RoR: Forum

Lindsay:

"Much jazz that I've ever heard is simply slime, & for the life of me I cannot understand Objectivists' preoccupation with it..."

Weeeell, that's probably because of all the popular music forms it's devotees see it as more cerebral or serious than pop or--arggh fuck!!--rock. I'm sure that's not true but some like to have a dollar each way :-)

I enjoy jazz. I find some of it supremely emotive & evocative. Never a bad thing for SOLOist.

Perhaps a few pointers on Puccini or Rachmaninov might pique our interest, Lindsay?

Ross

Post 41

Sunday, November 20, 2005 - 11:43pm

Ross Elliot wrote:

Perhaps a few pointers on Puccini or Rachmaninov might pique our interest, Lindsay?

Yeah, Lindsay, how about starting up a nice, fresh, pristine thread on the much beloved Rachmaninoff (or Puccini), so that Joe M. and I could return the favor and hijack it with some extraneous comments on jazz?

REB

Post 42

Monday, November 21, 2005 - 1:23am

Oh, quit your whining, Roger & Joe. You guys have it all your own way in the culture as it is. So SOLO's founder hijacks a thread on SOLO. Boo-hoo. Waaaaa!

Post 43

Monday, November 21, 2005 - 6:08am

Like some cheese with YOUR whine, Linz ;)

Post 44

Monday, November 21, 2005 - 8:54am

Linz sez:

Oh, quit your whining, Roger & Joe. You guys have it all your own way in the culture as it is. So SOLO's founder hijacks a thread on SOLO. Boo-hoo. Waaaaa!

Well said!

You're absolutely right, Linz. We jazz fans really are in the ascendancy, what with jazz orchestras existing -- often at taxpayer expense -- in every major city (and many smaller ones). Thanks to the generous support of the wealthy who love to show up at our concerts in their evening gowns and tuxedos and displays of diamond jewelry, we really lord it over the poor classical music fans, who must content themselves to an occasional PBS special and low-paying classical gigs in little hole in the wall bistros and clubs. It must really be tough being a classical music fan, to be squeezed into marginal existence like that. <sigh>

But hey, Linz, SOLO's founder can apparently do whatever he wants. Including setting a bad example for everyone else. So knock yourself out! Please.

REB

Post 45

Monday, November 21, 2005 - 9:01am

Who needs to go anywhere - the recordings do just fine, and hear them better and at LOTs less expense........

Post 46

Monday, November 21, 2005 - 10:43am

Pete,

Ornette Coleman is not one of the most articulate musicians out there--nor did he get much formal instruction in music theory.

As stated, the "harmolodic theory" doesn't make a whole lot of sense. I'm told that it is best exemplified in the work of OC's 1970s group, Prime Time--and in the work of some of the later editions of Captain Beefheart and his Magic Band.

Let's try, in any event, to maintain the distinction between what musicians do and what they say they are doing.

Robert

PS. George Russell's system is a whole nother matter. It may not live up to all of its marketing claims, but Russell is extremely well versed in music theory.

(Edited by Robert Campbell on 11/21, 4:04pm)

(Edited by Robert Campbell on 11/21, 7:39pm)

Post 47

Monday, November 21, 2005 - 10:53am

Robert, I can't claim to understand fully Russell's system, but I did find it intriguing. I know it influenced KIND OF BLUE to an extent, which is a very listenable album. I've heard that it was an influence on the music of the Allman Brothers Band as well...The Lydian scale is certainly listenable in itself, THE SIMPSONS theme is Lydian, I believe.
Have you read Russell's book at all? I only read what I could find online, the book being hard to find. I believe he's selling it online in an updated version for an arm and a leg...

Post 48

Monday, November 21, 2005 - 1:51pm

Joe- Do you understand the general idea of the modal approach in playing? You probably do, but if not look at that first, because it's terribly simple. It's a terribly simple way to sound really complicated. :)

There's some things in jazz that are like that- things that are very easy to deploy that give a complicated bang for the buck. Sometimes it's as simple as changing the main bass note that's going under the same chord. There- that one is worth about 500 bucks in private lessons. :)

Post 49

Monday, November 21, 2005 - 2:09pm

The modal systems I understand, I'm not sure I understand what Russell is saying by emphasizing the Lydian.

Post 50

Monday, November 21, 2005 - 2:14pm

Raised 4th, the tritone, the Devil's Chord!

rde
It's all about loving Satan.

Post 51

Monday, November 21, 2005 - 2:21pm

"Much jazz that I've ever heard is simply slime, & for the life of me I cannot understand Objectivists' preoccupation with it..."

Maybe try any of the Miles Davis stuff with Gil Evans arrangements. That's beautiful stuff, very melodic, great strings.

Post 52

Monday, November 21, 2005 - 5:36pm

Pete,
Harmolodics is a whacky theory Coleman came up with in the 70's that I imagine no one really understands, it's probably not even be meant to be understood. Harmolodic music aims to treat melody, harmony, and rhythm with equal importance and it is usually polytonal.
In practice it sounds like each member of an ensemble is playing a solo (simultaneously), with the harmonic and melodic lines influencing each other and sometimes swapping roles... but I might be wrong in my understanding.
Rich mentioned the trick of changing the main bass note under a chord; with Coleman's 'Harmolodic' work, the bass line changes all the time, moving all over the place, sometimes jumping up to the top of a chord or even taking up the melody.
I much prefer Coleman's pre-Harmolodic music, especially his music from the 50's and early 60's.
He's still playing today at the age of 75, so he must have some measure of KASS.

