keeping only to diminished, perfect and augmented fifths because those were the only ones I could imagine happening in scales. Not so! I recently looked at the enigmatic scale and found that we need to be more inclusive still. Here is the scale along with its triads:

As you can see both the II and V chords go beyond the parameters which I naively set. Since in this scale there are three minor seconds/half steps in a row (A#-B-C-Db) we end up with doubly diminished and doubly augmented fifths. If we consider that each fifth can have four types of 3rd (diminished, minor, major and augmented) then we will end up with 20 (count them twenty) triad types! (As far as symbols go I just simply stacked either plus signs or minus signs to indicate doubly diminished.)

Once again: give the triads a go...the whole point is that hopefully they aid you in expanding your vocabulary.

By the way, check out the wikipedia article on this scale here. You can discover its history (which includes Verdi) and that it actually has a different descending form.

puer natus est nobis

2010-12-25T11:45:00.002-05:00

Yes, today is Christmas and so accordingly here is offered a very old Christmas song: the Introitus Puer natus est nobis. You can google it yourself, of course, but the first one here has the plainchant notation as found in the Liber usualis.

But this has organ accompaniment (which seems to be the way it's done these days...I spent several days at the Abbey of Gethsemani and they did all of their plainchant not only in English but with organ also. I guess it does help the pitch not to deviate...) so the following one may be the way you're more used to hearing it:

Also this selection is found on In Dulci Jubilo's record Salve Feste Dies, and it's worth checking out because of their approach to the rhythm (the rhythmic values in "Gregorian" chant are highly controversial: it's known that there were different rhythmic values but what's not known is what they were).

In terra pax, let's hope...

the neapolitan minor

2010-12-21T10:32:00.012-05:00

A plug for one of my favorite scales. You can think of this as a Phrygian with a sharp 7 (i.e. a major 7th) or you can think of it as a harmonic minor with a flat 2. Here it is built on C:

Harmonically there are some interesting chords. Look at the V7 chord: it's a free-roaming dominant 7 b5 chord. Look at it in 2nd inversion...that's right, it's a French augmented sixth chord (which is also analyzable as a Fr 4/3). Here is the G7b5 and the Fr+6 with its common resolution (the +6 opening up to a P8):

There are two extended triads: the V (a maj-dim, aka the Italian augmented 6th in root position) and the VII (dim3-dim).

As for the modes they're really interesting:

[mode i: phrygian #7]
mode ii: lydian #6
mode iii: mixolydian #5 (mixolydian augmented)
mode iv: aeolian #4 (lydian-aeolian)
mode v: locrian #3
mode vi: ionian #2
mode vii: (dorian #1) locrian bb3, bb7

And here's an actual use of the aeolian #4 found in measure 11 of Manuel Ponce's fantastic Sonata III:

And for you guitarists here is the scale in five positions comparable to the five positions of major, melodic minor and harmonic minor:

Learn it, love it, live it...

extended triad types iii

2010-12-19T13:51:00.003-05:00

In this post we're going to look at extended triads in the way in which some might believe we should have done at the beginning: analytically or simply mathematically. The reason we didn't begin this way is because I wanted to demonstrate that there are real (and not just conceptual/theoretical) reasons why one needs the idea of extended triads, viz. the fact that they are produced naturally in certain scales.

So let's consider triads this way: chords consisting of a root, 3rd and 5th (as opposed to a harmonic structure that has just any 3 tones). As for 3rds we will allow diminished, minor, major and augmented; and for 5ths we'll allow diminished, perfect and augmented. The reason for "will allow" is that these intervals are all found naturally occurring in scales (such as the whole-half diminished and ionian flat-2, etc). We aren't going to examine triads which are comprised of a quadruply diminished 3rd and a quintuply augmented 5th (which triad would produce a third lower than the root and the like -- this could be interesting in a modern physics/mathematical kind of way but it's not extremely useful to us at present.

So based on our options of intervals we can simplify the triad families based on the 5th: there are only three kinds (diminished, perfect and augmented). Each family will have 4 types of third (diminished, minor, major and augmented). You won't have to resort to your calculator to figure, then, that there are, all in all, 12 triads. Here's a 1000 words:

The 3rds in blue denote that that chord is a basic triad type (diminished, minor, major or augmented) -- for example, the min 3rd in the diminished 5th family is blue because that chord is your garden variety diminished triad. And another 1000 words follow here with actual instantiations of all of the chord types:

Finally some issues of nomenclature. A M3P5 chord is simply called a major chord, so all chords containing a major or minor 3rd could be likewise appelled (a major diminished chord for M3dim5). Also since perfect 5ths are somewhat privileged we could drop that part of the name when it occurs: a diminished 3rd chord, an augmented 3rd chord.

Lastly -- and as promised -- let's look at the °3dim chord again. It has another name and is actually an extremely common chord in common practice "classical" music. Here it is in first inversion, showing its outer voice resolution:

Yes, that's right! An It+6 chord! For our purposes, then, the It+6 chord in root position is simply an It°3 chord. More on augmented 6th chords to come.

Play through these chords: some of these triads will undoubtedly be (or become) sonically interesting to you...

see also extended triads i, extended triads ii, basic triads

extended triad types ii

2010-12-12T12:40:00.009-05:00

In this post we're going to examine the whole-half diminished scale. It is, like the whole tone scale, a symmetric arrangement of tones, and its name is the formula of the arrangement (i.e. a whole tone followed by a half tone followed by a whole tone...). This scale is different from many, many others in that it has more than 7 tones, in fact it is octatonic (8 toned). Here it is along with its triads:

Since it's composed of more than 7 tones some problems of nomenclature occur. For instance, at some point a scale tone (degree) has to be duplicated. Above we've made it F and F#, though it could've been D and D# (which would've produced an E#, then F#), etc. A massive ramification of this is that there is not a unique, one-to-one correspondence between scale degrees and triads -- some triads will manifest in 2 different forms. Above it is II, IV and VII (because they each contain F, which scale degree also exists as F#).

In this scale there are two triads which are "extended": the I and III. But these extended triads are a bit different from the ones which occurred in the previous post, and that's because they are enharmonically equivalent to basic triads. Put another way, the first two extended triads we encountered have no sonic equivalents, whereas these two that hail from the whole-half diminished scale do. Here they are:

The I chord sounds like a 1st inversion Ab major triad; the III chord sounds like a 2nd inversion G# minor one. But even though this is the case it's still important to be able to analyze these triads as extended types, if only for consistency's sake (most likely from a performer's point of view). But there is precedent for this sort of thing. Consider the Fr+6 chord: it is enharmonically equivalent to a dominant 7th chord, but its function is quite different in common practice harmony (that is its resolution is different from that of a dominant 7th chord).

So, back to the chords at hand: the I chord can be called a minor augmented (min Aug) and the III chord a diminished 3rd augmented (°3 Aug).

extended triad types

2010-12-08T19:11:00.012-05:00

Over the next 3 posts we're going to be discussing extended triad types, i.e. triads in addition to the 4 basic types of major, minor, augmented and diminished (which topic was covered in this post). Perhaps unexpectedly this investigation will lead us into taking up the topic of augmented 6th chords.

If we only concern ourselves with the major and minor scales (both melodic and harmonic), and even if we throw in the harmonic major as well, we'll never encounter any triads beyond the 4 basic ones already mentioned. But this isn't always the case. Take for example the Double Harmonic scale and the triads which form from the scale degrees:

There are major triads (I and II), minor triads (III and IV) and augmented triads (VI) here, but look at the V and VII chords. They don't fit the pattern of the 4 basic types. The issue is that there isn't any ready-made term for either of these, so let's simply name them according to their intervals (which are some form of 3rd and 5th). The V chord is composed of a major 3rd and a diminished 5th, so we could name it a major diminished triad. Likewise the VII chord reveals a structure of a diminished 3rd and a diminished 5th: let's nominate this one a diminished 3rd diminished. And in abbreviated format: maj dim (V) and °3 dim (VII). Here's how they look built on C:

Why are there these different triad types lurking in this scale? Because scale degress 7, 1 and 2 are 2 consecutive minor 2nd intervals, which adds up to a diminished 3rd (and not a full minor 3rd found in the major and minor scales). This accounts for the double flat in the °3 dim triad built on C.

So now armed with this new knowledge you can analyze all of the following scales and you'll find that they contain the 4 basic triad types plus these 2 new "extended" triads: Neapolitan Major, Neapolitan Minor, Double Harmonic (as above), Ionian flat-2 and the Whole Tone Leading. Next time we're going to delve into the whole-half diminished scale and find even more triad types...

noh -- live 100% improvised

2010-11-26T09:29:00.003-05:00

Yes, back at Goodbye Blue Monday on Wednesday 1 December at 9pm:

NOH the 100% improvised spoken word free rock/blues band.

The lineup:

Mark Zebra Warshow: drums

Jesse Martin: bass

Charles Ramsey: guitar

Raymond Todd: spoken/vocals

That's at 1087 Broadway in Bushwick, Brooklyn, NYC...J train to Kosciuszko...FREE!

hidden patterns: the harmonic major

2010-11-17T21:20:00.009-05:00

There are different ways of learning modes: one way is to look at (say) a C major scale and then see that it contains the D dorian, E phrygian, F lydian and so on. Another way to approach learning modes would be to keep the same tonic: C ionian, C dorian, C phrygian, etc. In this method we're actually moving through many (7 in fact) different keys: C major, Bb major, Ab major... If we do this with the harmonic minor modes something very interesting happens...but first let's take a look at the major and then melodic minor scales.

This table shows the major scale modes starting on C as well as the parent mode whence they come:

If we examine the roots of the parent scales we'll notice that -- when rearranged -- they form an A-flat major scale: Ab Bb C Db Eb F G.

Let's do the same thing with the melodic minor modes:

In this case the roots of the parent scales form a B-flat melodic minor scale (Bb C Db Eb F G A).

Up to this point there isn't much surprising: the roots of the parent scales both spell out major and melodic minor scales. However this situation changes when we subject the harmonic minor modes to the same investigation:

Here the roots of the parent scales form a (drum roll please...) harmonic major scale! F harmonic major to be exact: F G A Bb C Db E. And in a way this gives a nice rationale for the harmonic major: even if we'd never heard of nor conceived of it there it is, buried in the harmonic minor in a sense. File this one under how wonderously strange nature is...

See also: modes

nor gloom of night...

2010-10-21T10:59:00.003-04:00

This Sunday, 24 October at 7 pm I'll be playing with Nor Gloom of Night at ABC No-Rio.

The show is spoken word with musical accompaniment: the music being very atmospheric and ethereal (think sound: definitely no standard harmonic progressions will be heard). I've been lax about posting gigs since the summer but Nor Gloom did do one gig about a month ago: there are no rehearsals and the lineup changes and as a result predicting the outcome of a gig is not an easy chore...that's the fun.

ABC No-Rio is located at 156 Rivington Street.

exploring modes via pentatonics

2010-09-26T10:22:00.011-04:00

OK, so if you've been reading this blog I understand that at this point you're rolling your eyes and emitting some form of loud "arrgh!" at the thought of yet another post dealing with pentatonic scales. Well, that's just how cool and useful I think they are, so here goes.

