Everything you guys put out is pure gold, I am so grateful for all your content 🙏 I'm a film score composer and I keep coming back to your channel to hone my harmonic and melodic versatility, I wanted you to know how far reaching your content is! 🙂
Really great exposition of some of Chick's Chick-isms. You can hear a lot of those ideas in Chick's solo version of 'Someone to Watch Over Me'. I'm guessing you guys knew that, tho . . . Thanks for a great lesson.
I try to tell people, Chick after AKoustic Band is a different Chick, you don't know Chick if you only know up to the 3 Quartets sound. Once he's playing with Patitucci, McFerrin, McBride, he's another level from where he had been, he goes beyond the McCoy+Evans+Herbie voicings.
Chick never stopped evolving and researching. He was a fine composer of modern music (and jazz as well of course). The ECM years have some sublime playing by Chick. I remind people to listen to his Live in Zürich with G. Burton (a true gem) and his solo piano improv but of course his Monk’s recording and his Three Quartets (great playing by everyone and composing!). Hi Septet is just fantastic and so is his piano concerto w/orchestra. The Akousic band isn’t his best output imo although the level is absolutely stratospheric. There are better trios where he plays and I will set aside the most commercial things that do not do justice to his genius.
When you look at scales from the perspective of chords (chord-scales) You label the notes as 1 3 5 7 9 11 13. So in the scale it looks like 1 9 3 11 5 13 7
You are correct: #11, b13 etc. is a nonsense notion for a melody instrument or a vocalist. Those crazy notations have nothing with real music. As a human, you think of music in terms of vocal lead, scales, melody and neighbouring tones, but you forget that jazz pianists and guitarists killed vocals and melody leads. Generally speaking, in the 20th century, the piano killed music, guitar burned it. The harmony part of the band killed the melody part of the band and made up new rules. Therefore jazz "scores" are made for pianists (and guitarists) who can't read music so well, so they need real-time visual help: that's why all the nonsense "chemical formulas" above staves, as a form of "Braille's alphabet" to the blind, playable by pianists on their 100 octaves stretch pianos with all 10 fingers, but impossible to any other instrument that plays one note at a time. Every time I download a score by mDecks, (they only know how to write jazz piano scores) I rewrite the score, finding the best variation and keys to play it for a particular melody instruments/vocals. I use that as an exercise.
I couldn't disagree more. Tensions above the octave are not nonsense. Melody is much more than just simple intervals. Look at Bach solo violin pieces, or for that fact any other composer's pieces for solo instruments that are not piano or guitar. Their use of melody go far beyond the linear concept. Harmony is embedded in compound lines that make use of chord extensions allowing many notes to play a roll in structures build by stacking thirds (for most part) The concept of a 9th interval, or a 13th is predominant even in classical music, not to mention romanticism and so on...
@@mDecksMusic You compare J. S. Bach with a typical jazz cat? I wholeheartedly disagree with you. Jazz "composers" can't write a proper score for various parts and instruments if their life depended on it. Because they jumble up all the stuff and think in terms of the piano/guitar chords, (which they must use - single line melody sounds awful on a piano or the guitar). And then they extend chords ad infinitum, because they never have real other instruments parts, can't lend some of those notes to other instruments because they don't know how, and often are severely limited in orchestral size. (They only allowed bass players to live) But nobody is ever admitting it. To the musically deficient guitarists and pianists, written are the names of the chords and endless extensions above because most couldn't and can't read the score, and because they memorise "shapes", not notes. And then, they give the same score to other instruments - if anyone dares to read that nightmare. Because the composers can't transpose, and expect players to transpose on the go. Utter laziness and incompetence, typical of all American "re-inventions". They don't even check whether a different arrangement could be better for other instruments. Because they don't even know whether it really works for other instruments, the instrument range, the colour, can players breathe, inhale, exhale, they don't know the timbre, the colour of the instrument, know zero about proper dynamics and accents, or where they could be added, nor they care to indicate it properly, and couldn't know if anything else is possible. Because most jazzmen could not care less. Because I'm properly trained in Europe and I CAN make sense of that mess, as I know the origin of that mess, I use it for exercise: write proper parts for alto sax, Bb clarinet, tenor sax, flute, vocals, etc.
Oh man! I don't know what you've been listening to. Have you ever heard of Billy Strayhorn, Gil Evans, Duke Ellington, Maria Schneider, Charles Mingus, Count Basie... for that matter, Quincy Jones or Nadia Boulanger and all the school that comes from that? You should really take a look at some of their scores. I know where you're coming from, I was originally classically trained and I used to think the exact same thing about jazz. I completely understand the feeling, but once you start looking into the great jazz composers and orchestrators you realize how much knowledge and craft there is there! I promise you they were not lazy at all! I'm not saying jazz is better, of course not! But it's worth looking into. There's a lot to learn from when you look at compositions and orchestrations of those guys! Just check them out, don't close that door, it's really interesting.
Great breakdown and very dense information wise! Great stuff!
