Actually, your honor, I ain’t stole nuthin’! I just borrowed a little bit, which I’m tryin’ to return, by way of the Universe! Hey, I hadn’t even heard of Master Guitarist & Educator, John Stowell until a few months ago, when my long time buddy, Prof. Dave King of the University of Music & Performing Arts in Mannheim, Germany (see post from 5/29/2013), took part in one of John’s master classes which was given at the school and sent me some video links. Needless to say, I was intrigued by Stowell’s harmonic and scalar concepts; especially his ideas of mixing … Read More
Bobby Stern
I recently discovered an awesome book by NYC alto saxophonist / composer John O’Gallagher, entitled “Twelve Tone Improvisation” (Advance Music) after stumbling upon it via a Dave Douglas podcast. O’Gallagher is a monster alto player with a fresh & unique concept. After hearing some of the music from the podcast off of his latest CD “The Anton Webern Project” and how “sophisticatedly funky” it sounded (Anton Webern gets jacked by Ornette meets Sun-Ra meets Bitches Brew), I got so excited I bought both the book & the CD. Although I’ve previously had some minimal exposure to twelve tone rows in … Read More
From the mid 1970’s until the early ’80’s I lived in Munich, Germany. Aside from being a beautiful, culturally oriented city lying at the foothills of the Alps, Munich hosted (somewhat unceremoniously, it seems in retrospect) one of Europe’s premier jazz venues at the time, known as the “Domicile” The “Domicile” was on par with Ronnie Scott’s in London, the Montmartre in Copenhagen, and several other major European clubs. It was part of “the circuit”, so one got to see all the major jazz legends who came over from the States (plus some of the top European musicians), on a … Read More
Part 1 Part 2 When “Midnight Love” finally hit the streets in the autumn of 1982, it marked the triumphant return of Marvin Gaye. I first got wind of it when, half asleep in the back seat of a car riding through Belgium on a November afternoon, en route to a gig in Luxembourg, I heard this tenor saxophone coming over the radio and, in my half conscious state, thought it sounded like Michael Brecker on one of his top forty disco type solos of that era. … Read More
After seemingly scoring some points with Marvin (Gaye) and Harvey (Fuqua) with a brief tenor solo on “‘Til Tomorrow” (see Part 1), I talked my way into having them invite me back for some more fun the next day. When I found out they were going to be recording in Munich for a few more days, before Marvin headed back over to Ostend, Belgium, I had to try to convince them I could still be useful; and while I don’t consider myself one of those individuals born with the gift of gab, whatever I told them worked. … Read More
It was a typical Munich summer’s afternoon in 1982 when I got back to my apartment and found a message, that I was to call Arco Studios back about a “Marvin Gaye Session”. I had been doing a modest amount of studio work in those days, mostly as a tenor saxophone soloist, as saxophone solos were common on many pop recordings of the ’70’s & ’80’s. Munich, as far as Europe went, was a pretty major recording town. It was a center of the “Disco” boom of the ’70’s, and the city boasted several film music recording studios, hosting rooms … Read More
Let’s take a look at a very hip sounding scale, Melakarta #31, known as Yagapriya. As you can see on the keyboard graphic to the left, Yagapriya has an unusual interval makeup: 1 1/2 steps – half step – half step – whole step – half step – half step – 1 1/2 steps The interval scheme of the second four notes (tetrachord) is the reverse (mirror image) of the first four notes, separated by a whole step.Yagapriya can also be thought of, in western terms, as 4 triads: (In C) C Maj., C min., F Maj., & F min. … Read More
The Augmented Scale is a symmetrical six note (hexatonic) scale. It can best be described as being formed by two augmented triads a minor 3rd apart (C aug & Eb aug) or, with different inversions, a half step apart. (C aug & C# aug). It can also be viewed as being made up of three Major triads, a Major 3rd apart. From C, the resulting hexatonic scales would be: C – Eb – E – G – G# – B (stepwise: -3, 1/2, -3, 1/2, -3), or C – C# – E – F – G# – A (1/2, -3, … Read More
Here’s a groovy little line, based on 3 note groupings of diatonic 4th intervals of the Melodic Minor scale, which morphed into being today as I waxed saxosophical. In my recent series of posts entitled “Melodic Minor: Major’s Evil Twin”, Pts. 1 -5, it was mentioned that: 1) The Melodic Minor scale system does not contain an unbroken row of 6 perfect fourths, as does Major (i.e. C Maj: B-E-A-D-G-C-F). As a result of altering the Maj. 3rd “E” to “Eb”, the newly created C Melodic Minor scale now has 4 perfect fourths, 2 tritones (Eb-A, F-B) and a diminshed … Read More
Here’s a transcription of John Coltrane’s soprano saxophone solo on his composition “Big Nick”, recorded April 11th, 1962 at Rudy Van Gelder’s famed studio in Englewood Cliffs, NJ and was included as part of the CD release of the album “Coltrane”, on the Impulse! label. This is the first of two versions of the tune recorded by Coltrane that year; the second, which appeared on the aptly titled Impulse! classic, “Duke Ellington and John Coltrane”, was recorded in September. The main difference between the two versions, is the form (and the intention). The “Ellington” version is a standard 32 bar, AABA … Read More