Let's say you have a Dmin7 chord that you're going to play over (or even write a melody over, etc). By using pentatonic scales you can elicit the colors of certain modes, and can do so by using your own and perhaps already copious supply of pentatonic licks.

The pentatonics that can easily be used are the following: start with the pentatonic with with the same root, in this case D minor. We can use the pentatonics which are 2 "clicks" both clock and counter-clockwise on the circle of fifths:

C | G | D | A | E

Each pentatonic scale, when combined with the underlying chord, corresponds to one or more modes. For example, if we take an E minor pentatonic scale (e, g, a, b, d) and play that over a Dmin7 chord (d, f, a, c) our resulting conglomeration of tones will be:

d, e, f, g, a, b, c

aka the dorian mode.

Starting with the pentatonic 2 clicks to the left and moving to the right (or clockwise on the circle of fifths) we can generalize the mode relationships as:

The reason that there can be more than one mode hinted at is because not all 7 tones of a scale are present in those situations. E.g. if we play a D minor pentatonic (d, f, g, a, c) over a Dmin7 chord (d, f, a, c) we only have five tones:

d, f, g, a, c

and without knowing what the 2nd (some kinda e) and 6th (some kinda b) are we can't tell what the mode is with complete precision. For instance, if there were an eb and a b natural we would end up with a complete dorian flat-2 (or flat-9), the second mode of the c melodic minor scale.

That is how the minor pentatonics will work over minor chords. In some future post we'll explore how they work over major chords.

what chord is it?

2010-09-24T00:03:00.003-04:00

Let's assume that you've played some sort of harmonic structure and you want to know (for some reason or another) what's the name of this thing I just played? We've discussed before that context has a lot to do with a chord's naming, but for now let's say that we're just dealing with one chord that sounds really cool and we need some kind of name for it. Here's a method which can get you in the game:

1. Write out all the chord tones and remove any duplicated tones.

2. See if there are any triads present (might have to look enharmonically). If no triads
go to step 4.
(a) If there's just one triad then this is likely your chord: go to step 3.
(b) If there is more than one triad pick the one that makes sense to you and go to step 3.

3. If there are any remaining tones they will relate in one of three ways, as:
(a) extensions
(b) additions
(c) suspensions

4. If no triads:
(a) Is one implied (e.g. a major 3rd could imply a major triad)
(b) Is it a power chord?
(c) Is it a stacked interval (stacked 5ths)
(d) Is it a tone cluster?
(e) Does the harmonic structure correspond to/imply any mode?

Needless to say for the above to work we have to have some sort of knowledge of basic triads and extensions, etc. Let's take a few examples and see what happens.

Example 1: f, g, a, c#.
Are there triads present? Yes: f, a, c# is an augmented triad.
Any remaining tones? Yes: g. This relates to f as a 2nd or 9th. Since there's no 7th present (which would be some sort of e) let's call this an F aug add 9 (or F+5 add 9).

Also example 1 can be viewed like this: f might actually be e# enharmonically spelled. That means we would have an A augmented triad: a, c#, e# (f). The remaining g is simply the 7th, so the chord could also be named: A7+5. (This kind of enharmonic spelling is quite common in music, classical or otherwise as music is really a guide for performers and not analyzers.)

Example 2: f#, g, b. Any triads? No. Any triad implied? Yes: g and b can easily give the sense of a G major triad (the perfect 5th is not needed for the ear to hear the "complete" chord). Then f# is simply the 7th which gives us a Gmaj7.

Example 3: bb, a, c, b. Again, no triads, buuut...a and c are enough for an A minor triad. The remaining bs are 9ths: we could call this structure A min add 9 add b9. Clearly, though, this is a form of a chord cluster, which will never yield very willingly to a nomenclature born of tonal music.

Also these 2 rules will help from time to time:
(1) If you ever have both a major 3rd and a minor 3rd treat the major 3rd as the actual 3rd and the minor 3rd as a(n enharmonically epelled) sharp 9th. E.g. the tones e, g#, b, d, g can be viewed as an E7#9 (g = f double sharp).
(2) Similarly in cases where you have a perfect 5th and a diminished 5th the perfect 5th is the real fifth and the diminished 5th can be seen as a sharp 11: c, e, gb, g, b = C maj7 #11 (gb = f#).

If the above is of only the slightest help then it will have served its purpose: the sound of the chord (and its emotive evocations) is the most important thing; the importance of naming it lies somewhere between a distant second and not completely a worthless endeavor.

See also: triads, seventh chords, slash chords, sixth chords.

short coryell lick (which has been seen before...)

2010-09-23T11:41:00.008-04:00

I've been listening to a lot of Larry Coryell lately and on the tune "Wolfbane" (from his 2005 album Electric with bassist Victor Bailey and Lenny White on drums) I heard a lick which I had transcribed on this blog before...yup one from Vinnie Moore's "Morning Star". Here's the Larry phrase (which is over E7#9) and the lick under discussion begins on the 4th beat of the 2nd measure:

And if you go to the Vinnie Moore transcription it's pretty easy to find: it's the very first phrase.

So the question is: did Larry listen to Vinnie's lick? or is it the case that given the number of players and the style that this pattern is inevitable? Similarities are bound to occur: just listen to the last movement of Brahms' First Symphony...remind anyone of Beethoven?

some live video

2010-08-23T10:51:00.007-04:00

Last Friday's gig -- which I didn't plug here on this blog because I've been too busy (read "lazy") -- was streamed live by the Yippie and then posted on USTREAM. I've linked to it here but you'll have to move the cursor around to these spots to see/hear the following:

19:45 John N. Johnson presents a great Monologue
46:13 General Slocum's Theater of Disaster
1:31:14 Naked Women Project
1:56:12 the moment where I break my high E string

Here's a link straight up if you'd prefer to see it on the USTREAM site.

The first performance is spoken word only (a great story about a man and his cat); the second mixes text with incidental music; the last music and spoken word.

naked women project at nublu

2010-08-17T00:04:00.000-04:00

The Naked Women Project will be at Nublu tonight. Check it out: $10 for 2 sets. That's right: 2 (count them two) sets of high-energy jazz, free improvisation, afro-pop and psychedelia all strewn with spoken word.

The projected line-up is:

T-bone
bass
The Law
trumpet
M'tazz
guitar
Polashek
sax
Father Charlie
words
Zebra
drums

with special guest performance artist Jazmine...

Nublu is located at 62 Avenue C.

transforming the circle of fifths

2010-07-13T17:12:00.008-04:00

Yesterday we looked at the circle of fifths (COF) and regarded how some scales and intervals looked when displayed on that circle. But as interesting as the COF is, it isn't the only way to display all 12 pitch classes: another intuitive way to do so would be to arrange the pitches chromatically. Here's how a circle of minor 2nds (COM2) looks:

It might not be obvious at first glance, but there's an interesting relationship between the COM2 and the COF. To start to see it let's look at how the whole tone scale -- or major 2nds -- looks when displayed on the COM2:

And let's recall how the same collection of tones looks on the COF:

They're the same shape! The two circles differ only by the tones not a part of this collection, and they differ in a very systematic way. The easiest way to see the pattern is like this:

that is, the tones not a part of the major 2nd collection simply swap places with their tritone.

Another way -- a more arithmetical way -- to understand this transformation is to use a formula:

Convert all the tones to numbers as in 12-tone music (C=0, Db=1, D=2 and so on).
Multiply all tones by 7 mod 12 (i.e. multiply by 7 and if the number is 12 or bigger subtract 12: if it is still bigger subtract 12 again, and so on until the number in question is less than 12).

Some examples:

C [0 M7 mod 12 = 0 x 7 = 0 =] C
Db [1 M7 mod 12 = 1 x 7 = 7 =] G
D [2 M7 mod 12 = 2 x 7 = 14 -12 = 2 =] D
A [8 M7 mod 12 = 8 x 7 = 56 (mod12) = 8 =] Eb

This multiplicative operation is a way of extending the basic operations of 12 tone music (retrograde, inversion, inversion retrograde), but here we have a graphic display.

Lastly we can see how some scales look when displayed on the COM2. Here's a major scale:
which is still a symmetric shape, though far different from the one it takes in the COF.

And here's how perfect 5ths look:

This shape is more visible evidence of a strong correspondence between the two circles under question...if this shape is mapped onto a COF one then has a chromatic scale:

circle of fifths and scales

2010-07-12T01:31:00.003-04:00

We touched on the circle of fifths before in this post. The circle of fifths is just that: notes seperated by a fifth (C - G -D - A, etc) and arranged in a circle because (in equal tempered tuning, at any rate) the fifths lead back to the starting point after all 12 tones have been accounted for (...Eb - Bb - F - C).

The circle of fifths (henceforth COF) has many uses, but one I've been playing around with lately is examining how scales look -- i.e. what shapes they take when the collections of notes are joined one to another as in the sequence of a scale. E.g. here's a whole tone scale:

And a chromatic scale:

Not surprisingly the 2 scales above take symmetric shapes when graphically displayed (the scales are symmetric in terms of their construction: comprised of 1/2 steps or whole steps). Surprising -- to me, at any rate -- is that when the major scale is displayed it also forms a symmetric shape:

As does the melodic minor.

Some asymmetric shapes: the harmonic minor:

and the neapolitan minor:

You can do these on your own, of course. Some other symmetric scales: the neapolitan major, the major pentatonic, the double harmonic. Some asymmetric ones: the hungarian minor and the harmonic major.

Lastly we can observe intervals -- actually we've already done this with the chromatic and whole-tone scales (min2 and Maj2 respectively). Here in one diagram are min3, Maj3 and P5:

The remaining intervals can all be found simply by going the other way round: C to Ab can be seen as a Maj3 down or as a min6 up. C to F is a P5 down or a P4 up, and so on...

naked women at goodbye blue monday TONIGHT

2010-07-11T11:42:00.006-04:00

Yes, TONIGHT a pared-down quintet manifestation of Naked Women return to the stage at Goodbye Blue Monday.

The lineup:

T-Bone Blatt
bass
Matthew Polashek
sax
m'tazz
guitar
Father Todd
'bone + words
Zebra aka "Tiger"
drums

The show is FREE and starts at 9pm.

creepy chords addendum

2010-07-01T11:01:00.007-04:00

I was reading through Ponce's fabulous Guitar Sonata no. 3 last night and realized that in measures 39 and 40 (of the first movement) there is the same chord progression as mentioned in the post on creepy chords. Ponce is in Bb, but the chords qualities are the same: Major 7th +5 and a Minor(Major) 7th:

In this context I wouldn't say that the chords are "creepy", though they are tense. More creepy -- or at least menacing -- are the chords immediately preceding the 2 above (actually starting in measure 35: the structure is repeated):

Here we're really only dealing with one chord per measure: Ponce simply "flips" the outer voices (the 7th and root exchange places) giving him a very nice stepwise-ascending bass line.

And lest we think that these are just contemporary harmonic structures, or something born of jazz, keep in mind that this piece was written in 1927 -- and it's probably a safe bet that Ponce didn't invent this all on his own, so one might be able to trace it back at least to Debussy (maybe even Liszt???)...worthy of investigation.

intervals on the guitar ii

2010-06-26T10:02:00.010-04:00

So now we come to the part of tuning the guitar that makes life interesting...the B string. In our last post we conquered the first four strings of the guitar (which are the same as the bass except that the bass being a bass has its strings an octave lower). Check out this diagram: I've made the B string red here to call attention to it:

Under each string is listed the number of frets that that string is distant from its neighbor to the left. If you wanna check this for accuracy consider the following: the low E and high E strings are 2 octaves apart (E2 and E4 respectively). Now look at the numbers: if we simply add up them up we get 5 + 5 + 5 + 4 + 5 = 24 frets. What's the interval corresponding to 24 frets? It's 2 x 12, which is the same as 2 octaves.

