The Blues Scale

[jancivil]

I have analyzed quite a bit of Charlie Parker. There is eg., a major seventh where it looks theoretically wrong all over the place. the point of the driving bop changes relied on the tritone, ie., M3 m7 so a whole lot of chords are dominant seventh function... so I reckon he was playing what his ear, and his heart demanded rather than the book. Quite another level of intelligence than the literal, straight analytical. There's some mystique to it, too, it's hard to describe how it worked and the same thing on paper doesn't always work.

[tapper mike]

Charlie Parker wrote the book. It was him that re defined "jazz" back at Milts Playhouse. Everyone followed Parkers example save...Miles Davis who had a separate take on the direction of bebop.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charlie_Parker#Bebop

Parker's standard methodology was to use all twelve tones however use them in context of the primary chord function. It was his methodologies and approaches that were embraced by all those who followed quickly or later. Such as Theolonius Monk, Dizzy Gilespe
http://www.pbs.org/wnet/americanmasters ... arker/678/

Parker didn't use the blues scale, nor did he use the imaginary bebop scale. To him tones were either chord tones or non chord tones. The non chord tones were often the means to get to a chord tone. It was both fluid and harsh. Listen to Anthropology, It's all there. blazingly fast but all there. or better still Confirmation


Monk on the otherhand was the master of reharmonizations with parker's methodology. He would fit chord subsitutions, passing chords and extended chords to smooth the harshness of the lines, Such as 'Round Midnight and Well you needn't" Those were the chords Miles couldn't play against when he spoke of all the chords being played.

Niether (parker, monk) utilized key, scale functionality as swing era jazz players did. And niether mixed scale ideas such as minor pentatonics interspersed with diatonics the way... Charlie Christian did (which was common in uptown blues and blues/jazz but nor bebop) Parker relied on chord tones and nieghboring/passing tones.

[egbert]

@Mike

I was reading some guy's piece on jazz lines the other day and he said in passing that being able to play all twelve tones at will was the definition of bebop (!) Just as you said above, there's the chord tones and then there are all the extensions and various other chromatic tones to make up the 12. In bebop like Parker's stuff and more recent versions thereof you see all kinds of melodic ideas tossed in - you can try to analyse and say that the soloist is playing substitute changes or using chromatic tones to get to a melodic destination or whatever but who knows what was in the mind of the player and whether even he/she thinks it worked. You often see quite different sets of note choices on the beat vs off the beat where the tension tones are accented off beat notes and the resolution/chord tones are on the beat.

Thanks for posting that tune BTW - it's a great tune.

[jancivil]

I don't know... but my take on what happened was more of a zeitgeist thing where a number of people arrived at similar or practically the same idea at the same time. I'm just following something on the tv or something so I'm no authority. but there are people who are inclined to opine Parker followed Bud Powell, or what-not.

anyway, and not to be Cap't Obvious or nothing but for whoever follows this... what they found - to turn a typical Hit Parade, show tunes, diatonic music into something that was more stimulating to the mind - into the full chromatic, was the discovery of flatting the fifth of that Major/minor seventh chord.
Eureka, you now have the dom. seventh/flat five a flat five away, instantly. G7b5 = Db7b5.

so there's this peculiar tension, of pop music that everyday shmoes can relate to and this thing as though intent on being art music.

ultimately people got more and more into abstraction and got into pure intervals.

Miles may have had a different take, and I'm certainly not an exhaustive historian, out of being more exposed to the european art music composers.
The harmonic idea that the bop people uncovered was not so novel actually. The french sixth chord can be made to do a similar trick from a different angle.
iv6 and that sixth was augmented; it smells just like a dominant seventh/no fifth, the germans fatten it up putting the fifth to it, so the frenchies will make it exotic with a flat fifth, and the implication gives you an option you wouldna thunk. 'Dm/F' is now transformed into something that smells a lot like F7b5, functioning as a spicy dominant to push you to E7 for instance. flat II = V if you will.

the thing bop did beyond harmony was the rhythm. Parker's rhythm was such a propellent to match the forward thrust of these harmonies.

the peculiar tension that 'held it back' [if you want to compare with more abstract music] was IME a process that fueled a lot of things that the ivory tower will have missed.

but later you get Cecil Taylor and it's more congruent with Schoenberg and that 'let's get right to it and say there is no hegemony of function' school of thought. Only with better rhythm.

[tapper mike]

I think you resent the fact that I bring the information to the table so much you refuse to recognize the truth no matter how many times it's presented to you jan.


All roads lead back to parker at Milts. Players come in, listen get a taste and then embrace and move forward. There were not closet musicians who followed the same direction that "got it on thier own" using the same characteristics that parker expressed.

[jopy]

Monk was playing his inimitable style before he met Parker (Monk was house pianist at Minton's before Parker ever got there). And they were playing bebop, or something pretty close to it, with Charlie Christian while Bird was still touring with Earl Hines's band. Any serious study of Monk shows that he had almost nothing stylistically or harmonically in common with Bird, and I've never heard a recording of Monk's own bands playing a tune by Bird (I could be missing something, but I don't think he did). So to say that Monk's approach was just harmonizing what Charlie Parker did is both chronologically and stylistically misleading.