Post 53

Tuesday, November 22, 2005 - 10:36am

Arlo,

Thank you for the explication of harmolodics. I hear harmolodic music as involving a lot of cross-rhythms, and a lot of rather dissonant counterpoint. Part of my discomfort with Prime Time comes from the instrumentation (two electric guitars, electric bass, very high volume level overall); part of it comes from the unrelenting density and busy-ness of the group sound.

Captain Beefheart's late 1970s and early 1980s records use lines that were worked out in rehearsal and subsequently played the same way--far less improvisation going on than in an Ornette Coleman group.

Robert Campbell

(Edited by Robert Campbell on 11/22, 10:37am)

(Edited by Robert Campbell on 11/22, 10:37am)

(Edited by Robert Campbell on 11/22, 10:38am)

Post 54

Tuesday, November 22, 2005 - 11:49am

Speaking of the Lydian mode, my own favorite example is Leonard Bernstein's use of it in West Side Story. Especially note the opening motifs of "Maria" and "Something's Coming." Damn fine.

For listeners, I heartily recommend -- in addition to the sound track recording (or watch and listen to the DVD) -- these two recordings:

1. West Side Story: Oscar Peterson Trio -- original recording, 1962, remastered in 1998 -- Label: Polygram Records. This recording had an enormous impact on me when I first heard it in 1968. I had found someone who I felt I would play like, if I could play piano. His musical "psycho-epistemology" matches mine, I guess you could say. :-) From that point on, I became a rabid Oscar Peterson fan, and I was led to yet another favorite, the Singer's Unlimited, via their collaboration with Oscar in the 1970s.

2. Dave Grusin Presents West Side Story -- 1997 -- Label: Encoded Music (also available as DVD-Audio disc by DTS Entertainment). The track with Gloria Estefan singing "Tonight" is to die for. <sigh> I copped the chord changes from Grusin's arrangement to use on a live performance last year in Burlington, Iowa, when my 93 year old college band director showed up to hear me perform there with the Side Street Strutters Jazz Band. He had conducted our college presentation of WSS at Iowa State University in May of 1967, so I couldn't think of a better tribute to him than to do a song from WSS with some really luscious chord changes. As for Grusin, I have long been a fan of his, from the time I first became aware of his writing when I heard a really hip arrangement he did for Peggy Lee on "Always." I especially like his sound track writing for "The Firm" and his Gershwin album. I would have to have these two and his WSS on my desert island. :-)

I'll mention several others, without detailed info: Buddy Rich and Maynard Ferguson, Dave Brubeck, and Stan Kenton. If you are fans of any of them, you might want to check out their recordings of WSS music.

Cheers and happy listening!
REB

Post 55

Tuesday, November 22, 2005 - 2:19pm

Ain't it funny what a raised 4th can do... :)

Harmolodics. Well... I was all around the scene when that was the rage, and working with a sax player in a band called Hazard Profile (we opened up for Alan Holdsworth, Fred Frith, Eugene Chadbourne, others- avant garde/art rock/jazz rock fucks we were, I suppose...).

You know what I think it is? Ask a sax player- he'll tell you. It's really about the overtone series. It's about blowing a note and making others, and learning how to control that to make one that somehow fits into whatever jazz chord is in question at the time.

The other way is to look at it as really extending the idea of altered chords, which you can do down to pure chromatics. Think about it. Take a triad and put whatever you want over it, you can make a case for playing it.

You can make a case for playing any note over anything, if you know what you're doing and what comes next. You can analyze why you play a C sharp over a C root tone if you know what you're doing, and it might not even be a passing tone. One thing jazz does is set you free with chromaticism. I learned that by not knowing what I was doing during improv. Actually, not knowing what you're doing during improv ain't that bad of a thing sometimes, as long as you wind yourself back in.

All that being said, I have come back around to believing that one thing you best not do is move away from basic principles and theory of music, of composition. The forms are there for a reason.

That sounds stiff, but I find it is true. It lets me write really good songs with less trouble, more simplicity, and more melodic heart than I did all those years when I was writing super hard shit. I consider theory to be something you use to look at music after it gets done.

rde
Off to check out a new studio tonight... I'm gonna put out a damn record this year if it kills me.

Post 56

Thursday, March 29, 2007 - 5:31am

This sure is an excellent article, with a lot of informative responses..... we need more like this...

Post 57

Thursday, December 27, 2007 - 9:11pm

Joshua,

I hate bebop, so much so that I recently had to tell my masseur either to change the radio or cut short my session. (He greatfully changed the station, admitting he didn't like it himself.) But if you can somehow take true affirmative joy in bebop, (i.e., you don't like it because it reminds you of mangled car-crashes or deformed children) then the only thing non-Objectivist about it would be to hide that fact in the fear of the opinions of others. Real Objectivists don't care what other Objectivists can't enjoy.

Ted Keer

Post 58

Friday, December 28, 2007 - 5:50am