So let's take an example: what is the following interval?

We've traveled down the neck 2 frets and laterally 1: but this lateral move has brought us onto the B string. Checking our chart up above we see that that means we've moved the equivalent of 4 frets down the neck. Consequently our interval is (2 + 4 = 6 frets which we know from the last post's first chart is) a tritone. You'll see this show up in A-form dominant chords.

Here's one more:

In this case we've moved laterally 2 strings, one of which is the B string, and backwards 1 fret. The B string is 4 frets, the E is 5 and our "backwards" move is -1, and all of that adds up to 8 frets, a minor 6th.

That really wraps up our discussion. One loose end, though: we've always considered our intervals from lowest to highest, but this may not be the order in which they occur melodically. Just keep in mind that from C up to G is the exact same as from G down to C (a perfect 5th). You can always measure from the bottom up even if you want to know the interval starting from the higher note.

intervals on the guitar/bass

2010-06-23T15:10:00.013-04:00

The last post here dealt with seeing the intervals on the piano. This time we're going to look at the intervals on the guitar/electric bass.

If we stick with a single string it's a very straightforward affair: every fret up or down is a semi-tone, aka a minor 2nd. Here's a chart that shows all of the intervals up to (and including) the octave. The left side of the vertical line -- which represents the string, any string -- is how many frets one is measuring from any starting point; to the right side is listed the corresponding interval.

In this chart m = minor, M = major, P = perfect and TT = tritone (augmented 4th/diminished 5th).

So let's take an example: say we're interested in knowing what the interval is when we play a note on the 4th fret and (on the same string) the 11th. Just subtract the lower number from the higher -- which gives us 7 -- and consult that number on the left hand of the chart. Then look at the right hand side for the interval, which in our case is a P5.

Now, an interval like the P5 on the guitar is usually much easier to play using 2 strings. The following will apply completely to the bass and almost completely to the guitar. "Almost" because one of the strings (the B string) is not tuned like the others. For now let's just stick with the first 4 strings on the guitar (E, A, D, G).

The strings are tuned in Perfect 4ths. Consulting our chart that means that if we move from one string to the next (from left to right) we're moving 5 frets. Let's call this movement lateral movement. If we moved laterally 2 strings away we would have moved 10 frets. Actually we all know this because this is how we first started tuning the guitar/bass.

So take the following example:

What is this interval? We've gone up 2 frets and over laterally one string. That lateral move is equivalent to 5 frets, so we've actually gone up in pitch 2 + 5 = 7 frets, which according to our chart way up above is a P5.

Here's another example:

Again, this isn't hard to determine. We've traveled "up" 1 fret and laterally 2 strings, each string being equal to 5 frets. So our total distance is 1 + 5 + 5 = 11. And that corresponds to a M7.

Now let's throw a little wrench in the gears. Consider this interval:

Here we actually have to employ the concept of negative numbers, which really means that we subtract instead of add. Why? Because relative to our starting position we're going in the opposite direction. Here we've moved laterally one string and down the neck (up in the diagram) 2 frets. That is numerically 5 frets + -2 (or just 5 - 2) = 3 frets. Our chart tells us that 3 frets is a minor 3rd.

Let this sink in: next time we'll tackle that B string...

intervals

2010-06-19T10:40:00.007-04:00

The keyboard offers a nice way of visualizing intervals (and many other relationships) which is helpful if you're ever having any trouble trying to remember and internalize what they are.

In the following I've taken the basic keyboard, rotated it 90° counter-clockwise (thanks to Photoshop) so that now "up" in pitch is now "up" vertically. What we're going to do is look at all of the intervals of a C major scale as they relate to C. One cool feature of this is that if we look at the intervals ascending from C they are all either perfect or major. If we measure descending from C all of the intervals are either perfect or minor. On the keyboard I've colored blue the reference C. Since we're measuring always from C I've just indicated to the right of the note name the interval. Go ahead, click on the image...it'll enlarge.

So let's see how the keyboard can make the intervals easy to "see" by examining the minor and major 2nds. The minor 2nd is the least amount of distance you can travel on the keyboard without remaining on the same note: there are no keys in between the 2 in question (here in our example C and B). In the major 2nd there is one key in between the notes (C and D). If you know any Latin you'll recall that minor and major are comparative adjectives: they mean "smaller" and "bigger" respectively. And we can easily see why the major 2nd is the "bigger" interval: it takes up more space in terms of keys. On a guitar it will take up more frets. And acoustically the note of the major 2nd will always be a bigger number (in Hertz -- i.e. it will vibrate more times a second) than a minor 2nd related to the same reference note.

One last thing: If you examine and really absorb all of the above intervals you'll notice that almost all of the possible number of keys are covered. E.g. from C up to B is a major 7th, which is 11 keys away from C; from C down to D is a minor 7th, 10 keys. From C up to E is a major 3rd (4 keys distant) and from C down to A is a minor 3rd (3 keys distant). On our chart there is no interval that corresponds to being 6 keys away from C. This is actually a famous interval, and will complete all of the intervals within an octave, and it has several names. If you are thinking about C to F# it is called an Augmented 4th (sometimes +4 or #4) ; C up to Gb is called a Diminished 5th (sometimes b5). It is also known as a tritone because it is made up of 3 (tri) whole steps (tones). Just using the white keys of the piano this interval is found in F - B (because six keys is exactly half of the octave's 12 it is symmetric: from F up or down you'll land on a B if you travel six keys).

put a lyd on it (flat-7, that is...)

2010-06-16T17:36:00.012-04:00

The Lydian flat-7 (aka the "Overtone" scale) is the 4th mode of the melodic minor scale. One mood that it is able to evoke (for me, at least) is one of "mechanization". Here are 3 examples, and they're all cartoon related.

The first one is called "Powerhouse" by Raymond Scott. No, it wasn't written for the cartoons, but it got used by Warner Bros. in some Bugs Bunny things, and that's where I heard it as a kid and forever have those 2 things linked in my brain. This is just the first theme (clicking on the images will enlarge them a bit):

The second one is the theme song from the Jetsons.

(The first lick above is instrumental and the theme proper -- "Meet George Jet-son" -- starts on the downbeat of the 2nd measure.)

And the third is from the Simpsons.

Of course there's more going on here than just a certain mode: the rhythm of the melody and the underlying accompaniment have a lot do with projecting that mechanized, futuristic feel. On the other hand, all things being equal (like the rhythm), this does seem to be a good mode to use for those occasions.

By the way, in improvisation one can see a rationale for the Lydian b7 (even if it weren't a mode that existed all on its own, anyway) by looking at the regular old Lydian. That is, the Lydian is used somewhat in place of the Ionian to get a raised 4th; similarly in the Mixolydian one might also desire a raised 4th...et voila! the Lydian flat-7.

Oh, yes, you can easily find all of the above tunes on youtube, etc, if they aren't a permanent part of your memory yet.

once again back at the yippie museum

2010-06-13T11:30:00.003-04:00

Tonight The Naked Women Project will congregate and return to the Yippie Museum/Cafe. Check it out! The Yippie is located at 9 Bleecker Street (between Elizabeth and Bowery).

Tonight's offering is the usual, sans any performance art.

personnel:
T-Bone Blatt
bass
M'tazz the Great
guitar
Zebra
drums
Samu the Law
trumpet
Swirly
ewi
Father Todd
words
Matt
sax

blues, high-energy experimental jazz, funk,
psychedelic afro-pop...

the neapolitan sixth chord

2010-06-12T16:23:00.017-04:00

The Neapolitan Sixth chord (usually N⁶) is a major triad built on the lowered 2nd degree of a major or minor scale/key. The sixth, as you'll recall from this post, meaning that the triad is in first inversion. It still functions as a II chord: that is it is usually followed by the dominant (or I⁶₄), and like any II chord it can occur in either major or minor settings.

Here's an example from Coste's Quadrille No. 2, op. 3 -- this one's in E minor, meaning that the Neapolitan chord is an F major, and since it's in first inversion it has an A as its lowest note. (click on the image to make it bigger):

And here's a nice extended usage from the end of Tárrega's Maria (Gavotte).

The key here is A minor, so the Neapolitan sixth is a B-flat major triad (with D in the bass).

Here's another example which uses the Neapolitan as a pivot chord in modulating. Because the Neapolitan is a major triad it is found in other keys diatonically. The following is from Carcassi's Etude no. 9 op. 60. It's in A minor and goes to the N⁶ chord, but instead of going on to cadence in A minor it pivots here to D minor (B-flat is the sixth degree of D minor).

(N.B. In the above Roman numeral analysis both of the VII chords are diminished and probably should have little circles next to them, too, to help call attention to that fact.)

So these are some uses of the Neapolitan: they are, in fact, widespread, and even though the above examples don't illustrate it they are used also in major keys. Also they aren't always used in the first inversion: Segovia in his Remembranza (Etude II) uses the Neapolitan in 2nd inversion (i.e. N⁶₄). Molino in his first Guitar Sonata (2nd movement) uses the Neapolitan in root position (the N/V...an F major chord going to E major, overall in the key of A major).

That appellation of Neapolitan has no significance, btw...just like the augmented sixth chords which are called Italian, German and French. More on those in a later post.

the beat makes a difference

2010-06-11T11:18:00.009-04:00

The idea of a beat (or a "tactus") -- that is some regularly recurring accent that sets up a meter -- is interesting. Without such an accent or focal point there's no way of telling where the downbeat is needless to say, which means, consequently that determining where any given rhythmic pattern starts and ends is made impossible. Take the following rhythm which recurs ad infinitum:

Without a downbeat there's no real way to distinguish what the rhythm really is. For instance any of the 3 notes could be thought of as beginning the pattern:

Which would produce the following (the gray area encloses the same notes which look different due to beaming).
Actually one good benefit of this is that if you can play the first one you can play all of them (for me #2 was always very, very hard to play...it's not!).

some creepy chords

2010-06-09T12:06:00.007-04:00

I've always associated the minor-major 7th chord with jazz tunes, South American (mainly Brazilian) music and cliff-hanger moments in James Bond movies and 70s TV shows like Charlie's Angels. But I just watched The Machinist (2004) a Spanish made film with Christian Bale and Jennifer Jason Leigh and it turns out that they can be used to convey creepiness, too (which I guess, after all, is an extension of tension). The moment I'm talking about here occurs at ca. 40min 37sec.

Note also that the 2nd "creepy" chord (1st chord in the 2nd measure) is an augmented triad with a major 7th. (You could also look at this as a C/Ab, which could easily come from the Harmonic Major mode.) From the first chord to this one the only changing part is the middle two voices: a major third that rises a half step. The last chord in that measure is also an augmented triad: really just the "upper" part of the Ab min/Maj7th.

Other elements which add to the creepiness (which seem to be universal): a slow tempo -- somewhere around a quarter note equaling something in the 50s -- and a lot of reverb.