Dizzy Gillespie in his autobiography credits Monk with teaching him advanced harmony on the piano (I.e. he didn't learn it all from Bird). Bud Powell was also taught by Monk before he collaborated with Bird. So again, there are multiple streams that get us to bebop and the independent contribution of Thelonious Monk shouldn't be soft-sold. And to treat Diz as a protege of Parker is also flawed by many accounts; they were more like contemporaries and equals who collaboratively developed this new music rather than a teacher-student relationship.

Of course, much of the rhythmic push had to, necessarily, come from Kenny Clarke, Art Blakey, and Max Roach. This was autonomously developed as a way to accompany soloists like Diz, Bird, Monk, Bud, etc., but they were leaders in their own right.

The point being, it was indeed a whole group of musicians cross-fertilizing ideas and playing off each other, not all eminating from Parker.

[shanecgriffo]

You don't hear scales so much in that music.

I think some of the best music is where you no longer notice what scale/mode etc is being used.
- pure musical idea shines thru.. It can get Awfuly hard to 'copy'/successfully analyze, that sort of music if you want to tho I think..

[jancivil]

I think you resent the fact that I bring the information to the table so much you refuse to recognize the truth no matter how many times it's presented to you jan.

well, I'm being real careful to say, 'I don't know', and that 'this is my take', what I've heard from around... If you were there, you know the truth. Otherwise it's your take from what you received. I'm just trying to have a normal conversation. I don't see how a difference of opinion on received trivia is so disagreeable. that's some rancor, though.

You've made mistakes in the past presenting your opinion here, on things which you really have no business claiming authority and I have not accepted that 'truth' and vigorously rejected it, & showed the error. There are 'true' things I have said you refuse to 'recognize'. You bring your particular experience [eg., that key of G assertion above] in as if it's universal, in a kind of solipsism. It isn't very sober discourse, and that's just not necessary, to bring your butt-hurt into this.

I don't accept your opinions as facts or truth necessarily. Here, I only have a take on some historical events. I'm not invested in this.

[jancivil]

for me, the more significant contribution to harmonic innovation is Monk's, ie., it's more useful to me. If someone else found something else, that's great.

You notice my use of 'agnostic' earlier?...

[jancivil]

also I wouldn't like that people read this and came away with 'Miles couldn't handle Monk's harmony'. I doubt that's true.

That might be a conflation of things. Miles moved away from busy harmony deliberately. That whole getting around the circle as fast as possible idea. I didn't know Monk's approach was that busy. It was more dissonant than most. Miles saying some shit, 'I can't play to that' to me says, 'I can't find anything to say here. This is some boring shit, Jim'.

He was all about the space between the notes, you know.

[tapper mike]

The music has gotten thick. Guys give me tunes and they're full of chords. I can't play them.

Miles Davis
http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Miles_Davis

The rest of the quote goes on to where he differenciates from bop players at the time and chose a different direction.

[wrench45us]

Miles is on record as not being able to deal with Monk's loose sense of time. Apparently Miles could handle any sort of harmonic changes (no bad notes), but couldn't handle an elastic sense of time. Miles taking jazz back to simpler chrodal chages was a rather inevitable thesis, antithesis , synthesis kind of pattern.

I'm with jopy on Monk's evolution prior to Bird. Fact is jazz evolution following tended to Bud Powell/Gillespie/Parker more than Monk. My sense is Monk was a one-off that influenced a lot of contemporaries, but those who followed wanted a slighly more predictable system than Monk.

The history of Parker's evolution has a great deal with him 'discovering' the extended chordal notes (9,11,13) -- i.e what the moderns call the 'upper tension structures'. As I understand it that's when his personal evolution took off.

[jancivil]

The music has gotten thick. Guys give me tunes and they're full of chords. I can't play them.

Miles Davis
http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Miles_Davis

where he differenciates from bop players at the time and chose a different direction.

Miles moved away from busy harmony deliberately. That whole getting around the circle as fast as possible idea.

As I opined, I think it's a rhetorical statement in critique of an aesthetic he was weary of.

[jancivil]

Apparently Miles could handle any sort of harmonic changes (no bad notes), but couldn't handle an elastic sense of time. Miles taking jazz back to simpler chrodal chages was a rather inevitable thesis, antithesis , synthesis kind of pattern.

Do you mean at the time, he 'couldn't handle'? I think you should cite that 'on record'. What is apparent to me is where Miles Davis exploited 'elasticity' in time rather to good effect. It might be more pertinent to note where he liked to have a pulse to scan against elastically, and that Monk's approach wasn't his, or very comfortable. If what you have is true.

NB: Sketches of Spain.

[that approach to] Modality in jazz improvisation was not retrogressive. A big part of the point of less changes was not to have 'simpler progressions' but to (somewhat) obviate them in favor of static grounds in order to enjoy modal playing. Modal playing that was a big influence here, lotta it didn't have chords, it was per se melodic emphasis. This was a novel approach. Miles seems to have said 'return to emphasis on melody' etc. but modality was the framework of that melodic emphasis. Miles got to be all about the space between the notes.

'informing' us about Miles Davis's deficiencies looks like some overconfident reading of some language.

[trimph1]

Actually, when it comes down to it I do get the 'impression' that Davis may have been able to manage the time changes rather well. Same with a lot of different things in his oeuvre. Monk's sense of timing was very elastic. I have a few recordings of his that featured some pieces that ere played wherein he seemed to have altered some of his structures almost 'on the fly' as it were.

To me Davis was just different in kind from Monk...different here meaning just that..without hierarchy.