Is blue and green modal?
Ethan Young
Kind of Blue. Was it mistakenly attributed to Miles, or did he just step
into the spotlight and take credit for it?
I constantly see "modal" tunes notated w/chords as accomanyments, NOT the
related scales...why is this? If the tune was intended to be modal, why
were the modes converted to "scales" based on the scales' harmonizations?
Wouldn't the original lead sheets state the modes in place of
chords/specific harmonic figures, or did they too use chords and then
somehow indicated that the piece was modal?
Thanks,
Ethan
Dean Elwood
nicked. Apparently he had a tendancy to do that!
"Ethan Young" <laisse...@att.net> wrote in message
news:ZHGE8.25394$Vm2.9...@bgtnsc04-news.ops.worldnet.att.net...
Steve Modica
I know what modes are, but I just view them as different ways of
approaching the same scale (playing a C scale but using G as the one and
that sort of thing).
So in that light, I would view a "modal" song as one that sort of
maintains a key signature, but has chord changes that support different
modes of that key.
A harmonically based song would be chords written around a melody
without
regard to modes of a particular key signature. Am I way off on this?
Steve
Christophe Pinson
least the first bars. I mean, it's easely played as chord melody tune
with melody on top, so naming the chords seems justified. Now, the
general mood of the tune naturally may lead to play " modally ". in
fact, "Moodally" would be more appropriate...
Now, just play the arpeggios on each chord and you'll see it really
sounds, so ...
Jurupari
?? Fortunately when I play it I get to choose what's 'appropriate' and that's
the changes.
It seems to me that it was treated modally and it could be just blown as a
phrygian taking the normal liberties that mode usually implies but I like the
changes and I have other tunes that have open phrygian sections if I want to
blow on them.
Clif Kuplen
Joey Goldstein
single tonal center, chord or scale, is emphasized for a long duration.
Blue In Green does not fit this mold. There is a new chord every few
beats. It is in the key of D minor and all the chords can be analysed in
that light.
The main difference between the modal approach to a tonal center and a
tonal (i.e. classical major/minor tonality) approach to a tonal center
is that when a particular chord type lasts for a long duration its root
becomes a sort of a tonal center and any harmonic (key) relations
between that chord and any other chords in the piece are minimized. The
player is free to explore and emphasize the intervallic relations of all
the tones in the implied chord-scale. Tunes that have regularly moving
harmonic progressions invariably suggest major and minor keys, sometimes
several keys for very short periods of time, and the key feeling is so
closely related to the major and minor scales that these sounds take
precendence over any modal feelings.
And anyway, successful modal key centers are just colorations of major
or minor keys. A tune "in" D dorian is really just in the key of D minor
with a modal color. A tune "in" D Phrygian is really just in the key of
D minor with a modal color. A tune "in" G mixolydian is really in the
key of G major with a mixolydian coloring.
Usually the chord scale associated with a chord of long duration is
obvious but if a composer wants to or needs to he could just write a
modal scale name next to the chord symbol or I have also seen guys just
specify the scale without a chord symbol.
--
Joey Goldstein
Guitarist/Jazz Recording Artist/Teacher
Home Page: http://www.joeygoldstein.com
Email: <joegold AT sympatico DOT ca>
Kev
> Kind of Blue. Was it mistakenly attributed to Miles, or did he just step
> into the spotlight and take credit for it?
>
I'd say Blue in Green is more tonal than modal. There is clearly a V-I - type
of harmony happening there, and were it otherwise one wouldn't feel some of the
chords "pulling" towards other ones as strongly, at least not the same way, as
they do. I think it's just that this period of Miles' output tends to get
broadly categorized as his "modal period", as though he suddenly started playing
modal stuff exclusively, but that's not entirely accurate.
-Kevin
Dan Adler
> related scales...why is this?
My definition of a Modal Tune is that the changes are not cadential.
In simpler words, it means that chords are not preceded by their
dominant.
Here's a good example: look at Aebersold volume 21 (Getting it
together):
http://www.jazzbooks.com/playalongs/021.htm
It cycles through all keys various chords. For example Maj7 chords
down in whole steps, up in half steps, in minor thirds, etc. Some of
these give you 8 bars to play on each chord, and some of them give you
1/2 a bar. The principle is the same. You play on one mode, then make
some attempt to connect it melodically to the next mode, and then play
on the next mode, etc. As you get better at it, you try to separate
your melodic rhythm from the underlying harmonic rhythm (also called
over-the-bar phrasing).