Music by Roque Baños.

yankee rose + heaven tonight

2010-06-07T00:05:00.009-04:00

Two different tunes from the 80s when guitar was king, by kings of the guitar: David Lee Roth's Yankee Rose with Steve Vai handling the guitar chores and Yngwie J. Malmsteen's Heaven Tonight. Though done by masters of technique the songs (and videos) are in that vein of true rock 'n roll fun. And who wouldn't rejoice at playing these tunes to thousands of fans?

Yankee Rose
(1986)

Heaven Tonight
(1988)

Actually Steve and Yngwie represent 2 different approaches to shredding, and here are representative short licks from the above tunes. Steve seems to like sliding around the neck, especially when arpeggiating. The picking isn't so rough but the shfting is in this one (this occurs at 2:38 in the video -- subtract out 1:41 if you're listening to some form of the audio):

And Yngwie -- Mr. "Neo-Classical" -- is all about sweeping arpeggios and alternate picking, the latter of which is featured here in a very nice harmonic minor passage (at 0:36):

N.B. I've transcribed this at pitch -- Yngwie (with band in tow) tunes down a half-step, so he's really playing in F# minor, though it sounds in F minor.

the naked women project at abc no-rio

2010-06-05T21:37:00.005-04:00

The Naked Women Project will be kicking off the annual ABC No-Rio Gala fundraiser event tonight starting at 6pm. $5 gets you in (but they'll take more: remember this is to help them raise money so that they can stay open all year and have great, awesome music every Sunday).

The lineup:

T-bone
bass
The Law
trumpet
Swirly
electronic winds
M'tazz
guitar
Polashek
sax
Father Todd
'bone + words
Thabit
drums

ABC No-Rio is located at 156 Rivington Street (between Suffolk and Clinton Streets) on the Lower East Side. The F/J/M/Z station at Essex-Delancey is just 2 blocks away.

new york city pop band live again

2010-06-05T00:03:00.006-04:00

A trio incarnation of the New York City Pop Band will be supplying some music for the opening reception of the art show "Dance, Sing and Eat" by Yori Hatakeyama and Sawaka Norii. That's at New Century Artists, Inc which is located at 530 West 25th Street, Suite 406. We start at 4pm, the opening proper at 3pm (and goes until 6pm).

The trio is:
Charles M'tazz Ramsey on guitar,
Tom T-bone Blatt on bass,
Nick Thabit on drums.

duo fortuna

2010-06-03T00:05:00.001-04:00

I'm really happy that I'm back with Duo Fortuna, a piano guitar duo in which I have the great pleasure of playing with Leslie Purcell Upchurch. I think of Electric Bartok, maybe with some more Eastern elements thrown in.

It's rare for me when this amount of rapport just happens. The pieces are (except for one or 2 examples) completely imrpvoised, but generally with some parameter(s) in place. E.g. "chromatics" where the dominant idea is chromatic, half-step movement. Or "Hirajoshi" where we stick to that Japanese scale (actually it's a koto tuning, but roughly a scale).

Check out the myspace for some audio.

the naked women project at the tank

2010-06-02T00:02:00.006-04:00

The Naked Women Project take to the Tank's stage tonight at 9:30 pm. Tickets are $7. There might be a mad, crazed priest out front ere the show's beginning, so don't come too late.

As always we'll be presenting a wonderful exciting blend of high-energy experimental jazz, free improvisation, afro-pop, psychedelia and spoken word.

The personnel:

T-Bone
bass
Big Matt
sax
The Law
trumpet
M'tazz
guitar
The Mad Priest
'bone + spoken word
Swirly
wind synths

Zebra

drums

The Tank is located at 354 West 45th Street between 8th and 9th Avenues.

sine waves graphically

2010-06-01T23:06:00.014-04:00

The sine wave is a "pure" tone, i.e. it is only a fundamental with no other overtones. All other sounds (musical or otherwise) are composites of sines (sinusoids according to Benade). Since doing the post on FirstSounds I became interested in how sines and other sounds looked so I started systematically doing some recordings with sine waves from a software synth (the Dreamstation).

The following images are from the editing software Cakewalk. Basically these pictures are telling us how the ear moves back and forth in response to sound waves. The interesting thing, of course, is how in compound sounds the ear is able to perceive more than one tone (or in other cases how it assembles one tone from many partials...more on that in a later post).

The first is of an A4 (the A above middle C).

Then a C5#.

And an E5 (now a major 10th above middle C).

Next are composites...First the major 3rd resulting from the A and C#.

Then the minor 3rd of C# and E.

Then the perfect 5th resulting from the A and E.

And finally the whole A major triad.

And one other interesting thing to note: these are time - amplitude graphs with the x-axis representing time and the y-axis amplitude (the middle horizontal line indicates the point where there is no sound, where the eardrum is in between being moved in and out). These images are small so it isn't evident in all of them, but by comparing the last one (the complete triad) with that of any of the single tones it is extremely easy to see that the triad is louder, exactly what one would expect (more sound = more volume).

arcas

2010-05-27T12:45:00.005-04:00

Yet another shout out for another great yet under- but getting-to-be-better known guitarist/composer: Julián Arcas (1832 - 1882). His music is, like Tárrega's (who heard Arcas play in 1862) a mix of 19th century European and nationalistic Spanish music. Here are examples of both styles (I'm whipping out extended passages here: fair use, after all), Spanish first:

Solea

Andante

The Andante is one of his most performed concert pieces, along with the Fantasy on Themes from La Traviata which was wrongly attributed to Tárrega (perhaps because he plagiarized it).

raga sindhi-bhairavi

2010-05-25T11:18:00.006-04:00

I transcribed this from the great Ravi Shankar album The Sounds Of India. What's great about the cd, beyond the playing, is that before each piece Ravi plays the raga used and also goes over the rhythm. Here is raga Sindhi-Bhairavi, and like the classical melodic minor it has 2 forms, an ascending and descending. Clicking on the images will make them ever so slightly larger:

The x's indicate that some microtonal bending was taking place in Ravi's playing.

I have no real conception of Indian music beyond what I've heard on cds, etc (i.e. I've never engaged in any formal study). But it seems that the idea behind the different forms of this mode (if I may) has to do with what tones are being tonicized or made the the focal point. Half steps do that well (and in Western music from the Medieval period on a similar practice has been in place: in fact melodic formulas born of said practice eventually gave rise to the melodic minor scale). I'll put up some actual passages of Ravi's playing soon, but play around with this raga keeping that half step idea in mind. Play it over a C#mi7 chord: it sounds cool, and gives a lot more color than a regular dorian or minor will (w/o chromatic passing tones, that is).

BTW I arrived at a C# by pitch shifting the original track up 86 cents (could've shifted it down, of course, too). Why not simply retune the ol' guitar? One reason: Floyd Rose.

coste

2010-05-22T15:45:00.014-04:00

I have to give a shout out for Napoleon Coste, the awesome French composer/guitarist who lived from 1805 to 1883. I personally don't go so much for the labels classical and romantic: though that taxonomy is not born out of irrationality it's a bit easier simply to talk about 19th century music. Having said that if any guitarists of that period assimilated the Schubertian style of "Strum und Drung" (i.e. of "Romanticism") it was Coste (along with Mertz, though Aguado, Arcas and many others circumambulated that style).

Of the many, many examples that could be mustered let me just lob this one passage out there from his Andante and Minuet op. 39.

Play through this (on any instrument). Hopefully it'll put you in a fervor to devour the rest of Coste's output, which spans the gamut from very easy to very virtuosic.

N.B. This example comes from a facsimile of the 19th century publication of the work. When reading through these editions one has to realize that less information is usually provided for the performer. A good example of this is at the E⁶₄ chord: the arpeggio is comprised of sextuplets, though no 6 appears anywhere above the appropriate groupings of notes. Also in that same measure the penultimate melodic note is D#, not D natural (the D an octave below was sharpened in the previous beat, and that holds for the entire pitch class).

naked women once again at goodbye blue monday

2010-05-17T10:51:00.005-04:00

Well, this is an after the fact post: Naked Women returned to Goodbye Blue Monday last night. Very nice show, great playahs. The lineup:

Tom Blatt: bass
Charles Ramsey: guitar
Lex Samu: trumpet
Tom Swirly: midi winds + spoken word
Nick Thabit: drums

The thinned-out ensemble worked even though we actually hand't really rehearsed as such. It's slight easier to listen to each other when there's less density.

The upcoming shows are: June 2nd at the Tank, June 6th at ABC-No Rio, June 13th at Yippie Museum at June 21st at MMNY (Make Music New York) somewhere outside in Prospect Heights in Brooklyn. Also I'll be playing with the New York City Pop Band on June 5th at New Century Artists for the opening of Yori Hatakeyama and Sawaka Norii.

can't you see

2010-05-12T11:01:00.004-04:00

Classic Marshall Tucker tune, a great jam to play over. Here's a live clip via youtube:

Can't You See

(1973)

Check out the solo starting at 2:08, especially that long, drawn out f to f# at 2:20 repeated thrice...totally awesome. The licks in this tune are synonymous with southern rock.

Transcriptions to follow...

pentatonics again

2010-05-11T10:30:00.001-04:00

So here's a way of using pentatonic scales which comes at the issue from the other way around from what we were doing before. Let's start with an F major triad, and let's use minor pentatonics.

Now, the first thing we should stipulate is that you can play whatever you want whenever you want. That's the first rule, and this is basically the opening sentence of Persichetti's Twentieth-Century Harmony. Your ear and musical soul will guide you. On the other hand often what we're doing when we improvise is restating the underlying harmony, and if this is the case then we have to be a little more analytical or "rule bound" in our approach.

Back to the F major triad. Let's see what happens when we start a pentatonic scale on all of its tones: f, a, c.

Right away we can see that the F minor pentatonic (f, ab, bb, c, eb) isn't the best choice if we're aiming at re-stating or -enforcing the harmony. The minor 3rd is what undoes this most. BUT in context the triad might be standing in for a dominant chord, so the minor 7th might work well. And if it is standing for a dominant-type chord it might be a 7#9 chord, in which case the minor 3rd really would sound as the #9 and it would reinforce the harmony. The tones relate to the chord as follows:
f = 1
ab = b3
bb = 4
c = 5
eb = b7

A minor penatonic (a, c, d, e, g) works well as the collection of tones is found in both F ionian and F lydian. It of course won't work if the major triad is actually a dominant chord. The tones relate to the chord as follows:
a = 3
c = 5
d = 6
e = 7
g = 2

C minor pentatonic (c, eb, f, g, bb) could well work, depending on context. If the triad is a dominant-type chord then you get the following:
c = 5
eb = b7
f = 1
g = 2
bb = 4

first sounds

2010-05-10T10:59:00.007-04:00

Several years ago I heard about this on some NPR show -- "this" being the fact that sound had in fact been recorded about 2 decades before Edison. The feat was accomplished by a Frenchman named Édouard-Léon Scott de Martinville. His machine, the phonautograph, for making this happen looked like this:

In a way this did "record" sound: but it did so only for the purposes of examining how it looked (it recorded sound onto paper). That is Édouard never seemed interested in hearing the sound reproduced. But in modern times that information can be used to turn the visible marking of a wave back into sound. If you use any audio editing software you'll know that if you zoom in close enough you get to see the actual wave form of the sound.

