"Orlando Enrique Fiol" <ofiol@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote in message
news:MPG.22c8c0a1c4dd1b3a989c1c@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> Danny wrote:
>>Dude, you need to cut that racist bull**** right now, quick. It's just
>>this
>>sort of lowbrow mentality that was leveled against a monster musician
>>named
>>Dave Brubeck which tried to complete disallow the public from truly
>>appeciating the man's superior musicality.
>> Ditto Bill Evans, although thankfully, time has rendered opinions such
as
>>yours to be complete nonsense.
>
> That poster was quoting what his college improvisation teacher told him.
> So, there's no need to attack him as a racist. While I can see how the
> "white man's blues scale" quip might ruffle some feathers, I understand
> its intent. Generally speaking, blues musicians think melodically rather
> than in terms of pitch cl*****, which is why endless noodling on the
> blues scale can sound inauthentic. Rather than play random combinations
> of pentatonic scales, blues musicians tend to decide what to bend,
> sharpen or flatten based on melodic and even emotional concerns. It has
> nothing to do with race as such, although there was a historical time
> during which blacks were unfortunately much closer to near constant
> blues than they should have been.
>
>>The question of whether a white man can play
>>the blues has no place in our small segment of society known as
>>rec.music.theory.
>>I WOULD HOPE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
>
>
> No one thus far has broached that question. In fact, I'd say that most
> black musicians today have worked especially hard to erase the blues
> pathos from their collective memory, which, IMO, has stripped black
> culture of one of its most enduring legacies.
>
> That said, any music can be reduced to a series of moves and an
> underlying logic behind decisions regarding which moves to make at which
> times. The blues scale as a construct is a misapplication of the
> principle of logical derivation. True, blues musicians often used
> pentatonic scales. In that sense, the blues scale is a code to making
> some right moves in the blues. However, the aesthetic choices blues
> musicians make regarding when and how to use those pitches is most of
> what gives the blues its characteristic sound. Plenty of other musics
> around the world use pentatonic scales, yet they don't sound like blues.
> So, if the blues scale were truly unique to the blues, playing it up and
> down should theoretically make music sound bluesy, which it definitely
> does not.
Good post!
Dave
--
David Webber
Author of 'Mozart the Music Processor'
http://www.mozart.co.uk
For discussion/sup****t see
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