This is very different from playing over songs that are primarily
based on II-V-I resolutions.
I highly recommend this book and CD set.
the one who loves not hates
>I seem to recall this is another tune written by Bill Evans which Miles
>nicked. Apparently he had a tendancy to do that!
Miles claimsin his brilliant and well written autobiography [ha!] to have
written all of Kind of Blue and Donna Lee. And it was his idea to voice the
chords in fourths.
With the massive and amazing out put of Bill Evans after playing with Miles, I
kind of doubt that.
Tim
"Keep in mind, that not only has Ricky Martin had a successful singing career,
but he's also been on broadway, been a Menudo, and a soap star. Which means he
now has enough credits to graduate from Gay University."- Jon Stewart
pmfan57
How do you characterize those cool Wayne Shorter tunes like Fall,
Nefertiti, and countless others in which a sequence of seemingly
unrelated chords are used to harmonize fairly diatonic melodies? I
know when I play over those, as opposed to a more traditional standard
chord progression, I pretty much treat each chord as a separate tonal
center, even though it's short-lived. It always seemed to me that
Blue in Green was like a precursor to that type of piece.
I love the way Pat Martino plays over those pieces.
Tom Lippincott
Ron Miller, the jazz composition teacher at U of Miami, divides modal tunes
into "plateau modal" and "vertical modal." So What would be plateau, Nefertiti
would be vertical.
Also, Bill Evans version of what happened with Blue In Green is that he was at
Miles' house and Miles gave him a piece of paper with the chord symbols for G
minor and A augmented written on it and said "what would you do with this?"
Evans said he went home and wrote Blue and Green and brought it back to Miles.
So it seems like maybe it's written by Bill Evans from an "idea suggested by
Miles Davis."
Tom Lippincott
Guitarist, Composer, Teacher
audio samples, articles, CD's at:
http://www.tomlippincott.com
Joey Goldstein
Note:
D = Dominant function harmony
T = Tonic function harmony
SD = Subdominant function harmony
SDm = Subdominant minor function harmony (i.e. borrowed from the
subdominant area of the parallel minor key)
Dec res = deceptive resolution (of dom7 chords)
Fall
E Major
D T (Mix)
V7sus4 of V V7 I7sus4 sub IIm of I 1st inversion
F#7sus4 / / / |B7 / / / |E7sus4 / / / |Ebmaj7 / / / |
Dec res D T (Mix)
V7sus4 of V V7 I7sus4 sub IIm of I 1st inversion
F#7sus4 / / / |B7 / / / |E7sus4 / / / |Ebmaj7 / / / |
G Minor G Major
SDm Dom T T SDm
bVIImaj7 V7 Im IIIm bIImaj7
Dmaj7 / / / |D7 / / / |Gm / / / |Bm / Abmaj7#11 / |
E Major E Minor
D T
V7sus4 of V V7 Im bVImaj7
F#7sus4 / / / |B7 / / / |Em / Cmaj7 / | / / / / |
Note: The main tonic of this tune is the tone E. Sometimes the chord
built on E has a maj triad associated with it as at bars 3 and 7 (the G#
is usually added to the sus4 chord rather than G nat to give it a
mixolydian color) and sometimes it has a minor chord associated with it
as at bar 15. There is a secondary tonic introduced at bar 11, G. Note
the realtionships between these two tonics. G major is the relative
major key to E minor. G minor is the parallel minor key to G minor and
therefore has a symbiotic relationship with E minor and E major as well.
So I see this tune as being essentially tonal but adventurous in the
usage of certain harmonic ambiguities. It is not so adventurous as to
totally destroy the key feeling of E as the overall tonic though.
Neffertiti
Ab Major
T
I I7sus4/IV IIm7b5 V7 of VIm
Abmaj7 / / / |Dbsus / / / |Gm7b5 / / / |C7 / / / |
Ab Minor
Dec res
T
bIIImaj7 IIm7b5 V7
Bmaj9 / / / |Bmaj9b5 / / / |Bbm7b5 / / / |Eb7 / / / |
B Major
Dec res (borrowed Dec res
SD T fr B minor)
IVmaj7 bIIImaj7 V7 of IIm V7sus4
Emaj7 / / / |Dmaj7/A / / / |G#7 / / / |F#7sus4 / / / |
Dec res
B Minor Ab Major
T D
Im7/IV V7 IIm V7
E9sus4 / / / |Eb7 / / / |Bbm / / / |Eb7 / / / |
Again, the keys, both major and minor, with tonics on Ab and on B are
related to each other, or can be.
