Very compressed and dense rehashing of mucho music theory. Will still be very difficult for most to finish this meal without taking tiny bites, letting them digest and then looking at the next bite. During Be-bop, more improv scenarios were encouraged, as with each chord, the be-boppers could use more of their patterns or ideas. It approached the ridiculous situation where, in some cases, the chord changed with EVERY beat.
This lead to the next evolution - or push back against such extremism - championed by such forward thinkers such as Miles Davis - the modal style, in which chord changes were tossed out in favor of one tonality existing for many measures - and focusing a bit more on the melody as being more important.
At first, the be-boppers were stymied - they ran out of ideas quickly, as they were based on harmonic changes to suggest which notes to choose. However, a deeper understanding of pure linear music evolved in which the ideas themselves were strong enough to exist without having to have so many changes underneath to support them.
Eventually, some found an endless supply of choices here while others were just plain mystified.
Cool video here for those really into this sort of stuff and deeper delving into music theory, but I predict that most blues harmonica players here will not even be able to finish watching this whole video. ---------- The Iceman
I remember looking in the appendix to the book "Improvising Jazz" as a high school student and being amazed at the reharmonizations of 12-bar blues; when I sounded them out they sure didn't sound like Muddy Waters.
But they did bring me to noticing how many of Mose Allison's sardonic humor songs were dressed-up 12-bars, along with such John Coltrane tunes as Equinox and Cousin Mary.
My own forays into this territory led me to swap the IV chord for a flat-II chord (like, in an E blues, using an F chord instead of an A chord) and then replace all the other chords as well.
Doing that, I came up with a tune called Spanish Changes, because the flat-II chord made it sound like the stereotypical Spanish guitar E to F progression. Does it sound like blues? Not much, but that's not the point. It's just a way of using that form as a creative jumping-off point. Still doesn't sound like Muddy, but it does sound like Winslow.
Great educational music theory video, but technically it should be titled "Post Modern Reharmonization of the Blues Form", which is an important distinction.
Playing the form of a music is not the same as playing the genre.
Which is fine, as Winslow perceptively points out in "Still doesn't sound like Muddy, but it does sound like Winslow."
I wish he'd used more relative chord notation (scale degrees) on the board though, I think it's easier to understand the mathematics of music that way rather than locking it to key center. ---------- Paul Cohen aka Komuso Tokugawa HarpNinja - Learn Harmonica Faster Komuso's Music Website
Last Edited by Komuso on Jun 18, 2017 5:15 PM
Well, I understand it well enough to conclude that it can't be played on a diatonic harp. Some of it can, but a diatonic harp doesn't have all the necessary notes. (I don't OB). Interesting ideas, though.
There actually are enough notes available w/out OB to utilize even the advanced chord substitutions. However, one must move away from thinking "harmonicky" and move towards choosing notes in a melodic line that work within the changes.
If you can bend to exact pitch in the first 4 holes, you pretty much have everything you need chromatically, except for one note that you can get by hole 6 exhale bend if you really want to use it. If it were me w/out OB capabilities, I'd just omit or work around that one note. ---------- The Iceman
I don't think harmonicky anyway, but my approach may be too scale bound to readily recognize what you are saying. I need to put more work in on arpeggios and learning to be able to more readily spell chords instead of having to think about it. I am pretty facile thinking in degrees of the scale, but I am not as facile with letter names of notes in all keys.
But I do understand what Beato is saying. The only thing I had to look up was what he meant by "quartile".
Last Edited by hvyj on Jun 20, 2017 4:32 PM
