The Blues Scale

[jancivil]

again I come to agree with jopy, esp regards the difference in Monk style with intervals and space vs Parker's runs wity upper structures

One direct way to research this is to listen to what each did with standards. How Monk played with standards is wholly different from what Parker did with standards. I can listen to Monk playing standards all day -- there's seems to be no end to ideas and throwing in the old stride now and again to touch base with history/influences. ... what Parker does with standards gets old for me sooner. It's a lot of notes and not much space. ?

Agreed, point-by-point, I agree with every word of this. I'm all about the space between the notes.

[jancivil]

Monk plays the way he does now because he got fed up.

I can see how people did get fed up with it.
I recognize Bird as the step of evolution it is, but the idea that this was *the* evolution and moving away from old bebop, eg., Miles/cool, is 'anti-Jazz revolution' is one I don't share at all.

Bitches Brew is revolutionary though, I think. There was a reaction to it. So in the first place jazz built on pop music and tried to make it something to keep your interest, but rock or funk is off-limits. That's pretty conservative and weirdly so I think.

[jopy]

you know, hoping to bring this back 'round to the OP's question, it is interesting to play along with some of those electric recordings that miles did in the late 60's/early 70's like dark magus or black beauty (which is basically bitches brew live). you can certainly use exotic harmonic displacements and superimpose multiple modes over those pieces, but nothing sounds more appropriate in that context than motifs drawn directly from the blues, albeit more of a funk/soul blues feel than the country blues. just playing along last night i'd guess that well over half of the licks i was able to cop from those records came straight from the minor blues of the key.

[tapper mike]

some of you still don't get it. Prolly never will. Bebop was an evolution from swing. Cool was an evolution. In Miles Davis music he moved away entirely from using chord progressions. He based his music more on classical polyphany then chord progressions.

Both Bird and Monk worked from chord progressions. Though monk instroduced alot of reharmonization and created a more "lyrical" approach to his solo's. This was not the case for Bird.

Bird used standard chord progressions and introduced connecting chord tone with non-chord tones. He wasn't interested in recreating standard ii-V lines as he was working out the arpeggio and connecting non chord tones with it. It was an experiment that he had of which he wasn't particularly comfortable with as he would introduce the non-chord tones on the and beats rather then on the quarter beats. If you've actually listened to or read a score of his music you'll see/hear this plain as day. He doesn't try to coax the love that's not his game.

And I'll bring this back up again. Regardless of what others may have taught him it was Parker and no other source stating his direction which he shared with others dating back to 1939

According to an interview Parker gave in the 1950s, one night in 1939, he was playing "Cherokee" in a jam session with guitarist William "Biddy" Fleet when he hit upon a method for developing his solos that enabled one of his main musical innovations. He realized that the twelve tones of the chromatic scale can lead melodically to any key, breaking some of the confines of simpler jazz soloing.

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

I had very good teachers as well but they didn't know everything. And occasionally I'd hip them to ideas I'd found along the way. That's the way jam sessions work. People exchange ideas. Sometimes the best idea's don't come from the best educated or the most experienced. And often the idea originator is not the most proficient with the concept.

[jancivil]

some of you still don't get it. Prolly never will.

[jopy]

some of you still don't get it. Prolly never will.

What was it we were supposed to "get" exactly? Nothing you've said contradicts or addresses any points raised earlier in the thread. You do seem to be trying to change your arguments to fit what's been shown though, which is pretty disingenuous. I guess when it comes to whether Monk and the rest of the beboppers were all students of Parker or whether Parker explained his approach to others frequently (as you've argued repeatedly), I'll take the words of Thelonious Monk, Dizzy Gillespie, Miles Davis, and Mary Lou Williams over yours.

[jancivil]

Frankly, it's real tiresome, Mike. "You resent me bringing the information to the table". "You'll never get it."

You haven't brought one piece of real information I haven't had since the early 70's.

This is your comfort zone as far as theory talk, I totally get that.