Some of the specifics of these two anaylses might be a little dicey but
the basic overall tonal key centers are pretty clear I think.
Now if I were looking for chord-scales to use over these changes I might
well assign names to them that relate to modal relationships I am
familiar with, lyd, mix, etc. but at no point are either of these tunes
really in a mode per se for any length of time.
The essence of modality is a *lack* of progression. A single chord or a
drone with a modal scale being emphasized is the only truly modal
setting, as far as I am concerned.
One of the inherited features we in the West have from the major/minor
tonal system is the way the ear tends to hear keys implied by virtually
any harmonic progression except those progressions, like Shoenberg's,
which are designed to destroy any key feelings that arise. Destroying
the key feeling of any music using Western scales and tunings is pretty
difficult to do actually. As Jimmy has pointed out almost all harmonic
progression used in the jazz idiom can be felt to have a key center at
any moment in time.
Dan Adler
> Also, Bill Evans version of what happened with Blue In Green is that he was at
> Miles' house and Miles gave him a piece of paper with the chord symbols for G
> minor and A augmented written on it and said "what would you do with this?"
> Evans said he went home and wrote Blue and Green and brought it back to Miles.
> So it seems like maybe it's written by Bill Evans from an "idea suggested by
> Miles Davis."
That's how Bach wrote 'a musical offering' to the king's theme, but
it's still attributed to Bach...
Dan Adler
Joe,
I agree with your analysis. As I mentioned before, my own definition:
Bop = functional = Dominant relolutions (cadences)
Modal = non functional = No Dominant resolutions
Any chord sequence where the chords "just sit there" and don't have
strong gravitational pull into the next chord - I call modal.
Pat Martino with his "activities" and "convert to minor" really shines
on these tunes because each area of activity for him is really a mode
plus all the chromatics that fit around it.
There are a lot of tunes that cross over these two areas. For example,
Benny Golson tunes. If you remember Pat's solo on "Along Came Betty" -
that's a masterpiece, yet when you look at those minor 7th's moving in
1/2 steps - they are clearly not functional. I remember what a shock
it was for me when I tried playing that tune after hearing Pat's solo,
and finding that nothing I knew about Bebop was really helping me make
sense of this tune.
pmfan57
I think, after reading Joey's post and this one, that there is
something to be said for both ways of analyzing those Shorter tunes.
I have always, without knowing there was a term for it, treated those
type tunes (there are countless such tunes now) as the "vertical
modal" type mentioned above. But a musician certainly should be aware
of how the progression can be reconciled with traditional tonality.
As to Blue in Green, I think Miles should probably receive co-composer
credits. He certainly contributed more than Irving Mills did to
Duke's songs!
Dean Elwood
likely, given the harmonic content and the melody, it's Bills' - although I
suspect that Miles played a big part in arranging it with him.
Perhaps both should have conceded it as a joint effort.
"the one who loves not hates" <ih8u...@aol.comiloveHMR> wrote in message
news:20020516191851...@mb-fh.aol.com...
pmfan57
This is one reason why I think it's really a good idea to study Pat's
theories about playing and to learn some of his representative lines
as he negotiates changes (Linear Expressions) and over a single chord
(the first video and the first part of Linear Expressions) Of all my
books, Pat's Linear Expressions and David Baker's How to Play Bebop
(Vol 1) have the highest ratio of information retained and used to
information read, at least for me. Also, the linear construction
rules that you get out of that stuff does not require you to play like
Pat. It just gives you nice sounding ways of getting from note A to
note Z, if that makes any sense. (In Lithuania, Z stands for F sharp,
JK)
Kev
I think of "Along Came Betty" as being a pretty functionally-based harmonic
framework. The half-step-up minor 7th chords to me are both the "ii" of another
tonal center, it's just that in the case of the first two chords, only the
resultant I of the B-7 is stated right away. The tune does end on AbMaj7, so
that Bbmin7 does end up going somewhere after all. I do hear the Gbmin7 and
Gmin7 as being functional as well, Gbmin7 is just the ii of a "I" that never
arrives. It's functional-sounding to me because the Gmin7 ends up being part of
a ii-V, which eventually goes to FMaj7. I think they would be non-functional if
neither ended up serving that purpose, like the minor 7th chords in "So What"
don't, but when one of them serves as a ii-chord, it makes it sound like
there's a strong implication that the other one is just an unresolved ii, IMO.
-Kevin
Thom_j.
