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Posted: Fri May 09, 2008 6:08 am
by Bob
Thanks. It looks like my weekend will be full.

Posted: Fri May 09, 2008 6:11 am
by Bob
Do you think Gil Evans got a lot of his voicings from Stravinsky? If I had the opportunity to orchestrate for 'big band' I'd bury myself in the two of them.

Posted: Fri May 09, 2008 7:44 am
by Bob
motherlode wrote:Yes, no question, Gil Evans' music says that he was inspired by what he heard from Stravinsky.

Mingus said that Bird called him on the phone once and said listen to this...he was improvising over the "Firebird Suite". Mingus said it was the most beautiful thing that he had ever heard. One can only imagine.
I love that. You can hear so many pieces that you'd love to hear someone improvising over. I've tried to write such things, but have made the mistake of scoring for 10-12 musicians, mixing classical and jazz players. Oy Vay! Often a bit of tension. and rehearsals impossible. I'm trying to do that now and limiting to percussionist, keyboard/voice, woodwind w/boucoup doubles. So their is a 'complete' orchestra.' as it were. Each piece with its soloist, who just responds to the 'landscape' "Mockingbird wish me luck." (Bukowski, C.)
Maybe, if i stopped dicking around on these forums.... It's stupid, I've got the venues, underwriters.... Improvising is fun, writing is work.

Posted: Fri May 16, 2008 8:26 am
by chespernevins
ML,

Wonderful illustration and description! Love it.

I think I understand your larger point of using unique notes in the melody.

Can you guys hear any analogy in this solo by Paul Bley on "All the Things You Are" from the Sonny Meets Hawk record?

http://www.4shared.com/file/47764522/d7 ... ATTYA.html

On the Stravinsky example, are you hearing the melody and chords as all being from the C Lydian Chromatic Scale?

OR

The C Lydian scale seems to have a HTG resolution to D Major implied. This could be seen as being over Bb lydian II chords. This gives us an image of a melody that lies 4 fifths in a sharp direction from the harmony (D Major tonic station over Bb lydian).

What do you think?

Posted: Sat May 17, 2008 6:23 am
by chespernevins
He played the changes; He had the musical muscle to sustain his approach;
Yes, this is not an easy approach to use consistently!
He was wrestling with trying to play ideas.
I love the moments of motivic development he pulls off. It holds together the abstract tonal relationships.

I am at the point where I can sing some phrases from this solo. But I want to try to get more of it. What made me think of this solo in relation to the Stravinsky example was the sharp lying tonal relationships. For ex, in the Bley solo he will sometimes do things like play an E lydian melody over a G Major chord. (He also plays flat lying lydian scales at times).

IN a less polytonal moment, he plays the whole bridge of one chorus in C Lydian (with one C# coming in over the G Maj chord, but then right back to C lydian.) We all know that that's not unusual - but the way he uses it at that point is unique.

Posted: Sat May 17, 2008 3:22 pm
by chespernevins
Yes, I try to!

A solo with this many notes is tougher to sing exactly all the way through without nailing down some pitches with the instrument.

But there are long stretches that are singable. (check out 1:00 - 1:15 and 1:45 - 2:04 for examples)

I was just checking out the end of the 2nd A section (first chorus). Over the ii V I in G maj he plays A lydian, then he seems to go into A Lyd Aug but uses that F to pivot into Db lydian.

Posted: Mon May 19, 2008 10:20 am
by chespernevins
BTW, Sorry to highjack the Stravinsky thread with this PB stuff.

I've wanted to analyze this PB solo in LCC terms for a while, thinking that it may be partially analyzed using Russell's "modes of cadence".

Not being 100% sure of all the implications of the 4 types of modes of cadence, I wasn't sure how to broach the subject.

Then the sharp lying melody (C Lydian or D Major) over the flat lying chords (in Bb or polytonal Bb and Db) brought up the subject.

I should probably just start a new topic.

Posted: Tue May 20, 2008 8:46 am
by chespernevins
The chords in this Stravinsky example are right in line with George's "Poly-Modal Harmonic Structures" (Example 2 page "H" in the Technical Appendix of the old 1959 book).

We know that GR was into Stravinsky, if for no other reason than he has a piece called "A Bird in Igor's Yard".

My question would be, is the C Lydian melody now a Vertical "Outgoing Modal" Melody in the key of Bb lydian?

This seems to imply to me that the harmony is the gravity centering element and that the melody is outgoing with relation to it.

But I wonder if my ears really perceive it that way. Maybe the melody is the gravity centering element? In which case, how do we summarize this tonal behavior?

Posted: Tue May 20, 2008 8:50 am
by chespernevins
By the way, how is your notation program coming?
Thanks for asking. I have it up and running, with some success, but need to spend more time with it to get the details I need.

I want to spend some more ear time on the PB solo, but then I realize the best way to share it here would be to write it up (or at least portions of it) and post it.

Posted: Mon May 26, 2008 8:02 pm
by chespernevins
sing the entire Tonal Gravity chart from memory (after all, this IS the essence of "the concept").
Not an easy task right off.

This is a great idea of yours - to express the chart melodically.

I'm writing out the lines based on the "current" tonal gravity chart.