So, anyway, if any of the above seems interesting to you please check out FirstSounds.org where there is audio of the first recording plus a lot of .pdf files of original documents. Also midway (or so) down the home page is a short very informative video.

naked women at yippie museum tonight

2010-05-09T01:06:00.003-04:00

Tonight Naked Women return to the Yippie Museum/Cafe. Check it out! The Yippie is located at 9 Bleecker Street (between Elizabeth and Bowery).

personnel:
T-Bone Blatt: bass
M'tazz the Great: guitar
Andy O'Neil: drums
Lex Samu: trumpet
Tom Swirly: ewi
Raymond Todd: trombone

and featuring GOLDIVA singing + dancing!

blues, high-energy experimental jazz, funk,
psychedelic afro-pop...

carmen of the spheres

2010-05-08T10:44:00.004-04:00

Very interesting take on the Harmony of the Spheres by Greg Fox here. A blurb from that page if you need any more enticement:

"This is (finally) the brand new early August 2006 work by Greg Fox, a first response to Edward O Wilson's "Consilience", Richard Dawkins' "Unweaving The Rainbow", Jared Diamond's "The Third Chimpanzee", Steven Pinker's "How The Mind Works" and most importantly Susan Blackmore's "The Meme Machine". All of these books deal (among other things!) with the relationship between art and science, between art and human nature, art and the world. "

The piece derives pitches from the orbital periods of the planets (using the idea that halving or doubling a cycle produces an octave down or up respectively). Of course that alone will only give one a fundamental frequency: I think he settled on sine waves for the realization.

gagaku

2010-05-04T00:08:00.006-04:00

I mentioned gagaku before in a post concerning Takemitsu's modern piece In An Autumn Garden for gagaku orchestra. For some interesting points concerning gagaku check out this site. Unfortunately only the home page is in English. But even so the information here is quite nice. Consider the following descriptions of some of the instruments:

Sho ... The light that penetrates from the Heavens
Ryuteki ... The dragon that ascends dancing in the Sky
Hichiriki ... The voices echoing on the Earth

When all sound together a Cosmos can be heard

The two Chinese characters (kanji) that make up the word literally mean "elegant music".

So there is a nice correlation between the instruments and the cosmos. Of course to get a more nuanced feel for gagaku one would have to plumb the depths of Heian culture more generally. Especially regarding the concept of wabisabi which is, as the WWWJDIC translates the term,the "aesthetic sense in Japanese art emphasising quiet simplicity and subdued refinement". Also the sadness that a cultivated soul feels upon experiencing beauty knowing its transient nature.

traditional chinese music

2010-05-03T12:32:00.009-04:00

Yesterday while strolling through Chinatown I passed by Columbus Park and heard some music. I went in to investigate and the music turned out to be coming from a traditional Chinese ensemble. I couldn't really get their name (all information was in Chinese, except for that they played as part of Music Under New York). I'm pretty sure that they're called the Street Musical Club. I can't find anything online about them specifically, but here's a good site with traditional Chinese music: Internet Chinese Music Archive. The lyrical quality of the playing is remarkable.

By the way, China has the oldest written music: tablature for the qin. The piece is called Secluded Orchid and comes from the Tang Dynasty. You can get some info on that in the wikipedia article or on this page (if you scroll down to the section called music you'll be able to hear it, too) from John Thompson. It's definitely worth listening to: the amount of harmonics used is stunning, as well as the fact that it could easily be heard as a contemporary piece.

in need of orchestration

2010-05-02T12:57:00.004-04:00

Back in the day it was customary for composers to orchestrate their works made for smaller ensembles and soloists. Or to orchestrate other composers' works -- especially piano works, Ravel's orchestration of Mussorgsky's Pictures at an Exhibition being the preeminent example.

So I'm not an orchestrator, but for any of you out there looking for some projects let me suggest some of the guitar repertoire from the early part of the 20th century:

Antonio Jose's Sonata para Guitarra
Ponce's Variations and Fugue on La Folia
Manen's Sonata-Fantasia
Migot's Pour un Hommage a Debussy (more on this one later)
...and though from the 1960s Mompou's Suite Compostelana
would be fabulous.

There are many more, but these are what I would pick first. And selecting from the list would probably yield a very nice album.

For practical "how to" examples one could consult De Falla's orchestration of his Debussy hommage and Martin's own Quatre Pieces Breves.

perfume for the month of may

2010-05-01T00:45:00.002-04:00

What better way to begin the merry month of May than with some tunes from Perfume? Here are links to 2 different tunes from different points in their career...

sweet donuts
(2003)

one room disco
(2009)

Used daily your overall mood will be improved!

drum rudiments

2010-04-30T10:08:00.000-04:00

I recently had to coach a drummer who was learning some rudiments like the rough half-drag and nine-stroke roll. Rudiments are really cool -- in fact I think anything is really cool that bumps up one's technique. But here's a site that not only does the rudiments on the snare but also in the context of a beat and a fill...nice applications!

rudiments from freedumlessons.com

On this page you can access all of the 40 rudiments offered, plus (scrolling down) there is a good description of each. Many, many thanks to Lionel Duperron for playing!

overtone singing

2010-04-29T10:16:00.005-04:00

What is overtone singing? If you've ever heard Tibetan Buddhist chant you'll know. But here's a short, helpful tutorial.

Basically the tongue (and lips and so on) in this type of singing changes the overtones that are produced while on a constant fundamental pitch producing a "bagpipe" type sound -- i.e. a high changing melody over a low drone. For some examples on Amazing Grace:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mO4Uh-Mini4&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NgyJ547oA4I&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kFWYSW4vfcA&feature=fvw

This ties in to the post on subtractive synthesis, and makes clear that there's a lot more going on when one pitch is sounded than one commonly thinks.

tab snobs

2010-04-27T12:24:00.001-04:00

I know that there are many, many guitarists out there who are "tab snobs", i.e. completely against the idea of communicating a music score in any other form than in familiar music notation. There are of course many, many, many more guitarists who can't read music or know where any notes are located on their instrument. So the tab snobs' position is somewhat understandable. But historically they're on the shakiest of ground, because if we go back and look at lute music from the 16th and 17th centuries it was only written in... (drum roll please) ...tablature. For the briefest of introductions check this site out. Also the Frederick Noad anthologies of Renaissance and Baroque music have some info regarding this, plus of course the Harvard Dictionary of Music, etc.

The reason that tab is useful is that it locates exactly where notes are to be played. In classical guitar scores this is settled by using a lot of extra information: fingerings, strings, positions, etc, which in a sense amounts to a tablature overlay on the score. I think that only offering up the notes without any indication of position and so on is lazy, unless we're only concerned about analyzing the notes and not playing them.

vinnie moore solo from morning star

2010-04-26T12:35:00.006-04:00

Yup, more Vinnie (Moore). This is his solo from "Morning Star", the opening track from the album Time Odyssey (1988). The solo begins at 1:38. Click on the gif to get a bigger image.

There are a million great things to discuss about this solo, but I'll leave that for a bit later. I did forget to put in the chords over which he's playing, but they're not hard to hear. The main point is learn the solo, or parts you like, take it/them apart and see what else you can come up with!

There's a short Vinnie lick in this post.

negativland

2010-04-19T13:16:00.006-04:00

So I dig Craig Baldwin's films a lot. The first one I saw (on DVD) a few years back was Spectres of the Spectrum. The next one was Sonic Outlaws, which takes as its main topic or point of departure a lawsuit that arose between the San Francisco based band Negativland and U2 (or perhaps more accurately U2's record label Island Records). I'll spare you the details here but I will give a shout out to Negativland. Check out that site. Basically the band and the film explore the issue of copyright, fair use and artwork creation from the point of view of originality. The word "explores" might be too generous, so let's say that there is an exploration down a certain avenue (mainly an anti-copyright one). Legitimate issues are raised, some breezed over...it's a worthwhile conversation.

naked women back at goodbye blue monday

2010-04-18T19:44:00.003-04:00

Yes, playing again with Naked Women at Goodbye Blue Monday.
Tonight at 9pm.

the lineup:
Tom Blatt: bass
Matthew Polashek: sax
Charles Ramsey: guitar
Tom Swirly: electronic winds
Raymond Todd: 'bone + spoken word
Zebra: drums

...and Goldiva handling the dancing chores...

subtractive synthesis

2010-04-15T11:05:00.010-04:00

A million years ago when I was very young I heard Wendy (but at that point in time Walter) Carlos' Switched On Bach. I think that it was the last movement of the 3rd Brandenburg Concerto that made my jaw drop and just sucked me into that world -- I desperately wanted a huge synthesizer that filled up rooms with equipment.

I only new the name of the synthesizer: Moog. I had no concept of "subtractive" or "analog" and so on. The first synth I ever got (much later) was the Roland Alpha Juno-2. Technically it's subtractive (it has digital oscillators and filters, etc, but has an analog sound). The only thing that made that hard was (1) there were no knobs -- all of the controls were buried inside and accessible only one parameter at a time; (2) I had no idea how synthesizers worked and consequently only made use of the presets occasionally making some modifications.

The thing is subtractive synthesis isn't hard to understand at all. And grasping it really makes it easier to understand what might happen when you start tweaking the parameters. (By the way this is absolutely not true of other types of synthesis like FM -- frequency modulation -- found on the Yamaha DX-7.) And these days software synths are cheap and easily available.

So what is subtractive synthesis? Here's my terse and possibly awkward definition: taking a basic sound (waveform) and filtering (i.e. subtracting out certain harmonics from) it to give a new (desired) sound. And if you're using a synth (software or otherwise) that's subtractive and want a little more info about it/them google the term and root around. Here are a couple of helpful sites:

DarkSonus
Yala
Wikipedia (this has a nice comparison with the human voice to make the mechanisms more easily understandable -- of course it's wikipedia and could change in a minute)

Here's a diagram I lifted from a KVR wiki which visually clarifies what's happening in this type of synthesis:

Of course in the end it's certainly not necessary to know how a synth works to use it effectively. But that knowledge can help you and aids in conceptualizing how sound works more generally.

midnight tango bass solo

2010-04-14T23:15:00.010-04:00

So I was thinking this morning that I've never done a bass transcription here. I remembered that there was a short, cool one in DiMeola's "Midnight Tango" (from the most excellent cd Elegant Gypsy) played by Anthony Jackson, so here it is. The solo starts at 3:52. Though short it's very interesting -- click on the gif to get a bigger image.

There are a number of things worth mentioning here:

1. The first motive (rhythmically 2 eighth notes to a long note, melodically a double stop of a perfect fourth that jumps up a 3rd and comes back a 2nd) is unifying but falls on different beats in the first 2 measures. It comes back on the 2nd beat in the 3rd measure but is varied.

2. The descending leap of a P4 in measure 5 is echoed but varied slightly in measure 7 (on the same chord).

3. Nice pedal point on C in measure 5.

4. The rhythmic motive of 16th triplets with 2 (non-triplet) 16ths in measure 4 is used again in measure 6.

5. Tonally measure 6 is a little surprising because rather than playing a form of A major over the E major chord he plays the parallel major, i.e. he opts for E mixolydian.

6. Overall the solo moves from longer note values to more florid ones (a well-used technique of composers going back at least to the Renaissance if not earlier).