I have been a bit laxed but I'm learning through the Pat M
books of "Creative Force Part 1 & Part 2" and I love his
theory! His videos a good too but I'm trying to stay with
only the written learning material and his music CDs with
each book.
Once you get a grasp of his "dim7 voicing, parental form
that all subsequent chords (its children) are derived from"
its really a blast..
thom_j.
a wandering frank
debate, noting only that it's contentious, but appears to lean toward the
co-authorship thesis. Evans, he says, protested a lot, but didn't really
take concrete action to solidify his copyright claim to the tune, and Miles'
declarations on the subject were not consistent.
Jimmy Cobb, on the other hand, said (and I'm quoting his quote in Kahn, p.
98), that "Actually, a lot of that stuff [for _Kind of Blue_] was composed
in conjunction with Bill Evans" and " The ideas and music were mostly where
Bill was coming from."
FWIW.
Frank
"Dean Elwood" <de...@nospam-legallyspeaking.co.uk> wrote in message
news:ac345h$qa$1...@knossos.btinternet.com...
Tom Lippincott
>Ashley Kahn, in his book _The Making of Kind of Blue_, doesn't resolve that
>debate, noting only that it's contentious, but appears to lean toward the
>co-authorship thesis. Evans, he says, protested a lot, but didn't really
>take concrete action to solidify his copyright claim to the tune, and Miles'
>declarations on the subject were not consistent.
>
>Jimmy Cobb, on the other hand, said (and I'm quoting his quote in Kahn, p.
>98), that "Actually, a lot of that stuff [for _Kind of Blue_] was composed
>in conjunction with Bill Evans" and " The ideas and music were mostly where
>Bill was coming from."
>
>FWIW.
>
>Frank
one other thing I just recalled from Bill Evans' biography: Evans said he
bugged Miles about royalties several times, sort of half jokingly, and finally
one time Miles got sort of exasperated and said something like "okay here's
your damn royalties" and gave him a check for some ridiculously small amount,
like $20. I'm not sure if I am remembering the story accurately but it went
something like that.
a wandering frank
"Tom Lippincott" <tomli...@aol.comnospam> wrote in message
news:20020521003957...@mb-mh.aol.com...
> >
> >Ashley Kahn, in his book _The Making of Kind of Blue_, doesn't resolve
that
> >debate, noting only that it's contentious, but appears to lean toward the
> one other thing I just recalled from Bill Evans' biography: Evans said he
> bugged Miles about royalties several times, sort of half jokingly, and
finally
> one time Miles got sort of exasperated and said something like "okay
here's
> your damn royalties" and gave him a check for some ridiculously small
amount,
> like $20. I'm not sure if I am remembering the story accurately but it
went
> something like that.
Kahn mentions that too, including Bill's biography take on the matter. I
think Kahn said something about it being $25. :) He also mentioned what
you said in your other post, about Miles giving Bill those two chords, G-
and A+, and asking him to see what he could do with it. I found that pretty
inspiring.
Btw, it's a pretty good, interesting book for some of the details behind
that album. I recommend it, although I haven't finished it yet. It does
spend a bit of time on the pre-Kind of Blue thumbnail bios of Miles' band,
so that won't be news to a lot of you guys, but still, the details of the
recording process they used are pretty neat, IMO. Kahn got to listen to the
master tapes as a large chunk of his research.
Then again, I got it (the book, not the tapes) as a gift from the wife. :)
FWIW.
Frank
Tom Lippincott
>master tapes as a large chunk of his research.
>
>Then again, I got it (the book, not the tapes) as a gift from the wife. :)
>FWIW.
>
>Frank
>
>
hey; a guy I went to music school with ended up working for Sony for a while as
a "librarian" or something like that. A mutual friend of ours visited him at
work once and he told the guy "wait here." A minute later he came in with a
tape spool and handed it to the guy. It was none other than the master tape
from Kind of Blue! Can you imagine holding that in your hand?
a wandering frank
"Tom Lippincott" <tomli...@aol.comnospam> wrote in message
> hey; a guy I went to music school with ended up working for Sony for a
while as
> a "librarian" or something like that. A mutual friend of ours visited him
at
> work once and he told the guy "wait here." A minute later he came in with
a
> tape spool and handed it to the guy. It was none other than the master
tape
> from Kind of Blue! Can you imagine holding that in your hand?
Either I'd have a heart attack, or I'd be frantically looking around for the
herds of lawyers waiting to pounce on me.
Heck, *I* wouldn't trust me with 'em...
Frank