Support
Looper's Delight
|
Support |
|
|
You talked me into it Rick.
FYI you can get them for $7 or 8 from Amazon
At 7:40 PM -0700 5/17/09, Rick Walker wrote:
>I have to say that reading Ashley Kahn's book
>"The Making of Kind Of Blue" really had a huge impact on me.
>
>Some of it was just discovering that Ravel, Bill Evans and finally Miles
>had
>been hearing the exact same thing that I've been hearing in my head for
>many years (and that is a lot of suspended chords that don't
>necessarily resolve)
>gave me a feeling of validation.
>
>Because I was involved early on with Balinese, African, Caribbean,
>Middleastern
>and Indian musics (filtered through my love of a lot of progressive
>pop musics, from
>prog rock to fusion to art rock to arty new wave) , my entrance
>into the world of melody
>was colored by a great love of scalar or modal playing.
>
>though I learned modern Jazz theory (or some of it, at least) in
>College, I mostly learned how
>to spell chords and understand how harmony functioned but never went
>through the regimin
>of either classical chordal theory or jazz chordal theory.
>
>Essentially, it was becoming a live looper that forced me into
>playing more and more melodic instruments
>and I had a very simple and naive approach of using the African
>paradigm of lining up a whole lot
>of synchronized and arranged ostinato lines,
>melodically.................I started with Bass so everything
>was linear.
>
>But from an early age, the harmonies of Ravel, Ralph Vaugh
>Williams, Aaron Copland, Debussy, Satie
>as well as the modalism of the whole early ECM jazz scene really
>appealed to me.
>
>At the same time I read Ashley Kahn's book (which to this day in my
>life was the best music reading experience I've ever had,
>as I bought the new remastered version of Kind of Blue and guiltily
>listened and slowly read about it's making) I also
>saw a wonderful documentary on the live of Joni Mitchell, (I've
>always loved her music).
>
>In it, she said that Wayne Shorter (tracking on her historic
>recording of Mingus with the dying Charles Mingus) told her that
>she should really consider resolving her famous altered tuning
>suspended chords with a major chord so that some resolution
>should occur. He was being critical of her tendency to use a
>suspended chord followed by a suspended chord.
>
>She said that when she wrote those songs that her life was far from
>resolved emotionally and that she wanted to
>reflect her life and feelings in her music.
>
>When she said that I sighed a sigh of relief and thought, "exactly"!!!!
>
>For some reasons a lot of normal chord progressions just don't do
>anything for me emotionally.
>I don't think I've ever written a tune using Ionian as an
>example.....................give me that raised four
>or that flatted seventh at least, for some emotional complexity.
>
>So, yeah, that was long extended way of saying, "The Making
>of Kind Of Blue" by Ashley Kahn really influenced me
>or perhaps validated me.
>
>He has written another one on the making of "A Love Supreme" by
>Coltrane, but much as I like that piece of music, it is not as
>compelling
>to me , theoretically, as Miles's excursion in Kind of Blue.
--
Emile Tobenfeld, Ph. D.
Video Producer and Digital Photographer Image Processing Specialist
Video for your HEAD! Boris FX
http://www.foryourhead.com http://www.borisfx.com
My photography can be viewed at
http://www.flickr.com/photos/22231918@N06/collections/72157603627170351/
My videos can be viewed at
http://www.youtube.com/Tobenfeld
"Don't make book, if you cannot cover bets." -- Tom Lehrer