Everything you guys put out is pure gold, I am so grateful for all your content 🙏 I'm a film score composer and I keep coming back to your channel to hone my harmonic and melodic versatility, I wanted you to know how far reaching your content is! 🙂
very interesting insight in Chick's harmonical and voicing concepts - thank you! 👌🏻
Very well
Really great exposition of some of Chick's Chick-isms.
You can hear a lot of those ideas in Chick's solo version of 'Someone to Watch Over Me'.
I'm guessing you guys knew that, tho . . .
Thanks for a great lesson.
THANK YOUUUUU!!!!!
Industrial strength Jazz concepts.
Amazing!
I try to tell people, Chick after AKoustic Band is a different Chick, you don't know Chick if you only know up to the 3 Quartets sound. Once he's playing with Patitucci, McFerrin, McBride, he's another level from where he had been, he goes beyond the McCoy+Evans+Herbie voicings.
Chick never stopped evolving and researching. He was a fine composer of modern music (and jazz as well of course). The ECM years have some sublime playing by Chick. I remind people to listen to his Live in Zürich with G. Burton (a true gem) and his solo piano improv but of course his Monk’s recording and his Three Quartets (great playing by everyone and composing!). Hi Septet is just fantastic and so is his piano concerto w/orchestra.
The Akousic band isn’t his best output imo although the level is absolutely stratospheric. There are better trios where he plays and I will set aside the most commercial things that do not do justice to his genius.
basic question how is A sharp 11 if it's the 4th note on the E scale?
When you look at scales from the perspective of chords (chord-scales) You label the notes as 1 3 5 7 9 11 13. So in the scale it looks like 1 9 3 11 5 13 7
You are correct: #11, b13 etc. is a nonsense notion for a melody instrument or a vocalist. Those crazy notations have nothing with real music. As a human, you think of music in terms of vocal lead, scales, melody and neighbouring tones, but you forget that jazz pianists and guitarists killed vocals and melody leads. Generally speaking, in the 20th century, the piano killed music, guitar burned it. The harmony part of the band killed the melody part of the band and made up new rules.
Therefore jazz "scores" are made for pianists (and guitarists) who can't read music so well, so they need real-time visual help: that's why all the nonsense "chemical formulas" above staves, as a form of "Braille's alphabet" to the blind, playable by pianists on their 100 octaves stretch pianos with all 10 fingers, but impossible to any other instrument that plays one note at a time.
Every time I download a score by mDecks, (they only know how to write jazz piano scores) I rewrite the score, finding the best variation and keys to play it for a particular melody instruments/vocals. I use that as an exercise.
I couldn't disagree more. Tensions above the octave are not nonsense. Melody is much more than just simple intervals. Look at Bach solo violin pieces, or for that fact any other composer's pieces for solo instruments that are not piano or guitar. Their use of melody go far beyond the linear concept. Harmony is embedded in compound lines that make use of chord extensions allowing many notes to play a roll in structures build by stacking thirds (for most part) The concept of a 9th interval, or a 13th is predominant even in classical music, not to mention romanticism and so on...
@@mDecksMusic You compare J. S. Bach with a typical jazz cat? I wholeheartedly disagree with you.
Jazz "composers" can't write a proper score for various parts and instruments if their life depended on it. Because they jumble up all the stuff and think in terms of the piano/guitar chords, (which they must use - single line melody sounds awful on a piano or the guitar). And then they extend chords ad infinitum, because they never have real other instruments parts, can't lend some of those notes to other instruments because they don't know how, and often are severely limited in orchestral size. (They only allowed bass players to live) But nobody is ever admitting it.
To the musically deficient guitarists and pianists, written are the names of the chords and endless extensions above because most couldn't and can't read the score, and because they memorise "shapes", not notes. And then, they give the same score to other instruments - if anyone dares to read that nightmare. Because the composers can't transpose, and expect players to transpose on the go. Utter laziness and incompetence, typical of all American "re-inventions".
They don't even check whether a different arrangement could be better for other instruments.
Because they don't even know whether it really works for other instruments, the instrument range, the colour, can players breathe, inhale, exhale, they don't know the timbre, the colour of the instrument, know zero about proper dynamics and accents, or where they could be added, nor they care to indicate it properly, and couldn't know if anything else is possible.
Because most jazzmen could not care less.
Because I'm properly trained in Europe and I CAN make sense of that mess, as I know the origin of that mess, I use it for exercise: write proper parts for alto sax, Bb clarinet, tenor sax, flute, vocals, etc.
Oh man! I don't know what you've been listening to. Have you ever heard of Billy Strayhorn, Gil Evans, Duke Ellington, Maria Schneider, Charles Mingus, Count Basie... for that matter, Quincy Jones or Nadia Boulanger and all the school that comes from that? You should really take a look at some of their scores. I know where you're coming from, I was originally classically trained and I used to think the exact same thing about jazz. I completely understand the feeling, but once you start looking into the great jazz composers and orchestrators you realize how much knowledge and craft there is there! I promise you they were not lazy at all! I'm not saying jazz is better, of course not! But it's worth looking into. There's a lot to learn from when you look at compositions and orchestrations of those guys! Just check them out, don't close that door, it's really interesting.
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