Of course all of the above points are good food for thought, but in no way are they meant to be taken as the only interesting points. Actually the one main point (if you will) is the emotive content of the solo. The details we've pointed out are good for us a improvisers -- they may make us think and become more creative -- but their real use is in attempting to find correspondences between them and the emotive effect that they produce.

Also if you're interested I transcribed Al's solo (sequentially right after the bass solo in this tune) years ago. I was a sweep picking fanatic back then, so be warned: I did re-finger it slightly to bring it into my world view. I wouldn't actually play it the same way these days.

the ukelele

2010-04-13T10:47:00.008-04:00

I teach some ukulele and I came across this post. Worth reading and worth checking out the site overall...

The larger question that comes from this post is just how lame is it to choose an instrument based upon what cultural associations it has attracted? It's quite possible that what the author is saying is that "instead of practicing and getting good on the guitar you can choose the ukulele which will not burden you with issues of virtuosity, technical limitations, etc." That shouldn't ever be considered a sound rationale for picking an instrument, even though once picked much fruit might be born. This gets into the whole issue of using music as an identity, which I feel almost always is a road that leads only to mediocrity.

Put another way for one to develop as an artist one might have to persevere through some criticism. If one can't stand up against "hair metal wankers" and "tedious singer/songwriters" (from the post) how week is that person???

BTW if you've got some extra time and dig on the ukulele go to youtube and search ukulele and while my guitar gently weeps...you might be surprised.

songs in the key of z

2010-04-12T11:33:00.002-04:00

This is just a book that I've poked around in, but I love the topic of "outsider" musicians. Here's the site associated with the book which has some other things to check out.

more guitar this sunday

2010-04-11T01:30:00.001-04:00

Playing more guitar at an art opening today for my friend and great painter Alexander Percy.

The skinny:

Rio Penthouse Gallery
10 Fort Washington Ave
(between 159th + 160th Streets)
New York, NY
Sunday, April 11, 2010
4-7pm

practicing music as entertainment

2010-04-10T01:46:00.001-04:00

Mass communication has made the means of delivering and distributing music easier and easier: up to the point where if one were to want to escape the grasp of music in an urban setting the only means of doing so would be earplugs. It is ubiquitous. From radio to tv to all sorts of tape and vinyl formats to cds to mp3s to video games...

But if we go back in time, say, 200 years there wasn't such a machine in place. In fact then the only means of hearing music was to hear it performed live. And live performances are not a great mechanism of mass delivery. What did suffice back in the day for that was sheet music. You could buy a Beethoven sonata or your favorite Schubert lieder or a Rossini overture arranged for solo piano and take it home and play it. Of course this presupposes that one could play, or even that there's a substantial population of "amateur" (I detest the term...more on that later) musicians who would consume the media in question. And there of course seemed to be.

This brings me to my main point: that practicing music is a great form of entertainment. Of course practicing music is often seen as a means to an end: usually a performance-of-some-sort end, and in this sense the term is loaded with laborious overtones. Also the word practice is highly equivocal: it might mean running scales, sight-reading through pieces or actually performing live (because performance needs practice, too). But no matter what you're practicing it should be fun -- though admittedly some things are just more fun than others (that's our world after all).

Globally viewed there's an advantage here, too. Were the world filled with people who practiced/played music at home, even just for themselves, there would be so much more music in the world! And a nice benefit to "professionals" is that there would be a much, much, much more informed audience base. And even if Stockhausen and Ornette Coleman always fetch a microscopically small slice of the population's attention, a fraction of a fraction of a fraction of a percent is still a large number when 6 billion people are under discussion.

random cd pulling: greensleeves

2010-04-09T01:51:00.003-04:00

Soon because of spatial limitations I'm going to box all of my cds, and in an effort to get reacquainted with some of them I've begun shutting my eyes and randomly selecting one from the array. Today's pulling: Greensleeves: A Collection of English Lute Songs. The artists: Julianne Baird, Soprano and Ronn McFarlane, Lutes (both 8 and 10 coursed varieties). This cd, incidently, was nestled between King Crimson's Ladies of the Road and Stanley Jordan's Flying Home -- NOT the best way to organize any collection.

This recording hails from 1989 but I didn't get a hold of it until 1993 (I'm pretty certain of that date because I was working on songs from that repertoire for a recital in school). And this was a cd I didn't really buy: it came via a friend who had some sort of BMG mailing cd arrangement (like get 10 cds for a $1 or something like that). Anyway I dug/dig it. The playing and singing are both done deftly.

My favorite tune is Dowland's "Come Again", though I'm not entirely on board with the handling of the "To see, to hear, to touch..." section. It would've been nice to have Dowland's "Come, Heavy Sleep" but they can't include the entire repertoire, especially when the scope is broad composer wise.

Not all of the pieces are duets: there's a fair number of solo lute works thrown in, and they're played beautifully. As a guitarist I feel that these pieces sit on the guitar well, but it's always nice to hear them on lute: they're "lighter" if you will (they're also higher in pitch unless you correct for that on the guitar with a capo). The anonymous "Bonny Sweet Boy" was a nice surprise: it's a very melancholy piece, and kind of short.

One definite thing worth mentioning -- with a view to bridging what might seem prima facie as disparate styles of music -- is that this kind of Renaissance lute music is highly improvisational. That's not really true of the ricercare of da Milano, for instance, but in these stylized dance pieces it's really the case. I'm thinking particularly of the solo music, but it's also easy to imagine a lute accompanist spontaneously adding passages (or licks if you will) and experimenting to make the music as interesting and beautiful as possible (and not dull and the same every time). If you'd like to see that in action I would certainly recommend as a starter Frederick Noad's Renaissance Guitar book. It has solos, duets and songs. There's also a good book of only solo music by the Japanese Zen-on Guitar Library simply entitle Renaissance Guitar. I'm not so sure it's in print anymore: you can check out the Japanese site here: Zen-On. A used copy shouldn't be too hard to run down I'd think.

diamond dust

2010-04-08T00:59:00.006-04:00

My all time favorite Jeff Beck tune (and there are a LOT of good ones from which to choose) from the classic album Blow By Blow. I think George Martin did the orchestration. This is the first chorus of the solo. Click on the image to get a bigger gif:

Some things to note about the tune: a couple of minMaj7ths and it's in 5. Also Beck does a great job of changing up whether he's starting phrases right on the 1 of the measure or not. And I noted on the chart where he goes for the Lydian mode.

Some issues: I did this transcription years ago, and even if I did it today I'd say don't get too hung up on the rhythmic values. Also I don't think that I'd play the notes the same way/places (but the notes themselves are accurate). And the chords get kind of approximate here and there...having said that it'll get you in the game. Lastly I did this in PowerTab (which is awesome) but the accidentals aren't really the ones I'd like to see. The only way around this would be to have the key signature change every measure or so at sections which is not really a great way to go. A good exercise in thinking enharmonically.

If you're interested in learning the head I have that up on my site:
diamond dust head.

This tune should be a standard.

repurposing pentatonics pars iii

2010-04-07T01:48:00.007-04:00

One interesting thing to do with pentatonic scales is to use them as a way of creating totally chromatic music -- i.e. music constantly using all 12 equal tempered pitch classes.

Obviously a pentatonic scale has 5 different tones. If you subtract that from the total available 12 you're left with 7 pitches. The interesting thing here is that most scales have 7 tones. Consequently if one person/group of performers utilizes a pentatonic scale and another person/group makes use of some 7 note scale the result will be that all 12 tones are being used.

So what 7-toned scale is left over? Let's use a C minor pentatonic scale and see:

C minor Pentatonic: c, eb, f, g, bb
Remaining notes: c#, d, e, f#, g#, a, b

Rearranging these 7 remaining tones we get:

a, b, c#, d, e, f#, g#

...that's right, an A major scale! And for me it's easier to think of this as a B dorian:

b, c#, d, e, f#, g#, a

and that's because then we get this easy-to-remember relationship:

Any minor pentatonic scale played along with a dorian mode 1/2 step below the minor pentatonic will yield the total chromatic.

But there are other ways of conceptualizing the relationship between these 2 scales. E.g. C minor pentatonic is also Eb major pentatonic, which means that there's a tritone relationship between the 2 scales (Eb and A major). And actually this one is pretty nice because the tritone is symmetric, so you could flip the scale types while keeping the roots and you'll still end up with all 12 tones (A minor pentatonic and Eb major).

This way of conceiving of totally chromatic music has a nice benefit of building in some easy to understand structure...give it a go and see what happens.

See also: repurposing pentatonics part i, part ii.

tone matrix online synthesizer

2010-04-06T01:52:00.002-04:00

Here's a cool little online sine wave synth.

It's very visual: just click in the grid where you want your sound to go and listen to the results. So you don't have to think like a musician: in fact you can just try to make pictures and hear what happens. You can also think about how symmetric your visual patterns are and how that affects the music produced (it seems to me that asymmetric patterns are more interesting, probably because they repeat so fast that symmetry is achieved that way).

The notes constitute a D major pentatonic scale, by the way, which means that it's this collection of tones:

d, e, f#, a, b, d...

You can also figure that temporally the 16 steps give you something like 16 sixteenth notes, or 4 quarter notes. If you look at it like this the quarter notes are coming by at M.M. 120.

Extremely fun.

the many flavors of 7th chords

2010-04-05T01:08:00.001-04:00

Seventh chords are triads that have had a third added to their uppermost member, the 5th (a triad contains some form of 1, 3 and 5). The third will 'skip' a note if you're thinking alphabetically, meaning that it skips a scale degree -- there the 6th -- and so we end up with a tone that is a 7th above the root of the original triad.

OK, my apologies for such a convoluted definition. Since a picture is worth a thousand words here's a C major seventh (the gray notes are not part of the chord):

Looking at this it's clear that a seventh chord can also be seen as a triad with the interval of a 7th added to the root of that triad. Regarding this approach the first thing to keep in mind is that there are two main intervals of a 7th: major and minor. (There's actually another one that comes into play and we'll talk about it in a minute.) So if we recall that there are 4 basic triads we should be able to produce (4 triads x 2 types of sevenths =) 8 types of 7th chords.

So the major triad gives us a major 7th and a dominant 7th.

The minor triad: a minor/major 7th and a minor 7th.

The augmented: a major 7th +5 and a dominant 7th +5

The diminished...well, let's talk about this one for a second. Here we really need to look at the first way (of stacking thirds) of constructing sevenths to see how these come about. We could slap a major 7th interval onto the root of a diminished triad but in practice this doesn't happen: it's enharmonically equivalent to a B major triad with a b9. But the real reason that it doesn't "happen" is that seventh chords developed historically from voice leading and from functional harmonic concerns. The diminished triad is a chord that came about as a VII chord, and in neither the major nor the minor modes will we get a VII chord that is diminished and has a major seventh.

So what chords do we get? If we add a minor seventh to the triad we get a (classically appelled) half-diminished chord. On modern charts you're most likely to see this called a minor 7 b5.

Then there is a fully diminished seventh chord: it results from stacking minor thirds up from the root. In the key of C we could start on B and get:
b, d, f, a-flat.
And if we added another minor 3rd we'd be back to b. (If we examine the sort of 7th here we don't have a major or a minor variety: in this case it's a diminished 7th.)

