A Little Tune Inspired by Is There Anybody Here That Love My Jesus by Medeski, Martin and Wood

I've been listening to some live 1995-1996 Medeski, Martin and Wood recently.  The It's A Jungle In Here > Friday Afternoon in the Universe > Shack-man era.  This is my favorite period of MMW music.  Particularly the tune Is There Anybody Here That Love My Jesus has been floating around in my head all week.

As an amateur hobbyist musician one great thing about reaching the point where trying to figure out something by ear is no longer an incredibly frustrating ordeal but rather a quite pleasant exercise, is that a door opens toward the possibility of personally interpreting the music by some of your favorite artists.  Even creating something of your own based on this music.  If you are in need of more tunes to learn you can just turn to existing recordings for ideas.

In light of yesterday's announcement that the Secret Keeper (Mary Halvorson and Stephan Crump) "house" concert would now be taking place in a church, I decided that now was as good a time as ever to see what listening to Is There Anybody Here That Love My Jesus could spawn.  Here's what came out of my banjo with me playing it.

I obviously wasn't trying to exactly duplicate this piece.  For one thing, I don't have the ability.  Secondly, I was hearing something a little different with maybe a few more measures or something repeated that doesn't happen in the original composition.  This is how it sounded about an hour ago when I recorded it.  This is like a first draft.  Things could definitely change as time goes on. 

I don't know how to play piano properly, but I have an electric keyboard that I use to help me discern certain notes because it has more clarity than my banjo does sometimes.  I kind of view the piano as a marimba with my fingers being the mallets.  Anyway, it's not heard on this recording thankfully but I used the piano before recording to help with deciding on some of these notes.  At other times I just did what I thought I wanted to hear.

Secret Keeper (Mary Halvorson and Stephan Crump) Friday, November 6, 2015 Richmond, VA

LOCATION UPDATED (and revealed) for the Secret Keeper "House" Concert on Friday, November 6, 2015 at 7PM in Richmond, VA!

This was originally supposed to be a house concert with very limited space but it has been moved to Good Shepherd Episcopal Church at Forest Hill and 43rd Street in Richmond, VA - a still intimate venue but one that will allow more people to attend.  There's a $10 to $20 suggested donation.

You might be thinking "experimental, challenging, freely improvised, modernly avant-garde compositions in a house of worship???"  (Actually, isn't there a history of free-improv within the church organ community?).  However, even as a non-religious person I know one thing:  I'll be worshiping some Mary Halvorson!!!  There is a guitar god.  Seriously though, this'll more than likely be a good room for appreciating this complex yet beautiful music.

Secret Keeper - Stephan Crump and Mary Halvorson

Secret Keeper is Mary Halvorson, guitar and Stephan Crump, bass. Mary Halvorson has been described as "the most future-seeking guitarist working right now" (Lars Gotrich, NPR.org), "the most impressive guitarist of her generation" (Troy Collins, AllAboutJazz.com) and "my current favorite musician" (me!). Grammy-nominated bassist/composer Stephan Crump is known for his work with mainstream jazz luminaries, downtown explorers, singer/songwriters and more, and is a long-standing member of the esteemed Vijay Iyer Trio.

Together as Secret Keeper, Mary and Stephan create something akin to improvisatory chamber music. Stephan says, “Mary and I each have extremely varied influences within music and beyond…we’re not trying to bar any of these influences from the music we create together, nor are we concerned with genre in any way”.  Anyone who enjoys art, experimentation, and virtuosic musicianship should try to attend. 

A $10-20 suggested donation will help pay for these top level New York-based musicians.

Secret Keeper
Friday, November 6, 2015 at 7pm
Good Shepherd Episcopal Church
Forest Hill and 43rd Street
Richmond, VA 23225

JAZZed "What's On Your Playlist" - Clave Patterns by Los Munequitos de Matanzas

JAZZed Magazine has a regular segment called What’s On Your Playlist where a featured musician will list what he or she has been listening to. These artists usually select current releases and/or things they’ve discovered recently, but in the August/September 2015 issue baritone saxophonist Brian Landrus took a different route: he listed five recordings that have had a big influence on his playing.

Brian Landrus on contra alto clarinet

One of the albums he mentions is Rumba Caliente by Los Munequitos de Matanzas. Landrus says “While at the New England Conservatory I was fortunate to study with Danilo Perez. Danilo was working on my rhythmic groove. Danilo had me tapping various clave patterns with my foot and playing bebop heads. It was, and is, very difficult, but it took my internal groove to the next level. He told me about Los Munequitos so I listened to all of their recordings available and transcribed as many of the clave patterns I could find. They’re a great source of compositional inspiration for me.”

