On Sun, 22 Jun 2008 09:13:14 +0100, "David Webber"
<dave@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote:
>
>"Danny Schorr" <.@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote in message
>news:q12r54prv4c2tbdvpdgiq04chcl5i5kiad@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
'm forced here to quote Nigel Tufnel:
"I've been working with this for about half an hour, and can't figure out
exactly... I don't even know where to start".
>
>> Could you elaborate on that?
>
>I'll try.
>
>If you go back to classical analysis there are "essential notes" (those
on
>the harmony) and "unessential notes" (not "inessential"!) which are the
>others.
>
>Unessential notes against the harmony occur in assorted ways including:
>
>Passing notes: you move in steps up or down. the unessential notes you
go
>through are passing notes.
>
>Auxiliary notes: you step off an essential note and back on to it.
>
>Appoggiature: you hit an unessential note on a strong beat and move by
step
>onto an essential note.
>
>Turns: go round essential notes.
>
>[In these last two I am not talking about the decorative symbols used in
>classical music but the sequence of notes which they imply, and they
don't
>just have to be short notes.]
>
>I'll gloss over the choice between chromatic and diatonic unessential
notes,
>but obviously there are both.
Do you actually overthink in this manner when you play? It's such a
convoluted approach. Obviously, this line of thinking only sees the blues
scale as a subset of major/minor, with notes missing. Blues players don't
subscribe to that view, in general.
>
>It may see odd or "uncool" at first but all of this is still relevant in
>jazz and blues playing :-) The upshot is that you can do almost
anything
>you like if you move in step and it can sound right - the unessential
notes
>fall into one category or another. But if you leap, and want to fit
with
>the harmonies, you should land on an essential note, or on a note one
step
>away and step off onto an essential note.
>
>Jazz improvisation before the late 1940s very much followed these
principles
>but gradually increased the concept of essential notes where things like
the
>B in Cmaj7 started to become "essential" as opposed to what it would have
>been in classical music.
Irrelevant to the subject at hand.
>
>A very good example is Bix Beiderbecke in the 20s: he was absolutely
>brilliant but an awful lot of his solos just ask to be analysed in
classical
>terms. "Blue notes" were not "extra notes" but a way of bending
certain
>notes (especially vocally) to give a certain feel.
Were? Still Are!
> You should be able to
>hear this in the older generation of Blues performers - for example as I
>mentioned Bessie Smith and Jelly Roll Morton. (The latter as you
observed
>was busily transforming blues into jazz but a lot of his early work was
>essentially blues.)
]
The modern player who wants to improvise on the blues scale shouldn't HAVE
to continually reference everything back to a few major pioneers who's
im****tance is arbitrarily defined. Am I saying there is NO value in a
backwards glance to those who came before? Not at all. Of course there
would be something to be gained. But early pioneers are not SACRED. You
could gain just as much by looking at anyone who has mastered his craft.
Or something......as I said at the top, I find this post to be so confused
an explanation I don't know where to start.
>
>It all changed in the late 40s - in jazz for example by Parker and
>Gillespie. Their approach was much more easily thought of as "playing
>scales against chords" and these days the jazz tutors are all about which
>scales go with which chords. The chords are more complicated - eg G13
has
>all the white notes of the piano, so the idea of landing on essential
notes
>is downplayed in favour of the scales vs chords approach. But as the
>chords change, the scales played against them change.
Irrelevant.
>
>In the jazz band we play all styles from the 20s to the modern day, but
>because of what I have listened to most all my life, the older way comes
>more naturally to me. But it doesn't "work" if I get a solo in a
>thoroughly modem piece and I have to think modern.
Don't think - listen.
>
>I suspect that the same sort of revolution from a what I called a
harmonic
>approach to a scale approach happened around the same time in blues (jazz
>and blues development by now being very much interrelated, even if both
had
>their different adherents). And somewhere along the line the idea of a
>blues scale has risen to prominence. Of course in as much as blues
>performers were/are often soloists, accompanying themselves on guitar,
they
>always had less to worry about in as far as fitting in with the rest of
the
>band is concerned. But I still hear the (albeit bent) "harmonic feel"
of
>early blues, and a "scales" feel in later examples.
>
>Anyway the arrangement of background riffs in Emancipation Blues made
the
>harmonic approach fit much better for me - as I say I tried approaching
it
>from both directions in rehearsals. Sure I played minor thirds against
the
>major chords - major thirds would have sounded naff - but the E E E E A7
A7
>E E B7 A7 E E structure was always uppermost in my mind, because the
>background riffs were nailing it to the floor :-)
I really don't understand, then. With such a solid grounding, I can't see
how using the blues scale wouldn't work. What instrument were you playing?
Maybe a clarinet wouldn't work as well as a Sax. (then again, maybe it
would)
I know you play many instruments - which one did you use for the gig?
>
>Dave
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