This chord is unique because any of it's tones could be the root (and because of this in 19th century music it was used a pivot chord in modulations). Mo' on dat in a later post...

There is one more seventh that is not a basic triad with an added third. It kind of results from whole tone harmony, or it can be seen as an analogue of the dominant 7th +5:
the dominant 7th b5:

You won't really see a C-E-Gb chord floating around out there all on it's own, but this seventh chord is not uncommon at all (and not just in jazz: it comes up in Granados' Valses Poeticos if memory serves).

Play the sevenths, use them, they're beautiful...

the wayward cloud

2010-04-04T00:43:00.004-04:00

This is a 2005 film by Tsai Ming-Liang (and in a way uses two characters from his 2001 film What Time Is It There?). It's a musical, or has musical numbers. And the music is great: it recalls 50s, 40s American music with singing in Mandarin.

Basically the setting of this film is a drought-stricken Taiwan where water is really hard to come by. Mix in a lot of watermelons. And a porn star and the filming of his scenes. Yeah, you get it: this is NOT a musical for the entire family -- in fact it's probably a fit for only the smallest minority -- though the film apparently made a lot of bread. If the image above doesn't prove that then check out the trailer (you have to be over 18 to watch it...the subtitles in the trailer are in French). You can hear (and see) in the trailer that the musical numbers really do constitute a "celebration of life": colorful, imaginative, funny, lascivious, weird...that's life, right?

The film's title in Chinese is 天邊一朵雲.

stage shows

2010-04-03T01:13:00.000-04:00

So I happened to see a band the other night (they took to the stage after the band I came to see played). They were really good: all of them had command of their instruments/voices, their songs were highly emotive and interesting and so on.

Buuuuuuut I had one issue, a pet peeve of mine, because I've been involved in these situations, namely please make a set list before you go on stage! I guess the idea behind no set list is to give off a vibe of "we're really laid back," and "we're so good that whatever we decide to play will work," etc. And several years ago I saw Chick Corea's Electric Band and he seemed to have that approach. And, hey, if you're at Chick's level you can make this approach work (though Chick was almost a comedian in between songs which added to the show and made his laisez-faire approach to the next tune really work).

The issue is most people really aren't there. So if you don't have legions of fans worldwide I'd give this advice: make a set list. It has 2 main beneficial side effects:

1. The set you're playing will stand a better chance of having some well-defined, good shape. Calling out the tunes you want to play next can yield good tunes, but all minor key, sad songs might get bunched up where you don't want them. Also it's a good idea to consider the energy that needs to be projected at the opening and closing of sets.

2. The performance should be a performance and not a rehearsal on stage in front of people. Others may not be so bothered by this, but I find it highly annoying to have to hear the discussions of what song would be good to do next, etc.

There's another possible benefit, too. The band I saw the other night attempted a cover and failed, started over, and stopped again. They proclaimed, "We didn't write this," though they did have a chart for the tune in front of them. It seems that a set list might concretize the fact that all the tunes need to be at a performable level.

OK, point made...

sarah bush art opening

2010-04-02T00:01:00.002-04:00

So I'm playing some classical guitar at an art opening tomorrow. The artist is Sarah Bush and her stuff is wonderful.

The opening is at the Made With Love Bakery. It's from 6-9pm. And yeah, that bakery is in Jersey City. If you're in the area come on out...

The Made With Love Bakery is located at

530 Jersey Ave
Jersey City, NJ
Saturday, April 3, 2010

(not too far from the PATH)

perfume's vitamin drop

2010-04-01T02:01:00.003-04:00

Yeah, another Perfume post. This one not just because they're super-hyper-ultra cute but because of the synth part: it's noticeably detuned. By a microtone? Anyway hearing it, and hearing how catchy it still is, should cause one to wonder just how far afield one might be able to stray in pop (and other styles of) music and still remain palatable...

Here's the link straight-up if you prefer it that way.

spike hill williamsburg

2010-03-31T05:17:00.006-04:00

Another one for you if you happen to be in the NYC area, this time here in Brooklyn...Spike Hill.

184 + 186 Bedford Ave
Brooklyn, NY
718.218.9737

Take the L train to Bedford and you're, well, right there. I meant to look when I was there to see what the actual address was of the stage side, but I forgot. If you go and you're not on the side you wanna be on just cross on over near the back.

Lots going on here...

swirly radio international

2010-03-31T01:03:00.001-04:00

Yes, check this site out:
swirly radio international
which is "broadcasting live from Williamsburg, Brooklyn"

Always a great selection of music.

slash chords

2010-03-30T01:49:00.005-04:00

We kind of broached the subject of slash chords on the post concerning 6th chords. In that case we talked about one specific use of slash chords, viz. representing inversion, or that the chord in question's root is not the lowest, 'bass' note. That doesn't cover completely what slash chords do, so let's now generalize what a slash chord is:

A slash chord is a way of representing a harmonic structure that has a bass note which is other than the root of the chord indicated. A slash chord is written in the form X/Y (pronounced "X over Y") where X is some chord (usually a triad) and Y is to be understood as a single note: the bass note.

There are 2 broad categories of slash chords:

1. The bass note is a member of the chord in question (though not the root).
2. The bass note is not a note found in the chord in question.

Examples of (1) above: C/E is a C major triad with E as its lowest member (in classical terminology this is C major in first inversion). G/D represents G with its 5th as the lowest member ("second inversion"), and so on.

Examples of (2): A/Bb (Bb is not found in the A major triad), D/C, F#/F, E/C and so on...

Furthermore, in this category of slash chords there is at least one big subdivision. Take D/C: it can be seen as an inversion of a seventh chord (in this case D7 but with the 7th in the bass). But D/C may just indicate a C lydian situation, so let's note that context has everything to do with slash chords.

For instance, slash chords are a great way of indicating bass lines. Here's a common one:

C | G/B | Amin |

The bass here is a stepwise line descending (C - B - A).

Also slash chords are an easy way to indicate pedals. Take "Someday My Prince Will Come" four measures from the end (in the Real Book):

Bb/F | Cmin7/F F7 |

Obviously these 2 measures are an F pedal.

repurposing pentatonics pars ii

2010-03-29T07:07:00.010-04:00

In our former post on pentatonic scales we discussed how the minor pentatonic (specifically the A minor pentatonic) functioned over its minor and relative major chord/key areas. Today we're going to pick up that thread and see where else a minor pentatonic can be used. Keep in mind that I'm going to be dealing with the A minor pentatonic in these examples, but if it's easier for you to think C major pentatonic just substitute that whenever I use A minor.

There are 4 other keys where the notes of the A minor pentatonic are found. The first one is C major, which was implicit in our last post. The notes of A minor are in bold:

C major scale = c d e f g a b c

There are 2 other major scales where these notes are found:

G major: g a b c d e f# g
F major: f g a bb c d e f

And one melodic minor scale:

G melodic minor: g a bb c d e f# g

We can generalize our information as follows: the minor pentatonic scale is found in it's parent major scale and the major scales located to the immediate right and left of this scale on the circle of fifths.

(Clicking on the image will take you to the great site whence the image came.)

Other examples: F minor pentatonic is found in Ab major as well as Db and Eb major; C# minor pentatonic is found in E major, A major and B major.

The minor pentatonic is also found in the melodic minor scale one whole step below the minor pentatonic's root (F minor would be found in Eb melodic minor).

And since the minor pentatonic can be found in 3 major scales and 1 melodic minor scale, it will consequently be found in any of those derived modes. So A minor pentatonic is found in E phrygian, G dorian, C lydian b7, D mixolydian and so on.

And when we say 'found in' we mean 'can be used where...(blank) is used'.

So bust out your pentatonic licks and ideas and see how they sound repurposed in these key/mode areas.

more written word: musical acoustics

2010-03-28T03:17:00.011-04:00

The study of musical acoustics is, to me, extremely interesting. In fact I think that it should be taught as part of music theory in conservatories and music schools, because it really is the theory behind the theory. Yes, depending upon what instrument and the style of music you play you might not think you'll ever want or need to know what uses an oscilloscope or a band pass filter have (but if you're a synthesist, on the other, the subject may already be old hat to you). On the other hand why we perceive tones and how (and why some sounds are 'clangy' and some sounds seem to have more than one definite pitch, and so on) should be knowledge that all musicians possess.

So, for a great primer on this fascinating subject check out the seminal work simply entitled The Fundamentals of Musical Acoustics by Arthur H. Benade. You can read some of it at here at Google Books if you'd like to get a taste of what it has to offer.

The great thing about this book, besides it's clarity, is that it really invites you to do experiments with sound/music. And this sort of engaging activity is really good soil from which creativity can spring.

phil keagy's willow tree

2010-03-27T13:54:00.008-04:00

I'm a late convert to Phil Keagy. I'm not sure why because I love his music. This morning I was listening to his 2007 album The Song Within and fell in love with all of it. And one little thing in particular jumped out at me from the 12th track entitled "Willow Tree". There's just a little harp-like effect that he does and I'll share how I play it. Here's the passage in question, which occurs right around 0:31:

The issue is handling the pull off from the A to the E. It's what I call a 'delayed pull off' because you wait to pull it off until after you play the (in this case) the F# on the 2nd string. The trick to playing the thing light and airy is to use one finger and drag it across the strings. I use my i (index) finger: pluck the A, F#, pull off the A to E, pluck the D. Now that the i is on D you're all set to use your m and a (middle and ring) fingers for the arpeggiated chord.

Give it a go: it's quite lovely...

a modal question

2010-03-26T11:44:00.003-04:00

So here's a question about modes not often asked as far as I can tell. As a bit of prologue let's assume that we all know a bit about modes: their structures and the sorts of chords (triads/sevenths) that they produce. Armed with such knowledge we could easily address the following question: what is the mode of the following progression?

G7 | Fmaj7/G | G7 | Fmaj7/G | (repeated)

This is fairly unambiguous: it's G mixolydian. An analytic play-by-play might go like this (here the paths are many, but this one). The notes of the chords in question are:

G7: g, b, d, f
Fmaj7/G: f, a, c, e (with a g in the bass)

Now we put these notes in order to see if they form a scale. We could start anywhere, but since we notice that G is prominent (it's the bass note in both chords) let's put it first. We then get:

g, a, b, c, d, e, f

We now have a 7-note scale. Since there are no sharps or flats we can easily conclude that it must be some kind of mode of C major. G is the 5th tone of C major, and the mode on that tone is the mixolydian. (We could also have deduced mixolydian from the tones themselves simply by analyzing their relationship: 1 2 3 4 5 6 b7).

OK, so far so good. But here's the question part: What if the chord progression is changed just slightly to this:

G7 | Fmaj7 | G7 | Fmaj7 | (repeated)

That is we no longer have a grounding G bass note -- instead we have 2 different chords. If they're both of equal length (and consequently equally prominent) what is the mode now? Can we really safely say that it's G mixolydian? It seems that it might just as likely be F lydian. And really the first or last chords may not give any aid in determining: the first chord might likely lead to the real tonal area later, and the last chord might produce some kind of unresolved, "hanging" effect.

Again, we could have a chord progression as above that does emphasize one modal area, by rhythm or perhaps even the melody. But my main point is that in no way would we be on sure footing in certain circumstances when attempting to answer the question of mode.