I had not heard of this Cuban group so I looked them up. The music is good and I can see how Landrus found it to be a great source of compositional inspiration. The idea of tapping various clave rhythms while playing head melodies sounds very challenging, but worth trying. You can read the full article – and the entire issue – here: http://digitaleditiononline.com/publication/?m=27630&l=1

The JAZZed interview with Ran Blake in the same issue is also worth checking out.

Know the Chords, Hear the Changes...or Not

In the 9 years that I’ve been playing music I’ve never fully believed in the concept of chords being a predetermined order of stacked notes that you then solo over. I don’t think I hear music this way, which may be why I was initially drawn to the single-note melodies of traditional Irish music despite having no cultural or social connection to that type of music. In Irish traditional music it seems that melody comes first and harmony/chords are a non-essential modern add-on.

Traditional Irish music is great, but I really want to play music that is not tied to any tradition, style or genre. Music that is completely free of those connections. So, then the question becomes how do you extend this concept of melody first into the realm of free improvisation?

For one thing I never know what the chords changes are to a song – I can’t really hear “right” from “wrong” in this way – and the idea of having to be aware of the chord changes and basing my selection of improvised notes on this knowledge seems restrictive. If I play a “B” note why does that have to be a G-major chord to meet someone’s idea of what sounds “good”? Couldn’t you pair that B note with the notes in a B-minor chord, or an E-minor chord, or any combination of notes that somehow complements that B note? And can’t you change it every time? 

Then I read about Ornette Coleman - the great melody writer and improviser - and how he had dispensed with chord sequences in his compositions and instead used melody as the basis for improvisation.  This gave him the freedom to take those melodies in any direction he wanted at whatever length, pitch and speed felt right.  Knowing about this makes me feel a lot better and when I listen to Ornette's music I hear something similar to what I have in mind or hoped could be done.

I won't pretend to even begin to understand what Ornette Coleman was doing or how he heard and interpreted music, but knowing that such an important figure in the history of jazz did not rely on predetermined harmonic structure gives me some confidence that you can effectively improvise melodically without concern for the underlying or implied chords.  Now I just need to find other musicians who want to practice this type of playing.  Hello?  Anyone?  Is there anybody out there?  Maybe an upright bassist or a cello player is reading this?  I'm sending out smoke signals.

  

Practicing a Two Bar Section of the Haitian Meringue La Douceur

There's a tune I've been learning called La Douceur.  It was written by the Haitian composer/violinist Arthur Duroseau who was part of the Duroseau musical family from Port-au-Prince who made some recordings in the early 1950's.  La Douceur is a Meringue type of tune.  It has some syncopated timing that takes some getting used to and a seemingly difficult sequence of 8th notes at the end of the B-part which can feel very sped up when compared to the rest of the piece.

I wrote that two-bar lick out in the notation form that I have recently adopted which uses major scale note numbers which can then be applied to any key or tonal center you want.  See image below.  The note numbers correspond to the notes of the major scale.  This morning I was practicing that lick in the key of B, which means that my note "2" is a C# note and 2b (flat 2 or "doo" for diminished two) is the note C in the key of B.  With this kind of notation it's pretty easy to transpose.  All you have to do is know a major scale and then apply that knowledge to the sequence of notes.  After I'm done writing this I will try it in a different key.

La Douceur "lick" at end of B part

Michael Doucet recorded La Douceur on the 2013 BeauSoleil album From Bamako to Carencro.  Here's a link to that recording.  The lick starts just after 50 seconds and is only a couple seconds long:  https://soundcloud.com/airshowmastering/beausoleil-avec-michael

And here's a video of the amazing banjo-mandolin player Dennis Pash of the Etcetera String Band and the Ragtime Skedaddlers playing it.  Dennis' version is where I first heard La Douceur and it made me want to learn this tune!  The section transcribed above starts at about 33 seconds into this video.



Remember, this method of notating is not like a tab or treble clef anything like that.  The numbers correspond to major scale notes, not finger placement, so it's not instrument specific or key specific.  You can use this notation system for any melodic instrument....saxophone, flute, guitar, mandolin, et cetera, and you can use it for any mode.  A tune in Dorian would probably have 2 as the tonal center.  Makes sense, right?

Is Music Theory a Science or a Religion?

Duh, it's a science.

Penn Jillette has said:

"If every trace of any single religion were wiped out and nothing were passed on, it would never be created exactly that way again. There might be some other nonsense in its place, but not that exact nonsense. If all of science were wiped out, it would still be true and someone would find a way to figure it all out again."