[jancivil]

your thesis was Bird was the primary, sole progenitor, from which everything followed as if an emanation.

You have had to revise that a bit when information was brought which cast some doubt as to its validity.

If you read what I, just for instance, have said it should be clear that I perfectly well 'get' the difference between music which focuses on chord changes versus counterpoint-derived effects (Cf., 'Cool') - 'polyphony' there is a journalist's ignorant word you're regurgitating by the way; this appears to be outside of your particular comfort zone - and over the years here it would be perfectly clear that I 'get' the difference between a melodic focus out of modal approaches, and eg., Bird or 'school of Bird' more or less intent on outlining changes.

There just isn't a whole lot to get. None of this is news.

[jancivil]

Jopy branched off from my statement re Bitches Brew into something that could be interesting, a kind of jam session approach, and you just had to reiterate your understanding - as if superior - one 'mo 'gin. It's tiresome.

I hope you listen during a session rather than seek to assert dominance in every moment. I've played with people like that. Their chops were not all that compelling either. The ones that flourished got over it.

[egbert]

I have been interested in what most of the posters here have brought to this discussion and the external material they have linked to. I appreciated Mike's contribution but I don't see any necessity for this to descend into any kind of acrimony. I dipped out as soon as it did a few days back.

My 2c worth on the BoTC: Gil was central the BoTC stuff but his relationship with Miles brought his work to the world. Miles had a good personal relationship with Gil and did great work with him subsequently on Porgy and Bess and Sketches of Spain and Miles Ahead.

It is worth considering the commercial realities. Miles was a huge star and this gave him a lot of clout in the industry. He managed to get a lot of money - eg advances on future sales - out of Columbia with the sheer force of his personality. His rasping voice was actually the result of him yelling down the phone at these people too soon after surgery to remove polyps on his vocal chords.

Gil's intricate productions were probably not feasible without his wagon being hitched to Miles. The Porgy and Bess sessions were hugely expensive and Miles decribed it as the hardest record he ever did. Miles was the only soloist on these albums and asa result his musical personality is printed all over them. I don't think Gil could have made these projects happen without Miles because he needed a recording company to back the projects and fund all the sessions - Gil poured an enormous amount of time and effort into the arrangements but they would probably never have been realised as projects without the agency of Miles or someone like him - if there has been such a person.

[jopy]

I have been interested in what most of the posters here have brought to this discussion and the external material they have linked to. I appreciated Mike's contribution but I don't see any necessity for this to descend into any kind of acrimony. I dipped out as soon as it did a few days back.

I hate to belabor this point, but wouldn't the person who tells others that they don't get it and never will be largely responsible for dragging the tone of the thread down toward acrimony? That's a pretty heavy personal insult in my book because it offers no specifics other than to declare someone else uneducable. I challenge you to find a similar level of insult levied against Mike prior to his attacks on others for daring to question his dubious, evidence-free assertions about the history of jazz.

[vurt]

you could just ignore him? i find it easy enough to ignore insults, fair enough debate the history of jazz and question any "facts" you or the actual history of jazz may disagree with

[jancivil]

___

[jancivil]

some of you still don't get it. Prolly never will. Bebop was an evolution from swing. Cool was an evolution. In Miles Davis music he moved away entirely from using chord progressions. He based his music more on classical polyphany then chord progressions.

Bird used standard chord progressions and introduced connecting chord tone with non-chord tones. He wasn't interested in recreating standard ii-V lines as he was working out the arpeggio and connecting non chord tones with it. It was an experiment that he had of which he wasn't particularly comfortable with as he would introduce the non-chord tones on the and beats rather then on the quarter beats. If you've actually listened to or read a score of his music you'll see/hear this plain as day. He doesn't try to coax the love that's not his game.

Do tell. "Introduced" non-chord tones to improvised lines. That WOULD be news!
But it's just not based in reality at all.

Here's Bix ca 1927:

covering the devices you are attributing there to Bird's "introducing".