And, by the way, why would we ask such a question? Because if we're improvising we have to have some way of dealing with the music at hand. And this goes to my over-arching view of practicality. If someone were to say, well, given the 2nd chord progression above I'd just play a C major scale, I don't see how that's a real problem. Also if one were to say that there's no single mode and that s/he would switch between mixolydian and lydian, also not a problem (though if the tune were up-tempo it might be difficult to manage 'switching').

The question is also interesting from an historical point of view: in music around Mozart's time an ambiguous key center would have to be deliberate (like in a developmental section) or it would just be bad music because projecting a key center was the name of the game. In our time that's just not the case: ambiguity abounds and we can bask in it, but also have to deal with its implications...

toop's ocean of sound

2010-03-25T13:41:00.010-04:00

This really is a fantastic book. It's how people should write about music -- yes, that means you in the academy especially. It inspires. And no matter how much you already love music you'll love it and appreciate it even more after reading only a little bit. And not only that but Toop (himself a musician) does a great job of situating music in this world's sonic environment.

You can read the whole thing online if you can read French here at Google Books. Otherwise buy it online or at a real bookstore or get it at your library (NYPL has it -- which is where I read it). More than likely it will lead you to many new, wonderful things...specifically it turned me onto Sun Ra's film (yes film) called Space Is The Place.

repurposing pentatonics

2010-03-24T10:32:00.007-04:00

For a lot of musicians (especially guitarists) pentatonic scales and licks are among the first things learned improvisationally. But of course pentatonics go way beyond this: they're used everywhere from real American sounding tunes like Amazing Grace to jazz/blues/rock/country/bluegrass to 20th century classical music.

So here's the thing to consider first: just like any other scale pentatonics have modes. That is the collection of notes that make them up can be started (and ended) at different points. Take for example this collection of tones:

c d e g a c d e g a c d ...

If we start this at c we get:

c d e g a c, aka the major pentatonic scale.

If we start at a we get:

a c d e g a, the minor pentatonic scale.

There are 3 other modes, too, but the major and minor are the most common.

Now, as a guitarist I'm just naturally inclined to consider the minor pentatonic as the basic one. Especially from a playing point of view. And this is the first main point of this post: any minor pentatonic lick can be used over its relative major key area. It just simply becomes a major pentatonic in those instances. And the reason for this is that the mode isn't really determined by where we start and stop and what we emphasize in a scale but by what is emphasized harmonically. Put yet another way: playing an A minor pentatonic lick over a C major chord results in a major pentatonic lick sound.

In that vein let's end this post with some numeric thinking which will become extremely helpful when you start to use pentatonics (especially in later posts). When you play your pentatonic licks try to think of how the tones relate to the underlying harmony. Consider these situations again:

A minor triad:
a = 1
c = b3
d = 4
e = 5
g = b7

C major triad:
a = 6
c = 1
d = 2
e = 3
g = 5

The main advantage to a numeric understanding is that it generalizes the information so that you can understand not how just a specific pentatonic relates to a certain chord but how they relate in all cases.

In the next pentatonic we'll see a whole array of other areas where pentatonics can easily be used.

vocaloid

2010-03-23T04:53:00.001-04:00

I'm usually behind in tech stuff: not because I don't dig on it hard but because I'm not young enough to just know when this stuff comes out exactly the minute it does. A student of mine turned me onto this product (ultimately from Yamaha): the ZEROGcs Vocaloid. On their page you can listen to demos and download the free version 1 (which is quite limited but still quite cool).

Basically this is a synthesizer voice: in a piano-roll type scroll you type in the notes and the lyrics. It strikes me that the uses here are many, many, many. If nothing else it's fun to listen to the tunes that others have done with this...

the parkside lounge

2010-03-23T01:00:00.002-04:00

Another NYC venue for music (and comedy and other events) is the Parkside Lounge located at 317 Houston Street. Be sure to click on the calendar. You can see that they have a vast array of music and entertainment...

The nice thing (to me, and a drawback for certain people) is that it requires some walking from any train that you decide to take, and it's a cool 'hood to walk around.

move it on over

2010-03-22T13:37:00.004-04:00

The guitar solo on this classic Hank Williams tune from 1947 is a favorite of mine, and since it's so short (just one chorus of 12 bars) I offer the whole thing here...click on the image and it'll get bigger:

Keep in mind that the eighth notes aren't even, they're swung.

If I had to pick a favorite part -- besides just the whole solo -- I'd have to say the way the A7 gets articulated is hip, and it's hard to ignore as being utterly cool the triplet figures. Also the double-stop section near the end is evocative of the steel guitar. (Oh, yeah, that steel guitar part is cool and worth learning, too!)

Also, if you don't have the recording you can listen to it here on youtube. The solo in question starts at around 0:58.

brainwave entrainment

2010-03-21T12:06:00.008-04:00

The idea behind brain wave entrainment is that certain brain wave states can be induced by external stimuli, viz. by a series of tones and blinking lights. Why one might desire such a feat is that certain states of the brain are associated with certain brain waves (as measured by EEG or electroencephalography, "electro-brain-writing"). For example delta waves (1-4 Hz) are associated with deep sleep, alpha waves (7-12 Hz) with relaxed, meditative states. The latter are obviously something that would be nice to have access to whenever, thus 'mind machines' come into play.

Here's a virtual one, the MetaMindMachine. Download it, unzip it and run it. On my computer it begins with some annoying pops, but it settles into tones after a bit. It's way too early for me to say if it's producing it's desired effect or not (I've tried to make my own in the past but to no avail), but it's definitely fun and experimenting with it seems very worthwhile.

Here's an interesting and related-to-music-peripherally point: brain waves can be induced by tones in the ears that are of different frequencies. For example, if alpha waves are desired (say a 10 Hz wave) then in one ear a pitch of 440 Hz is sounded while in the other ear a pitch of 450 Hz or 430 Hz is sounded. The difference in pitch is the wavelength produced in the brain (in this case 10 Hz).

Oh, this is an open-source program, so if you're able and inclined you can customize it, improve it, etc (I'm not among that flock).

some points about triads

2010-03-20T10:15:00.019-04:00

Triads are 3 note chords built out of 3rds. Here are the 4 basic types:

These are in root position and close voicing, but triads can be spaced out more, inverted (i.e. the root needn't be the lowest note) and can have more than 3 notes so long as there aren't more than 3 different notes. The following are all A major chords:

I tend to regard the Augmented and Major triads as related (both contain major 3rds) and the Minor and Diminished as related (both having minor 3rds). But actually the Major and Minor are related as they both contain a Perfect 5th. The Augmented and Diminished triads have no commonality at all -- in fact they're kind of "opposites":

Traditionally triads ended up having harmonic functions as they conveyed a sense of key. They acquired names based upon their root as it related to its parent scale:

I tonic
II supertonic
III mediant
IV subdominant
V dominant
VI submediant
VII leading tone

(The 'sub' label does mean under: a subdominant chord is a fifth below just as the dominant is a fifth above the tonic. The submediant is a third below the tonic, just as the mediant is a third above.)

Keys were established by a strong V - I relationship, usually by a
II - V - I
(root movement of a fifth being felt strongest). In the 20th century triads were used by composers much, much more freely as keys were less important than modality or color. You'll find Ponce using progressions like D min to Eb min, F min to B maj, C maj to Gb maj to C maj (all in his fabulous piece Variations sur "Folia de Espana" and Fugue -- vid. variations vii and viii). Of course the voicing is important, but more on that later.

See also Sixth Chord.

max: kiss me kiss me, baby

2010-03-19T22:43:00.010-04:00

Ahh, Max, how I love them. And my favorite song is this delicious tune Kiss Me Kiss Me, Baby (1996), from which I'm offering the signature synth lick on today's post. It's doable on guitar (play it up an octave): even though the picking will have to be fast to keep up it's mainly pentatonic (it's at around a quarter = 128, but depending upon how you finger it the jumps can be a bit tricky). Anyway, play it on whatever instrument at whatever tempo...and because it's pentatonicly pliable -- and has a great shape -- it sounds awesome re-purposed. Basically it's over the chords Bb, C and Dmin.

Clicking on the following image will enlarge it:

I broke with convention in notating the 16th tied to an 8th in the 3rd beat of the first measure (and when the same repeats in measure 5) just to drive home the fact visually that it's the very same rhythm as in the in the first beat going to the second.

Here's a youtube link of the tune, although this "live" version is better. (The above starts at 0:27 on both clips.)

minor key signatures misleading

2010-03-18T00:13:00.001-04:00

You don't have to think about it too hard to realize that key signatures are really major-key oriented affairs. They do in fact and 'to a T' accurately describe the makeup of a major key: C major has no sharps or flats, F-sharp major has six sharps (all but B) and A-flat major has four flats and so on.

But when it comes to the minor keys it's a whole different story. Well, if we restrict ourselves to the natural minor (aeolian) keys then it isn't a different story. But historically, even in Renaissance music where they did use the 'Church modes', sharps and flats entered into cadences. So much so that G# really did become a part of A minor. And melodically so did F# (hence the name melodic minor).

So, in effect, if we're talking about the melodic minor the key signature of its relative major is likely to be 'off' by 2 accidentals: A minor's key signature has no sharps or flats, but A melodic minor has 2 sharps; C minor's key signature has 3 flats but C melodic minor has only one flat (Eb).

Now, none of this may be an issue if you're playing Bach, etc (though in the older Baroque music the key signatures really hadn't been worked out, exactly because of the issue we're discussing), but it is an issue if you think key signatures when you consider modes from an improvisational/compositional point of view. For example: C melodic minor and E minor might seem quite distant by key signatures (3 flats and 1 sharp respectively), but in fact there's much more overlap: the only accidentals are Eb and F#.

Consider also the difference between a melodic minor key and its parallel major. A melodic minor, for example, only differs from A major by 1 tone: the 3rd (in this case C). Obviously if you think of scales/modes/keys from a numeric skeletal point of view then this won't ever be a problem. But we're generally taught the key signature approach at first, so in a sense there's a bit of unlearning to do.

freddie hubbard lick from stolen moments

2010-03-17T10:06:00.008-04:00

This whole solo is super cool, and you should learn the whole thing if you get a chance. I just really like the way this lick lays over the IImin7b5 - V7 progression: it has a perfect contour, and is filled with some nice bebop passing tones. Extremely useful...

(Clicking on the images will make them slightly larger.)

This lick starts at 2:04 on the recording (it's in the 2nd time through the form for Freddie). And oh, yeah, I'm not a trumpet player, so if there are any nuances I've grossly overlooked in transcribing this please let me know...

blonde -- guesch patti

2010-03-16T01:31:00.002-04:00

Well, even though I'm not really in favor of posting youtube clips (who knows how long they'll be around???) you'd never know it from my actions. So here goes another one. Since I just posted a tune found in Greenaway's 1996 film The Pillow Book here's another: a French pop tune called Blonde by Guesch Patti.

I can't heap enough praise upon this tune. The music is dark and spacious, and the singing is a great counterbalance to it in terms of weight. And check out the F#7+5 chord at 0:56 (it repeats, too)! (BTW a G7+5 is a great chord in the turnaround in Stolen Moments.) For those of you who speak French you might not need it, but the scrolling text is helpful (it ties into the theme of the film, too). Oh, the clip is absolutely not a G-rated affair, so be forewarned.