What Penn said is true and I feel the same way about music theory. It's just an attempt to explain what is already going on. The existing vocabulary we've been given to describe music is absolute, but it's not for everyone. It covers more than most of us need to know.

Which is why if you're feeling confused by music theory, I challenge you to find your own way of interpreting it. Try and really get to the essence of what this terminology is attempting to convey and then imagine that all existing knowledge of music theory has been wiped out and put those same concepts in your own thoughts or words.

I have sort of done this myself by applying a notation system that views all 12 "keys" universally as equals, and all 7 notes of the major scale as a sequence of diatonic numbers based on a tonal center, and the five remaining "blue notes" as raised or diminished diatonic number sounds ("dive" for a flat five note and "rive" for a sharp five note, for example).

This way of analyzing the notes of a universal scale makes it easy to transcribe.  Perhaps think of it like this:  most melodies in the key of C-major/ionian or its relatives (D-dorian, F-lydian, G-mixolydian, etc.) use only the white keys of a piano keyboard.  When they do use use a black key it is a "blue note".  In other words, some note in the major scale has been sharpened or flattened.

Now imagine if you could transpose the sound that comes out of the keyboard so that the white keys were A-B-C#-D-E-F#-G#-A and so on.  The same song played the same way would now come out in "A" instead of in "C".  If that melody in C had a "flat" 7th note that made B change to Bb, that same melody in A would mean that the "flat" note makes G# change to G natural. (G natural doesn't seem "flat", does it?!).  I would just call this note "dev" [diminished seven] regardless of key.  These are the building blocks of seeing it more universally.

As soon as you can start thinking of music theory in a way that (correctly) applies your own personal meaning to it, you'll understand the existing science that is music theory a whole lot better.

Phish's A Live One 33 1/3 book by Walter Holland

I am happy that there is now a book about Phish in the 33 1/3 series of novella-length essays on music albums.  The album chosen - A Live One - makes sense.  Although Phish does make good studio albums, that type of work would have been too far removed from the improvisatory concert experience that makes Phish Phish.

As their first officially released live recording, 1995's A Live One retains the feel of an album due to its purposeful order of cherry picked selections from various 1994 concerts, but still allows for a jumping off point to discuss Phish as a whole.  For one thing, the band had already moved on by the time A Live One came out the summer after the recordings were made, and would move on again and again before the 90's were over.

Author Walter Holland says that his imagined reader is an interested non-fan who's heard of Phish but knows little of their music, without much experience listening to improvisation.  He also says that he resisted the urge to sell this reader on Phish.  In my view, it's a mistake to believe that the reader needs selling at all.  Such a perception only perpetuates an assumed negative popular/critical opinion that we should be past by now.

I do like the musical terms Holland occasionally employs to describe what is going on during jams, like when he says "in this context A7, as the dominant, leans hard toward the D-minor chord that grounds the whole song".  However, too much of the time is spent on clunky, cluttered writing and unrelated tangents.  There are footnotes for things that don't need footnotes and plenty of things that could use a footnote but don't have one.

On page 8 he says "Maybe A Live One isn't a great album", which he is probably right about.  But then on page 68 he says "Go ahead and put on the A Live One 'Tweezer' if you have it.  If you don't own the album go buy it (it's good)".  I find that to be frustrating.  Holland does make some good observations, such as his explanation of the hose as "anthemic major-chord catharsis after a tension-building passage".  Such matter of fact language is refreshing.

It's hard for me to be too critical of someone who set out to write a Phish 33 1/3 book because that person had to know he was going to be under intense criticism just by doing so.  I admire his effort.  Near the end of the book Holland provides perhaps his best synopsis:

"I like how they've aged.  A Live One has long had a terminal quality, to me - without meaning to, it concisely sets out the terms of a musical close-packing problem that their later explosive--minimalist improv authoritatively solved, and they've never gone back to their early combative style.  Nowadays the borders between their improvisatory episodes are more porous, transitions more gentle, improvisations less inclined to wander aimlessly--beauty is the chief imperative in Phish's late music, and novelty is all but set aside.  There's no didactic or antagonistic point, as there was in (say) the A Live One 'Stash' and 'Tweezer,' which run long and loud and play tricks on the listener partly for the sake of extremity itself; that is, for a laugh".

In my case I was so psyched for there to be a book like this that I pushed on through despite/because of some irritations.  It's a pretty quick read and if anything it might allow you better interpret your own opinions of this band.  Although, don't be surprised if you get to the end wondering if much, if anything, has been said.